Balls Are Cool.

There are big events in life that I have always considered life-changing events. Marriage. Children. The death of a loved one. You get my drift.

I would have to say that purchasing a house would rank very high on my list.

We closed on the sale of our current home on Friday. The movers will be here Monday, to move the furniture and the few of our belongings left (everything else was moved to storage last weekend) to their storage facility. We close on our new home on Wednesday, but won’t take possession until August 11th. In the interim, we get to live in my parent’s basement. Do I need to say how thrilled I am about that?

All in all, I have to say, I hate moving. I’ve pretty much hated this entire process. It’s stressful, and my daughter thinks it’s the end of the world (not that I expected any different, she’s 12, and has lived here more than half her life). I can understand that. I hope we never do this again.

In truth, my kids are the main reason my wife and I WANT to move. Our neighborhood, due to the fact that the homes are some of the few in the valley below $150k, attracts two things: White trash and renters. I may have ranted about this in a previous post, it’s hard to say. So, either we get shitty neighbors, or we get transient families without roots (or, sometimes, both). My daughter has had several friends move away, and it seems that the ones who DO stay are less than optimal in terms of the kinds of kids one would like to see their child hang out with.

We’ve also had problems with the school. It seems that there are only a handful of the staff that really give a rat’s ass about the success or failure of our child. Unfortunately, it took so long to find the ones that did, that nothing could be done about it until after we’d made the decision to move.

I guess I’m saying that, despite the royal pain in the ass that is moving, it will be better in the end. The neighborhood is nicer, the house is much larger (and has a garage… I am absolutely STOKED about that), and best of all, there is absolutely nothing else that needs to be done to this house. The basement is 100% finished, and all major repairs and upgrades have been taken care of. Woot!

I guess I’m not very sentimental, either, because as we were pulling out of the driveway to run some errands today, I looked back at my house and thought “I won’t even miss this place.”

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I was watching the BYU - UNLV MWC tourney championship game yesterday. I’m a BYU fan, despite my feelings for the church. BYU didn’t play well, and ended up losing the game.

After the game, however, some idiot fans decided to get into it. On the news, they showed a bunch of UNLV fans on the court taunting the BYU fans.

What the hell, people? It’s a damn GAME. How completely stupid do you have to be to get into a fight because your team wins or loses a game?

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I have this wonderful condition called sleep apnea. Most people know what it is. It’s my own damn fault, really — I’m too fat, so my airway closes off while I sleep. This prevents my body from getting into REM sleep at all, meaning I wake up as refreshed as a wino after a night of drinking followed by a nap in the park.

Several years ago, when I was diagnosed, I got to spend a couple of lovely nights in IHC’s sleep center. The first night, they hooked me up to various monitoring apparatus which checked my brain activity, breathing, and blood oxygen levels. I felt like a freaking science experiment, and I have no idea how they expected to get a good reading on any of my stats. I mean, I wasn’t going to sleep very well when wired up, especially when I felt like if I moved, I would somehow screw up the readings.

About a month later, when I went back for the second test, they fitted me for a CPAP. During the night, they play with various pressure settings on the device to see which one brings my blood oxygen up to decent levels, while at the same time still allowing me to sleep. It was the best night of sleep I’d had in ages.

Unfortunately, my experiences in the sleep lab did not carry over to in-home use. I still wake up feeling like total crap. I’ve been to a pulmonologist, who told me “Lose weight, there isn’t anything else we can do for you.”

If I don’t get eight hours of sleep in a night, it exacerbates the sleep issue even more. And let me tell you — getting eight hours of sleep in a night is far from the norm around here. We’ve got three kids under five, and anyone with kids knows how fun it is trying to get them to sleep through the night. Also, anyone who is a sysadmin can attest to the fact that sometimes, shit just breaks at the worst possible time (as was the case tonight, hence the reason I’m awake).

I’ve been attached to this damn machine now for almost four years. Like I said, I hold no illusions as to WHY I have this condition — it’s my own fault. I’ve been going to the gym now for almost 2 months — woo hoo! I’ve noticed I’m slimming down a bit, which motivates me even more. For the first time in those four years, I can actually see a light at the end of the funnel. I will get healthy and get rid of this thing for good.

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We’ve got a neighbor with… issues. I have no idea how old she is — she looks like she’s in her mid to late 40’s, but since she doesn’t bathe, it’s hard to tell how much of her countenance is age and how much is grime.

Anyhow, this lady also two kids, who she can never get to school on time. Why? Because she doesn’t know how to drive. Or read, apparently.

She also regularly tells my wife and I how little money her and her husband have, how they’re on welfare (both from the state and from the church), and how they’ve almost been evicted three times.

What. The. Fuck.

I have told this woman several times that I don’t want to know the details of her sorry life. (I was a little nicer then that, but the basic message was the same.) She doesn’t get it. I don’t know if she wears her sad life as a scarlet letter, or what the hell’s going on in her mind. I strongly suspect that she’s got some sort of mental illness, but I’ve known people with some pretty bad shit goin’ on that have pulled themselves up and made something of themselves.

Now, I’m not a cold and heartless bastard (though, you may already think I am). I can understand that everyone falls on hard times, and everyone needs a hand from time to time.

What I don’t get is, when people continue to find themselves in the same situations… over and over again… year after year… why they don’t decide to do something with their life and make a change.

In this particular case, knowing what I know of this woman, I suspect that the main problem is laziness. Yeah, I could be wrong, but I get the feeling that these people don’t want to do SHIT and expect the rest of the world to take care of them. Her husband has had long, LONG bouts of unemployment, and invariably his parents end up taking care of them. Why work when Mom and Dad are willing to pay your bills?

What pisses me off more then ANYTHING, though, is the fucked-up example these two are setting for their kids. These kids are not far in age from my own children, and actually come over to my house semi-regularly to hang out with my kids. I hear from others in the neighborhood that these kids are BAD KIDS and that they do BAD THINGS. What I see is a couple of kids with no parental guidance in their life.

That’s what makes me the most angry about their situation. I think that  once you have kids, you lose the right to be stupid. Period, end of sentence. Yes, I am well aware that the world does not work this way, but it’d be a damn better place if it did, wouldn’t it?

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I love my kids. Really. They are so freaking awesome.

Sometimes, though, they are not. And one of those times is when we are grocery shopping.

I once mentioned the frustration I feel when I’m trying to shop with four kids who are tired, ornery, and ready to be out of the store. This friend has a kid, so I was kinda surprised when he acted like it was not as big of a deal as I was making it.

I wanted to punch him in the mouth.

First off, as anyone with children knows, kids lose interest in things quite quickly. They think the idea of going to the store sounds fun, till they realize we’re not buying them treats. (This used to be a semi-regular occurrence, but we’re trying to help them develop healthy eating habits.) And after the first few minutes, they’ve lost interest in the toys we’ve brought them and have either started to pick on each other, or started to cry (depending on the age).

Second off, there is the sheer volume of food required to feed such a group. We’ve been fortunate in that I have a skill set that is somewhat in demand at the moment, and as such I’ve been able to make a living. And thank God, because my grocery bill keeps going through the damn roof! The other downside to this, aside from the cash, is the fact that we can’t get through a week’s worth of shopping without using two carts.

I’m sure that I am part of the problem. I have little patience when it comes to going to the store. I want to go in, get what I need, and get the hell out. My wife, on the other hand, regularly adds things to the list (usually things she’s forgotten), or wants to look at other non-food items (such as clothes for the kids). Usually this results in an angry “lets-get-the-fuck-going-now-because-I-can’t-take-this” statement, to which she usually replies “All right, all right” and gives me a  (well-deserved) dirty look.

The other people at the store frustrate me, too. I mean… sweet Jesus, you are NOT the only person at the damn store! Move your cart out of the middle of the aisle, please. And what’s with the dirty look you give me when I ask you to move it? It’s not like I said “Get the fuck outta the way asshole!” If you recall, I said “Excuse me, please.” How can you take offense at that??

But worst of all is the feeling I get when I bring it all in the house. “$250 bucks and this is all I got?”

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Today, my wife had her wisdom teeth removed. She was fadirly nervous about the whole thing, though I assured her it’d be no big deal.

Turns out I was slightly wrong. See, my wife is… well, let’s just say she’s slightly over 30 so I don’t piss her off by telling everyone her age. As I’m sure you know, usually having them removed at a younger age makes things easier.

Half of them had curled roots, which made it a bit difficult to remove them. I’m not saying it was a huge ordeal or anything (I’ve heard some horror stories), all I’m saying is that if she’d had this done earlier, she probably wouldn’t be hurting as much right now.

Her being in pain means that I get to play mommy, something which usually doesn’t thrill my younger kids. I don’t think I’m quite as loving as she is. It’s a Dad thing, I guess.

I tell you what, though — it really makes me appreciate her. Sappy, I know, but it’s the truth. She does a HELL of a lot of work in one day. I mean, a day job is rough sometimes, too, but chasing the kids around the house, trying to keep the place semi-clean, and keeping them entertained is a BITCH!

I wonder how she has the energy to do ANYTHING at the end of the day. I mean, I only did this TODAY (well, I hope, anyhow), and I’m totally wiped.

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My wife and I just got done watching a National Geographic special about 9/11. They focused on speaking with the people that were actually there, and in a lot of cases talked to the emergeny operators and survivors.

I was surprised how emotional the whole thing made me. A lot has changed in my life since that day, most especially the fact that I now have a wife and kids. I think it hit closer to home as they talked about speaking with people in their last moments of life, and how most of them just wanted their families and loved ones to know they were OK.

Another  emotion that erupted from within, which somewhat surprised me, was anger. That there were people in this world capable of inflicting that kind of damage on an entire society, merely because we believe differently then they do.

This is not anger with Muslims, Arabs, or any particular race or culture. This is the same anger I feel when I read about the man in Utah County who shot his wife, Kristy Ragsdale, as she was getting out of the car to go to church Sunday. Or when I read about Verne Jenkins, who was shot and killed after chasing a would-be thief out of a convenience store for stealing, of all things, a pack of gum.

It leads me to ask the question: What the HELL is wrong with these people?

Sometimes, I think people like this should be taken somewhere and executed. Painfully. Or tortured, or something far worse. Think of the pain and suffering these people and countless others have evoked on the friends and family these people have left behind.

And on the flipside of that intense hate, I wonder what circumstances could possibly have led up to these tragic events. What types of environments could these people have lived in to cause them to feel that these actions would somehow grant them a paradisiacal afterlife with God? Or, that shooting this person was the only way out of their current situation? What drives a person to kill?

In some ways, it’s why I fervently hope there is a God with the power to dish out punishments worthy of such offenses.

Unfortunately, all I can do is hope.

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Today, a former employee came to visit us at work. (Actually, the guy that I replaced.) As I understand it, he left because he had several disagreements with other employees. I guess he just got to the point where he couldn’t stand it anymore, and walked out.

It became clear that he was still pretty upset with one of the individuals, in this case the “straw” that broke his back. When she said hi to him, his response was “Fuck you.” And I thought… “Wow, how classy. What a jackass.”

I started thinking about how silly it was that he was upset with her after several months had passed.

But, as I thought more about it… don’t we all hold grudges to one extent or another? I know I do. Especially lately… since it’s come to light that my in-laws are not particularly happy with me for one reason or another. I think that, for the most part, these sentiments wouldn’t bother me if these people were not such a big part of my life. If a co-worker expressed the same opinions, I would be a little bothered (to the extent that it affected my job, anyhow). If a complete stranger told me they thought I was a manipulative jackass, I’d tell them where they could stick it.

But these people are my wife’s parents. They are my children’s grandparents. As much as I’d like to deny it, their opinions (no matter how misinformed) do affect me to some extent. And, honestly, it’s a bit troubling that they feel so maligned by me.

Bottom line: I am holding a grudge against THEM just as much as they are holding a grudge against ME.

So, that’s a nice thought. Now, how do we fix it? That’s the hard part.

Tags: Family, Stupidity, Work // Add Comment »

Seems like blogs are full of “here’s what I’m changing for my new year’s resolution.” Man, that’s so cliche.

So I’m gonna do the same thing.

Mostly it’s about health for me. I’m overweight, and I have sleep apnea. There’s a little cause and effect going on there. So I got a gym membership, and I’m giving up all forms of soda (and anything else that has sugar, high fructose corn syrup, or aspartame in it).

I tell ya what, I’m rockin’ it right now. I didn’t think I’d make it this far.

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I took the fam to Burger King for lunch today. As I was eating, I noticed that my “medium” cup looked very much like the cups we called Large cups when I worked at McD’s 15 years ago. It was a 32-ounce beast, so small is now 20 ounces, medium is 32, and large is a whopping 44. Jesus.

After lunch, we headed over to Shopko to return some baby clothes my wife bought for the little one. Turns out whichever sweatshop  made them had forgotten to put buttons on the sleeves (whoops). While we were there, I perused their abundant clearance section, and realized they had a LOT of XXL and XXXL sized clothes on the rack (which is probably evidence that America is, indeed, getting fatter, but that’s a subject for another day).

I had this wild thought: What if clothing companies started doing the same thing fast food companies have done with drink sizes?

Imagine how much better we’d feel about ourselves, if an XXL was suddenly the “large” size. God, I’d be downright skinny in my medium (now XL) tee shirts and sweaters.

I should patent that. Too bad you can’t do that online with a credit card, eh?

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