One of the most challenging aspects of parenting, in my opinion, is occupying your children with cool experiences that enrich them and you while at the same time building the parent/child bond that is so necessary in our families of today. For the past few years I have made it a point to get my kids out as much as possible, taking them to places like Tilden Park, the Lindsey Wildlife Museum, the Oakland Zoo, the Tech Museum of Innovation and a few others. I think it is important to get them out of the house while allowing them to experience things they enjoy and letting them learn at the same time.
In keeping with the theme this week, I am continually challenged to find things to do with the kids that will meet all of the things I want for them but still allow me to take care of them and the house as needed. With weekends being so short nowadays I am finding that my free time to take outings with the kids has been dramatically reduced in favor of cleaning the house and other domestic chores that are absolutely necessary to keeping our house running at least somewhat smoothly. Which brings me to my next question.
At what point do you forgo domestic duties to enjoy time with your family? I have always been of the mindset that family comes first. But I can see how that undermined my wife's attempt at order in the house are when I look at how terribly behind I get when I take the kids out when I should be home handling home related business. And the more I do this the more worn out I get, which leads me to cut back on some of this and spend more time at home, which ends up in me feeling guilty that I am damaging my kids by not getting them out of the house more.
Is there a way to have the best of both worlds? I want a clean and orderly home. I want a haven for my children to be able to live, grow, learn and experience in. But I also want for my children to be able to experience life beyond the borders of our front and back yards. I want my kids to not just read about stuff but to be able to experience them and learn firsthand what the thing they are learning is really all about.
To that end I have though that there are things we can do that will not require a whole lot of time outside of the home but will still allow for a fun experience for all of us. Some of the things I am thinking are:
Of course we cannot always do everything around cleaning the house, right? At least that is what I am aiming for. Some of the other things that I have thought about that might require a little more time outside of the house, but would be incredibly fun:
Now my only contention is with how I go about doing all of these things with a sick wife at home and a home that needs desperate maintenance almost every day. But I suppose that is why I write. Because I so do not have all the answers. In fact, I don't think I have any answers. I just have a strong desire to take care of my family and provide for them as best I can.
I am not exactly single. In fact, I am nowhere near that. No no, I am very married. But my wife, unfortunately, has been hit with a rather debilitating illness that renders her pretty much incapable of performing tasks that she used to perform regularly in the course of day.
What that means is that my workload has increased dramatically over the last few months. No longer can my wife spend time during the day doing laundry, washing dishes, teaching the kids, running errands, planning for and preparing meals, managing the finances and scheduling the calendar of events that is always exceedingly large in our house. And with these things being not done the onus falls on me to get them done.
Except I am not really in a position to take all of these things on in a given day. The reason is that in addition to taking care of all of the things that a stay at home parent (SAHP) would normally do I still have to work my regular day job (roughly 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM) in addition to client work I do on the side (which I usually work between 9:00 PM and 11:00 PM weekdays). Where in all of this do I get to take care of my home? Weekends? Not exactly, since I have to schedule client work for Saturdays as well. Sundays maybe, but only after about 1:00 PM since we usually go to church until then (unless my kids have a wicked strain of undying headlice).
All this leads me to one enormous question: how the bloody gripes do single working parents actually go about parenting their children while still managing the responsibilities of the home? I am finding this to be quite difficult and extremely frustrating as I watch my house get thrashed daily, my dishes get used but not washed daily, the laundry pile up daily and my kids go unparented daily. What is a parent supposed to do?
I am seriously feeling wholly inadequate to be a father right now. I feel like I am letting my kids down so bad. They hardly get to do anything. They never really get to go anywhere. They are almost as imprisoned in our home as I am. I feel guilty and I feel as though they deserve so much more than what I am giving them. All the while I am feeling less and less adequate as a provider as I watch my finances spiral out of control and continue to avoid certain telephone calls from certain 1-800 numbers that I am certain I don't know.
If you are a single parent would you mind sharing some of your tips with me? I am fairly certain I am going to be into this situation for a while and would love to hear how some of the pros do it. I am at a loss to be perfectly honest. This is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life and everyday it gets harder. So any words of wisdom are much coveted and appreciated.
And if you can't spare that, could you spare some babysitting time?
A few weeks ago my wife was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is a very lifestyle disturbing illness that is very difficult to diagnose and ever more difficult to treat. In a nutshell:
The defining symptoms of fibromyalgia are chronic, widespread pain and tenderness to light touch. Other symptoms can include moderate to severe fatigue, a heightened and painful response to gentle touch (allodynia), needle-like tingling of the skin, muscle aches, prolonged muscle spasms, weakness in the limbs, nerve pain, functional bowel disturbances, and chronic sleep disturbances. Sleep disturbances may be related to a phenomenon called alpha-delta sleep, a condition in which deep sleep (associated with delta waves) is frequently interrupted by bursts of alpha waves, which normally occur during wakefulness. Slow-wave sleep is often dramatically reduced.
Many patients experience cognitive dysfunction (known as "brain fog" or "fibrofog"), which may be characterized by impaired concentration, problems with short and long-term memory, short-term memory consolidation, genitourinary symptoms and interstitial cystitis, dermatological disorders, headaches, myoclonic twitches, and symptomatic hypoglycemia. Although fibromyalgia is classified based on the presence of chronic widespread pain, pain may also be localized in areas such as the shoulders, neck, low back, hips, or other areas. Many sufferers also experience varying degrees of facial pain and have high rates of comorbid temporomandibular joint disorder. Not all patients have all symptoms.
Wikipedia
At first I thought the doctor was spot on because my wife has exhibited many of those symptoms in the past eight months that she has been ill. There were a few inconsistencies with the diagnosis in my opinion, but for the most part all of the things that are encompassed by fibromyalgia were apparent in my wife's lack of health for the last eight months.
Then a few days ago my wife found Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS, or CFS for short) and began to look closer at that. Now I have read about CFS. In fact, when my wife first got sick back in November I read I about CFS and thought that the symptoms seemed eerily similar to what she was experiencing. I even suggested it to my wife's doctor in January and, as of about a month ago, the only thing related to it that was ever put in my wife's chart was "fatigue". Not CFS, just fatigue.
Looking closer as CFS you'll find:
CFIDS is characterized by incapacitating fatigue (experienced as profound exhaustion and extremely poor stamina) and problems with concentration and short-term memory. It is also accompanied by flu-like symptoms such as pain in the joints and muscles, unrefreshing sleep, tender lymph nodes, sore throat and headache. A distinctive characteristic of the illness is post-exertional malaise, a worsening of symptoms following physical or mental exertion occurring within 12-48 hours of the exertion and requiring an extended recovery period.
...
Additional symptoms are reported by people with CFIDS (PWCs) such as word-finding difficulties, inability to comprehend/retain what is read, inability to calculate numbers and impairment of speech and/or reasoning. PWCs may also have visual disturbances (blurring, sensitivity to light, eye pain, need for frequent prescription changes); psychological problems (depression, irritability, anxiety, panic attacks, personality changes, mood swings); chills and night sweats; shortness of breath; dizziness and balance problems; sensitivity to heat and/or cold; alcohol intolerance; irregular heartbeat; irritable bowel (abdominal pain, diarrhea, constipation, intestinal gas); low-grade fever or low body temperature; numbness, tingling and/or burning sensations in the face or extremities; dryness of the mouth and eyes (sicca syndrome); gynecological problems including PMS and endometriosis; chest pains; rashes; ringing in the ears (tinnitus); allergies and sensitivities to noise/sound, odors, chemicals and medications; weight changes without changes in diet; light-headedness; mental fogginess; fainting; muscle twitching; and seizures.
CFIDS Association of America
The more I look at CFS the more I think that this is where the problem lies. I think my wife has been stricken by this illness more than I am thinking fibromyalgia. Here is my thought process:
CFS and Fibromyalgia and how they stack up to my wife
CFS
Fibromyalgia
My Wife
Data for this table gathered from CFIDS and Wikipedia
Incapacitating Fatigue
X
X
X
Problems W/concentration & Short-term Memory
X
X
X
Flu-like Symptoms
X
X
X
Unrefreshing Sleep
X
X
X
Tender Lymph Nodes
X
X
X
Sore Throat
X
Headache
X
X
X
Post-exertional Malaise
X
X
Inability To Comprehend/retain What Is Read
X
X
Inability To Calculate Numbers
X
X
Impairment Of Speech And/or Reasoning
X
Visual Disturbances
X
X
Depression
X
X
X
Irritability
X
X
X
Anxiety
X
X
X
Panic Attacks
X
X
X
Personality Changes
X
X
Mood Swings
X
X
Chills And Night Sweats
X
X
Shortness Of Breath
X
X
Dizziness And Balance Problems
X
X
X
Sensitivity To Heat And/or Cold
X
Alcohol Intolerance
X
Irregular Heartbeat
X
X
Irritable Bowel
X
X
X
Low-grade Fever Or Low Body Temperature
X
X
Numbness, Tingling And/or Burning Sensations In The Face Or Extremities
X
X
Dryness Of The Mouth And Eyes
X
X
Gynecological Problems Including PMS And Endometriosis
X
X
Chest Pains
X
Rashes
X
Ringing In The Ears
X
Allergies
X
X
Sensitivities To Noise/sound, Odors, Chemicals And Medications
X
X
Weight Changes Without Changes In Diet
X
X
Light-headedness
X
X
Mental Fogginess
X
X
X
Fainting
X
Muscle Twitching
X
Seizures
X
If you look closely you can see that many of the symptoms Sandi exhibits are found in CFS. And while the fibromyalgia camp still carries with it a heavy list of things that suck, Sandi is experiencing more of the CFS related issues than the fibromyalgia ones.
This leads me to think the doctors have misdiagnosed her. Which means they are treating something that is not what she has. Which means the chances of her improving her health are pretty much crap. Which means that our family is going to continue to go through hell daily until something can be done.
The most daunting thing about CFS, as I continue to study it, is the insanely long recovery period. It is one in which people with CFS may never actually fully recover. And in general that period is between two and five years. How badly does that suck to be the poor soul with CFS? Living, day in and day out like you have just gotten run over by a train and knowing that you are going to be run over again tomorrow as soon as you wake up, and then again the next day, and again the next, and so on. For years.
I really feel a great deal of sympathy for my wife right now because she is in a place that no one should ever have to be. Her life is very hard right now and as such, the lives of her family members are very hard right now. But praise God, there are people that are willing to help us and many have already helped us.
I am just trying to wade through the stuff that I have take care of now that my wife is, in effect, incapacitated. But that will be for tomorrow's post I think, one in which I will call out for help from single parents that are trying to raise kids, take care of the house and take care of the bills.
So this morning, at 7:42 AM, you turned three. That is huge. It is like an entire 1 more than 2. You are all growed up, at least as far as a three year old can be, and are all kinds of big boy now. Yet is still feels like just a few days ago that you were born.
Today was a weird but special day for you. Through an odd scheduling snafu mom scheduled a day out with Yolanda today. That meant that you, me and all the girls would be home today while mom was out wine tasting. Except, at the very last minute this morning your momma decided that she was not healthy enough to drive herself to Millbrae so she asked me to take her. Which meant all of us were going for an early morning drive this morning.
Momma threw you all in the truck (figuratively of course) and we headed to Millbrae. We dropped mom off and Greg invited us over to his house for breakfast (actually, he invited us out to breakfast but since you and your sisters were hastily rushed out of the house this morning all of you were in your jammies and none of you had shoes). Breakfast was awesome and you and Preston had a great time playing around the large open living room at their house. We stayed there for a good while and finally got home around 1:15.
About 15 minutes later auntie Katie showed up to wish you a happy birthday and she ended up treating us to lunch. We came home, ate, talked, ate some more, played and ate some more. Then Auntie Katie had to go because we had to go get some stuff for your cake tonight. Since mom was not here all day she wanted to be able to do cake with you tonight. But we needed a cake and some toppers to go on it. Which is why we went out to get that stuff.
We got home right around 4:30 or so. I put a movie on for you guys while I got the coals ready for steaks. I got dishes washed and everything ready to cook and got to it. While I was cooking you and Alaynah were playing out in the yard. Playtime seemed to go on forever for you two, but it actually ended at about 6:00 when we had dinner. A little while later mom got home.
Just after that we had your rainbow cake with Diego toppers and "A" and "J" candles. It was awesome. We got you wired on all sorts of buttercream frosting then turned you lose on the front room to open your presents. You got a pretty big kick out of most of them, playing with the little spirally Go Diego Go car slide. In fact, you played with that up until it was bedtime.
Which is why I am writing this so late. You see, in the hubbub of what was your birthday I had no time at all to even tell you happy birthday here. So I am taking this time, after you are asleep and after I have taken a shower (because Lord knows I needed one). I just want to tell you again son... Happy birthday. I love you and I am glad that God chose to bless me with your existence in our family.
You are an amazing kid. You learn incredibly fast, you are very smary naturally and you are all boy. I love watching your maleness come screaming out of you as you develop into a little boy. You are already well on you way to that and I am certainly glad that I get to be a part of that with you. So today son, as you sleep off the effects of a very busy Sunday, I just want to let you know again how much I love you and how glad I am that you had a happy birthday.
The other day I received an email that detailed how similar politicians are no matter where around the world they may be. I thought that certainly Americans had the upper hand when it came to our elected leaders being political. I may have been wrong.
It seems that Senator Bob Collins from Australia is the example to follow when being political. He recently gave an interview regarding a tanker ship that experience a horrific accident at sea. The accident, one in which the front of the ship detached allowing 20 million tons of crude oil to spill into the sea, happened near Australia.
You gotta see this...
Amazing, isn't it? I have yet to see an American politician pull something like off.
Side bar: If you hadn't guessed while watching the clip, it is a satire by John Clarke and Bryan Dawe, an Australian comedic duo that have been doing satires of weekly events, called the 7.30 report, for some time now. You gotta admit, they are darn funny.
Yesterday, as I left work, I couldn't help but notice how gray the air was. It had been smoky like this for a while, but not this bad. In fact, today it was so bad that it was not only difficult to see, it was actually a little weird to breath.
I could actually taste the air around me. It tasted chalky, smoky and dusty. My throat felt dirty and scratchy very quickly and my nose felt like I had been cleaning the garage all afternoon. When I opened my mouth to breath I could almost feel the air filling my mouth with particulates. It was a little disturbing to be honest.
Given the insane number of fires that the state of California is experiencing at the moment it is no wonder that our air is as unhealthy as it is. There are, from last I heard, about 1,000 fires burning statewide which have consumed about 20,000 acres of property. That is a lot of burning land.
Throw in the winds coming from the North, where some of the most intense wildfires are taking place and you can see that the recipe for tasty, smoky, charred air is well positioned to bring itself to everyone's door.
An example of what I am talking about can be seen in the following image, taken as I walked out of my office yesterday evening. It is a photo of the Concord airport airstrip, which is usually plainly visible. Additionally, the trees behind the airfield are usually well within view, not to mention the huge range of hills just behind it.
On my drive home I noticed that something seemed to be terribly wrong with my view. The more I thought about it the more I realized, it was that the mountains that are usually so majestically plastered against the skyline were absolutely non existent in the current airspace. The sky looked like a foggy winter morning when it was indeed a warm summer evening.
My heart, thoughts and prayers go out to the people affected by these blazes. I am also praying for all of the firefighters that are upholding their oath to protect the public and are putting theirs lives at risk to make sure people are safe.
These are tough times for California. By most accounts we are entering into fire season about three months early and already we are experience more fires than we usually do in an entire season. Please keep the state of California in your thoughts while the brave men and women that are battling these fires continue to protect us even at the cost of the very lives.
More Pictures
On the way home, Southbound 680 in North Walnut Creek
More driving... I can't help but notice no mountains
There should be more greens and blues in this picture
Usually at this point I would be seeing some hillside
Still not a hillside to be seen outside of the very close one here
I realized in my quest to build a new theme for my blog that as I did validation testing on the markup that it didn't validate (against the XHTML 1 Strict DTD - because I am a little Geek OCD when it comes to my markup). After a bit of inspection I realized that it was the stupid YouTube code that I copied from their site that was throwing off my validation.
Apparently YouTube thinks that everyone that puts their code into a site writes their markup under the transitional DTD. How stupid is that? A la:
Well I wasn't about to be told that I cannot have valid XHTML in my code. After all, I took the time to make sure the core code was valid, why should I tolerate invalid markup injected into my code by YouTube or Wordpress or anyone? Exactly.
My solution? Simple. Google.
And Google, being the friend to me that is always has been, helped me right from the go. It took me Valid XHTML to Embed a YouTube Video. After reading some of the goodness on this tutorial I read the comments. And lo and behold, I ran across another tidbit of goodness that all bloggers that are into valid XHTML output should look at.
The Valid XHTML YouTube embed code generator - Online tool is totally awesome. It is fast, clean and reliable. I have already used it twice and will more than likely be using for every video embed I post until I want (bad enough) to write a Wordpress plugin. Until then, if you are at all interested in keeping your XHTML template standards compliant, hit this little converter up because it rocks.
And just so I can prove myself to not be a liar... remember that little YouTube generated code snippet above? This is how it comes out afterward:
A recent Sitepoint article by Rachel Andrews, Director of edgeofmyseat.com, outlined some pretty Nifty Navigation Tricks Using CSS. Anyone that wants to learn to make some pretty cool tabbed, button or vertical bar navigation lists should give this article a read through. It is a pretty well written article and has a great deal of code that can be easily copied and pasted for your development pleasure.
For four pages it reads very fast. It is easy to follow and the examples are practical. I wish there were some working samples of the code, but still, it is a good teaching tool for those that have yet to dive into CSS based navigation lists (and you should get into it, as CSS is designed for such things).
For those that want a huge assortment of samples, code and really cool lessons, check out Stu Nicholls' CSS Play. This site is an amazing reference for learning the art of cross-browser compatible CSS. There are menus, layouts and much more available to learn from and even use, in many cases without even a link back to him, though it is always a good idea to give credit where credit is due.
So if you are in need of a little CSS learning fix, hit these references up. You will enjoy them and, in the case of Stu Nicholls, may even make them part of your normal daily web development toolset.
There are many a wife that has been widowed by the World of Warcraft craze that has swept the world. And plenty of men, women and children have fallen victim to the craziness of the addiction to this violent, expensive, wasteland generating game.
However there is an entire class of people that are being overlooked in our zeal to cast judgment on the yayhoos that have gone WoW-stupid. These folks are largely overlooked because they are the ones that missed the boat. That's right, these poor people have missed the hit parade of early adopters and are now forced to work twice as hard, some times three times as hard, to accumulate the WoW wealth needed to really impress the female gnomes and imps trolling about the WoW.
But I have good news for these people. Blizzard Entertainment, the same folks that brought you World of Warcraft have recently announced plans for World of World of Warcraft, a game that allows those that missed the first rush of WoW freakiness to pass them by to easily integrate themselves into that world by gaming themselves into it.
Have a look:
So it appears that you can now put yourself into the game even if you are not in the game. How cool is that? No more being an outcast, outsider or freak that doesn't know what a level 3 gnome rogue is. No way Jose. Now, you can be one of the cool folks associated with World of Warcraft, in your own World of World of Warcraft.
I never tire of LOLCats. Seriously, never. I can literally sit for hours and be amused by their silly antics and wonderful captions.
So imagine my surprise when one of them came up missing. A real life lolcat, missing in SF.
I almost wanted to hit the city just to look for it. I would stop, of course, at a burger joint to pick up a cheezburger before beginning my quest to find the lil lol. And I would celebrate mightily after having caught it as I would have been a guy that actually caught a real life, living LOLCat.
