AIIIEEEEEE!!!! My life! I MUST whine!!!!!

[digitalwanderer]

Ok, if'n you don't know about me and such that's ok and probably to your benefit; but the main reason I post like such a fiend at a couple of three boards or so is to distract me from going ABSOLUTELY INSANE from my day-to-day life. Occasionally it gets too much for me and I do an open rant about it in the OT lounge of one of the boards I frequent, and it DOES make me feel better.

Yes, I'm sick and probably partially insane by some clinical standards. Whatever, it's nVnews' turn for me rant. :p

AAAAAIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

Ok, I haven't gotten a break since a couple of weeks before the vacation I got back from a couple of weeks ago now...and today is just upping the anty on me. My 5 year old son started getting sick last night, and it turned full-blown about 2am or so...right around the time it hit my wife. I feel sorry for the both of 'em, but right now I am just a LITTLE tired of spending the night cleaning puke out of the bathroom sink because one of 'em was using the toilet while the other needed to too. It was a loong night, and I really didn't get a whole lot of sleep. My son finally got to sleep again around 4am, my wife finally passed out around 6:30am when she woke me again 'cause SOMEONE had to get up and call Gail (my son's bus driver) to tell her not to stop by, and that's about the time my 3 year old daughter woke up all bright and bushy-tailed ready to face the world. :rolleyes:

Me son is feeling a bit better, he got up at around 9 and played 2 hours of gamecube before deciding on a bit of a nap. I got him nice and hydrated & medicated, and his fever is down and his color is better. I 'pect he should be muchly improved after a nap...but my daughter does NOT want to nap, she wants to go to the park. I can't blame her, it's a gorgeous day after a looong winter and it even sounds good to me...but I can't take her and leave me son sleeping with me wife in a questionable state. (Well, there's no question about it...she is OUT! The poor lady was up all night with the nasties and I'm sure besides missing out on sleep she's exhausted. She's sleeping on my half of the bed after a quick shower this morning, she was sweating something FIERCE when she was ill...her half of the sheets/pillow are soaked! Great, I gotta change sheets and do laundry today too. :rolleyes: )

So I'm running a balancing act from hell trying to keep everyone happy without going insane. I think I can only do ONE of the two things, and I'm afraid keeping everyone happy is a lot more important than me sanity right now. (What good has sanity ever really done for anyone anyways...)

My son is actually asleep, which is GREAT as he needs it; my wife is sleeping comfortably, which is also GREAT as she needs it too (She works at 4pm today, she'll be up & better just in time to get ready for work. :rolleyes: ); and the daughter is in her PC room in her bedroom happily watching Nick and screaming for her macaroni & cheese which is JUST finishing up on the oven as I'm desperately trying to appease/cajole/ANYTHING to keep her quiet enough to let the others sleep!

Gotta run, M&C duty calls. :rolleyes:

[Kruno]

Your post is too big. I'm not reading it. :lol:

So are you going to go to the hospital or what?

[digitalwanderer]

Originally posted by K.I.L.E.R
So are you going to go to the hospital or what?

No, that was a couple of weeks ago when me step-father died...but he's feeling muchly better and came home a few days ago and is recuperating nicely and his prognosis is excellent. :)

[Kruno]

Originally posted by digitalwanderer
No, that was a couple of weeks ago when me step-father died...but he's feeling muchly better and came home a few days ago and is recuperating nicely and his prognosis is excellent. :)

Uhm... I never knew that. I wasn't even sure what I was reponding about with my hospital comment.

[digitalwanderer]

Originally posted by K.I.L.E.R
Uhm... I never knew that. I wasn't even sure what I was reponding about with my hospital comment.

That's ok, I don't think I even mentioned it. It just came to mind with the hospital comment. (It really happened, and he really is getting better now. Modern medicine is kewl. :cool: )

[stncttr908]

I invision myself being in that situation in 15 years or so. Maybe I won't ever have children...

Good luck to ya! Hopefully it'll be your turn to be waited on when the missus gets better.

[LORD-eX-Bu]

I hope I can dodge bullets long enough to have children:kill:

[nin_fragile14]

I hope this doesn't offend... but it is unusual, by strange American standards and stereotypes, that you stay home while your wife works. Is there any reason for that?

[omghi2u]

Yea...he's a soccer dad.

[sbp]

Dayum. I hate to see digitalwanderer whine. So enjoy.

http://www.lemonizer.com/uploads/brownies.gif

[PsychoSy]

Originally posted by nin_fragile14
I hope this doesn't offend... but it is unusual, by strange American standards and stereotypes, that you stay home while your wife works. Is there any reason for that?

My buddy Tim did it for a while and still does to a degree. He was Mr. Mom while his wife was a restaurant manager. She left that to further her education, though, and recently got a Pell grant. As far as I know, she's allready got a degree in Acccounting. They're in a bind (living with her parents) for the time being but once her schooling is done, she can really put those degrees to use. :)

In the meantime, poor Tim...
He's got 3 kids all below the age of 5.
Luckily, he ain't bringing anymore into this world - he got snipped! :p

Wise man! :D

[digitalwanderer]

Originally posted by nin_fragile14
I hope this doesn't offend... but it is unusual, by strange American standards and stereotypes, that you stay home while your wife works. Is there any reason for that?

No offense taken at all, it IS weird even by contemporary standards. I've always taken the view of "why be normal?" (and further all the way to "what IS normal?", but that's another discussion. ;) )

When my wife got pregnant with our first child we'd been married a couple of years. I had been working on cleaning up the remnants of a mispent youth, and was all the way back to cleaning up me college record. (I failed out a couple of semesters. I just stopped going without dropping classes, a VERY STUPID MOVE!!!!) I was just finishing up re-doing my freshman year when we found out we were about to become an actual family. The first pregnancy was HARD on my wife, she was pretty much bedridden for 6 months. Her work was a bit-o-a-prick about it, so she quit. I finished up my semester and went back to work. I started as an apprentice estimator for a paving company, and quickly jumped to US Steel as a "Level Two System Operator" for their #2 caster....basically a glorified sysOP who got to stomp around a steel mill in his safety gear occasionally to fix terminals & printers and such. I LOVED it! My first job gotten all by my lonesome without any connections or ins, and it was a pretty decent one that I excelled at. (There wasn't a whole lot of competition to be good there, most of the folks there didn't even LIKE computers! Weirdos... ;) ) But it was 'swing-shift'; which means 10 days of 8-4, 2 days off, 10 days of 4-12, 2 days off, 10 days of 12-8, and then a 4 day weekend. It wasn't the easiest schedule to get used to, and I was a REALLY helpful Dad/husband with me "free time" and often ended up missing sleep...alot. :rolleyes:

Then Target called, and made me wife an offer to go work for them. It was easily twice what I made even after my upcoming raise, (I started at $10/hr at USS and moved up to $13/hr in 16 months, with an additional $3/hr raise coming in a couple of weeks plus LOTS more room for advancement...I ate that place up! ;) ), and it was 9-5 type hours with weekends off and better benefits!

So we had "the talk"....

End result of I gave my company two months notice that I was leaving and my wife took the job. I cashed out my "retirement fund" from USS and bought myself Blue and threw meself into the Mom-thing with a vengeance. :D

It's worked out well, really well. Oh, I'm going a little nuts from time to time; but I handle it a lot better than my wife would. (She ain't as patient/casual as me) My wife spent 5 years putting herself thru school to become a pharmacist because it's what she's always wanted to do, and she really didn't like the thought of just chucking that all away to raise kids. Me? I muddled thru life destroying every opportunity that was given to me and ended up trying to crawl my way into a bottle, meeting my wife and getting another chance at a REAL life was a gift from the fates that fell in me lap and I absolutely REFUSE to screw this one up!

When my daughter came along my wife worked thru her pregnancy for the most part, but this time her employer (CVS now, where she originally started working at age 16 and got the idea to become a pharmacist....due to the guy she's now alternating shifts with. :) ) was super-cool about it and very helpful.

I started the whole "Mom-thing" about 5-6 years ago now, and except for my house having a tendancy to look like a hurricane just hit it we're doing great! :D My kids are exceptionally sweet, healthy, kind, sharp, funny, and genuine. I know I must be doing something right because they're turning out so well. (Oh, and I work like a dog to keep me wife happy too. I'm not whipped, I just happen to love the lady and my goal in life is to try and make her happy. It's my goal and my choice, and I've been quite happy with it. )

So that's it, the long-long version. I'm right now at the cusp of going back into the job market and am getting excited. My daughter is 3 now and ALMOST ready to start going to Purdue, I've just got to finish up the toilet training. (We're almost there, almost.)

Oh, and my wife and me have different last names too. She wanted it that way when we got married since we didn't plan on having children and she didn't want to change all her licensing. The kids have my last name, (I was pushing for the boy to have mine and the girl to have hers, just to add to the general confusion of things.), and me and my wife now alternate last names on a regular basis since we found out it's legal and it tends to save confusion sometimes. (Although she's recently asked if I'd mind if she legally changed her last name to mine...WOO-HOO!!!! )

Today is getting better. No one is really sick anymore, I'm just facing the aftermath clean-up. :rolleyes:


EDITED BITS: Went back and changed "Bubbles" to "Blue", I got ahead of meself.

[nin_fragile14]

That's great, man. I'm glad that one of you decided to stay home; I'm a big advocate of having a parent raising a kid when they're young, rather than throwing them into a daycare. People underestimate the importance of the first 5 years of a kid's life... good to know that you're doing it right.