Category: Home Base

Jesus. You people are probably starting to think that I’m making all this baby stuff up by now.

With a number of factors in play, including the insurance angle which completely befuddles me, we’re in a holding pattern until Monday. No baby this weekend, sorry. My apologies for what must continually seem like crying wolf. I’d love to be cuddling up to a baby tomorrow. But I’d also like for my wife, who has to do the really painful legwork on getting him here, to be comfortable with the timetable. She’s in bed right now with Olivia purring her to sleep. Me, I’m agitatedly sitting here shoveling new game reviews into the PDF database by the half-dozen, and watching the anything-but-classic 1984 Doctor Who story Warriors Of The Deep as it dubs to DVD-R, and wondering, indeed, why anyone would want Warriors Of The Deep on DVD. But I’m a Johnny Byrne fan – he also wrote The Keeper Of Traken and, oh, about 70% of Space: 1999 (and still hasn’t gotten a royalty check from Berman & Braga for the number of Voyager episodes that completely ripped off Space: 1999) – and I’ll get Warriors whenever it officially comes out on DVD just to hear him go off (albeit in his own classy, eloquent way) on what a hash they made of his script.

I’m sure you guys think I’m barking mad to be casually going on about action figure collecting, old video games, and DVDs while waiting for the little guy’s arrival. Hopefully you realize that some of this is purely a coping mechanism, self-distraction at its most blatant.… Read more

Okay, so here’s the score at halftime.

We’re not in labor, but mom has been depressed and miserable for over 24 hours. So we’re back to plan “A” – she goes into the hospital at midnight tonight to begin the process of inducing labor so we can have a baby around this time tomorrow. Now, she’s still locked up tighter than Fort Knox, so I have very little doubt that a C-section is going to go hand-in-hand with the induction. Put simply, This Is Gonna Hurt. She’s been home from work for four weeks, out of six weeks of paid maternity leave, and my reading up on the subject has been that recovery from a C-section is a 6-to-8-week thing in and of itself – and that’s assuming that the woman can then return to a desk job, not something physical like delivering the mail. Also, if she’s recovering from a C-section, I’ll probably need to stay home to take care of her and Evan, rather than trying to keep part-timing. So…we’ve got a problem, and one whose solution I’m not sure of. I get no paid leave from my part-time gig – if I don’t show up, I don’t get paid – so we’re looking at a bit of pain on the purse strings here. (Hey, at least Evan’s got a ready-made food supply until further notice – I’d probably join him at the buffet line except I’m sure I’d get the crap slapped outta me.)

Please don’t anyone mistake this for a beg, solicitation, or anything else. This is really just me trying to work out in my head How We’re Going To Do This. Jan’s got some insurance paperwork in to claim disability on her random wild blood pressure from a while back, so that might help. I’m not a big fan of people who file for disability at the drop of a hat, but I think this one is perfectly justified. I’m already trying to set up something to do some stuff on a telecommute basis for my part-time gig, but that’ll probably put enough money in my pocket for half a cheeseburger, and I don’t even know if it’s the half with the cheese or not. The video work is variable at best, and while I placed one ad in Entertainment Fort Smith’s bridal issue that netted me two cold calls – one of which was hands-down one of the rudest jerks I’ve ever dealt with in my life – it’s clear that the video work is going to have to come from outside the area to make that a viable source of income. And I’m not sure how to start there when I can’t get more than two local cold calls from an ad in what was supposed to be the biggest issue of the year (though I’m not going to go into why a bridal issue would be published in July, a month after, oh, say, the big bridal month, but there ya go, says the guy who got married on July 1st). Guess my ad writing skills ain’t all that and a bag of microchips, eh?

Of course, for the moment, I’ll just be happy if I’m looking at my baby boy this time tomorrow. That’s what really matters.… Read more

We’re getting close to having a room ready. Which is a good thing because we’re starting to get some strong indicators that we’re geting ready to have a baby Pretty Soon. Here’s where he’s going to live – still a work in progress, but now at least it’s a liveable one.

… Read more