Category: Life

Lack of Sleep

Life, Sleep, Twitter

If I ramble a bit today, it’s because I’ve been burning the midnight oil lately.  I came up with an idea for a Twitter application (more on that later) and, after a few false programming starts, suddenly found myself in a coding zone.  I would come up with new ideas and then implement them quickly.  As midnight approached each night, I would suddenly get a burst of energy.  My mind would race with ideas and bug-solving solutions.  I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep because I needed to “just code this one last thing… or maybe this one then I’ll go to sleep…”

Of course, I’m not 22 anymore.  I can’t code all night, sleep for four hours and then take on the new day full of energy.  Well, I can to a small degree.  Being a parent has shown me just how little sleep I can survive on.  When your baby wakes up every hour or two and stays awake for hours on end completely oblivious to the fact that it is 2:30 am, you find out just what sleep deprivation is like.  Luckily, our boys aren’t like that anymore (usually).  They go to sleep (albeit with various degrees of cooperation) by 8:30pm and sleep until 6am (when NHL, weekday or weekend, wakes me up to ask if it’s ok for him to go to the couch).

Still, I’m turning 36 in a couple of months.  Thirty-Six.  I’ve got to start realizing that I’m not a young man anymore.  After three late nights, I was really tired.  I probably should have gone to sleep early last night.  Still, I stayed up until midnight.  I might have even been fine with that, but other events conspired against me.

First, it was a call from work with an issue.  I helped as much as I could and then went to bed.  At 3 am, I got a second call from work.  At the same time, NHL woke up and asked to come into our bed.  After a half an hour, my call was done and I tried to get back into bed.

I got less than a half hour’s worth of sleep before JSL woke up crying.  He asked to come into our bed, but that just couldn’t happen.  One kid in our bed is a tight fit.  Two kids and there would be no room for us grown-ups.  So I asked him if he’d want to sleep with me in NHL’s bed.

I grabbed my pillow and cuddled with JSL in NHL’s bed but couldn’t fall asleep.  Right outside our window, some birds apparently decided that 4am was the perfect time to tweet and squawk incessantly.  This went on for about another half hour.  I finally fell asleep and slept fitfully for an hour and a half when B woke me up so I could go to work.

I think I’ll go to sleep at 9pm tonight… Unless I get some coding ideas for my new Twitter application.  Then maybe I’ll go to sleep an hour later. Or two hours.  Or… wait, how’d it get to be 1am so quickly?!!!

Ok, I know I said “more on that later” about my Twitter application, so here’s a teaser.  It’s an application designed to make it easier to manage your friends and followers.  I’m quite proud of the work I’ve done and can’t wait to release it.  My biggest obstacle right now is that I need to figure out a good name for it.  I’m hoping to find something catchy with an available dot com and Twitter handle.  I’m open to ideas if anyone thinks of anything catchy.  I’ll even credit you in the application when it launches.

Who Am I?

Family, Fatherhood, Gardening, Life

Yesterday, the rain held off.  It was the perfect time to catch up on some yard work that needed to be done.  I mowed the lawn, put down some grass seed (our lawn still hasn’t recovered from the burst water pipe last year), trimmed some hedges, and potted some plants we had purchased the previous day.

While I was doing this, the boys were inside with B.  They could have come out, but they don’t like the noise that the lawn mower puts out.  JSL, who came out for a little bit, freaked out that every small flying bug was a bee coming after him.  Besides, I had set up NHL on my computer and he was having a blast playing Angry Birds, Gravity Duck and other games online.

So I had the time to myself.  It was nice.  I had peace and quiet and could think while I lugged heavy bags of dirt or pushed our mower up and down the yard.  I began to enjoy my “Dad’s Day Out” until it hit me.  This *was* the closest thing to a dad’s day out that I’ve had in awhile and I was doing yard work.  Some day out.

I began to think about how I’d rather spend a day out by myself.  Suppose B came up to me and told me that, this coming Sunday, she would take the boys and I could do whatever I wanted.  What would I do?

I don’t have any family or friends here and it often feels like I switch between “Worker Mode” (where I’m in an office all day with little to no social interaction beyond “we need you to do this for us”) straight to “Dad Mode” (where I try to cook meals, take care of my wife and kids, clean up, etc).  If I’m not in “Worker Mode” or “Dad Mode”, who am I?  Who is TechyDad when he’s not coding web sites or being a dad?  I’m not sure I have an answer for that question and it scares me.  I love being a web developer and I love being a dad, I don’t think it is too much to ask to be able to be “just me” from time to time. 

The dream I had last night isn’t helping my mood, either.  I was with B and my parents visiting my grandparents’ grave site.  Only, I didn’t know exactly where it was.  Somehow, I got separated from everyone.  As I tried to find them and the gravesite, they visited the grave and then prepared to leave.  I tried to explain to them (via cell phone) that I still needed to visit the grave, but they told me they’d leave without me if I didn’t get to the car.  Then, B came by to bring me back to the car over my objections.  I was almost in tears over being denied the opportunity to visit my grandparents’ grave when I woke up.

I’m not sure if the dream is somehow related to the “Who am I” feelings from the previous day, but this wouldn’t be the first time that I dreamt about something bothering me.  Between yesterday’s identity crisis and this morning’s bad dream, you’ll excuse me if I’m feeling emotionally on edge today.

No Time For Photos

Life, Photography

Today is Wednesday. Usually, this would mean I’d be posting some fun or interesting photo I took for Wordless Wednesday. Sadly, I don’t have any photos to post. I don’t mean that I don’t have any fun or interesting photos. I mean I have *NO* photos at all.

The past week or so has been hectic.  Between room cleaning, snow and ice clearing, freelance work, a website I had an idea for and the various other “normal life” things that take up my time, I’ve had no time or energy to wield my camera as of late.

I’ve seen plenty of things that would make for great photos: colorful, cloud marked skies, snow covered trees, cars that haven’t been moved in weeks which are buried in snow, sparkling ice on a bush.  However, as I’m noticing these things I’m either driving (stopping in the middle of the highway to take a picture of the sky isn’t too safe) or running late (if I need to drop NHL off to school in 5 minutes, I’m not going to stop to take sparkling ice photos).

Hopefully, things will calm down in the next week or so and I can resume taking photos again.  I need to practice with this camera as much as I can because I’ll be taking tons of photos when we go to Disney World!

Sleep Eludes Me

Life, Sleep

Last night was a rough night.  I was already tired from staying up too late.  So I vowed to get to sleep early.  Yeah, right.  I wound up watching TV and reading articles online until midnight.  Finally, I shut down and tucked myself in for a nice, long, uninterrupted sleep.  What was that about uninterrupted sleep?

JSL woke us up once with a coughing fit.  He and I have been having these for weeks now.  No fevers or any other symptoms.  Just really heavy, congested-sounding coughs.  And, of course, he refuses to take any medicine.  (And, of course, I keep forgetting mine.)

After the second JSL-cough-wakeup-call, I pulled JSL into our bed.  Then we had a restless sleep until around 5am when NHL woke up.  He had had a nightmare.  I encouraged him to go to the bathroom and then go back to sleep.  He woke back up (or, more accurately, shouted questions at us since we don’t think he really went back to sleep) at 5:30am, 5:45am, 6am, and 6:10am before we finally dragged our tired selves out of bed, set him up on the couch and I pulled myself into the shower to get ready for work.

Now I sit here exhausted and thinking, “I really need to get to sleep early tonight.”

Yeah, right.

TechyDad and the No Good, Horrible, Rotten Day

embarrassing, Life

Today was not my best day.  In fact, it was filled with FAIL after FAIL.  It started off promising enough.  I got NHL ready for school and myself ready for a day of training.  I dropped NHL off and began into work.  Halfway to work, I snapped out of “auto-pilot” mode realizing that I wasn’t going to my office today.  I was going to training!  And training was in the exact opposite direction.  Note: Face-palming while driving is *not* recommended.

After I got to training, things looked up.  I arrived on time and the training session was going well.  Then we broke for lunch and I went with my boss to a local sub place.  Exiting his car, I happened to look down at my two brown shoes.  My two MISMATCHED brown shoes.  I was mortified but resolved not to mention a word lest I suffer more embarrassment.  Instead, I went out of my way to (as subtly as possible) make sure both shoes weren’t in his field of vision at the same time.

At one point during the day, I had needed a password for a site.  Now, I usually carry around a USB flash drive with passwords and some other documents.  So I plugged that in and got my password.  After I arrived home, I realized that I couldn’t remember putting the flash drive away.  Yes, I had forgotten the drive at the training center.  I called and they were closed for the day.  I was able to reach my account representative who said he’d put it aside for me.

So, after all of that stress, I’m looking at the big To-Do list of things I should get done tonight and thinking “I *really* want to just veg out with some Kirby’s Epic Yarn until it’s time for bed.”  I think I’ll justify it by saying that any development work or housework I do tonight is potentially cursed.  Who knows?  I might delete the database instead of copying it or drop the dishes while trying to load the dishwasher.

Here’s hoping tomorrow is better.

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