And so.

3:14 am, 8/28/14.

My Boo.

Wherein there is endurance.

Monday we went to the place where we are supposed to have The Girl.  We were there till 3am and my little princess was a no show.  We still wait.

The Wife is holding together as well as she can but we are in a different gear than before.  She is resting, I am doing what I can to keep her and The Boy fed and taken care of.  I know how I feel, I cannot imagine how she feels right now.  

I know for a fact that we were spoiled before when The Boy was induced.  There was no waiting or false starts or month of contractions.  It was a relatively simple process that still managed to suck, no doubt it sucked, but it was over and done in a day.

I do look forward to the day she finally comes.  To a ceasing of hostilities on my wife's body. to the ability to hold her for a while while everyone else rests.  I look forward to introducing our Boy to The Girl, to teaching him how to play with her.  I look forward to a SLIGHTLY more restful night of sleep though I doubt that one will happen for a while yet.

Maybe tomorrow.

How do you do it?

At this point in time, Monday morning, 11:27 am on Aug 25th, The Girl has not yet arrived.  Her due date is the 29th.

Maybe we are just being impatient or we were spoiled with our first child, who due to medical reasons had to be induced early.  Ergo we did not go through the last month of pregnancy and all of the "fun" that brings. However The Wife has been having contractions for three weeks.

We are tired.  Well, I should amend that.  I am tired, she is exhausted.  We are starting to get that glaze that says "maybe today, but probably not" and we sigh and go back to what we were doing.

I know it is for the best that she is getting more incubation time, I do and I know that I am being selfish when I say I want this baby out.  I want us all to have some rest.

Maybe tomorrow.

In which we continue to wait.

My birthday has come and gone and still no baby.  I was hoping that she would be born on that day but alas and alack, no go.  The Wife and I have started to resign ourselves to the fact that despite all of the fun practice contractions, The Girl will not be showing up any time soon.  The Wife and I have developed the stares that prisoners give each other.  We are resigned to a fate we cannot change.

The Birthday was good though.  I am now 31, but care very little about the number. I think it is slightly more significant that the light from 61 Ursae Majoris will be reaching us very soon.  According to wikipedia we are 31.1 ish lightyears from that star meaning that in something like 1.2 months light from it from when I was born will reach us.  Memory Alpha tells us that the NX-01 was sent to investigate the star close up and one of the planets in the system is named for Johnathan Archer, Archer IV.

I like measuring time in Light Travel time.  

Still waiting.

While The Girl is not yet technically due and we should be waiting patiently for the due date, we're done.  I don't think I've been as prepared for anything as we are for the Girl.  The Wife and I were talking about it this weekend and pretty much landed on the fact that if we still had something major to do then maybe, MAYBE the waiting wouldn't be so bad.

I would call this weekend rather successful though, in spite of not spawning a new Overlord.  I purchased a birthday gift for The Wife and The Boy received his first comic book.  Its Angry Birds and while I may not have selected it, he loves it.  He slept with it last night.  Every time he was up to use the bathroom, when I tucked him back in he had to have it.  Its like it is in his blood or something...

Additionally I've had the opportunity to give myself a lot of work, which I did and now must find the time to do.  That will be interesting once the Girl decides to finally make an appearance, but doable.  All it takes is the determination to do it.

And now I am a potato.

We are still on Babywatch.  The top favorite for a replacement word for F**K is Braxton-Higgs.  At this point, from a non-incubator perspective, it is kind of like watching a Wife size pot of water come to a boil.  It takes forever, you can easily burn yourself and just when you think you get to the point where you can cook your food the stove explodes because you have placed an irresponsible amount of hot water on a tiny stove.

What was I saying?  Oh yeah, FRUSTRATION.  As bad as the waiting is for me, it is much worse on The Wife.  I at least don't have a wee thing inside of me, wriggling about and keeping me awake, having to use the bathroom and punching me intestines/bones.  I joke with my wife that she does not have patience at the best of times but that's not true.  Right now what she is doing I'm not certain I could do.  The little sleep, the changes in taste and smells.  The aches and discomfort that only seem to subside but never leave.  I think I would be driven mad.

Again, just being on the outside of the process is frustrating.  I can't control when the baby comes or how smoothly it can go.  I can't know beforehand if something I do will set off a pregnancy related discomfort with my wife.  The lack of control is hard.  Whenever The Girl comes it will be a little easier.  I will be able to hold her and let my wife rest.  I will be able to feed her or give some quiet time.  I know how to handle babies now and even though less sleep and more stress are a certainty I welcome it.  Heck, I'm even looking forward to it.

Where I live.

Utah is a place that, sometimes rightly so, is the butt of many jokes.  The Simpsons where Bart challenges Millhouse, "Race you to Utah".  Broken Arrow where they boast about if they ever go to war with Utah.  Yadda yadda yadda.  Point is Utah gets more pokes than say.... Montana or Idaho.  That being said there are some very cool things here that I love.

Did you ever see the TV movie of The Stand?  Most of what wasn't shot in Vegas was done here.  The first public meeting that they hold in "Bolder" in the third episode is the Union Pacific building.  An absolutely stunning building that is now part of "The Gateway", a mall in the center of the city that hosts our St Patrick's Day parade.  The airbase that Trash wrecks is actually the Wendover Airfield close to the Salt Flats.

Remember The Sandlot?  The actual sandlot is located a couple of blocks from my gramma's house.  Down south a ways is the pool and park where they filmed the carnival and pool scene, you know the one.  My dad was even cut from the movie.  True story.

The iconic dog chase scene, where Benny outruns Herc causing all kinds of mayhem, well I know for a fact that they filmed much more than they ended up using.  It happens in movies, of course it does but I am sad that me da was cut from this one.  Anyhow, my dad in his prime was one of the most recognizable faces in the Western Scottish Pipe Band Association.  A Drum Major.  He and the band he was working with at the time, I believe it was the Salt Lake Scotts were hired to be extras during filming on that scene.  The dog and Benny were to run through them and they were all to fall or scatter or whatever.  Less than five seconds of screen time really.  One of the drummers damaged his instrument during the filming, dented it all up.

All the while I'm sitting there under a tree, watching all these people make a big fuss over lights and cameras.  I petted a big dog and played with some kids.  Every so often the dog would be moved to go to the cameras and then come back.  Once the dog came back a little scuffed up.  Apparently the dog trainer tumbled and so the dog thought to do the same.  I petted him and helped give him water.  I had no idea that the kids I played with or the dog I sat with under the tree were the stars of the movie.  All I knew at the time was my dad was doing a job with his band and it would help us go to Disneyland.

It kind of salts my butter though.  They filmed the cake part of that scene the same day.  That made it in but me da didn't.

I've gotten off on a tangent so I guess I will end here.  I'll talk more on Utah later.

A subtle reminder

We really are living in a sci-fi world.

Everyone who reads this is taking part in the world of tomorrow as well.  You are probably reading this on a screen that is no thicker than three inches and possibly even something that is a quarter inch thick.  It is much more power efficient than ten years ago when we were still going away from the CRT beasts of yore.

Other people have a Kindle with E-Ink.  Ink that changes size to make words or images on a page.  A paper page mind, not a crazy screen but something that is more like paper in a book than not.  We are developing OLED screens that one day can give you a real time HUD on your car or turn every wall in your house to a vivid landscape.

We have a nuclear powered, laser equipped science lab the size of a car on Mars that has been happily doing tests for two years with no real signs of stopping that we landed there using a frakkin flying saucer. We know more about how the universe works and we are using that to our advantage.  The NIF in California is a prime example of this.  Heck, that place is so Sci-Fi they used it as the warp core in the last Star Trek.

Point is, I am happy to be here.  I'm glad you can join me.  Lets learn about something fantastic.

Taking bets.

I've started a little pool.  I am asking friends and family when they think The Girl will be born.  She is due this month and I thought it would be nice to treat someone to a lunch for getting it right.

Interestingly enough most people are going for the 15th and after.  Something is telling me that it is going to happen sooner rather than later though.  She has dropped and is showing other signs of it being an IMMINENT EVENT.

All looming portends of terror aside, I am looking forward to ending this phase and moving on to the active Daddy phase.  I am hoping to get The Boy as involved as possible.  He already loves to help and I want to make sure that he is protective of his little sister.  Some people may not like the approach we are taking but I do want him to feel responsible for her.  I hope it will help him not feel envious of all the attention that she is going to get.

After she is born I am also going to take the time to spend some time one on one with him.  My biggest fear is that he starts to feel less important.  I never want him to feel that way and I am going to do what I can to play with him and show him lots of love.

No pressure.

Music Monday

If atheists are right and God in whatever form does not exist, if we are alone in the universe and there is nothing out there but dust and echos and light, how much more wonderful is music?  Existence in general but music particularly.  Motes of dust upon a mote of dust hurling through infinity and all the while we sing.  We pound out patterns.  We pluck notes.  We toot a flute.  Cradled in our only home.

We scream at the darkness.  We compose complex melodies that mean something only to those that can hear it and even then it can mean very different things. We come from the dirt, we make something wonderful or share in something wonderful and then we go back.

Recently, in a cosmological sense, we've been beaming these songs and our voices out to the universe at large.  It may never be deciphered but we've added our voice to the background radiation of existence.  Part of us will never ever die and in a way it is one of the more honest parts of ourselves.  Music born from pain, joy and love.  Music made to make money.  Talk shows that illustrate what we found important at the time.  Comedy, propaganda, secret messages.  Each and all going out to infinity, possibly never to be seen again but never really gone.

Kind of makes bad music worthwhile, doesn't it?