I guess you can say that I haven’t had a lot of time to do much of anything lately.  The thought of coming home and sitting down to type in a blog entry after sitting in front of a computer for the entire day (yes, day) really makes my eyes water.  It must be an age thing.  But anyway, onto the news.  Looks like it’s been around 3 months since I have posted anything of substance to the site.  Coincidentally that’s how old little Stephen is today.  Some might say there is no coincidence there but you never know.  

My grandmother passed away I guess a month ago now.  Everything seems to happen so fast.  I know that she really didn’t know us any longer and the reason part of me is saying that it was all for the best but it seems kind of callous to think of things that way.  I might say callous things but I'm, for the most part, not that way at all.  I think what I miss is the way she used to be...not so much the woman that sat down at another family's table at a Mother's Day dinner (I might add that it was a black family whom she swore was her kin), but the woman I knew growing up.  She might have been slightly annoying to everyone else, but she was kind and knew how to tell people off.  She demonstrated that on her family (the white ones, not her adopted black family in J&R's Steakhouse) time and again.  She will be missed.  Not for telling off her family, the other kind and grandmotherly stuff.

The lovely Danielle and I celebrated our one year anniversary this past weekend.  What is that, paper?  Well we went through a bunch of that celebrating.  It was nice to get away a little bit (and I do mean a little bit, we stayed in Nassau which is the next county over) but we missed the little shit producer.  Well I shouldn’t say little shit producer because lately he has been producing a lot of shit.  It would seem that he excels at it.  There might even be a future in it for him.  I don’t know who would have the demand, but he can surely outpace it with his supply.  We stayed at the lovely Garden City Hotel which was...really not anywhere near as nice as Las Vegas, but it was nice.  For the first time in my life I was stopped from bringing a beverage into an establishment, or rather a case of beverages.  I just didn’t feel like springing for $5 a beer from the lovely in-room fridge when I could spring $10 for a case of the same damn thing...just not in a lovely fridge.  Call it the old miser in me...I think of the money we save on not drinking hotel fridge beer as nearly putting Stephen through college.  Ok, it might buy him a book, but still.

Danielle’s water broke at 5pm while she was at one of her friend’s homes.  They were throwing her a small baby shower which would make it I think the 5th one.  While eating chips and Mexican dip she realized that she seemed to be peeing herself more than usual and recognized it wasn’t pee but amniotic fluid running down her leg.  She called me at work where I was just ending my shift and I went over to pick her up.  We stopped home to pick up some stuff and drove leisurely to St Charles hospital in Port Jeff.  

We got there and went up to one of the birthing rooms where the doctor examined her and told her that she was 5 centimeters dilated (out of a possible 10).  By this time it was about 7pm.  Contractions started coming faster and Danielle’s insistent curses that she be given an epidural became more like disembodied cries from another dimension.  Unfortunately the lone anesthesiologist on call was busy with an emergency c-section and couldn’t come down yet.  So they shot her up with Demerol which blunted the pain…not enough to stop the cursing, but enough to repel the demon that seemed to inhabit Danielle before the shot.  The contractions continued for awhile and finally a nurse came in to check her.  She was fully dilated and they don’t do epidurals for women that are fully dilated…welcome back my demonic wife.

To say that Danielle wasn’t happy about this would be the understatement of the century.  But she pushed and pushed and little baby Stephen came into the world at 10:54pm, August 9, 2007.  He weighed 7 pounds, 15 ounces and measured 20 ½ inches.  He is perfectly healthy and does not like to cry unlike his father.  From water breaking to birth, I am pleased to say that we broke the 6 hour baby barrier thanks to my expert coaching.  Sure Danielle had something to do with it, but about half-way through when it became apparent to Danielle that drugs were not forthcoming she wanted to go home.  If it weren’t for me wrestling the keys from her hands, she might still be pregnant.

That’s your basic recap.  I’m freakin tired.

I haven’t written much lately. All I can say is that I am tired and don’t have a lot of free time anymore. I’ve been working a lot (10 hour days and 8 hours on Saturday just because I love it) and like almost everything at work, it’s another example of be careful of what you wish for. I have worked for years to get into a position where I would be able to work on making things better with a computer. Now I’m there and when I get home from work I can hardly look at the computer. I find myself looking for things that will help me with a work problem and there goes my free time. But then most of my free time is taken up by baby preparations.

The bun is still in the oven though it looks like the timer has popped because the lovely Danielle’s belly button has gone from innie to outie. What can you do? I have been having some second thoughts on his name. Originally we were going with Stephen Michael…but the more I think about it the more I want to change his middle name to something starting with a U…Umberto…Ulysses…whatever. Why? Think how cool it would be to have the initials SUM when your last name is McMath! Yep, now you can see the reason I don’t have naming privileges.

We went to an all-day Lamaze class last Sunday. Nothing better than being stuck in a room with a dozen heavy breathing pregnant women and a dozen disgruntled men. It wasn’t that bad, but it was fricken hot and being in a room with a dozen hot heavy breathing pregnant women isn’t as fun as you might think.

We joined another warehouse store a few weekends ago, Costco. I can’t say that I was impressed and I can’t avoid that nagging feeling that the membership cost will probably be the most we actually spend there. But much like the first purchase we made from the first store, BJs, we joined to buy cheesecake. Don’t ask.

Last week we went out to dinner with another couple to the local Chili's restaurant. Themed dining at its best to be sure, but it really was quite good. The highlight of the meal was not the food however, but the beverages. None of us had any sort of alcohol just the normal carbonated fare, but it was not the beverages themselves that were outstanding. The server was incredible. He had us choking down soda after soda and before we could get to the half-way mark on our glasses he had another one on the way. At that point we knew that not only did Chili's have a free refill policy, but they enforced that policy. At the end of the meal Len (our waiter) asked if we wanted anything else and it was the first time in a long while that I knew exactly what everyone at the table was thinking. Yes, another round. It reminded me of church.

Later that night we went to another eatery for dessert. I think it was called Milk and Sugar (could have been Bread and Water, or some other catchy Yuppie title, can't remember) where we sat on couches and drank coffee in front of a coffee table. Myself, I am uncomfortable eating anything on a couch. I will sit down on the floor at the coffee table at home if I am eating something other than chips, but that's home. We had our sundaes on the table and I was getting an ache in my back. Did I mention that they had a band playing? Oh yes, they did. So we have all of the discomfort of a bar (not being able to hear anyone else) with none of the benefits (beer). I was getting flash backs to a time when being on a couch at a bar meant that I had too much to drink and the curb outside the bar somehow looked like a couch to me. A firm couch, but still. Anyway, the M&S waiter was the exact opposite of Len from Chili's. He took our order and disappeared. We had to flag down someone else to get the check. It wasn't fun for me at least.

Ok, that?s out of the way. In baby news we found out what the sex of the impending baby will be. We went to the sonogram place (also known as my gyno) and the technician told us at first that it was a girl and then about 3 minutes later said that it was a boy. That was the final determination...so boy it is. Now I know it has to be mine if they couldn't tell the sex right away. Oh we have also settled on a name and let me say that our good friend Lenny had nothing to do with this, but we are going with Stephen in honor of my father who passed away recently. It just narrowly beat out Mick Mookie, but I guess this is more appropriate and I like it too.

Oh and without explanation I have to say that I now sleep next to Darth Vader. I'm hoping that it's just the pregnancy and that I?m not sleeping next to a sith lord but there you have it.

I sensed the presence. It had been a very long time since I had smelled this particular scent. It is a mixture of incompetence, cheese, Coke, and a certain indefinable odor that could only be described as blue/green.

I sat motionless looking to our friend the squirrel for my defense lesson hoping I would not be seen. It didn't work and he approached. I turned in my seat to stare deeply into the shirtbiote's maw and I still see it even now that I have turned away. He came to me and held out his hand in friendship to see if I would recognize him. I shook his hand only to obsess moments afterwards (and every second since) on where that hand had been moments before. I knew where it was. My mind remembers where it went automatically time and again as the doorknob turned so many times all those years ago. There is a part of my brain that died in that moment. Indeed, my hand felt sick.

He asked if I remembered him. There had been many nights that I drank to near unconsciousness trying to purge those memories and put good kids through college with my bar tips. I still remember.

He explained that he had a bad illness that required him to be hospitalized for quite a while. All I could notice was his ill-fitting false teeth and vibrantly blue shirt. He mentioned that he was out for a long time but after a few weeks he had regained all of his mental capacity back. My brain screamed! Never could there have been such a short journey from near brain death and his full mental capacity. I bit my lip. My blood healed the wound into a scab inside my mouth.

I exchanged pleasantries with him while the deafening scream inside my head stopped me from volunteering such things as my recent marriage and impending fatherhood. I did not want this man and those memories to attach themselves in any way to the pureness of those good, magical things. Several times throughout the exchange he caught his teeth in his mouth and I had to look away. The mental image of false teeth dropping onto the desk and rolling onto the floor was not something I could hold back laughter from so I had to think of something else. Street urchins rolling in a street made of broken glass came to mind...and then it was gone.

He left me saying that he had to get back to his job. Seems he has a new-found work ethic that was not present a decade ago. It was a blue day. I wonder if the illness had an effect on the shirtbiote that made him actually respect his work...and forget how we really never talked when we worked together. And so ended the longest exchange of words we had ever had despite working together for years.

The title was just something stuck in my brain from a bygone era. It was there because the lovely Danielle has been in a bit of pain lately. Now, I'm sure that her pain is real and is quite uncomfortable but I have to question how it hurts. Her knee and leg hurt and have been this way since the weekend. How did this happen you might ask? Well, the only reason we can put our fingers on is the couch. Yes, the lovely Danielle crippled herself from falling asleep on the couch for a hour or two. Ironically this happened while I was outside shoveling ice. I am now trying to get her away from the debilitating effects of laying on the couch. One can only imagine the damaging effects sleeping in a bed might have on her body!

Obviously the reason for the pain can't be that she really strenuously laid prone, but more likely that it has something to do with the pregnancy. Danielle is taking it all in stride though. She is convinced that this kid isn't even born yet and it's already on her nerves.

We had what I believe to be the largest snowfall of the year over the weekend. It was somewhere around 3 or 4 inches of the nicest ice you would ever want to see. Being lazy by nature I decided to wait until Saturday to shovel it all. Here is a recap of how it went.

First off, the snow was too heavy for the snow blower so I threw my back into it. Chipping and shoveling for about 3 hours over the entire weekend wasnt really so bad. It was heavy, but nothing I couldn?t handle once a year. In the midst of my shoveling a truck pulled up and a man got out asking if I was the man of the house. Instinctively I always say no when someone asks a question like that but I think the heavy lifting and cold temps got to me and I muttered "I guess" instead (in the usual manner I have when someone questions my manhood). He then went into a sales pitch about meats he had for sale. Now I don?t know how it is where you come from, but I generally don?t buy things from a door to door meat salesman. Call me odd, but its just not me. So I declined and he went on his merry way selling meat down the street. In retrospect I hope I wasn?t propositioned, but anyway.

The snowstorm produced a few other problems for us. One, the telephone line we have with Verizon no longer produced a dial tone. It really didn?t bother me because I still subscribe to the philosophy of 'phone bad', but the lovely Danielle needed it so we called the service line. You would think that the telephone company would have the best telephone customer service. Well then you would be wrong. I guess they honestly don?t care about telephone customer service because if your phone isn?t working, the chances of you calling in to complain about it are pretty slim, but we had cell phones. So we called.

Calling the telephone company to report a problem is like calling a drunk, retarded, computerized, monkey that is developmentally challenged. We talked to this thing and secured a repair appointment three times, each time it would put us back to beginning of the menu. By the third time I was screaming yes into the phone which is the equivalent to reverse phone sex at this point. At last they finalized our appointment (anywhere between 8am and 6pm on Monday...please don?t get me started on that) and then were transferred to a repair technician that confirmed EVERYTHING we just said to the damn computerized retard. Why wouldn?t they just get us the human if they were going to do it anyway? I don?t know, but we had an appointment.

About 10 minutes after my meat peddling salesman left a Verizon truck pulled up. This was about 4 hours after we made the appointment...and 3 days before he was supposed to show up. As he left he noticed the progress I had made in shoveling the driveway and asked if I would like to come and do his driveway as well. I envisioned a phone technician-shaped dent in my shovel as I politely declined. He fixed the phone and left. All this and my throat was still sore from yelling at the phone.

Did I mention that the snow plow took out our mailbox? Yes it did. So being the sort that actually likes mail (not male, keep your meat salesmen off my block) fixing the thing was at the top of the list of things to do on Sunday. We went to Lowes for its fine selection in really fricken ugly mailboxes and posts. Making our purchases, we headed home and opened up the box with the mailbox in it to find that it was really really dented. It looked like a pristine mailbox box, but the box inside the box was less than boxlike. So back to Lowes to return the mailbox we bought 10 minutes earlier. It was a fun weekend like that.

I feel better now. In baby news, we will be finding out the sex of the baby on April 11th so lay your bets down now. We already know it wont have downs syndrome so pay up all you losers. Oh and might I add that betting that my child would be retarded (though a foregone conclusion if genetics have anything to do with it) is in extremely poor taste.

Today we went so I could make my contribution to this little baby project that I seem to be involved in. I had to get a blood test to determine what my blood type and RH factor are. I checked with my doctor and he had no idea so I had to get the test. Did my doctor refer me? Nope. I had to get a referral from the lovely Danielle's gynecologist. So yes, I am one of the few males in the world that gets blood tests at the behest of a gynecologist. It's somewhat unsettling to be sent to have any tests done by a gynecologist and now I am right there with you women! I still dont know what my blood type is and I am kind of hoping that I am RH neutral since it seems everyone needs to be positive or negative. It would just add to the confusion the baby must feel.

Beyond that, I attempted to do our taxes tonight using an online service called TaxAct. I do not recommend them. I reviewed our completed return before filing and found that they had put the lifetime education credit in the wrong spot resulting in an over $800 error in the return. I am going back to filing the old fashioned way...pen, paper, no freaking electronic filing.

Just in case my last entry was too cryptic, the picture is from a sonogram that the lovely Danielle had last week. As of right now the lovely Danielle is eight weeks and two days pregnant with little Oops as we have nicknamed the fetus. I will be putting up a poll on possible names for the final product soon as I seem to have lost my naming priviledges. I guess suggesting Mookie was probably a part of the reason for that, but hey, you have to try. Let's see, so far neither one of us has had morning sickness for which I am grateful. I don't want to speak for Danielle but I could do without that. We don't know what flavor it is coming out yet but we will be finding out whenever these things are found out. Oh and yes, to all of the mother figures in my life, you're wishes are coming true. I can only hope and pray to some random deity that I have a child JUST LIKE ME and sorry about that Danielle.