Stepping over the cat on the stairs this afternoon and I managed to stub/jam my toe. Darn thing’s all purple and loose and quite painful. Strangest thing about this, besides the pain, was the fact that my very first thought as I was tumbling down the stairs was, “Am I going to be able to go running tomorrow?”
Sad. So very sad…
By the time you read this, Karin will have (finally) checked out of the hospital, and we’ll have the baby home and in his crib. The rest of this week we’ll be busy adjusting to a new sleeping schedule, settling in, and getting used to this new baby thing.
Being pulled in so many different directions at once, I sometimes feel like MacGyver having to come up with novel ways to overcome the demands that baby is putting on us. Heh…
Sorry for the late post, but I’ve been a bit…distracted.
At 3:30am on February 10th, Karin woke me up to tell me that her water broke.
At 8:30pm on February 11th, our son Tyler was born! He’s 11lbs 15oz of cuteness 
In the baby recovery room, just after his round of shots
Baby meets mommy for the first time
Pouty lips, fat cheeks...pure awesomeness!
While watching an episode of Burn Notice on blu-ray last night a random, obtuse thought popped into my head, and before I could get the brain / mouth filter into gear I spouted the word “Sardines!”
“What was that?” Karin asked with a puzzled look in her eyes.
“Sardines. I’ve never tried sardines.” I couldn’t tell you why that particular thought had suddenly come to mind. Perhaps a long dormant, forgotten brain cell decided to spontaneously fire, projecting the thought of tinned fish into my frontal lobe. Or perhaps there’s a bit of subliminal advertising going on in the episodes of Burn Notice, with the good folks at Fox Television receiving a kickback from the sardine industry with each and every can of sardines sold.
Regardless of the origin, the idea had taken root, and I was bound and determined to try a can of sardines. From that night forward, I would not feel complete as a human being until I had accomplished this task which was set out before me.
Thus, the great Monday Morning Sardine hunt began. I jumped into the S2000 and jammed over to my local grocery store, where I found the object of my quest:
Running through the self checkout line, laughing maniacally and crazy-eyed, I swiped my check card and inputed my PIN number like only a man on a quixotic journey such as mine could. Gripping my newly acquired tin of sardines, my knuckles turning white from my kung-fu grip, my butt hugging close to the ground as I rushed towards the sliding glass doors in hunched, lurching, crab-like motions. Exiting the store I dove head first into my car (which I left running in the red zone by the front door), gunned the engine, and in a cloud of thick, acrid tire smoke made haste for home base.
Karin, confused by my singularly obsessive desire for canned fish, and having recused herself in the upstairs office to avoid any confrontations, heard me burst though the garage door and shrieked, “I think you need to calm down!!”…or something to that effect. I couldn’t quite hear her, but that didn’t matter now, for my quest’s journey was about to bear fishy, fishy fruit.
Ahhhh, there it be, laddies. Canned gold!
Oddly enough, sardines taste an awful lot like tuna, only a bit more mellow. The head and tails had been removed, but on my second fish I noticed that the spine was still in place. Oh, lucky day!:
The bones of these fish are so tender you don’t even notice them as you eat. Very interesting.
And so, satiated for the moment, I made a mental note to pick up a few more cans during our next shopping excursion. I can’t help shake the feeling that these would taste fantastic in a sandwich…
It’s amazing how poorly Californians react to bad weather. If we get more than an eighth of an inch of rain we firmly believe the world is about to end; that we stand upon the precipice of painful inconvenience and total annihilation. We’re unsure which direction in which to fall, often opting for the worse of the two as we blindly thrash and gnaw in the unfamiliar confines of our temporary misfortune.
Take me for instance. I awoke this morning at 5am for the sole purpose of getting into work at 6am just so I could leave early to avoid the afternoon traffic and predicted early evening squalls that would surely portend our certain doom.
Man, we’re a weak, reactionary lot, we Californians.
And as I write this, the end times have yet to befall our tiny corner of reality. The rains have not carried us away to our ultimate reward. Though a severe bout of fat rain and a bit of hail have managed to visit us, we’ve yet to see the thunderous hell storm that the news has been projecting and carefully nurturing in our tiny little brains these past few days. I can’t tell you how used I feel. Like a one night stand forced to endure the walk of shame down the dark, narrow hallway of some anonymous fraternity, mocked and scorned for fervently believing every sultry, filthy lie I had been told, my skin crawled with humility and remorse for unquestioningly swallowing their lies.
I don’t think I’d fare well in a state that had actual seasons. Snow would definitely send me over the edge…
