Happy 3rd To Little A

Everyone wish Little A a happy 3rd birthday. The birth story follows …

(Rememeber all this happened 3 years ago and is all true and we remember it on the 26th of every year. )

Name: Little A
Weight: 7 lbs. 6 oz.
Length: 20.25 in.
Birth Date: 4.28.03

To appreciate the whole story we have to start Saturday night about 7:45 PM when I went to feed the dogs. A had Bronchitis and had been coughing for about 2 weeks. She complained her side really hurt Saturday afternoon. No one thought much of it other than she was sore from coughing. I, however, when feeding the dogs was trying to move a fan in the dog house. I picked it up and promptly received an eye full of sawdust in my right eye.

Into the house I went to flush my eye. So I flushed and flushed and flushed and the pain and sawdust were still there. So into the shower I go. And flushed and flushed and flushed some more … no dice! So I called a friend to take me to a minor emergency clinic. The one I usually go to was closed so I go to another one ( wait — this story is going somewhere ). I have this thing about eyes .. I nearly had a panic attack so they send me to the emergency room. One Zanex and some vicaden later they send me home saying it looked ok, just a scratch.

Mean while, back at the ranch, A coughs a little too hard and feels a pop in her side. Intense pain and off to the emergency room she goes in another town with a cracked rib. She’s escorted by her pregnant sister SIL, who is 6 months pregnant. They are stopping at every Whataburger along the way to go to the bathroom. Two pregnant women in a car on the way to Dallas from Arlington having to stop and pee; one with a broken rib. Let’s recount. A’s in the ER in Dallas, I’m in the ER in Arlington.

So at 2:30 AM Sunday morning we finally all get home and get some sleep.

Monday morning we were schedule to induce at 9:30 AM. So we start our day about 5:30 AM. Those with kids understand the 4 hour gap. A rounds the corner and says, “I think my water broke.” A’s had 2 kids prior and her water didn’t break on any of them. So the pace quickens. 90% of everything was ready, but we were expecting more time. H, our 5 year old, got to witness all the action. To his benefit Monday morning’s breakfast was Starburst. It’s amazing how logic goes out the window when you have to be somewhere.

We show up at the hospital at 7:30 AM ready and we let them know the situation and in we go to labor room 7.

An hour or so later the epidural is in and a little too high. A can’t breath from the Bronchitis … remember that? So we go up and down with the epidural medicine, not the epidural. Then about 4:45 PM, the Dr. comes in and says, “Ok, let’s start pushing.” And then he leaves … Ok, I may be a rookie, but … ok so he left.

So she pushes and pushes, remember she has a broken rib, and pushes. Little A gets about 1/3 out and the chord is around her neck. Not too tight, but it’s got to be cut, the Dr., who has now returned, clamps two sides while I am looking over A’s left leg. Just before the Dr. cuts, I think, that’s going to squirt me right in the face, and it did! It was like when you turn on the kitchen sink and grab the sprayer and you get that abrupt shot to the face. So the Dr. says, “Never had that happen before,” and we move on. A few minutes later I have my little girl, Little A. Mom and baby are well!

So where did you come from?

Lee Ann did a great post once on first comments and all and she did a HUGE amount of research to find people’s first comments or something like that. I quit HNT’ing because of her. My breasts just can’t compete with some of the ones that are out there!

But the question floating in my mind lately has been about what sites you really go to and read. Can you give me 2-5 in the comments of who you read consistently. I’ll admit that I am very behind in updating the drop-downs to the right. Some of those people don’t even exist.

But I will give you this, here are some I am almost religious about.

A day in the overwhelming life – http://kellyim.blogspot.com

Absolutely no exaggeration or sarcasm HERE! – http://dramaticsarcasm.blogspot.com

Alice’s Wonderland – http://aliceblogs.blogspot.com

Can’t Find The Lake – http://hxadams.blogspot.com

Castles of Nannbugg (Lee Ann) – http://lahilton.blogspot.com

Dave’s Blog – http://davidhphotography.blogspot.com

Suburban Goddess – http://blog.maclaughlinstudios.com

The Deep End Of The Pool – http://thedeependofthepool.blogspot.com

And there are others. How many? A ton see bellow to see my RSS reader.

( And that’s only the blog folder – or part of it, there’s a comics, HNT, News, Inactive and Sports folder as well.)

Why Does This Stuff Fascinate Me?

<—- This pic comes from the Baylor website ( Baylorschool.org in Chatanooga! )

I never thougt I could be intellectual after only a few hours of sleep. Hurricane force winds last night in my hood. One tree is bent.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. Anyone see this?

College bars students from posing for Playboy.

Why does this story draw my attention? Is it because I want to see naked college chicks? Or maybe it’s because I’m Baptist and I need to have an opinion? Or maybe I want to see some naked college chick, but wouldn’t want MY daughter doing that, just some other guy’s daughter.

No, it was the little interchange at the end that made this article worth the read. Baylor has long been a conservative bastion. Maybe it’s more of a hypocritical administration bastion than conservative bastion. I do applaud the effort, but do a door-to-door for porn and you’ll get more in your dragnet than the two who pose.

This is my favorite line:

“One woman, who professed no desire to pose for Playboy, said Baylor officials had ‘more important things to worry about’ and wondered if male students would face similar punishment if they were seen reading an issue of Playboy featuring Baylor women.”

And here was my thought. “Can you legislate morality?” My answer, “Yes!” On the surface, most people say you can’t, but I disagree. The question becomes, as this woman implies, “Can you enforce morality?” My answer, “not totally and never completely”.

Ejected! And A Win

So I’m an assistant coach for a little league team. Yesterday was the third game of the season and my first official day at the helm as interim skipper as the head coach was out of town on business.

Fortunately, he made the lineup and all I had to do was move from 1st base coach to 3rd base coach while the other assistan pitched and the coach’s wife took my place at first base. The team mom then moved up to dugout coach. Lots of coaches for 13 kids, but you’ll see why in a minute.

Baseball is a complex game, but there is really only one rule you have to follow when you are hitting and that’s always bat in order. It really doesn’t matter what position you are on the field, you have to bat in order. In this league you can play an additional player and have 10 players on the field instead of the regular 9. The other good thing is that you can also have everyone on your bench hit – and for us that’s 13 players.

At the 3rd inning, you sub in your bench players – usually that’s 3 players, but last night we had a no show, so only 2 kids were on the bench. Ok, all well and fine, right?

Wrong!

I go to make my subs at the middle of the 3rd and they eject me because I haven’t made my subs at the beginning of the inning! What differenence does it make? They aren’t going to bat in any different order and they were about to take the field!

Stupid … just plane stupid. So I got ejected for that.

So now we have 1 coach pitching and 1 coach ( the coache’s wife ) as the first base coach and I’m outside the fence coaching 3rd base.

Uggghhhh!!!

The coach’s wife was on the phone with the coach and he’s screaming, “No! That’s not right!” He’s going to take it up with the league when her gets back.

Doesn’t matter to me, we won 17 – 10.

C Section Explanation

Got a short note today ( not nasty at all ) advising I explain more about the c-section statement from yesterday. If you have a c-s scar, I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all. My comment was in regard to looking up what a c-s scar looked like. When I googled said scar and looked at the images I found this picture (graphic):

http://www.hidralibrary.com/images/2c-section_scar1-18-05.jpg

My comments were in no way intended to inflame or embarrass anyone. The image I found is, in fact, a separate conidition that is appearing around the scar itself.

So sorry if I hurt your feelings, but that was IN NO WAY my intention.

Jef

Scatter Shots 4-12-06

Not enough for a full post on each but a nice buffet none the less …

A Purpose In Life

Last night was the first night I kept stats for the baseball team I help coach. It is a full time ordeal to juggle this and that. After the game H may have found his niche in life. H loves numbers or at least is good with them. The idea of being able to be around a sport and use numbers and be able to travel with the team really set his sports panties on fire. We’ll see if I can get him interested in stats keeping.

Immigration Bill

A couple of posts down there were a few REALLY good thoughts on this. Leesa and TD3K ( as well as many more of you ) had some good observations. I noticed in the paper this weekend they are marching sans the Mexican flags. That or the media picked up on this and only snapped poses with American flags. This issue still angers me, but it’s almost unenforceable as it is.

C-Section Scars

Never seen one. Not that it’s a foot fetish like thing with me, but I think I actually saw one once and didn’t know what it was. Until I Googled it and now I know. I hear tales of vertical and horizontal ones. …. hmmmm …. now the interest isn’t as great. BTW if you do Google it and look under images, you must feel some sort of compassion for the woman who looks like she’s been beaten with a baseball bat.

Blockbuster

Been going wild checking out movies to test my DVD burner/player in my PC *clearing throat and looking over my shoulder*. I’m amazed at Blockbuster’s catalog. Stripes is only for sale in my store, but you can rent Tom Hanks in “The Man With One Red Shoe”. Hmmmph. But Son In Law and a few others are also not available. Unfortunately, my unlimited rentals only works at one Blockbuster. I don’t think they do inter-Blockbuster-loan.

EBay
A won a bid for a cookie jar that is a replica of her grandmother’s. Her cousin has the original. I was so happy for her. I’ll tell you this. There is no price too high when your wife finds something of sentimental value on the interwub. We sniped it with hammersnipe.com. I highly recommend it … if you have the means. ( what movie is that from?)

Fresh from my sniping, I felt obliged to buy the 1980’s mega hit Flash Gordon on DVD on EBay. Yes, it ended up being pirated, yes, the menus are in Portuguese and yes it is just as cheesy if not more than when I saw it at 10. I was up until 10 last night watching a piece of it.

My Missed Opportunity

I know Texas royalty. Actually, I have since elementary school. I am friends with Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick’s daughter. The same one that appeared in this article If I had known she was going to make that much a year ( $130,000), I would have been a better friend. Actually, Christi is a very nice woman. I saw her at our 10 year reunion a few years ago and I have had the chance recently to look at the pics of that event as well as the 6th grade graduation where her father gave a short speech. He was sitting next to my dad at the front of the library. Odd how that happens.

Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire

Lab results are back and I’m sure your looking for a dramatic post about my colon, if said post is possible. There shall be no drama. The biopsies are benign, which is good, but I have proctitis and colitis ( the c caused the p ) and hemorrhoids. And you could have knocked me over with a feather with each one of those because I know nothing about any of them. My wife occasionally battles the h’s since child-birth and they are visible, but I had no clue.

The c is interesting though. It means my body’s immune system tries to fight off the good bacteria in my colon and causes ulcers. Then they go on and talk a lot about other stuff like they don’t know what causes it and diet doesn’t affect it and they may or may not take your colon. Who knows. I don’t have cancer and I’ll take that.

But into the fire means little a has to have surgery tomorrow. It seems her pee pee hole is being blocked by adhesions and that’s as delicate as I can put it. Ya, way more than you wanted to now. My boss bought her a big bag of M&M’s. I’m sure little a will enjoy them. But we reached this after a month of a hormone cream that turned little a into a PMS 2 year old. Dude, I fear the teenage years with her.

But she’s off that and scheduled to go under the knife tomorrow sometime. Trust me, after last year’s vasectomy the thought of anyone cutting on your privates is not that cool of an idea or a sensation. So a weekend of R&R for little a and a 1 lbs. bag of M&M’s might make it bearable.

What The Immigration Bill Is Really About

Citations:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.4437:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/04/03/IMMIG.TMP
http://www.emigrant.ie/article.asp?iCategoryID=9&iArticleID=54175
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2006/apr/04/yehey/world/20060404wor1.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060325/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1601.html

I have a really odd kind of feeling about the immigration bill debate. If you are interested you can see HR4437 for yourself as listed in the first link under citations above.

I’ve already commented at Jenius’ site with my feelings and thoughts, but I ran across more information this weekend I wanted to present to see if it changed anyone’s mind.

America is probably one of the richest countries in the world per capita. We do things like take a shower and flush the toilet and never think that a large majority of the people in the world do not have the means to shower or flush a toilet. Being wealthy has it’s ups and downs.

On the surface one might suspect that this bill is anti-Mexican. And, on the surface, I might tend to agree until I start to read of people who have been in this country 10 years illegally. I take issue that you couldn’t fill out naturalization and immigration papers in 10 years. That also means you did not pay taxes for 10 years on the wages you earned. So far, that tells me you have committed two felonies. You should love this bill as it will let you stay in this country and become a citizen.

What I wish the bill did was force you to pay 10 years back taxes. If you made a meager $24k a year and paid 1/3 to taxes over 10 years you would have paid to the government $80,000. That’s $80,000 you ripped the U.S. governement and its peope out of. If I do that as a citizen, I go to jail.

I really wish this bill was reversed and let people stay who had been here less than 10 years. I don’t condone an act just because it’s gone on so long.

$80,000

That’s a couple of school teachers salaries for a year – good ones. That’s tuition to a major university for an underpriveledged child. That’s a downpayment on a home or a home for a homeless person. That’s 800 $100 trips to the grocery store for a mother on WIC.

And there are 3 million illegal immigrants (estimated) in our country, not paying taxes, not doing their share, living a criminal life they would have you believe is something they deserve.

If you think deporting these people will destroy the economy, think again. All the money we pay to feed and educate their children, all the money we pay to county hospitals to take care of your sick illegal immigrant relatives. All that can be recooped on those who have legally earned the right to be called “citizen”.

The United States has traditionally been an isolationst country up until the 20th century when it entered into World War I reluctantly. This bill is about our return to isolationism. The U.S. has only been an involved country since 1914. That’s less than 100 years. Immigrants came to this country fleeing an injustice, not seeking welfare or illegal activity. Many went through Ellis island to be processed LEGALLY to have that better life.

We can step back and wrap ourselves in the flag and the memory of martyred victims of terror, but that does this country a disservice. This bill will clean house and return the status of U.S. citizen to where it rightfully should be. Bestowed on those who have come here to make their lives better through hard work, and recognition of the laws of this country.

So in conclusion, I would like to say this bill is not harsh enough. That’s a rough view and tough words, but I believe we have to draw the line in the sand. We have to say, “These are the rules to becoming an American citizen, if you do not follow them, you will have to go.”