The life and times of an irrational father. One man, multiple personalities.
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I Think the Window was Fogged Up

April 15th, 2009 | Posted by Joe in flat earth | irrational dad | pain | sick Tyler | sleepless nights | surgery - (5 Comments)


After Tyler’s nine month checkup last week, Sarah called me and filled me in on how it went down. I then proceeded to do some research over at Google on otoscopes, otitis media, and ear infections. After reading for around two hours, I wrote a post about the appointment and the concerns that came from it. I usually proofread my posts twice before I unleash them to public scrutiny. Unfortunately, even after that, I’ve still found spelling and grammar mistakes after pressing the deceptively plain "publish" button. I frantically start clicking and editing, praying all the while that I get it fixed before anyone visits and before the readers that many of you use pick it up. Once that is done, I give the post one final reading. The point is, I’ve read that post a minimum of four times – probably closer to six or so – and never saw what most of you did. And I feel horrible for it; like I took you for a ride.

Am I concerned for Tyler? Of course. I’m his parent, his protector; I’ll be concerned for him every day of my life. Am I worried about it? Not really. I know he’ll be just fine. Am I worried that you hate it when people ask themselves questions like this and then answer themselves? Absolutely! It annoys me as well sometimes, so I try to keep it to a minimum.

The post only had a few comments from my readers, but I received quite a few emails about it, along with some comments on Facebook, a couple tweets, and a live conversation or two about it. It appears that many of you finished the post thinking that Tyler couldn’t hear. Maybe it had something to do with the post being titled, "Great, so he can’t hear, then?" Oops.

To clarify, the Doc said that he still has fluid in his ears, and it could create some hearing difficulties. Tyler responds to many sounds, so I’m not worried that he can’t hear. I just don’t know how clearly he is hearing. I compounded that with the fact that he had a double ear infection two months ago and has never stopped tugging on his ears, and took it to extremes. Gee, I wonder why my blog is called Irrational Dad.

After many – MANY – suggestions, I told Sarah that we’d be silly to not at least try taking Tyler to a chiropractor. Sarah made an appointment and took Tyler in yesterday while I was at work (actually, I was driving home from work and only missed the appointment by twenty minutes).

Since I wasn’t there, I won’t be able to do justice to exactly what transpired. Sarah said that Dr. Nagel used a tool that she compared to an air gun. Google has failed me in trying to get a proper name for the instrument, so we’ll just have to call it an adjustment gun. After checking Tyler’s back and neck, Lee (Dr. Nagel) shot him a couple times. This gun does not puncture the skin nor inject weird voodoo medicine into the body. From the little I have been able to gleam from the internet, I believe that the tool is basically a spring loaded actuator that gives a speedy, yet painless adjustment to whichever vertebrae has been targeted. Using an otoscope, Lee saw the fluid in Tyler’s ears, so when he goes back in for his second of three adjustments in a few days, we’ll know if things are improving. Personally, I won’t need a fancy otoscope to know if Tyler’s getting better. I just need to see Sarah wake up in the morning feeling rested because Tyler didn’t wake up crying four times in the night.

Lee is very optimistic that we’re on the right road. He is the husband of a woman that Sarah and I adore (our Bradley Instructor), and we assume that she has a pretty decent taste in men, plus our super-awesome Nurse Midwife takes her children to him as well, and I’d be inclined to believe anything she says, even if she told me that the Earth is flat. And to be perfectly honest, with the alternative being the possibility of putting Tyler under anesthesia to get surgery, this treatment will be worth every penny, whether it ends up being necessary or not.

Tyler is nine months old and has had his first chiropractic adjustment. I’m 31 years old (41.3 times older than Tyler) and have been to the chiropractor fewer times than my own son. Just thinking about that makes my T4 hurt. Seriously. If Lee saw an x-ray of my spine, I think he would drink a bottle of Gatorade (you know, to get his electrolytes up), tell his receptionist to clear his schedule, crack his knuckles (ha), and take me right to the gates of heaven a few times.

It’s midnight already?

October 14th, 2008 | Posted by Joe in addiction | flat earth | time - (4 Comments)
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Pregnancy is a disease*. I know that’s a bold statement to make, and I have very little science (translation: none) to back it up, but I’m sure that I’m right, just as I’m sure that the world is flat. My arguments are as follows:

+ It tends to be contagious
+ It causes memory loss
+ It appears to cause “selective hearing”
+ In women, there is a tumorous growth in your belly that seemingly doubles in size every 4 seconds, and leeches you of your very life force.

If that’s not a disease, I don’t know what is. I would like to touch on a couple of those points, if you don’t mind.

Contagious
I won’t lie to you. I don’t exactly know how this works with women. They call it the “baby bug”. When a woman is pregnant, it’s only a matter of time before pregnancies start popping up all around you. They say it’s “in the water”, but I don’t have any beakers or bunson burners to independently verify this.

Men are different. We purposely (maliciously?) try to force pregnancy upon our friends.

Me: “Hey man, Sarah’s pregnant. Looks like yours truly is gonna be a dad.”
AnyMan: “Oh boy, the last thing the world needs is another ‘you’ running around.”
Me: “That joke gets funnier and funnier everytime I hear it.”
AnyMan: “Dude, your life is over. Say goodbye to ever having fun again.”
Me: “DUDE, you should get your girl pregnant. It’d be awesome. Our kids could play together.”
AnyMan: “Yeah, ummmm… I don’t think so.”
Me: “C’mon man, being a dad is going to be awesome. I’m trying to share the awesomeness with you.”
AnyMan: “It’s ok. I think I’ll just stay lame and, you know, do whatever I want whenever I want.”

Memory Loss
When Sarah was pregnant, she misplaced her wallet, cellphone, the home phone, keys, the dogs, our house… everything. To top it off, Sarah seems to have forgotten that she forgot everything. She’s already planning for a sibling for Tyler (in a few years, back off).

The memory thing affects me, also. Although I can remember just about about every detail of Tyler’s birth, the colors of the memory are muted and not as intense. I’m sure that before long I’ll be recalling the memory to friends as a wonderful, pain-free experience.

Selective Hearing
This one didn’t come to me until yesterday. We’ve already cleared up what my non-parent male friends may have said to me when I told them Sarah was pregnant. When I told people that already had at least one child about my pending membership in the Daddy Club, they would say that it is “the single greatest, most rewarding thing you’ll ever do”. And they were right. I can’t even imagine not having Tyler around.

But let me talk about yesterday. When I finished with work, I played with Tyler for awhile, ate dinner, played 2 games of cribbage with Sarah, played with Tyler, watched “Forgetting Sarah Marshall“, and played with Tyler. When he went to bed, I turned on the Browns/Giants game, and Sarah started catching up on email. When the 4th quarter rolled around, and I realized that the – until now – undefeated Giants weren’t going to win, I pulled out my laptop and started catching up on my news sites. When I finished that, I opened up my news reader so I could catch up on blogs. I glanced at the clock and saw that it was midnight. What? It’s midnight already? I needed to be up and getting ready for work in just 4 and a half hours!!!

That’s when my eyes really opened up. It wasn’t just that I didn’t have time to read the blogs. As I looked around the room, I started processing what I was seeing. A burp cloth on the couch, six childrens’ books from the library scattered on the floor, a camcorder with a drained battery next to the dog bed, a camera on the floor, a pacifier over here, a doggie bone over there.

Things started coming together like they do at the end of M. Night Shyamalon films. I was spinning in circles in one direction, and the camera was rotating around me in the other direction. Memories and conversations replayed in my head. Although I was listening to what my friends were saying at the time, my brain wouldn’t let me HEAR everything that they were saying.

At the time, what I heard was, “Becoming a dad is the greatest, most rewarding thing you will ever do.”

My brain filed away the rest of the conversations into an area of my mind that I couldn’t access. Yesterday, the floodgates to those inaccessible areas either opened or came crashing down.

“…but you won’t have time for ANYTHING any more.”

“Kiss your hobbies goodbye, because it’s all about the baby now.”

“Get your butt in gear, because Sarah’s going to need more help around the house.”

I became light-headed as I realized that I simply do not have the time to maintain my current daily habits. There aren’t enough hours in the day.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must mention that I believe I’m addicted to the internet. No joke. I check my email constantly. You know, just in case there is an emergency, and the person decided to email me instead of call me. I check Digg about 4 times a day. Yeah, I think I’ve got a problem. I have an action plan to combat the issue. I haven’t told Sarah about this, because she wouldn’t believe that I can do it. She’s accepted my addiction and sees it as part of the status quo now. It’s win-win for me though. If I do limit my ‘net use, she’ll be surprised and happy. If I fail, well, she’s none the wiser, unless she reads this blog. But let’s face it, she’s only online for about 2 minutes a week, so she’s not likely to catch this post.

It sure would have been nice if there was a memo that mentioned that days are still only 24 hours long when you have a baby. I was under the impression that, since the human population in our house increased by 50% from 2 to 3, the number of hours in a day would increase to 36. It would have gone a long way towards making things more manageable for me. It turns out, and here’s the shocker folks, that the universe does not revolve around me. It only seems like it because it revolves around our flat planet.

* That reminds me; I broke up with a girl once by saying, “You’re like a freakin’ virus, and I’m tired of being sick.” In hindsight, I’m thinking that wasn’t the most tactful of ways to end a relationship, but it was amazingly effective.