slow day...sorta

well, I was all set to say "it was a slow evening, I sat around, watched TV, watched MOST of Real Genius (had to go to bed before it was over)", but then I realized what event occured yesterday.

My eldest son declared, in the middle of the playground at school, that my daughter still wets the bed. Which she does, but there's no need for him to be advertising that to the world.

I explained to him the ramifications of what he'd done. How I still remembered a girl who peed while making a speech in front of the class -- in 4TH GRADE! That that was the sort of memory and torture he was bringing to his sister.

I didn't spank him. I barely yelled at him. I didn't ground him, or take away any of his weekend priveleges (TV and computer/Wii playing). What I *did* do (and I like this idea, in an evil sort of way) is tell him that he is now in charge of all the chores, and we'd be adding new ones. Scrubbing the toilets and sinks in the bathroom. Scrubbing all the floors that need to be scrubbed (dining room, kitchen, bathrooms) by hand. And he'd be doing it until we said we he was done, so that he'd live (for a while) with the indefinate horror of having to do these chores, as his sister would have to live with the indefinate fear of someone bringing up her most secret of shames for the rest of her life.

Thinking about it, I'm still angry with him. Still.

mouse?

So, while at a pet store a couple of days ago, my 3 year old son decides he wants a mouse. My wife repeatedly tells him no, but he's got this idea so completely stuck in his head that he was wandering around the house telling anyone and everyone about HIS mouse, and how he was going to name it after his best friend from pre-school, and how he'd pet it, and hold it.

For my older sons 9th birthday he got 2 mice, both of whom died within a few months, I believe from sheer terror. The cats would sit and stare all day long.

I remember one time walking down the hall and both cats (we had 2 at the time) were sitting next to my sons dresser, just staring. Figuring they found a bug or something, I pulled the dresser away from the wall. Our huntress, Cinnamon, dashed in, struggled for half a second, and came out, with a little pink tail dangling from her mouth. I was able to rescue the mouse, and put it back in its cage (my son had decided he didn't like part of the cage, so he threw the part away -- leaving a gaping hole in the cage).

Now, that was a 9 year old. My *3* year old wants one, and to top it all off, we now have 3 cats. The answer was an adamant NO. I sat him down and explained why he couldn't have a mouse, and he seemed okay with it.

We got him sea monkeys instead, and he seems pretty happy with them :)

sprout!

About a week ago I had my kids plant some seeds. My daughter had picked out some California poppies, and my youngest son picked out sunflowers, which he and the oldest son planted. My daughter noticed yesterday that they had sprouted -- the sunflowers much more than her poppies, but her poppies HAD sprouted. They were all very excited, and they all watered their little sprouts.

THIS is what being a parent is about. These moments of learning, of joy, of appreciating the little things. I truly enjoyed those 10 minutes of gardening with my kids.

weekend fun

I helped my brother in law move this weekend. It went rather well (except for some drama from my other brother in law's girlfriend, who was all sorts of bitchy), and except for a couple of clashes (and a few rips in my shirt), was a fun weekend. After moving on Saturday, on Sunday we picked all the dogs (their 2, our 1) from the kennel we had left them at the day before and headed to the dog beach in San Diego (right where the 8 ends at the beach). It was a fun afternoon, and Murphy had a blast. He's still sleeping off all the fun he had :).

We headed home after that (about 1pm), and had a nice afternoon to recover from the weekends activities. I'm sore all over, and although my knee did hurt on Saturday and most of Sunday, once I was able to just sit and not have to go anywhere or do anything, the pain let up.

No gaming this weekend; I'll try to get some in during the week (probably on Thursday when my wife is in class).

Zelda made me do it!

Okay, it's a fun game. Really fun. But frustrating. Frustrating to the point where I was cussing at the TV.

It really wasn't made for someone like me, who only gets an hour or so to game. If you're in a dungeon and save your game, then exit, when you come back to the game you have to start over at the beginning of the dungeon. Sucks ass!!! I don't have time for that, just save where I was, and move on!

War, war, war

yes, I know it's been a while (over a month!) since my last post. So sue me. Things have been crazy, but not in real life. Online!

I joined a few free online game sites, notably www.cybernations.net and www.lunarwars.net. Full of political intrigue, and just plain head bashing (mine, unfortunately, not theirs), it's a pretty much full time gig, if you let it be. The game itself takes probably 5-10 minutes of your day (CN at least...LW takes maybe 20-30 minutes), but all the political stuff (both intra and inter alliance politics, reading forums, chatting on IRC) can take significantly more time, and it's been a blast.

I'm in an alliance based off of one of my favorite "not news" sites, Fark.com. I originally joined CN based on a greenlight on Fark.com. Not known to me then was that the Fark alliance (Farkistan) was under attack from a rival alliance, the GOONS (Goon Order Of Neutral Shoving), who are based from a Fark.com rival website somethingawful.com. GOONS is 30x more powerful than Farkistan, and was just pounding on them. Still are. It's a complicated situation (that I'm not going to outline here), needless to say, in the midst of it, some of us found a NEW game called LunarWars, where we could start Fark (LunarFark) from the beginning, sans GOONS, and quite a few people jumped to Lunarwars (though most of us still play both).

Ah, LunarWars. Due to the new conditions, (and much more hope for a future of growth there, instead of being chased by and pounded on by GOONS and their cohorts in the Initiative), I got much more active in the politics of the Lunar Fark alliance, even gaining a seat on the TotalFark council, where I get to make decisions on Non-Aggression Pacts (NAP's), Mutual Defense Pact's (MDP's) and other sorts of foreign affairs work, as well as voting on local alliance policies.

In other words, I've been busy :)

In real life news, I got my garden going this past Sunday, with 4 tomato plants, 2 jalapeno plants, and 1 anaheim chili plant, after having tilled the whole area (I love the Garden Claw!). After planting the last jalapeno, I stood up, blacked out, and passed out.

After waking up on the ground, I got up (almost blacking out again), stumbled towards the house, where my wife saw me, said I looked half asleep. I told her I had just passed out. She took me to our bedroom, and laid me on the bed. Took my blood pressure: 96/54 pulse 105. She got me some water, and I drank some. About 20 minutes later, we retested my blood pressure: 80/64 pulse 95. I stayed on the bed for about an hour. We figured out that there were 2 (well, 3 really) causes: I hadn't had enough liquids that day (dehydration), and I hadn't eaten since early that morning (this was around 2pm), so I had a low blood sugar (we wanted to test that too, but we didn't have any test strips for my wife's old blood sugar monitor from when she had gestational diabetes).

In the future, when I'm going to be doing some strenuous labor, I'm going to make sure I eat and drink a bit right before (something healthy, not junk!)

Since that episode though, I have to be really careful about getting up too quickly, or I get dizzy and or start to black out. To be honest, I've had that problem for as long as I can remember, it just seems to have gotten really bad this past week.