Sleep vs. Asleep

A twelve year-old boy who has recently lost his sight is learning how to use a walking stick for the first time, and a young girl is learning how to steer her wheelchair with a breathing tube. These are two of the first people we meet at Children’s Specialized Hospital in New Brunswick. We’re awestruck at how beautiful the facility is, and again when they show us to a private room larger than most Manhattan studio apartments.

There’s a free Sony PlayStation, a complimentary 16” laptop, about 1000 channels of IO digital cable, and a DVD player with access to a tower of recently released movies, and that’s just in Karina’s room! On the floor is every conceivable comfort and type of entertainment and half a dozen restaurants with the availability and choice of a luxury cruise.

After a parade of people introduce themselves and talk about the place, somebody asks Karina what her favorite food is. She makes everyone laugh when she says almost in a whisper, “salmon and broccoli.”

“Fine that’s what’s for dinner then,” a woman says, and sure enough at 5PM sharp, that’s what arrives.

This place is like the movie “Wall-E” where all of humanity has anything they can dream of at the push of a button, except here the kids truly deserve anything they desire while they focus exclusively on getting better or learning to cope. I’m thankful Karina will be completely fine in a few weeks, as I meet kids who will struggle for a lifetime.

Speaking of the blind: Allen called this morning with the latest hate mail from his Facebook page. It sounds a lot like Sean’s "Hate Hannity Hotline," and that makes me smile. People I haven't thought of since the Carter administration miss the humor and focus on the politics. If ignorance is bliss, why are liberals so angry? I could care less - 52 Million people DIDN'T vote for Obama -- but you wouldn’t know it if you’re idiot box is glued to CNN.

I proudly thank the Bush administration for keeping my family, and the rest of us safe for the past 7.5 years. Go ahead and hate the man, but he proved America’s strength without apology. Today the messiah is off on his World Apology Tour. Just don’t apologize on my behalf, or on behalf of the millions of people who have died for you Mr. President.

Newsflash Barry: America WAS born a Christian nation regardless of what you say. Read a history book. In the words of Bob Marley: “If you know your history, you would know where you’re coming from.”

Like the kids here who will have to work hard to learn and grow, it takes some effort to educate ones-self beyond what’s being spoon-fed from the talking heads on the shmuck-box. They won’t explain Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals and that Obama taught workshops from the curriculum in Chicago and is presently implementing it like a playbook. And you won’t see it in the NY Times, so at least click here for some excerpts: http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/communism/alinsky.htm

By the way, the NY Times which selectively features gibberish and has more than once aided and abetted the enemy is losing more money than many entire nations’ GDP, but may still have a future in hard copy form….to line bird cages. That is if you want to breed a traitorous, stupid bird that will parrot any crap the White House releases.

One thing the paper can’t selectively refuse to tell you is that the book that sits at the top of it’s own Best Seller list is Liberty and Tyranny, by Mark Levin http://www.amazon.ca/Liberty-Tyranny-Conservative-Mark-Levin/dp/1416562850. You can’t have an intelligent conversation about Constitutional Law and what’s happening today and ignore this book - but what am I saying? Liberals don't read books, they regurgitate talking points fed by other liberals. Reading takes time away from watching television.

The book sits at the top of the NY Times list, because intelligent people still do read. But for those who don’t want to miss Dancing with the Stars, here are the Cliff notes to what’s happening to our country at neck-breaking speed:

"To each according to their needs, from each according to their means." Karl Marx.

“We need to, ya know, spread the wealth around a little.” That’s Barak Hussein Obama.



God made children cute so people wouldn’t kill them. Maybe because she has always been especially difficult, God made Karina especially pretty. Maybe all girls are difficult. They are after all practicing to be somebody’s wife some day.

Wherever we go, especially over the past year, people stare or tell her, or comment to each other when they think she’s out of hearing range. She gets her looks from her mother who people assume was, or is a supermodel. I hate that expression because I imagine an anorexic chic with a flying cape. Here at the Children’s Hospital, with so many seriously hurting kids who will never feel that way, I’m actually feeling a little guilty, almost embarrassed that Karina is so pretty – I know that doesn’t make any sense, but that’s why writing is therapeutic.

I have over the years discovered another mathematic theory – the prettier the girl the crazier - as illustrated by the equation L=P2 (Looks = Psycho-ness squared). For my own safety reasons, I can only say that my wife is a licensed therapist.

Karina does things that really should be set to scary music, and my mom who was and still is very pretty is about as crazy as you can get without the paramedics showing up to drag you away.

She can’t help talking non-stop to everybody she passes. I’ve learned not to be embarrassed by this through sheer shock therapy. You get on an elevator with her and before the next floor she is engaged in conversation. This can be quite amusing because people are so taken off guard that they assume she’s just talking out load to herself and ignore her until she brings it to their attention that she is in fact waiting for a response.

This week, I have repeatedly watched her say something she thought was funny to people that didn’t speak a word of English, interrupt dialogue between a nurse and a doctor because she assumed they were including her in the conversation, and offend a family of orthodox Jews by asking why the Sabbath elevator has to stop on every floor and inconvenience her. She wasn’t serious, but when English is third in line behind Hebrew and Yiddish, you can miss the nuance of the joke.

Mom, maybe try something friendlier, like: “If Ella Fitzgerald married Darth Vader, her name would be Ella Vader.”

My Dad is visiting, and circumstances brought him and mom together for the first time in ten years. Here’s how they got along when I was a kid:

Jeff: “Dad, can we get a dog?”
Dad: “What kind of dog would you like?”
Jeff: “Mom wants and Afghan.”
Dad: “Afgans are stupid dogs. Your mom wants an Afghan because it’s the only kind of dog she’s smarter than.”

Mercifully, they got along well and my dad showed superhuman patience with her. Maybe that’s because he spent the last year recovering from a brain injury after being hit by a van.

I have spent every hour for the past seven days with Karina and it’s been heaven. It’s amazing that you can live four decades and then experience a completely new feeling, and that’s what happens when a man has a little girl.

Karina is shy with people until she gets comfortable, and here with new people talking to her every ten minutes, she’s very cooperative and smiley but especially quiet. When she’s alone again with me and starts talking like herself I feel very special and it’s like falling in love with somebody for the first time, every single minute.

Alone with her away from her brothers, I am discovering the personality behind the nightmare she can be. She is obviously becoming brilliant, and she is extremely creative and funny. With almost psychic ability she repeatedly kicks my ass at various card games - even when I try to win. I watch her sit at the computer and teach herself how to read at www.starfall.com and marvel as she speaks with a vocabulary that’s well beyond five years. I have no idea how or where she is learning and absorbing so much from, but it seems far from normal – or perhaps girls really are much smarter.

She wakes from a restless sleep and asks me to sleep next to her. To those who believe, God has promised an eternity in Heaven with Him, but until then, he’s loaned me Karina, so I have to go now.

Funny is Relative

My wife won’t read  my blog.  She says it’s not funny. I’m writing during the least amusing time of my life while my daughter sleeps nearby recovering from seven hours of spinal surgery, in order to amuse myself.

OK so not everything I say is keel over belly laugh pee yourself funny. Like when the cashier at the mini-mart asks if I want my Doritos in a bag, and I say,  “No thank you, it’s already in a bag.” But that’s no reason for my wife to say I’m not funny.

Stick with me here this may start slow

“Don’t use my name!” she warns me every time I start to write. 

This is from a woman who has joined every social networking site on the planet where she’s posted photos of our entire family on each one. There are Taliban in Kandahar that can pick my four year old out of a kindergarten class picture, but I shouldn’t use her name in my stories.

See, now that right there would really get her mad.   And as I write that, I giggle a little and she responds immediately:

“Are you using my name!?” 

“No, did you use your name on Facebook.com/AlQueda?”

“You’re so not funny.”

This is the support I get.

Sometimes I really think I do have something amusing to say that gets no response whatsoever and I’ll call my brother in North Carolina to repeat it just to see if I’m crazy or if I’ve really stumbled upon a hilarious thought.   Generally, he’ll crack up – unless I catch him at a bad time,  in which case he’ll just call me a schmuck and hang up.

Jeff – he doesn’t care if I use his name – used to have an Instant Messenger problem with his computer where whenever I sent him an Ichat it would automatically open into a full screen window.  This was a minor annoyance to him because he’d never know when he’d be working and I’d unexpectedly pop in. 

Only a minor annoyance until one day he was in the middle of a Powerpoint presentation to a group of businessmen in their conference room.  I’m sure he was discussing something about banking programs and real estate partnerships, when I interrupted with this question that suddenly filled the large pull down screen:

“Have you ever noticed that the urgency with which you have to take a crap is directly related to the traffic coming into and out of the bathroom?”

“I have illustrated this with a simple formula mathematically for your perusal:

Sx = UT²       

Shit (Variable x) = Urgency (Traffic) squared”

Jeff had to stop mid-sentence to address his captive audience -- which thankfully had a better collective sense of humor than my wife – about his brother’s “issues.”

I suppose if my wife thought I was funny, I would have spared Jeff this classic moment in business meetings, but then again if Einstein had Ichat I bet he’d have shared his theory with his brother, even if it opened a full screen window on his computer.

Besides, every one in that room that day could relate to Sx =UT²

In fact some of them might have experienced it that very day.  But, how many people think E=MC²  is even relative to them?    (Relative….get it?)

Maybe my wife is right.  I don’t feel very funny today.

I recommend one of my posts written prior to my daughter’s surgery.

 

 

 

 

More Crap From Central Massachusettes

My son has been stuffing toilets since he learned to go potty.  Or maybe he hasn’t really yet learned to go potty because he still can’t properly use one.   He’ll be 13 in August and he still thinks peeing with the seat down is like some sort of sick carnival game.  The stuffing part isn’t all his fault he just creates abnormally large thick logs.  I know that’s disgusting to read, but not nearly as gross as living in the same house with it.

I’ll spare the details of the last nine year’s worth of extra large feces and the accompanying overflow stories, but this weekend we’re staying at a hotel just the three of us, my wife, my son and me.

 I’m not sure if he’s been eating steel ball bearings or he just doesn’t go for days at a time, but I now find myself searching for Ex Lax in a part of Massachusettes where the hotel visitor’s guide lists the “Heifer Walk” as the next major attraction. The photo shows a cute little pontailed girl with a cow, but the women walking into the hotel as I leave, have me wondering if the event doesn’t begin in our lobby.

 Needless to say there aren’t many 24 hour pharmacies and the few scattered gas stations and mini marts are lightly stocked with meds that help stop the runs, but not start the race.

  I already know how this will work, once I am sufficiently hopelessly lost or I have found the product, my son will have pooped. So I call every 15 minutes or so to ask how it’s going.    

 “Dad!  Stop making a joke out of everything!”

 I’m not laughing.  It’s Friday night, I’m on the first day of my first vacation in three years – most of which will be spent in a hospital with my baby girl next week, and I am in the middle of nowhere on safari looking for Ex Lax so my kid can take a dump.  

 Eventually, I find a Walgreens, directly across the street from a CVS.  Apparently the owner of one of these great franchises went to the Starbucks school of business – but now after nearly an hour of coming up empty, I have a choice of where I can spend $13.99 for my son to do what comes naturally to me three times a day.

 I call my wife.  “Most of these say “works gently overnight.”  Isn’t there something that “works roughly in minutes?”

 Yes, but he wants to swallow rather than insert - so I hand the lady a $20.

 She apologizes for some brief delay in getting to the register, but she should be apologizing for selling a box of four laxitives for $13.99 plus tax.

I am in fact now, as my wife predicted I would be, hopelessly lost, so it takes 45 minutes to find my back to the hotel where my wife and son meet me in the lobby to of course tell me he has gone already.  He feels better, but all is not well.

 He has of course, not only stuffed the toilet with one of his soda-can size doodies, but the toilet has overflowed and there’s now shit water all over the floor in room 440 at the Hilton Garden hotel in Central Massachusettes

 My wife and son have a brilliant plan to handle this awkward situation. They have closed the door and left, and are now waiting for me in the lobby to  go tell somebody.  They will meet me at Pizzeria Uno while I go talk to the front desk.

 “Dad, don’t tell ‘em it was me,” My son pleads.  

 OK kid,  I’ll blame the maid.  I’ll say she stopped by to fluff the pillows, leave some mints and took a dump the size of a dachsund, before leaving and lockling the door behind her.

So now my mini “vacation” includes personally walking up to a young attractive Russian reception girl to ask about a plunger for a stuffed toilet.

 No problem we’ll send somebody up.  Se we’re at Pizzeria Uno and they have a million stupid jokes.  My son is a lot happier after he craps – which unfortunately is only about twice a month.

  When we get back to the room, there has been no sign of a janitor or housecleaning, but the message light is blinking. 

 “I’m sorry,”  the girl at the desk tells me.  Everyone is apologizing for the wrong reason tonight.  “I’ve been calling you for the last hour.”

 “WHY?!”

  “We don’t like to send people up if you’re not in the room.”  huh? 

 And we don't like hanging around nearby while other people are cleaning up our doodies.

 She's going t0 send someone back up now.

So there we are watching the Discovery Channel while some poor schmuck is unstuffing the toilet and cleaning up my son’s doody water.

My wife whispers but loudly over the sloshing, “Hey, do you think we need to tip him?”

 What do you tip somebody for mopping somebody else’s shitwater in central Massachusettes in 2009 during a recession?

I think anything less than $1,000 would be an insult, so I opt for "no" in order to not feel cheap.