Frenzied Daddy

I mean talk like a pirate day: September 19th. It was pretty cool- and I even got Miss B to talk like a pirate. A little heavy on the Arrrrrs tho

But the day after, when I tried to convince her it was ‘talk like a ninja day,’ Ms B blew it for me, and told me (loudly and in front of the girl) “Honey, don’t be silly, ninjas don’t talk.”

Well, duh!

We saw him tonight on “I Want That,” and it really clicked. Of course we’re in the 95% of parents who say “only 2 hours of television today…” and of course it doesn’t really stick. Miss B routinely gets plenty of television time, and of course Ms B and I can’t really keep her from the computer (We’re on the computers constantly, ourselves). We’re adding Bob to our wishlists though- he’s only about 100 bucks, and I think he’s pretty swell.

So today I’m taking a break, a quiet time away from my kids, my wife, my work connections. I’m checking email, sipping coffee, enjoying the lap of luxury in the lobby of Providence Hospital.I’m on their ‘guest’ wireless network, which is insecure and only allows web-page browsing. I’ve been given a pager by the information desk.

Why am I here? Ms B has been out of work for almost two weeks, she’s been having a lot of abdominal pain. Three doctor visits, an ultrasound, and finally a consultation, and we’re fairly sure that yes, she has a cyst on one ovary, but also “something else” on the other. The doctors have narrowed it down to four possibilities, and they need more information. So they’re doing laproscopic surgery — in through her navel — to investigate, and remove the second ‘mass.’ Some scary words have been tossed around, but actually sitting here while she’s having the procedure is kind of relaxing. It’s one of those things that’s so totally out of my hands that I needn’t worry about it. She’ll either be out of the hospital in a few hours and then home, or she’ll be here for a while (if the surgery shows some of the more drastic results.)

Ms B’s sister had ovarian cysts from when she was about 15 to about 27, when she finally had a hysterectomy. Ms B’s mother was adopted, so we don’t know how far back these problems go, but we will have to keep our daughters informed of “ovary problems.”

We’re just glad we already have daughters; that’s one less stress about all of this.

update…
Ms B didn’t have any sorts of cancer. She did have, as the doctor described it, “a bag full of blood clots” that was twisted in on itself about five times. The pictures were pretty nasty. The pathologist will be preparing a full report on it, but that was the basic description. Ms B’s surgeon was impressed with her pain threshold, and can’t believe that she has been living with this mass for at least three weeks.

“Daddy, did I tell you that my (imaginary) fuzzballs like to ride around on little squirrels?” Miss B was chatting with me as I was driving home tonight. I told her that I did too. “But you need to ride a giant squirrel.” “Naah,” I laughed, “just many little ones.” She sounded thoughtful. I couldn’t see her, she was in the dark back seat. “Daddy, how much do you weigh?” I told her. “Wow. If each squirrel could carry one pound, you’d need two hundred and thirty squirrels!” I laughed at that, and said that would be a lot of squirrels, but a herd like that might work ok. Then she went on.. “but if each squirrel could carry two pounds… that’d be one hundred and fifteen squirrels!” “Yup, what if they could each carry 5 pounds?” That one took her a while, but she eventually got the answer. Ten pounds was even easier; she just took half of the five pound answer.

“So, ” she went on, “what if each squirrel could carry twenty pounds?”

“Well, you can figure that one out too– but I warn you, it gets kind of messy. ”

I heard her figuring in the back seat for a while. “Ten, no fifteen, no…. OMIGOD THAT POOR SQUIRREL!!!”

Ms B, on her way home from school yesterday, informed me that she was writing a success guide to Zoo Tycoon 2. Naturally, smelling “free content,” I said “wow, that sounds great honey, can I put it up on the website?” There was a pause from the back seat, and then she asked “Daddy, can kids have websites?” I responded in the affirmative, deftly swinging the car out into traffic. Then the question I hadn’t quite been prepared for… “Daddy, can I have a website?”

Hmm, Can she have a website. Well, the obvious answer was “yes.” If I register a domain in my name, and she follows some clear, absolute rules about posting on the website, and blah blah blah, yeah she could have a website. That’s what I told her. And I told her she had to come up with the eight bucks to register the domain, and the domain name. So she starts listing possible domain names: she’s really animal-oriented, she’s a girl, she loves playing Zoo Tycoon 2. So, she thought “zoogirls dot com” would be good. ahem It’s, uh, taken. And it’s not pretty, not family-oriented, and very not safe for work. It’s certainly not good for a nine-year-old. So we talked about other options too, and I left for work with her doing her homework and considering domain names.

I would certainly rather see her on her own site rather than facebook or myspace. Ugh!

I was thinking about that for quite a while. At first, I was thinking she wanted some sort of basic website with a couple of pages and stuff. We discussed it, and it came out that she wanted to post stories and art; and things like her Zoo Tycoon Success Story. So I talked about a WordPress site, like this one. She thought that’d be fine, as long as she could make changes to it and upload “spinning 3d pictures of animals and stuff.”

When I came home from work, I told her that there was a way she could get a “free website.” She could use Wordpress.com, a hosted Wordpress blog system, and she could use the themes they provide. She wants more control over the themes, but we worked it out that she can try with this, and we’ll see how well she likes it. We had to set up a new email address to get it, but now she’s all set up for her WordPress blog. She hasn’t posted anything yet, so don’t go running over there to look for it.

I figure hopefully it’ll help with writing and stuff, and since I have the administrator password, I can watch over her shoulder.

Well, first; we went to Disneyland. I suspect if you’ve seen my Flickr stuff (look to the right), you know that.

Also, the dogs went to doggy camp in Klamath Falls. Thank you again to my in-laws. Grampa R and Gramma N are really good dogsitters, and if you want their number, drop me a line. Or .. err, maybe not, on the other hand

Miss B is in fourth grade at her school- two more years until she elevates to middle school. My trials are already beginning. Her current read is “Bras and Broomsticks. Yeah, that about covers it. All through out the summer, she was telling us that her new class would be great “except it has her two worst enemies in it.” Apparently her two worst enemies are the two cutest boys. And on the second day, she and one of the two cutest boys declared a truce. His mother grabbed my shirt collar and cooed “Isn’t it so cute?” … Lady, all I wanted was to stagger to Starbucks and get my coffee.

Why is it the “cute boys”‘ mothers think them and my girl is “cute” but I just see them as … well … I know- I was a boy once, and at some point, these “cute boys”‘ brains will shut themselves off for about ten years. Or longer.

Ms B has been really busy too. She went scrapbooking this past weekend, and later this month her friend R is taking her out of town to a scrapbooking retreat. Just like that! Pretty swell of her

I wrote an article on Design Theory, using Robin Williams’ books on Design as my source. It’s aimed at scrapbookers and web designers, because, well, that’s what we have in the house, and the two disciplines aren’t very different, when it comes to that sort of thing; color combinations, alignment … well, if you read the article, you’ll see what it is I’m talking about.