along the journey

Took these pictures yesterday. They’re pictures of Caleb and his cousin Tyler playing in the leaves behind our house. He has a ball, except he got a little frustrated at Tyler for throwing the leaves in his face.

We had yummy dinner, pictures of our spread (true geekiness), will be up later, but it was delicious. After dinner we sat around the house, and then went out to Amy’s grandparents house. We hung out there for a while, until Amy and I felt too bad to be social any more. We left and came home.

We’re both home sick today, Amy, still recovering from her spinal tap, me, I’ve got another cold. I knew it was coming, just didn’t expect it to keep me from working. Oh well. Another month of working for Tek Systems, and then I’ll be a full-time employee with bennies, such as paid sick leave! Woo Hoo!

After several hours at the hospital, the doc mentioned that there was definately extra pressure in her brain and is prescribing medicine to treat the sympton of psuedo “something-or-your-mother” cerebri - or intercranial pressure. She’ll start that medecine tomorrow. This is mostly good news in that we were dreading that after the spinal tap they’d tell us that there was nothing wrong. Amy has noticed an almost immediate improvement over the past few hours in how she feels overall. However she is still recovering from the procedure.

Tonight as I was giving Caleb a bath he realized that he is able to stick his face into the water without dying. He’s never been afraid of having water poured over his head, in fact, that’s the part he enjoys most about bath time, but he’s always been scared of sticking his face in the water. Tonight he’d stick his face in the water for a second and the emerge, snot running down his nose, tickled to death. He loved it. He did it over and over and over again. As I pulled the stopper on the bath water, he started rolling over on his back in the water and back to his belly. He loved being on his back in the water, but it has always frightened him as well. I suppose the dunking his head in the water made him realize that it would be alright if he go water in his face while on his back. It was the most adorable thing.

So many new discoveries have been made in the bathtub. I’ve always meant to write about them here, but I never do. I think I may enjoy bath time even more than Caleb. I think he realizes that too.

Amy’s at the hospital across the street from my office, having her spinal tap done. I’m tired. Been waiting forever, well a few hours, and she just went back for the procedure. I didn’t feel like sitting in the hospital any longer. Say prayers!

So I write the entry about my Dad’s birthday, and then don’t call him. DOH! I remembered this morning only about 8 hours too late! I feel awful.

Yesterday, I did a bunch of yardwork, like the happy-homeowner that I am. It’s been a year or 5 since I’ve really needed to rake leaves. I raked up the leaves in my driveway and frontyard. There’s no way I’ll even touch my backyard, there are way too many leaves back there. I’m just gonna let mother nature run her course, I’ll get them up next spring after they’ve been composted.

We went to Center Stage last night and saw No Foreigners Beyond This Point, a world premier. It was alright. I was frustrated at the seats we were in during the first act, we could see hardly any action happening stage left. As it neared time for intermission I scoped out the audience and found us some seats in the center balcony. I put my stuff down before we left to get drinks. The second act was much better, if not just for our better view. It really blows me away that the director could write off 20-30 seats, just in the balcony, not sure what sight lines were obscured from the orchestra. My guess is that there are close to 100 seats which are awful because the director failed to take the sight lines into consideration, either when blocking or when working things out with the technical director when designing scenery. Despite my frustration with the show, I ended up enjoying it. It was worth the money $10 total…. Thank God for Pay What you Can Nights!

Hadn’t done a whole lot today. Lounged around, watched tv, played on the computer. I did go out once, for bread and chips for dinner. That’s it. It’s too cold to go out. I’m thinking it was probably 35 or so, but on this side of the season it feels like 15. Moving into Spring, this would feel warm though. The almanac says that we could have a snowstorm this week. That’d be exciting. I remember one year, we still had our foster-sister, Danielle, it snowed the night before Thanksgiving. I’m not quite sure why I remember it, but I do. That might have been the blizzard of 89. Was there even a blizzard in 89? That’s how much I don’t remember. Heck was it even Thanksgiving at all?

My dads birthday is always around this time. I almost never miss it, mostly cause I always miss my moms birthday and I know my dads birthday is usually between hers and Thanksgiving. The other night I called mom to find out when dads birthday was and she told me that since I missed hers she wasn’t going to tell me. I eventually weasled it out of her. I feel really bad about missing their birthdays too. Dad’s not so much as moms though.

Caleb and I stopped by my grandfathers house last night. We hadn’t seen him in a month or so and I wasn’t sure if anyone had invited him to dinner for Thanksgiving. Pop was hooked to oxygen. I had never seen him sick. Not that he’s never been sick, just I’ve never seen him when he’s been sick. The doctors don’t seem to know what’s wrong with him, and as best I can tell are just letting him wait things out at home. It really scares me. He’s the only grandfather I’ve really known. I want so much for Caleb to get the chance to play with him. Yesterday Pop wanted him to sit on his lap, I’ve never seen him be very interested in Caleb, so I tried to pick him up and put him on his lap. Caleb thought that I was picking him up to leave, since I always take him to kiss Pop on the cheek, he was trying to give him a kiss. I told Caleb we weren’t leaving yet and tried to set him on Pops lap. He didn’t want anything to do with it. I was sad. I think Pop was too. As we left I felt really awful. Like I was abandoning him. I’m very scared that yesterday may have been the last time I see him alive. I really realize that that’s an awful thought, but I just don’t know. I called mom to let her know that I thought he was really bad, she encouraged me, but it’s still hard to think about.

This week is set to be pretty stressfull! The best I can see is to sit back and relax, take things as they come. We’re hosting dinner on Thursday, Amy’s not supposed to do anything on Wednesday, and I’ll be working. Tuesday afternoon is Amy’s spinal-tap. Sunday and Monday I’m sure will be spent trying to get the house together for Thursday, trying to figure out what we’ll be having and when it’ll get made, as well as trying to figure out what to do with our ailing vehicle. It’s started acting up differently than I’ve ever heard a car act up. Some sort of knocking near the front drivers side tire, I can actually feel it. Sort of feels like I rock pops up and hits under the car, usually when accelerating and going over a bump. I looked under there, but I wouldn’t know if something were out of place unless it was hanging down or something, and then I’d doubt my self.

Things are difficult for me. I try really hard to help Amy with things, but I know that I don’t do as good a job as she would if she were performing the same task. I try to be understanding and caring of her situation, but I always feel that it’s not enough. That no matter how I feel, what I do or say, she never really comprehends how deep it runs. To me, making her happy, keeping her content, is so important to me. I might sigh, or get frustrated if doing something for her draws me away from doing something I’m doing, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t care, or don’t want to do it.

For our Anniversary I wanted to order Amy some soap and stuff from a local girl who makes them hand-made. I told her that I wanted a gift basket type thing with various scents and stuff, but didn’t know what products to get. I was hoping to get it the weekend of our Anniversary. The girl told me that that it was too soon for her to have the stuff ready, so I asked if it’d be possible to get them the weekend after. The weekend after is when my domains went south and my email was down. Apparently during that time she had scheduled time to meet me, and sent me email after email about picking it up. I didn’t receive any of them, and had no idea she was even trying to contact me. When I finally got my email back working I emailed her again, told her I was still interested. Instead of explaining it much more- here’s my end of the correspondence:
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Is betterness a word? Things aren’t completely better, however our worse case scenario is no longer a possibility! At this point I feel better about sharing as well. For about 2 years or so now Amy has been having spells where she’ll hear her heartbeat in her ears, or see spots, she’d be nauseous and extremely tired and often times dizzy. It got pretty bad while she was pregnant but we just attributed it to pregnancy stuff. Since we’ve had Caleb it hasn’t been so bad, until these last few months. When Amy had her last bout with it she went to see her doctor who told her that if it happened again to call immediately. Well she was seen immediately on Tuesday. The doctor referred her to an opthomologist. Her appt was on Wednesday. During that appointment she was told that normally people come in with this condition but are sent home with nothing wrong. She was different. She was told that there was some sort of pressure on the back of her eyes that could be caused by two things, a brain tumor or water on her brain. If it was a brain tumor they’d have to operate, if it’s water on the brain they’d have to do a spinal tap and refer her to a neurologist for treatment. The opthomologist scheduled her for an emergency catscan, that happened yesterday. We were told that we would have to wait until probably Tuesday. Today she got the results back. In the words of everyone’s favorite kindergarten cop, “It’s not a tumor”. Thank God, however we are not in the clear yet. Still down the road she’ll need a spinal tap, followed by some sort of treatment that’s not yet been discussed with us. It all depends on what her spinal fluid reveals to the doctor. Thanks for the prayers and concerns.

Thanks Suz for watching Caleb for us today.

Definate craziness going on with us health-wise. Please pray for us. I will update with full information as soon as we have more!

So I got my domain back and working. It feels good. Feels like home. I was able to edit the entry about the hijackers yesterday, and then I made some changes and now dean-o.org is pointing to a different server. That server is mine, except for some technical issues. It’s currently displaying Rob Carlson’s default webcam page. Hopefully I’ll fix that this evening. Email being sent to dean@dean-o.org may not reach me, so you will definately want to send mail to dean@dean-o.org for the next little bit. Send me two- one to each address. As if people out here in webland actually email me.

Last night we had quite a scare. We were eatng dinner and Amy and given Caleb a peanut butter sandwhich. He’s never eaten peanut butter before, but we keep trying. So as we were winding up dinner I started to try to get him to eat it. I eventually gave him a spoon with peanut butter on it and showed him how to dip the apple in the peanut butter. He was having so much fun playing with it and eating it. As we started to clean him up we noticed that his face was really red. His eye was starting to swell and there were raised bumps on his face. We didn’t know what to do. So I took some pictures before putting him in the bathtub. I washed him off good, made sure to wash the peanut butter off his face and out of his hair. When he got out it was more visible, but not quite as severe. Amy called his pediatrician and they told us not to worry as long as his tounge doesn’t start to swell and he’s breathing alright. They also told us not to give him any more peanut butter.

Before he went to bed the rash was completely cleared up, except that his eye was a bit red still. Amy gave him some benedryl and put him down for bed. When I talked with Amy a bit ago he was still sleeping. One of the worst parts of this experience though is that i can’t enjoy a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich with my son, something that I was looking forward to.

The short and sweet of it. Amymckenzie.org no longer belongs to us, all of the content previously available there is now available at amymckenzie.com, Amy’s email address will also be updated to amy@amymckenzie.com.

Well I found out today that dean-o.org and amymckenzie.org had expired, mostly because they stopped working and were no longer in the whois database. So as I tried to fix things I was mostly frustrated that I didn’t receive an message from register.com to remind me that the domains were up for renewal. I decided that I was definately not going to re-register with godaddy.com and instead found a cheaper registrar. I registered dean-o.org again, and everything went fine until I tried to add amymckenzie.org. It wouldn’t let me buy it. It wasn’t in the whois database, but wasn’t letting me reserve it. So I called godaddy’s customer service who told me that he would look into it, that it was not registered and that it was not letting him grab it either it. He said he’d call me back and let me know what was going on with it. So tonight when I get home I start looking into it some more. The domain amymckenzie.org was hijacked, and registered out from under me. The culprits domainreg@hotmail.com seem to make a habit out of this kind of stuff. I’ve emailed them asking them how much money they want for it, but from what I’ve read, it sounds like they want $300+ for them. Fuhgedaboutit! I went and registered amymckenzie.com with godaddy. Both amymckenzie.com and dean-o.org should be working before the end of the week, as should the associated email addresses- amy@amymckenzie.com and dean@dean-o.org. Please update any amymckenzie.org addresses to reflect this change. Also if you could put a little update on your page with some of this information in it that would be great- spread it around so google gets the new information as well as information about the hijackers.

As you may have noticed I have intentionally linked register.com to godaddy.com so as to drive the link traffic to godaddy. my own little one-man googlebomb. If enough people link the words register.com to godaddy.com then godaddy will get higher search engine placement. If you have any questions regarding that feel free to email me. dean@dean-o.org