A Beautiful Weekend

I’m taking some time once again to let others view our sad and weary lives. There were some highlights this past week, to be sure, but mostly another disappointment in trying to find some rest and relaxation.

A few weeks ago, we decided to take a few days off and finally do some family camping this year. This year has been abnormally cold and wet, even when I took my trip to Utah it was so cold and wet that I couldn’t do what I wanted to do there. I figured that sometime it would clear up and I was getting pretty sick and tired of being stuck at home and inside. It would make for a busy week, but I was so anxious for change that I didn’t care.

Monday was the first sign that it was going to be a challenge. Tracy had tickets for Peter Gabriel at the United Center and I was to stay home with the kids. It had become more of an effort to find someone to babysit than it was worth so there ya go. I had made dinner for everyone and was actually surprised that they were eating it. You see, the two younger boys don’t seem to want to eat anything other than chips and ….well, nothing else. They were actually eating the sandwiches I made! I know, it isn’t that original and kind of a cop-out but these kids don’t want anything of a culinary challenge, so why go through the bother. It wasn’t too long before Madsen decided to throw up all over floor. Luckily, it was on the hardwood and not the carpet so clean up was easy, but Madsen was pretty out of it for the night. He had to make a few runs to the bathroom as the night wore on. One thing that struck me was how much the last 10 years had suppressed my gag reflex. There was a time when I would be losing it along with the kids, but that doesn’t happen much anymore. I just looked at Madsen while he was losing it with the parental rush of trying to comfort him and thoughts about how I was going to clean it up and what I needed for that task. Tracy and I, as we often do, were trading IMs and coping with all it takes for us to be parents in these times away from each other. The rest of the evening was uneventful for me, but that was the calm before the storm.

My next few days I was in pre-vacation mode at work. That usually means that I don’t change that much in my programs or code, as I’ll be unavailable to fix it. Mentally, I was already off. Like I said, I didn’t have much rest and relaxation during my Utah trip and I was really looking forward to spending some time in the woods. I always am a bit hesitant on these trips because I know the kind of pressure this puts on Tracy as the kids are relentless on her attention. She usually has to do much of the packing and planning and the work she does while we are out and about always amazes me. I never take her for granted in times like these and I try to read her moods and frustrations so I can do something to ease them. The children make camping a completely different experience for her from what she experienced when she was a kid and when we camped extensively when we were in college. I wish I could make it more enjoyable for her and about the best I can do is keep the children away from her so she can get a bit of a rest.

I was also keeping an eagle eye on the forecast. The early forecast showed a partly sunny day on Thursday and sunny the rest of the weekend. Perfect. Temps in the mid 70s. The reservations were made, right next to the lake. Should be a good opportunity for playing with the kids and all manner of foolishness. We didn’t need to be out the door early Thursday and we were going to give John a good chance for work on the bathroom without constant interference.

Thursday early morning began the disaster that this camping trip was to become. Bennet decided that he was going to be sick all that morning, and throwing up was to be his mode of demonstration. Tracy handled it with all the patience that I could ever expect. Motherhood is amazing to me. I honestly don’t know how they do it, all the demands made upon them. Almost a full decade without a full night’s sleep would have made me madder than a hatter. Even as the morning progressed and Bennet was visibly better, it didn’t get any better for me. I started feeling uncomfortably sore as if I was also sick. I wasn’t nauseous like the kids have experienced, but it wasn’t a good feeling. We packed up our gear and left to go to Rochelle first to watch a few trains. I also wanted to go along Illinois 64 to see what kind of terrain the bike path I wanted to take with Hayden looked like. I was uncomfortable the entire way. I had taken medication to see if it would stave off whatever I was experiencing with little success. The forecast also was glaringly wrong. It was cold with a constant mist. I was so desperate for a week away I was willing to tolerate it though. Upon arrival at the train park, the kids went off to play on some equipment and I got the chance to stretch out and try to take care of my drowsiness. I did get to see a few trains and I did feel better after some rest.

We found our campsite at Rock Cut with little to no issues. I still wasn’t feeling up to par but we got the tent up. Madsen was filled with energy as usual and was trying my patience also, as usual. He is told something and it seems he immediately forgets it. The kids were also tracking mud into the tent which then drove Tracy nuts. Certain levels of common sense aren’t all that common right now.

So, in our rush to get out of town, we didn’t have a whole lot in terms of supplies. We drove out of the park and were surprised with the number of stores. We searched for a grocery store...none. We stopped at a Target. Above the door there were pictures of food and we joked that that didn’t necessarily mean that there was actually food for sale there...and there wasn’t! We drove around for several more miles and were not greeted with any more opportunities to buy food. Considering how many grocery stores surround us at home, I was rather shocked at the lack here. We did find an Aldi and bought some food. So okay, we need to plan better when it comes to assuming that a town of several tens of thousands of people has grocery stores.

So here we are. We now have food and the kids are getting a very quick and harsh lesson on how to act in a campground. And it is raining. I wish I could muster up some disappointment but I’m feeling so bad all I want to do is lay down and go to sleep. Tracy knows that I’m not feeling well so she pretty much leaves me alone, but the kids...oh, the kids. They are constantly whimpering and complaining on how the have to go to the bathroom (pit toilets, the horror!) and get a drink and non stop complaining. If I wasn’t so darn tired I’d do my own discipline with them, as I was highly annoyed. How Tracy handles it, again, without losing her mind I just don’t know. For example, it is wet outside so we tell the kids that they can’t go into the tent without taking their shoes off. It only takes us about 20 times to drill that into their heads. One one of the many trips to the bathroom, Madsen puts his shoes on inside the tent, which crossed our own limits of patience but then goes on to step on Tracy’s and Bennet's pillows!.....Anyway, Madsen begins to complain about a sore stomach and all I think is that he is once again suffering for attention. Ellie then begins to complain and before much else happens...”I think I’m going to throw up. That gets all our attention. Tracy fumbles at the door and manages to get her out of the tent before she purges all of the day’s food and drink. Barely out of the tent, mind you, right in front of it. So now we have the chaos of a sick child emptying her stomach at the door of the tent, the rain falling and the small, backup son complaining about his sad life. We take into consideration that I’m also not feeling well and the forecast changing to be cold and wet for the next day and decide that it just isn’t worth it. We fire up the lantern and pack up. While we are doing a crude job of folding the tent, Madsen loses his battle with his stomach in the car. He tried to catch everything he could in the towel but it didn’t do the complete job. We just weren’t prepared for all the vomit that struck us that night. It was a quiet drive home.

I didn’t feel good the next day either. We set up the tent and took a hose to it and I spent most of the afternoon and evening in the bathroom. It was a beautiful and wonderful few days off.

Come Saturday we prepared to head up to Oshkosh for Nathaniel’s and Mandy’s reception. We had to think about what might come our way considering what has happened previously in the week. Still, it was Nathaniel. We had to go. So we went up and had a good time. I was the only one that went up in shorts planning to change there. When I came back, Carrie looked at me and said “You clean up real nice.”  “Yep, but I can’t seem to convince Tracy about that.” I responded sarcastically.

Trying to control the kids in our pastime. I took several trips outside to hunt for bugs with Bennet to keep him occupied. When the time came for the throwing of the bouquet, we made Ellie get into the group as she was “single”. She really didn’t know what to do about that. I whispered to Carrie that if Ellie actually did catch the bouquet, there would be some ticked off girls there. During the dance, Becca danced with Bennet and Bennet just loved it. Layne mentioned that he didn’t know what to do with all the left overs. If I had felt better, I would have eaten more, but I didn’t and I’m trying not to eat so much anyway. Other than that, it was a good time. The crab/pasta salad was terrific. I hope Nathaniel and Mandy have an exceptionally good life together.

Sunday I didn’t do much. I stayed home with Ellie and Bennet while Tracy went to church. About three pm I had about had it and I told Ellie to get ready for a bike ride. We rode down McDonald to the bike path, across to Randall and south to the forest preserve. Ellie mentioned once that she was “bored” but as she was getting into the car to ride back with Tracy, she gave me a hug so I know that even if she was bored, she enjoyed the trip. Tracy mentioned that she talked all about it on the ride back. She had fun.

Great weekend, huh? I don’t want many more like it.

Happy Father's Day

This is my second draft on this particular post. The actual experience of Father’s Day changed my story quite a bit.

I was going to have a nice pseudo three day weekend. I was going to work at home on Friday and then camp out with the kids for the weekend, just good father’s day stuff. It didn’t work out that way. A routine generator test on Thursday at work turned out to not be that routine. The Uninterrupted Power Supplies (UPS), that cover power to our servers if a power outage hits and before the generators kick in, decided to break. Thursday afternoon turned into a struggle to find out all the servers that were down and my Oracle RAC cluster decided to not work any longer. Those might help the user but are no end of trouble for administrators. I finally left work at about 6pm, which isn’t that bad for other mere mortals, but that makes about 12 hours for me. I woke up on Friday with an email that all work at home was cancelled and that everyone had to come in. That turned into another 12 hour day. They decided to have several people do shifts to cover for any power outage. The theory was that many servers wouldn’t come back after a power outage and someone needed to call the team as well as start all the services up again. I “volunteered” for the 4am-10am shift since I am usually up then anyway. While I wasn’t expected to “work”, but just be there, it was uneventful but not all that fun. The rest of Saturday was uneventful. Tracy went and spent the day with Madsen and I did wrangle a cheap breakfast at Ikea with the family before we went our different ways. The rest of the day I spent trying to recover some of my lost sleep and do laundry. Tracy did come home at about 6 and I was able to spend the rest of the evening with her.

Sunday morning was another horrible morning. I woke up at two and wasn’t able to get back to sleep until around 6. Bennet had wormed his way into the bed by then and he seemed to be concentrating on kicking and scratching me the rest of the morning. When I finally did fall asleep, I just had a nightmare about losing Bennet at a parade. I figured that it was some sort of divine lesson to learn to appreciate the child that was scratching and kicking me.

I spent the next few hours getting ready for church feeling nothing be sorry for myself. I didn’t want to be awake, I didn’t want to wear these clothes, I didn’t want to go to church, I didn’t want to deal with any other living being. I admit I was feeling very selfish. I knock myself out at work and this was “Father’s Day”. I’m not one for holidays but this fit into my mood. I didn’t want to deal with anything. My day, let me use it the way I want to.

Then I thought about Tracy. Yes, I was being selfish but this woman had given up the last ten years of her life for these kids. She has to deal with my whining and the endless demands of these children. Over the past 10 years, she has had 4 small humans invade her life. She almost died with one of them. Both of her parents have died in the past decade. She had nursed her mother to health, moved her to Illinois and let her be there for the birth of her last grandchild. She didn’t want to deal with these situations any more than I did but she still does it. Who am I to be in such a state? What do I have to complain about?

No, Father’s Day didn’t work out the way I wanted it to. Tracy spent the day painting and fixing dinner. I folded clothes and had my daughter bake me cookies (yet another thing that Tracy really did but it gave Ellie something to do for me). I biked with the kids to the corner and rented a redbox movie. That was pretty much the extent of what I did. It wasn’t what I wanted to do for the day, but my life isn’t about me, is it? I might not do much, but I am there for them.

Happy Father’s Day.