Frenzied Daddy

It’s been a long month. Let’s just close it up and call it done.

We’re off to the in-laws this weekend. Hoping to get the dogs into a kennel at their ( the in-laws’ ) request. It’s my nephew Damien’s first birthday, and all the girls are returning home to visit with him.

I may have to break away with my wife for a few hours for the Ironman movie; we’ll see what’s playing down there. I’m not really a Ironman fan, but then I’m not really a Hulk fan and I enjoyed that movie.

More news soon. Have a good weekend!

I haven’t been writing as much as usual because my time is tied up with a client. It’s an especially rough contract for me because our “design styles” are completely different. It’s easier to explain as caricature; everything’s in shades of grey here, so bear with me. I’m not as extreme as I paint, and he’s not as extreme as I paint in this next paragraph.

I’m pretty lassaize-faire about webdesign. I’m concerned about colors and how well they work together, proximity, alignment and simplicity. For me, something “doesn’t display right” if it’s in the wrong place or if some lesser important piece obscures it. I don’t really care if IE and FF display differently, as long as they’re not “horribly screwed up.” My client, on the other hand, has spent hours creating the pages he wants, exactly how he wants them, and the judge of my success at recreating them is based on the difference between a screenshot and his photoshop file. If an element is a pixel out of alignment, he sees it right away.

Our disparity is made worse by my status in the project; I took on a “back end” role, understanding that the design would be covered by someone else. That someone else has vanished, and I’m trying to take the one page he designed for a previous incarnation of a page ( elements have changed and he had an imperfect understanding of the page ) and make it work for the real page. So I’m working with a flawed copy, trying to make a perfect copy for exact specifications I disagree with on a philosophical level.

It’s been a pain in the ass. I’m sure, for both of us. And he asked me for a schedule for the rest of the project, with deadlines. When I presented him with one, he asked me about the consequences of missing the deadlines- what if I miss a deadline? Which made me think of contracts that say “5000, if completed by X, losing 10% per day it’s late.”

Not like I’m planning to miss any deadlines, but this project is eating up family time, play time, relaxation time, sleep time. In my priorities it comes right after my full time job. It’s essential, and I know it, that he gets his website up and live before the deadline. I’ve made some stupid mistakes with some parts of it, but overall I’m happy with the project. I’ve put off other work that our finances need me to focus on, and am working diligently on his site.

In an unrelated issue, I had to go give some blood for a cholesterol screening this week. I give blood at the red cross pretty frequently, and it’s always easy. I go in, get stabbed, get drained, and get some juice. When I went in for the cholesterol screening, they drew blood out of the same arm that the Red Cross uses. Well, they tried, but couldn’t find the vein. So they tried the other arm; and missed the vein there too; in fact, they fished around with the needle before they got frustrated and got someone else to do the draw. Now I have a bruise ( a little bruise, a dime-sized bruise ) in my elbow. The phlebotomist apologized, and that was it.

But every time I look at it, I think “yeah, I was inconvenienced here.” But they were doing their job, it just didn’t go as well as we wanted.

The DQ’s artistic skills have really been taking off lately. We’re very proud of her. She’s currently learning about depth of image and background and arty stuff like that.

So, I’m cooking dinner. The kitchen window looks out over the deck, the back porch, and the grassy knoll we call a back yard. It’s lovely. Not quite weed-infested, but it will be before autumn. The TT is amusing herself by letting Perrin out onto the porch and picking him flowers and trying to get him to eat them.

She comes into the kitchen ( she comes through the back door, through the adult’s room, through her room, through the hall, through the living room, and into the kitchen) with a bright yellow flower from the yard. She presents it to me like it’s a treasure. Of course, it is a treasure. It’s also a dandelion. “Oh, honey, what is this? Thank you”… She tells me it’s a flower. “Ok, this particular kind of flower is called a dandelion. Can you say dan-de-lion?” (drmrffleon). “That’s great. ”

In all honesty, I’m trying to get the cheese grated, the spaghetti noodles cooked and the sauce properly tomatoey. I’m not totally focused on accepting her gift and giving her a learning moment.

She runs back out the door ( all the way through the house ), runs back outside, and I stir the sauce as I watch her bend down and pick a single flower and come running back into the house, into the kitchen. She breathlessly presents me with … I don’t know what sort of weedy looking flower it is; it kind of looks like baby’s breath, but stringier.

“Oh honey, this is lovely. I’ll put it here with the dandelion. I don’t know what this one is called though.”

“Daaaaa-dddd-dd-d-dddy, ” she announces, “It’s a flower. Can you say ‘flower’ ? ”

“flower?”