Wash, rinse, repeat.

Trying to keep a house clean and picked up with two children living in it is like trying to build the Bilbao Guggenheim with marbles and sand.

We've fallen into something of a pattern with Jewel. I suppose that some parents have a plan or follow some sort of a system, but that's just not us, so we wait for the pattern to reveal itself to us.

Why not? A day after it does, it changes anyway.

For the last few days, however, that hasn't been the case. Sort of. Our little Jewel wakes up at 5, and I get up with her while Mama catches what little uninterrupted sleep she can during the day. This also happens to be Mama's only me time.

I take Jewel out to the living room and move her from blankets on the floor to a Bumbo on the dining room table to a bouncy seat to an exersaucer to a swing to my arms and back to the blankets. While she's amusing herself in all of those locations, I'm making coffee, an omelet, toast, and lunch for myself. If I'm good, I'll empty the dishwasher.

But I'm not often good.

Of course, along the way, I'm taking time out to talk to Jewel, hold her, read her stories and try to make her laugh. By the time her brother gets up, at about 7:30, Jewel is done with me, done with her toys, done with the blankets, Bumbo, bouncy seat, et al. and is ready to go back to bed. However, in another half an hour we know that she'll wake up, starving.

In addition, at this time, I'm switching from making breakfast mode to getting out the door mode, leaving Mama with one waking boy and one sleepy, hungry baby...and one Papa pulling on tights. Her dilemma is how to give them both what they need at the same time, which requires being in two places at the same time doing two different things.

My dilemma is that if I leave before 3B gets up, I can simply walk out the door and get home an hour earlier. If I'm still here when he wakes up, which is almost always the case, it takes another hour for me to get out the door because I'm helping Mama manage the two kids. I'd like to get home an hour earlier, since the end of the day is often more challenging than the beginning, but I also don't want to leave Mama outnumbered by the kids...and, of course, I don't want to leave the kids.

So, I usually get out the door after 3B is up and eating breakfast and while Jewel is on her way back down. She'll stay down for about 45 minutes on Tuesday or Thursday and about an hour and a half on Monday, Wednesday or Friday, when her babysitter, O, is here. Why does Jewel sleep more for O? To taunt us.

Why is O here? So Mama can work after dropping off 3B at school. But whether it's Mama or O, Jewel takes a morning nap, then is awake until her afternoon nap. Of course, she usually is ready for her afternoon nap around the same time her brother is going into quiet time, which has replaced his nap.

He spends about an hour in his room pursuing quiet activities. Or performing the drum solo from YYZ. You know, whatever works for him. If Mama's lucky, she'll have Jewel down for her nap by the time 3B is done with quiet time and ready to wake her up with his afternoon activities. Or, perhaps, he'll camp out in front of the TV, although we've started to firmly enforce a one hour TV time limit, so that's not as likely.

Around this time, I'm wrapping up work, forgetting to anticipate that one person who comes by as I'm packing up and needs to talk about a project for half an hour, or that one seemingly innocent email that's really a stealth bomb with a payload of urgent work. Eventually, however, I disentangle myself from that right around the time that Mama is starting to unravel a bit under the constant tugging pressure in opposite directions from Jewel and her brother.

I get home in time for the end of 3B's dinner. He eats, if we're lucky, or wanders around the living room if it's a typical night, while I change from my bike clothes into play clothes. Then, Mama and I tag team dinner--one of us eats while the other wrangles 3B and somehow keeps Jewel awake and content.

Then we divide and conquer, one of us retiring to our room to bounce Jewel on the yoga ball for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 days or however long it takes to get her to sleep, while the other puts 3B into bed, reads him three stories, locates his extra, super duper, double duper, extra, extra, extra soft lovie, gets him a sippy cup, brushes his teeth, snuggles with him for a minute, kisses him five times, walks out, remembers to go back in and turn off his Christmas lights, and so on.

Then we collapse. Jewel sleeps in bed with us, and often Mama lays down with her while she goes to sleep and then drifts off herself. I tend to stay up way too late after that, watching whichever Bourne movie is on that night, tweeting mindlessly, writing blog posts, wondering why I'm up, and running the dishwasher if I'm good.

But I'm not often good.

Eventually, I make my way to bed where Mama is feeding Jewel throughout the night as I slumber unaware next to them. Until 5 a.m., when I take Jewel out to the living room and move her from blankets on the floor to a Bumbo on the dining room table to a bouncy seat to an exersaucer to a swing to my arms and back to the blankets. While she's amusing herself in all of those locations, I'm making coffee, an omelet, toast, and lunch for myself. If I'm good, I'll empty the dishwasher.

But I'm not often good.

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Forget politics and remember us

My brother forwarded this to me, and I was going to post a link to the Livestrong site, but it doesn't include this full message, which I think bears repeating.

For anyone whose life has been touched by cancer--or any other significant disease or condition--Ruben's story is heartbreaking. In fact, it should be heartbreaking to anyone.

Please pass this message along.

Thanks,
--Papa B

Forget politics and remember us.

Ruben hasn’t given up on his fight. Tell Congress not to walk away from health care reform.

Dear LIVESTRONG Supporter,

Last night, President Obama stood before the nation and delivered his State of the Union address. We were delighted to see him deliver a clear message to Congress saying, "I will not walk away from these Americans and neither should the people in this chamber...Let's get it done.”

Despite those strong words, the reality is that we are in serious danger of losing a once-in-a-generation chance to achieve real health care reform. The situation couldn’t be more urgent, and we need your help to send a strong message to Congress: Do not give up on health care reform. Will you join us and send your elected officials a clear message to keep up the fight?

http://www.livestrong.org/takeaction2010

You could not write fiction more dramatic than what we have seen over the last week. On January 18, one state elected a Senator and we are being told that may reset the entire healthcare reform effort. We must be clear in saying to our elected officials: You must not give up. We are counting on you.

Just the other day I heard a story about a man named Ruben, who has been fighting cancer off and on for 11 years. This year, he lost his job. His cancer, which had been stable, became active again and he has had to go back on treatment. His doctor prescribed two new chemotherapy drugs to combat the cancer. But last week, Ruben had to tell his pharmacist, “No, don’t fill that prescription. I can’t afford it.”

Unfortunately, Ruben is not alone. We all hear these stories far too often or have our own version to share. That is why it is more important than ever that we send a strong message to Washington: Forget politics and remember Ruben.

http://www.livestrong.org/takeaction2010

It only takes a moment to share this message with your elected officials, to tell them, as the President said last night: "Don't walk away. Not now. Finish the job for the American people."

As someone who has been touched by cancer, you know firsthand how critical it is to have dependable, quality health care. It can be the difference between life and death. Let’s not let this once-in-a-generation opportunity pass us by.

http://www.livestrong.org/takeaction2010

LIVESTRONG,

Doug Ulman and the LIVESTRONG Action Team

P.S. Please forward this message on to your friends and family.

My new rubber

Last Thursday I picked up my new rubber, and when I got home, I unrolled them and put them on right away--yes, that's right, I bought two. I had to replace the two that I'd been using for the past couple of years. The old ones finally got too thin, full of holes and unreliable.

The new ones have been a great ride. I filled them up to their maximum hardness and they're still comfortable after an hour of riding. There's nothing like new rubber to put a spring back in my stroke. The only other thing that has such an immediate effect is lubing my chain.

...oh, I'm talking about my new bike tires. What were you thinking about?

It was hard...er...difficult to find replacement tires since I like to run 1 1/4" wide tires on my 26" mountain bike wheels. Most mountain bike tires are between 1 1/2" and 2 1/2", but I don't need all that extra width for the road riding I do.

If I was on dirt at all, or if I was riding on snow as I used to do when commuting in Colorado, then the extra width would help keep me from sinking in and keep me more stable on the bike. But, here in Northern Virginia, where I'm mostly dodging potholes, old hubcaps and swerving cars, the skinny tires are faster, thanks to lower rotational weight.

I also don't need a knobby tread because I don't need my tires to dig into dirt to get traction. I actually get better traction from a tire that's more slick, because a low profile or slick tread puts more rubber on the road. And when that rubber is new, fresh from the factory, it rolls even better, making my commute easier.

These particular tires seem more vertically compliant than my old (cheaper) ones, which is a fancy way of saying that they're more squishy. But, the nice thing is that they're fast and squishy, which means pedaling is easy and so is the ride. Other tires I've had have been fast or squishy, but not both at the same time, making for a rougher ride for me, since I wasn't willing to push harder, even if it meant a softer ride.

And, at the same time, these have a puncture resistant belt under the tread, which is a necessity for me. I've found that without that, the glass, tacks and other debris in the road causes more flats than I'd ever want to fix. OK, one flat is more than I'd ever want to fix, but getting two or more in one commute is absurd, so that puncture resistant belt is a requirement for me.

I've only been on these for a little over 50 miles, but they seem good so far. Next time around, I'd like to try a similar size from my favorite tire manufacturer.

Until then, I'll continue riding this new rubber until it wears out.

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Two and a half great miracles happened here (and no, I'm not talking about the double ear infection)

Yesterday, while Mama lounged around in her silk pajamas, nibbling on bon bons, I took 3B to the doctor to have them confirm what we already knew was pink eye and prescribe him drops for it.

When 3B got up--at 5 a.m. for, like, the 237th day in a row--it looked like he'd rubbed it too much. About five minutes later, it was swollen. About five minutes after that, I wiped some gunk out of it. While I was putting down the tissue from that, I watched more green pus shoot out of the corner of his eye.

Happy weekend, everyone. Wash your hands.

By the time Mama got up and the doctor's office was open, 3B looked like he'd done 12 rounds of rope-a-dope with Mike Tyson--except his ears were intact. The waiting room looked about like you'd expect on a Saturday during cold and flu season. I did my best to keep 3B from rubbing his eye directly on anything, and we got out of there with the prescription we came for. The doctor said that his ears were full of fluid, but not infected, so if he complained of pain in them to call right away.

I should have known something was up when, while we were waiting at CVS, 3B only wanted one of the chocolate gold coins I bought to bribe him with. Then, as we were walking out, he said, "This is good."

"What's good, buddy?"

"We're going home."

There's a first time for everything, I thought. Little did I know what that truly meant until this morning.

3B was again up at 5, and not looking too hot. He made it through the morning OK, although giving him his second round of eye drops took about three years off of my life. And Mama's. We finally convinced him to use the Aunt CaliforniaGirl method, putting the drop in the corner of his closed eyes, letting them roll in as he opens his eyes. That was much better than the previous night's dose, during which 3B's caterwauling was loud enough that a police helicopter circled overhead for the duration.

Then began the miracles: first, I went to put Jewel down for her nap...or rather to enforce her nap, since Mama had put her down about five minutes earlier. After about 10 minutes of soothing her, I decided to lie down with her in bed...which, of course, means that I took a nap too, for about an hour and a half. When we got up, the house was eerily quiet. I figured that Mama and 3B were playing down on the street and was ready to go down and meet them, but there was Mama sitting at the dining room table, working on her computer.

"Where's 3B?"

"He has a double ear infection. He said his ears hurt, turned pasty white, then said he wanted to go lay down and take a nap."

"I'm sorry, whose son said he wanted to take a nap?"

See, there is a first time for everything. Unfortunately.

3B slept for about two hours, then woke up and acted for the rest of the day as if he'd never had either pink eye or his ear infections. While I was glad that he rebounded so fast, I have to admit that I was secretly hoping that he'd want to take another nap later in the day, so that perhaps I could catch another one. Yeah, fat chance, Papa.

And he was acting like that even before his first dose of antibiotics, which went much more smoothly than the eye drops. Much. First, the antibiotics are pink...and here's my suggestion to big pharma: make it possible for pharmacists to dye kids' prescriptions any color so that kids can get their drugs in their favorite color.

And big pharma, you don't have to thank me, let's just split the profits from this 60/40. Forty percent will be enough for you, right?

So, as 3B is sucking back his first dose of antibiotics, he pulls away, looks at Mama and solemnly intones, "I love antibiotics."

Don't we all, dude. Don't we all. Hell, pink antibiotics might qualify as another half a miracle.

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Our pig died this morning

You know, our pig...our iPig:


This is really going to cut into our living room concert series. KISS, Van Halen, Rush, The Beatles, Johnny Cash and Neil Young just aren't the same without a subwoofer...even if it is a pork belly subwoofer.

Perhaps we shouldn't have trusted an animal without much personality.

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