White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Heh, I was a busy boy yesterday. I did finally eat my lunch later in the day. I got to a point where I had done all the work I could do and was waiting on other for either input or action. I had left an apple and a bosc pear for later grazing, but they remain untouched. Recently, I have stopped drinking coffee. As much as I like it, I think that the high levels of caffeine in my system may be contributing to my ongoing sleep issues. Sure, I like to say up all night and get things done, but I don't like laying in bed while torrents of disconnected thoughts run rampant through my mind. It's disconcerting. In it's place, I have been drinking a significant volume of tea. Oolong tea specifically. I used to mix it up a bit and consume a bit of green or black tea as well, but my stocks have been depleted and I need to make a trip to the Asian Market. In any case, I was going on my third cup of tea yesterday afternoon when I noticed that I had left a sheet of paper on my desk that did not belong in the place where it sat. I can be fairly picky about my stacks of paper. OCD you say? Nonsense ... just me tap this pen 17 times and then trace the outline of my cube so the planet does not explode, mkay. But I digress ( a lot), I grabbed the sheet of paper and quickly pulled it over to the other side of the desk oblivious to the cup of piping hot tea that I had just set down in front of it. It was not one of those instances where time stood still as events unfolded, they happened instantaneously. I look down and there is a puddle of quickly cooling fluid on the desk, but not nearly enough to represent the full volume of the now empty cup. Following the trail of the raising columns of steam like a jet contrail, I find the missing 80% had actually landed squarely on my left thigh and was busily soaking into the denim. Oh, and it was hot. Oddly enough, not hot enough to imbue any discomfort. Ahhh, MS has actually provided me with a boon! The decreased sensation on the front of my thighs from nerve damage and site reactions has given me a reprieve from a potentially painful encounter. I count my blessing and make a resolution to only drink tea orally and not topically.

I'm back at the Manor and the twin tyrants are with me. It's dinner time and Jake is trying the "I'm not hungry' gambit, but this time it isn't going to fly. We have a time-out till he agrees to finish his dinner, but comes back just as incorrigible as ever. Daddy will not brook any insubordination so I opt for the nuclear solution - send child to bed without dinner, TV or play-time. The wailing commences immediately when he begins to understand what has happened. Oh, the humanity. Alexis declares that 'Jacob not cooperating, he bad!' and I concur. I also let her know that she needs to eat her dinner as well or a similar fate will befall her. She digs in with a renewed gusto. Shortly after I had carried Jake to bed, I returned to gauge the effects of his incarceration. I asked him to come out and stand in his door way and spoke to him about his behavior. I let him know that I was disappointed and that he needs to eat so he can get better and so he can grow up to be big an strong like daddy. Ok, that last part is a bit of a fib, I want him to be bigger, stronger and smarter than me ... but we will do this the old fashioned way. He responded with a sufficiently contrite murmur and we agreed that he was penitent enough to qualify for an early parole. We went to the dinner table and he began working on his dinner again. I made things a bit easier on him by reheating the food in the fission-power microwave oven and diamond furnace. Things are much better after that. Yeah, daddy the hard-ass/bad-cop. Oh well, like consulting, it's a lousy job but someone has got to do it.

The Mrs walks in at about 1845 and the kids shout for joy. She then produces a little DVD case and hands it to me. It's the Incredibles. I flip it over to read the back and Alexis proclaims 'Put DVD in TV!' Ok, ok, let me get off the plastic wrap. "Open it daddy!' Sheesh! I quickly extract the wafer thin piece of technological wonder from it's hermetically sealed sheath and ensconce it in the waiting maw of the 86 inch plasma flatscreen hologram view-panel. Smiles all around. Jake got tired of it about half way through and wandered off with mommy to do some art-work. Alexis, well, I had to remind her to breathe and blink every so often. She was mesmerized, pretty much like daddy. All in all, things could have gone better, but they could have gone worse too.

I did not sleep well last night. Too much coughing was keeping me from getting more than a few minutes of sleep at a time until some time after midnight. Of course, Jake woke up some time around 0130 and the Mrs went in to check on him. He had turned on on his aquarium-nightlight and the music box. When she got to him, he had already fallen back asleep. I think I need to turn down the volume on the monitor.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 8:05 AM