Just Call Me Carl Fredricksen
At work today, I felt pretty stressed out. A deadline was looming and a server was just not cooperating. As I walked out of my office, at around 1:15 PM, I suddenly felt a sharp stabbing pain in my upper back and neck. I could feel all of my muscles in there spasming.
Now, I’ve had muscle spasms before. I get them from time to time, mostly due to stress and mostly limited to the muscles under my right shoulder blade. (Don’t ask why it is that specific, but it is.) This was different, though. Instead of moderate pain, this was extreme pain and instead of being limited, it was much wider in scope.
I stayed still for a few minutes, hoping it would pass, but no such luck. So I slowly made my way to my bag where I was sure I had some advil. More bad luck. No advil. I searched through all of my desk drawers and bag pockets but couldn’t find a single pain reliever. I asked around and no coworkers had any. Finally, one of my coworkers had some and I took it hoping for some relief. By now, the spasms had lasted almost an hour.
I spent the rest of the day feeling like an old man. I shuffled back and forth slowly. I thought ahead before opening any door to plan out the least painful way of doing it. I winced upon getting up and sitting down. I even felt hunched over as my tightened, still slightly spasming muscles refused to let me stand up straight.
Later that night, JSL demanded to see Up on Roku / Netflix. We watched (well, I watched while JSL ran around playing) as Carl Fredicksen fought hard to get his house to Paradise Falls. I’ve often found that I’ll get so engrossed in a movie and identify so much with a character that I feel like that character after the movie is over.
Can you see where I’m going with this? Yes, I found that I had identified with Carl. I even found myself reaching for my cane once or twice before my arm realized that I don’t use one. I’m only in my mid thirties. I shouldn’t be feeling like this.
I tried consulting a medical expert… and by that I mean JSL, who upon hearing of my pain, grabbed his stethoscope and said “Dada, me gonna be doctor!” That didn’t help. So here I sit with JSL typing up this post and trying to ignore the pain in my neck and back. After JSL goes to sleep, I’ll try a nice, hot shower to see if that’ll relax the muscles. If not, maybe a good night’s sleep will do it. Worst case scenario, I’ll find a cane with some tennis balls on it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to yell at some kids to get off my lawn. Annoying whippersnappers!
Plans Set In… Clay?
I’m the kind of guy who likes having things planned out. I’m not very good at “just winging it.” Still, if fatherhood has taught me anything it’s that you always need to be flexible and plans are never set in stone. You never know when a little one will get a cold and shatter your perfectly formed plan.
Take this weekend, for example. I had a great Father’s Day in mind as the weekend approached. We would wake up early and go strawberry picking. For dinner, we would go a great, local Chinese restaurant. On Saturday, we went to the Great Escape (more on that later). Coming home, it was late and JSL fell asleep. Then we stopped by Dunkin’ Donuts for a very late dinner and he woke up… and stayed up until midnight! Then, he woke us up at 4:40am to come into our bed just as a huge thunderstorm erupted. There, he hogged bed space until 6am when his big brother woke up.
I set NHL up on the couch with the Roku remote to be entertained by Rugrats on Netflix until we were all more rested. Then, I fell back to an uneven sleep-wake up cycle until B left the bed. I laid in bed with my eyes closed knowing what was coming up and yet savoring my last moments of lying down before beginning the day.
B and the boys came in and all wished me a happy Father’s Day, gave me some cards and presents. I got a Star Wars “book” (it’s a series of cards connected at one point so they can swivel around). I’ll use these while watching Star Wars with NHL. I also got some pajama bottoms and a coupon book from NHL (good for vacuuming, doing the dishes, and learning about computers with me).
After getting up, getting dressed, eating breakfast and checking our house for damage/leaks from the previous night’s storm (nothing, thank goodness), we talked about our Father’s Day plans. I really wanted to go strawberry picking, but my trip outside showed me two things. First of all, it was hot and humid. Secondly, it was muddy out. Having the boys walk through hot, muddy fields to get a ton of berries was probably not the best idea. (Especially when I would be the one tubbing them that night!)
NHL was actually the one to suggest an alternative plan. He said we could go bowling. Most lanes seemed to be closed on Sundays, but we found one that wasn’t. Before bowling, though, we needed to eat lunch. The place I had wanted to go to was completely out of the way, so we did what we’ve learned to do since becomming parents, adapted our plans to the situation. We went out to a local chinese buffet and had a pretty good lunch. NHL even tried two new things (black bean buns and edamame) and loved them.
We went bowling and, while I’ll post details later, we all had a great time. After bowling, we stopped by BJ’s to pick up some things and went to B’s parents’ house for dinner.
Father’s Day turned out to be a lot of fun even if none of my planned activities got accomplished. That’s life and parenting, though. You can either learn to roll with the punches and have fun with the new plans or you gripe about your messed up plans and miss all the fun that it happening right in front of you.
P.S. Even this blog post was a “roll with the punches” thing. I originally intended to post about Six Flags or bowling with photos, but realized I had uploaded the wrong set of photos. So I needed to post about something else until I get to the photos on my computer at home.
Geek Dad Book Review and Giveaway
Thanks to winning a contest over at Dad of Divas, I was able to check out the new book Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share by Ken Denmead. I was instantly overwhelmed, but in a very good way.
The book recognizes that not every dad is your stereotypical sports-loving, beer-drinking man. Some of us like Star Wars, role playing games, and other things of a geeky inclination. Since dads love sharing their favorite activities with their kids, the question becomes: How do we share our love of science, technology and other geeky subjects with our kids? Sharing some items might be easy. You can sit down with your kid and have a Star Wars marathon, but others might not be as easy to share. Chances are, a 7 year old won’t quite understand or have the patience for an adult-level role playing game.
Aloha Friday: Spammers, Scrapers and Thieves, Oh My!
I had a great Aloha Friday question all lined up, but it’s going to have to wait. As I was headed home, I got a call from B. She searched Twitter for #DisneySMMoms and found a tweet from a user named EsterlDode titled "#DisneySMMoms 2010 – A Not-So-Impossible" followed by a URL. Now, she recognized this as the beginning of my latest DisneySMMoms post so she clicked the link wondering what she would get. She was greeted by my webpage. Except it wasn’t my webpage.