freckles

5-20-09

I wasn’t nearly as spooked with yesterday’s tremor as with the one Sunday. In a first for me, I was in the car when this one happened. I was on the off ramp from the 405 heading to my folks house. I actually thought that a car had rear ended me when the jolt happened. When I determined that was not the case, and noticed the swaying of my car, I thought that I had in fact just experienced an earthquake. I wasn’t sure, and I switched the radio to AM news stations, who were useless. The boys never even noticed. Luckily, Ken texted me asking me if I was ok, which meant I wasn’t imagining things.

Aside from the shaking, my evening was uneventful. I am pretty sure I coughed up parts of my body in the numerous hack fits I was having. It was awful. This morning I have not been coughing as much, but I also have not had to talk much, having spent my morning so far working silently on some accounts. I figure if I start moving around and talking again, I am going to cough some more. Hmm..makes me wonder if perhaps rest is what I need.

Bobby has become a real speed demon on his bike at my parent’s house. He rides it really well, turning well and having a blast. Even Dax has kind of figured out how to peddle more effectively. If he gets the bike going Barney Rubble style, then he can peddle using some of the momentum. He lacks the strength or leverage to start the bike purely based on the pedals.

Dax had a peeing accident yesterday after having put him in underwear. My fault, really, as I should have paid more attention to how long since he last peed. No worries, and really, it was good for him to be wet, which upset him greatly. It may work to our benefit.

I really wish people were not so hypocritical.

People just started making me talk, so my cough is bubbling up from inside. People ask me questions, and yet they don’t like the answer, and then they badger me for the answer they want. Look, people, I don’t have the authority to make things ideal, I can only help guide you in what you need to do in order to make sure things are done correctly based on policy, and give you insight as to why things are the way they are. Getting pissy with me because the system is flawed helps no one.

Ken wasn’t feeling well yesterday, and I told him if he is still sick to call out on the home school class this morning. We will see if he listened to my advice.

I wonder if that whole thing works where when you look in the mirror you tell yourself that you are beautiful that you start to believe it.

Apparently Ken went to work. Luckily he only has the tedious task of the Bumblies class. It is only an hour, and in theory, if Aaron covers his own class this afternoon, Ken can go home to rest.

Of course, this morning the net was down, so I was unable to check my Facebook or anything else. Super frustrating, but whatcha gonna do? It means that at lunch I will be busy trying to catch up. I had some friend requests sent, one on MySpace that I unfortunately cannot check until I get home as my quota net time doesn’t cover that social networking site for some reason. Oh well. It is probably good for me to be off the net every now and again. I am in danger of becoming much to dependent on it.

Speaking of computers, Ken bought the game SPORE. Holy fuck, that could be my death. I have always been leery of playing any of the games my friends have taken up like WoW or any of the many others with names that are not worth mentioning. One reason was that I was never good enough to keep up with their incredible skill. It was frustrating and a good lot of them were not willing to give me a break during learning. Ken was always patient, but I just wasn’t willing to deal with the scorn from others. But truly, a huge reason I didn’t play is that I knew my weakness.

In high school, I played Super Mario Brothers. Heck, it may have been Jr High. Either way, I hijacked my brother’s Nintendo and played that damn game until I finished it. When he got Super Mario Brothers 3, Angela and I once again took over his room and game system and played from morning until night. It was crazy. I lost whole days of summer, sitting on this stupid game system. I know my crazy addiction when it comes to things like Facebook, but luckily, there is only so much you can do there. You can’t talk to friends that don’t answer, for instance. But a game that has such a vast universe that allows me to talk with people real time and to make up characters, I knew that this would suck me in and the episode of South Park would be way too accurate.

SPORE looks like it could easily suck me in. You not only create a character, you create life. You are evolving with every bite of critter or plant life. You go from this little swamp scum critter to this flying, singing thing, and I haven’t even gotten that far in it.

I had seen articles about it when it came out and I was intrigued then. But it was one thing to lose my life to the computer when I was just me. Now, I am me with two small children that need me for basic necessities of life. Sure, they can manage to entertain themselves for the most part, but someone still has to feed them.

What makes it even easier to get sucked in is that Bobby has become fascinated by the game. Ken introduced him to Diablo some months back, and he loved pushing the right buttons for Daddy as he killed random bad guys. With this, he watches, and tells us where to go, and even gets to make the decisions on what kind of eyeballs the critter has or maybe the kind of feet. This has become his choice for the game of “game night”. Last night, we maneuvered his critter around and struck up a conversation with some other random critter. Then, out of the darkness, two other critters jacked us up and proceeded to beat the piss out of us leaving us dead as they kicked my corpse’s head. Not only was I shouting at the machine, so was my 4 year old, loving every minute of this. Now, I had to continue not just to placate my own addictive nature to come back and beat the snot out of those two hoodlums, but I have to do it to avenge my son’s character, and in turn, make him endlessly happy with every flap of my crazy wings. Shit! Now the game has become a bonding experience.

I have at least resisted the urge to play the game when Bobby is in bed. Luckily there is only one machine it is on, and Ken tends to play it after kid bedtime, allowing me to seem like I will not play the game unless I have to. In reality, I have to distance myself lest I end up getting zero sleep compared to my precious 6 hours I get now.

Perhaps I need to get that Wii sooner than later as truly, I can only play that for so long before I collapse from exhaustion. Maybe then it will pacify my desire to game more. Either that or I see game nights in my household when the boys are older to not be us sitting around the kitchen table playing Monopoly, but rather us each in our own rooms, logged onto the Brenan network in some kind of quest. I suppose at least we are being a family.

I just had a sudden desire to have freckles.