Work Trip

Work travel all last week. Had to suffer DC, got to visit with Andy & Deanna, and Tony & Alicia. Behold, I occasionally do wear something besides jeans to work!

Dad Solo*

Carrie went out of town for a work conference over the weekend. It was just me and the kids all weekend...and mom, who stayed over both nights. Mom went with us to a dance recital, to the mall, and cleaned the house while I took the twins out for frozen yogurt (and a beer for me!) She also hosted the kids at her house Sunday while I went to Walmart. Oh, and Saturday night Tracy brought Conner over Saturday night and cooked enchiladas for us. I had a lot of help and am grateful for it. Carrie thinks I had it too easy.

Jesse picked up and delivered a dog run for us over the weekend as well. It's going to serve as the fencing for the chicken coop. Now I just need to get chicken wire and try to predator-proof the thing as best I can. The chickens are getting big and are starting to investigate what's outside of the Rubbermaid tub we've kept them in up till now.

Last night, after Carrie got back, we cooked Sunday dinner. This makes 3 weeks in a row, I think? Maybe a solid month of having folks over on the weekend for at least one meal, whether Saturday or Sunday (or both.) Feels good to be entertaining. And since we don't really live in a close-knit neighborhood I like he feeling of providing the kids some minor sense of community. Anyway, Alex and mom were over for fajitas and we ate out on the patio. We'll probably be doing a lot more of that in the near future.

Abby woke up around 3am last night. She has been consistently sleeping through the night for a while now, so that was a little bit of a surprise. What wasn't surprising was that after that I couldn't get back to sleep. I tossed and turned a bunch and ended up reading comics (Saga, fantastic book) for hours. Never did get back to sleep. I hope it's not a the start of a trend, either for Abby or me.

Face Hair

My mustache is long enough that it curls into my mouth when I open it to eat. I should probably look at significantly trimming this thing.

Yesterday I actually prepped for the Wednesday D&D game, but both Tiff and Larry got bound up with work stuff. Cancellations hurt this game less now that we've moved it to weekly. I'm still pondering a shift to Dungeon World but given that I started in with 5e to give them a taste of the new edition I'd like to at least get a decent amount of sessions in before doing so.

Both Carrie and my iPhones have had dusty lenses over the camera for a while. So I found a video on how to clean them out, and it looked pretty easy. True to form, it took me screwing it up a little in the attempt on mine to get it right the second time around. The video I perused turned out to be for an iPhone 5, vice the 5s. So when I pulled the face off I also pulled the ribbon cable responsible for fingerprint ID out, instead of gingerly removing it. It didn't appear damaged, and seemed to reconnect fine, but now the fingerprint ID on my phone doesn't work. I also managed to strip the small pentalobe screws near the charge port that hold the thing together. But at least I stripped them getting them in and they're doing their job. My camera lens, however, is dust-free. A new home button and screws were pretty cheap so I ordered them and will probably attempt a replacement. Finagling Carrie's phone went better, but she's got a chunk of brown something on the lens that resisted canned air. I may get a pen lens cleaner and try it again.

Creeping Along At High Speed

The twins are 5 and 1/2 years old! How'd that happen all the sudden.

For lack of anything else to write about, let's take a look at our current family schedule. Exciting, I know.

Get up around 6-6:30, get ready some while the kids are still snoozing. Even Abby, for the most part, is sleeping through the night. For now...) Fix breakfast for the kids (almost always Eggo waffles, mostly blueberry), get them dressed, then around 7:30 Carrie takes Abigail to daycare down at St. Paul's and I shuttle Owen and Paige to the Lighthouse Academy on University (Lately we've stopped listening to Kids Place Live on XM and I just play something off the phone for them. For the past week or more it's been Splash Woman by MegaRan and Not the Future by Bad Lip Reading every time.) Then it's a 30 minute commute for me. I work for 8 hours from when I get in and then head home. By that time Carrie has generally picked up all the kids and is home. Get home, get dinner cooked, and eat around the table like a proper damn family (...now if only we could get Abby to sit still and eat...) After that it's baths for the kids every other day and a little tv before getting them ready for bed. Abby's bed time has been slipping of late. For a long time it was 6:30 sharp. But since the latest time change it's seemed to spring forward an hour too. Most nights I read to Owen and Paige in their room before lights out. Current read: Winnie the Pooh. After the kids are in bed Carrie and I watch some tv, she goes to bed, I watch some more tv, then I go to bed.

Deviations: Owen and Paige have started Tae Kwan Do lessons on Mondays. I generally get home before them and try to have dinner on the table by the time they get home. Last night I did that AND got on the treadmill for the first time in months. Wednesday I have Larry and Tiff over for D&D. This generally means Carrie runs solo on putting everyone to bed. Thursday is dance class for Owen and Paige, which means Fast Food Night. And I game over at Ben's (or our house if Ben and Amy are busy) about every other Saturday.

We've got chickens! Or maybe I should say, Carrie and the kids have chickens. I've been mostly hands off with them so far. They are currently stinking up the garage under a heat lamp while they feather. We should have the coop all set up (hopefully) by next week.

The back-back yard is finally getting some work done to it. We had water run around and a hose bib and watering system installed on that side of the house. Now we need to extend water lines across the yard, have a large (25' x 45') sand-box-play-area installed, build three (4' x 12') above-ground planters, and we will have put a small dent in the to-do list for back there. Item still on it include planting trees, landscaping, and installing an open patio-firepit.

Housedate

We got solar panels installed last week. They're not quite up and running yet (installation of new electric meters by El Paso Electric still needs to be done) but they should put a heavy dent into the electric bill for the new house. That has proven, what with summer and all, to be expensive.

The new house is still coming together. Carrie and I have been trying to knock out several things every weekend, but the list of things to do (of varying immediacy) grows every week. The next big thing is getting the support posts on the back patio replaced. We knew this was going to have to happen when we moved in, but there has been some troubling compression of a decorative wall above the south corner post. We've got a quote though and should hopefully have it taken care of soon-ish.

Having an above-ground pool has proven to be less vexing than I thought it would be. Part of that was coming to the understanding that chemical balance on it is a broad, moving target and as long as we get somewhere in there the pool will mostly be fine.

Mixed Emotions

Piper's death went as well as can be expected. I fed her ribs before the vet showed up and she ate both the meat and the bones. We lay Piper down in the grass out in the yard, and it was over a lot faster than I expected. Gato was the same. There was so much anticipation that it felt like the process should have been more drawn out. We buried her out in the back yard, in an area near where we'll likely want to plant a tree this fall. Until then I plan on mounting a lantern over her grave, and lighting it once a month.

 

There's an absence, for sure, but in a weird way. Piper had been so intrinsically wrapped in our lives, I kind of feel like I'm not grieving enough. But then Carrie and I have both been in some level of mourning since she was diagnosed with diabetes. The initial grief then was pretty intense. We moved past it, but there was never really a moment in the past seven years that we didn't feel she was likely to pass away at any time. There were a few times in those years that she took a temporary turn, or we had trouble regulating her insulin, that it came back on me. But for the most part, beyond the tedium of regularity in feeding, she went pretty easy on us. Or at least that's how I prefer to remember it.

 

When we made the call that it was time to put her to sleep, that level of sadness was crushing. For the days leading up to it I managed to hold it together for the most part. There were moments, though, when I crumbled. So, yeah, her actual death came with a level of relief commensurate with having grieved, on and off, for almost seven years.

 

Maybe that why, less than a week after the feact, I still think about Piper, and think I see or hear her, but not as much as I expect I should. And that makes me feel guilty. But still relieved. And also glad that we could do as well as we did for her.

 

 

Piper

We weren't too sure what to expect with moving Piper to the new house. She lost most of her sight and hearing at the old place, but could still rely on muscle memory or something to navigate the place without too much trouble. There was some stiffness there too, but pretty minor. Since we've moved the stiffness has gotten worse and she spends almost all of her days sleeping. Her sight and hearing are bad enough that she bumps into things a lot, and even at the whistle pitches she can hear, she often misinterprets where it's coming from. We've been pretty lucky that she's only had two accidents in the house. On top of that her joints have been giving her enough trouble that we recently had to elevate her food bowl, since she was having trouble with what appeared to be her front legs and bending over to it. This weekend I opened a can of food, Piper sniffed at it, and then wandered off and went to sleep. She eventually came back around and nibbled a little bit, but left it alone for the most part. Since then she's been erratic with how much and when she eats. Today we stopped giving her the canned food and switched over to tasty things like eggs and pork chops and steak. Her current condition, coupled with diabetes, this is not sustainable. The last time I took her to the vet was over two years ago, when she had started losing weight. At that time the vet suggested we keep an eye on her, and that when her quality of life started to decline, then we could make a decision. We've decided to get ahead of impending, potentially painful, health issues and have scheduled a vet to come out to the house on Thursday evening. Carrie got Piper in October of 2001. She went through obedience training and came out the other end one super well-behaved. She was my companion on more desert walks than I can count. When she was diagnosed at 7 with diabetes in 2008 we were told the average lifespan after that was 3-5 years. She's beat that handily. We even credit that diagnosis and the proceeding management with (in a small way) preparing us for kids. She would have turned 14 sometime in August. Piper's been the best dog I've ever known and I'm going to miss her a ton.