Cohiba’s Brain Dump

The incredible power of the word Dada

Oliver’s favorite new word is Dada.  My heart immediately melts and goes gooey every time I hear him say it.  Some days he’s such a daddy’s boy.  Doesn’t want mom no way only want dad.  Because my wife and I were trying so hard for dada he even calls her dada, so now were working on mama.  I don’t know if she knows how much it means to me that he calls me dada.  She probably does or she also wouldn’t have been encouraging him to learn dada.  Pretty sure he knows what it means because we ask him where’s dada and if i’m in the room he immediately looks at me and smiles.

So in a way its a early fathers day present for me.  A interesting fathers day comment, I took Oliver over to visit grandpa and also return grandpa’s umbrella.  My dad made the comment I hope your a better father to him than I was to you.  My dad wasn’t a bad father, wasn’t the greatest either.  But now having my own son it puts things in a different picture.  Kids don’t come with instruction manuals we can only do and imitate on how we were brought up.  Hopefully our parents did a halfway decent job raising us.  But it makes me understand I wasn’t the greatest of kids I was good at getting into trouble.  My one skill of knowing exactly what buttons to push to get people insanely angry didn’t help.  So do I forgive my dad, yeah, but its also hard not to when with his mini strokes he’s having he remembers less and less.  Its also hard to watch him going the same way my grandpa did and I’m so not looking forward to the vegetable times where he no longer talks, barely knows people and eventually just drifts away.

Insert Snarky Subject Here

Ok, so i’m not being very creative today.  Ahhh life it goes on..   Today is my step daughter’s last day of school, then tomorrow she leaves to be with her dad for the first half the summer.   Which means things are going to be really weird.  First house will be quieter, Oliver will get lots more attention since he will be the only one around.  I can now pee with the bathroom door left open!!  That and we start having to schedule mid week visits and weekend visits.   A bonus is that this weekend will be our weekend.. 

Were going to attempt to go camping this weekend so it should be intersting.  So two adults, a pack and play, and a 7yr old all in the same tent, can you say crowded.   When we bought the tent we didn’t quite have a baby in mind, but we should have enough space for a little while.

9 1/2 months

Where has the time gone.  Doesn’t seem possible that my son is 9 1/2 months old.  Seems like only yesterday we were in the NICU wondering why we were there and how long we were going to be there.  Still seems like he’s a happy healthy boy.  Still isn’t crawling yet but rolling like crazy and has started walking with help and seems to love that. 

Dad your not feeding me enough..  But this wash cloth is tasty

1 Down 2 to go

What you may ask.  Well my one Grandmother died last week.  So I now have 1 grandmother left and 1 grandpa left from different sides of the family.  But with my Grandma dying it brought up some more interesting Dysfunctional family issues.   My grandma hasn’t given me the time of day in nearly 20+ years.  It also was like pulling teeth and from the pictures we took she was not happy to be at my son’s baptism.  So when she died I made the conscious decision to boycott her funeral.  Took a bit of explanation to my step-mom so that she could convey it to my Dad and apologize as to why I was not going to be at his mom’s funeral.  Granted her relationship with my Dad was just about as good but with his strokes and diminished mental capacity things are easily forgotten and forgiven.  Me on the other hand can hold a grudge.  Not the best thing to do and I’m sure various excuses were given for me not showing, like he couldn’t handle it, couldn’t get the time off.  All of which are not true.  I took my bereavement day and it was a nice vacation day.  Weather was nice and it was a relaxing day. 

Brings me to another topic, I have had a lot I’ve wanted to write in my blog, but due to serious carpal tunnel issues and lack of time I haven’t been writing.  But in a way I will be glad when my Dad finally goes.  Yes it will be sad that I’ll never get to talk to him again or see him again, but he won’t be suffering anymore.  He also won’t be causing suffering on my step-mom and the rest of the family who worry every time he’s admitted to the hospital with another mini-stroke, is this finally going to be it.  To get a bit more morbid, he called me up to ask my year of birth since he couldn’t remember because he’s making out a will since he’s going to have carotid artery surgery to remove some blockages that they think are causing the increased mini-strokes.  So he’s working on the assumption that there is a chance he won’t survive the surgery.  I’m not sure what to give the odds.  Since its now considered day surgery I’d give it good odds that they will successfully bypass the blockages and help delay and decrease the number of mini-strokes he’s been having lately.

Now that Oliver is 8 months old its interesting to see that he’s sooo close to major achievements but still just a bit behind and not making the great strides he should.  He is soo close to crawling it’s awesome.  Today he sort of figured out how to semi crawl backwards.  Seemed like he wanted to go forward after the cat but kept pushing himself backwards and frustrated he wasn’t going in the direction of the cat.  Still amazes me how he can go from one day not being able to do something to bam he’s rolling all over the living room.  Still has his cousin beat in the teeth department.  8 teeth and counting and his 15 month old cousin only has 5. 

So life continues at a much frantic pace and the crickets and dustmites on my blog may continue to grow and breed.

Surviving another year on the mudball

Yeah!!!  Sunday will be my 36th year on the mudball named earth.  Growing up there were many times I didn’t think I’d make it to 25.  At one point during one of my depression induced daydreaming I had this grand scheme how I would go out in a ball of fire on my 25th birthday by ramming my car at over 100mph into a bridge embankment.  Well as you can see that didn’t happen.  Some day I should sit down and go over all the different ways I’ve thought about trying to kill myself.  Use to joke I could write a book, 101 ways to kill yourself.  But my luck it would just depress me to where I might try one of the idea’s.   Common if I can’t poke fun at my depression there is something wrong…

But the birthday cards have started rolling in.  I also get to see how dysfunctional my family is.   I get a birthday card that’s a your a bad son letter also.  Gee thanks Mom F’U too and you wonder why i haven’t called or emailed.   Like I want to hear how wonderful and godly your life is and how evil and satanic my life is and how I’m suuuch a horrible son/grandson etc..  Here you hypocrite bend over I’ll show ya how evil my life can be.  I’d much rather just not receive a card if your gonna be that way.  My family just doesn’t get it.  I could care less about my birthday.  Its another year that I’ve survived and I soooo look forward to trying to survive another one NOT.  But in no way do I ever feel like celebrating my survival.  Maybe the large ones i’ll celebrate and let you make fun of me when I hit the big 40 and am over the hill.  As it is i’m already past 50% of my life expectancy so I’ve been over the hill for a few years now. Why aren’t we celebrating that when it happens.  Ohh wait no one likes to think there statistically half way to death.  But no lets celebrate it when you have 38% of your statistical life remaining.  Thats  if your an average male who doesn’t smoke etc.. etc..  Granted I’m still using the old average of 65 even though in 2005 it went up to 75.  But with my Asthma, overweight, high cholesterol i figure I’ll be lucky to make it to 65 without hitting one of the large 15 causes of death.

So raise a glass of your favorite adult beverage and toast me to surviving another year and being another year closer to Death.  I’ll toast myself while shredding Metallica’s ONE on my Wii with my Birthday present my lovely wife, and step daughter got me.  Oliver helped to but since he has no clue what a Wii even is yet i don’t include him