The Engineer and I Archive

When Kurt was a baby, his mom made him a blanket from scraps of yarn. From the stories I’ve heard along with the fact that he still has this “blanket” in our closet I’d say that he has an unnatural attachment to it. It was crochet with red and blue flowers and there had apparently been another color made with an angora yarn which baby Kurt didn’t like - He chewed all of the angora flowers off and spit them out.

Toddler Kurt named his blanket “friend” and used it as his superhero cape. One time when young Kurtie was sick he had “friend” balled up next to him and Kurt’s mom came by to cover him up with another blanket. Young Kurtie protested, “No, you’ll cover his eyes”. Kurt’s mom looked down to see “friend” arranged in such a way that two previously flowered gaping holes were staring back at her.

Young Kurtie was also upset every time his mother decided “friend” needed a washing. Kurt would stand at the washer the whole time and then watch “friend” tumble in the drier. Kurt would then complain that “friend” had lost its smell and proceed to rub “friend” all over himself to get the smell back.

This year for Christmas, I unwrapped all of the presents for Sophia. A couple of her presents were specifically from Kurt and I was not privy to their contents. The first present I opened on Sophia’s behalf from him was a green and white striped onesie with blue lettering that read, “I (green heart shape) Mommy”. All together now, “aaawwwww, how sweet!” The second present was his old “friend”, which would have been a very nice sentiment if “friend” wasn’t a stringy thirty-five year old brown semi crochet mass of musty fermented Kurt spit with a few red and blue flowers left on it. EEEWW!! Get this hepatitis and e-coli ridden thing away from my baby!

Kurt’s mom had no idea that he had wrapped his old “friend” for Sophia let alone that he still had the musty old ball of yarn in his possession. When Kurt’s mom saw me open the gift of “friend” for Sophia, she dug through the Sophia gift pile for a specific box. I opened it when Sophia’s turn came around again. Inside I found three pictures of young Kurtie with his “friend”. “Friend” was originally a WHITE crochet blanket with burgundy red, dark blue, baby blue, white, bright pink, baby pink, lemon yellow, and pistachio green flowers and a baby blue cloth backing. Under the pictures and wrapped in tissue paper was a new “friend”. We dubbed it “Friend 2007”. We’ll see what kind of memories this one creates.

Tuesday I woke up to a cold house. In the morning I blew it off as a cold snap outside that my furnace would soon compensate for, but a couple hours later it was still cold. Our house is a tri-level and each floor has its own temperature zone that varies about five to ten degrees from the floor below or above. I usually hang out on the third floor since it’s always the warmest. I went downstairs to try overriding the energy saver thermostat thing but nothing happened, and damn was it frickin’ cold down there! The thermostat read 60 degrees (Fahrenheit), but I really don’t think it was even that warm. Sophia was fussy all day and wouldn’t let me put her down anywhere because every surface was cold. She didn’t take any naps ans wouldn’t sleep even though she was wearing three layers and I was holding her. By two o’clock I had enough and had realized that I had not heard the furnace kick on once through the whole day.

I called Kurt at work a little ticked off because I thought he had programmed some funky cold temperature only comfortable to him and anyone used to living in a medieval castle. “How the hell do you change the temperature on this thing?” He gave me the instructions, but that was exactly what I had tried earlier. He asked me to check the circuit breaker. I was frustrated holding a phone in one hand and fussy monkey baby in the other, so I was too impatient to try and cipher the scrawl on the panel from twenty-seven years ago. “I have one thing to do and I’ll come right home.” He said. He’s so sweet (sometimes). In the mean time I wondered where we would stay if the furnace needed to be replaced, and oh god that would be another expense on a house we want to move out of soon!

It turned out to be the circuit breaker - the house warmed up, and Sophia slept all evening. Amazingly, I was still able to get her to bed at her usual 10pm that night. Unfortunately, morning wakeup came early on Wednesday. That’s ok, I can play zombie mom. It’s my own fault for staying up late to play with blog stuff. Actually, I got quite a bit done on Wednesday morning. I even had a shower by 9am. At ten I called a friend to explain some blog things to her (I helped her with a Wordpress blog that I will more formally present once she has a little more to read - in the mean time if anyone in the Seattle are needs an event coordinator let me know ).

My friend and I went out to lunch a couple hours later and I woke up my napping baby to go from the car to the restaurant. I didn’t think it was a big deal since she usually goes back to sleep easily when I’m carrying/holding her. Sophia was great up until my food arrived and she decided she was hungry as well. Up until this point, I haven’t even attempted feeding her in public. I usually take her to the car if I need to feed her; it just seems more private that way. What’s odd is that before having a baby I had no problem flashing my little booblets around. Somehow feeding my baby seems like a private thing almost like going to the bathroom but a lot less disgusting. It’s either that or it’s because my previous booblets seemed harmless where as my new super-sized milk producing machines could put an eye out. I don’t know. Either way I haven’t mastered the technique necessary for private feeding and I made this my first attempt. It didn’t go well. I think I managed the privacy part well, but apparently, Sophia can’t find my nipple in the dark. I took the shrieking monster and my baby-blanket-covered-self outside to the car while my friend had my food boxed up for me (thank you). Sophia stopped screaming the minute I left the restaurant. I don’t know if it was the cold air, she liked that I was walking, or if the busy favorite lunch spot was just too loud for her to concentrate on eating. She happily ate in the quiet car and fell asleep.

I drove to a park, finished my lunch and then went to the store. I went to the store to buy a Christmas gift (which I did get), but I also bought a cute Christmas-y red suit for Sophia. She now has two Christmas outfits. Later in the day I found out Kurt almost bought the same outfit when he stopped at the same store after work. She has him so wrapped around her little finger. The day I posted the photo on this Wordless Wednesday he came home and told me he didn’t get any work done because he spent the whole day staring at her.

When Sophia and I got home, I fed her again while she made coffee percolating sounds in her pants. Time to change the baby - OHMYGOD - she shit herself up to her nipples - literally! Usually when she has a blowout, I’m able to roll her onesie up in a way that no poop touches her face as I pull it over her head - no such luck this time. Thankfully her onesie jumped on that bomb and contained the bulk of it. I didn’t notice right away but apparently my clothes weren’t spared from all of the fallout, and now for our unscheduled baby bath accompanied by blood curdling screams. For the first month or so of her life Sophia screamed bloody murder if you changed her diaper, but didn’t mind baths at all - that’s not the case now. Now it’s the reverse for both.

I got her dressed, re-dressed myself and fed her again. She fell asleep just before dad got home, and was completely out for four hours! I took a little nap too because I knew there would be little sleep for me later! I’m new, but I’m not completely daft.

I’ve been having a craving to try my hand at making bread pudding. I have a recipe that calls for brandy. Not having any brandy on hand I went to the grocery store yesterday. In Washington state beer and wine are sold at grocery stores whereas hard liquor is sold at liquor stores. There wasn’t any at the store I usually do my shopping at so I went to one that I know has a much bigger selection. I thought since brandy is derived from wine that it would be in a grocery store, but no I have to do a separate trip to the liquor store. I didn’t go. Why? Because on the door of every store is a sticker that says, “must be 21″. Yes, I’m well over 21, but Sophia isn’t. I can’t just leave her in the car even if it’s “just for a second”. I don’t know if I would be allowed in with her or not, but didn’t want to make a separate trip and pull her out of the car just to find out I either need to send Kurt after work or go by myself after Kurt gets home. I just don’t feel like - gawd I’m not myself after having a kid - I don’t feel like testing the limits. Alcohol laws are so fucked up!

Today on the news they said a judge ruled that a fourteen year old Jehovah’s Witness boy with leukemia could refuse a blood transfusion that could save his life.

Mount Vernon boy dies after refusing blood transfusion
NEWS UPDATE Nov, 29, 2007

SEATTLE — A few hours after a Mount Vernon judge ruled that a 14-year-old Jehovah’s Witness sick with leukemia had the right to refuse a blood transfusion, even though that refusal might kill him, the boy died in a Seattle hospital.

As Kurt pointed out while we watched the news tonight, this boy was basically granted the right to die for religious reasons, which is fine. It’s part of our freedom, but if this same boy sought to have a bottle of brandy for religious reasons, it would be denied. Much like the eighteen to twenty year olds that sign their life away to serve and protect this country, they’re old enough to die but not old enough to dull the pain. But unlike the military enlistees this fourteen year old can’t even legally have sex. If he had consensual sex with an adult that adult would be charged with statutory rape. But he can choose to opt out of medical treatment that could save his life at age fourteen.

Earlier Wednesday, Skagit County Superior Court Judge John Meyer denied a motion by the state to force the boy to have a blood transfusion. The judge said the eighth-grader knows “he’s basically giving himself a death sentence.”

Doctors diagnosed the boy with leukemia in early November and began treating him with chemotherapy at Children’s Hospital, but stopped a week ago because his blood count was too low, the Skagit Valley Herald reported. The boy refused the transfusion on religious grounds.

However, his birth parents, Lindberg Sr. and Rachel Wherry, who do not have custody and flew from Boise, Idaho, to be at the hearing, believed their son should have had the transfusion and suggested he had been unduly influenced by his legal guardian, his aunt Dianna Mincin, who is also a Jehovah’s Witness.

Mincin has declined to talk about the case.

The boy’s father told the P-I the ruling shocked him but after visiting his son later in the day Wednesday, he decided not to appeal. He said doctors told him Wednesday evening that the boy, unconscious since Tuesday, had likely suffered brain damage.

Several friends of Lindberg and of his parents attended Wednesday’s hearing, and some ran out crying when the judge announced his decision.

“Dennis does present himself as a very mature man. But he really is just a child trying to please the adults around him,” said Jan Curry, whose daughter, Morgan, is his friend.

With the transfusions and other treatment, the boy had been give a 70 percent chance of surviving the next five years, the judge said in court, based on what the boy’s doctors told him.

Still, the judge said his decision was based strictly on facts.

“I don’t believe Dennis’ decision is the result of any coercion. He is mature and understands the consequences of his decision,” Meyer said during Wednesday’s hearing. “I don’t think Dennis is trying to commit suicide. This isn’t something Dennis just came upon, and he believes with the transfusion he would be unclean and unworthy.”

Today Kurt and I were talking about the reaction I had to the flu shot when Kurt announced that I must be allergic to eggs because the viruses used in the influenza vaccine are grown in hens’ eggs (as opposed to a cock’s eggs). I reminded him the only thing other than greasy foods I’ve EVER had a problem with is dairy to which he replied, “Well eggs are kind of dairy.” I’m not kidding, he really said that. I was so shocked I didn’t even have a come back other than, “What the fuck, since when have eggs been any kind of dairy?” I suppose that’s why he’s an engineer and not a farmer, but that ranks right up there with my supervisor that wasn’t sure if New Jersey was a state and my friend/coworker that didn’t know what time zone we live in. We’re right next to the PACIFIC ocean! There must be mercury in the water or something.

Friday night Kurt decided to clean the oven. Yep, that’s the exciting life of thirty-somethings with a seven-week-old baby. He’s had the instruction manual for using the self-cleaning mode out for about a week. And for a couple months, I’ve intended to clean the oven along with getting some of my cast iron pots degunked in the same million-degree process, but I just never got around to it. The self-cleaning mode takes about four hours and I wanted to pick a time when I wouldn’t be in the house. Well, Kurt turned it on and my cast iron never made it in. Damn it! And with in minutes the whole middle floor of our house was filled with smoke. *grumble* So we open the windows on the middle floor and watched movies while locked upstairs in the master bedroom. Four hours later the oven beeped to let us know it was done. It remained locked for the cool down period, which I think was another hour. Once the cool down period was over the oven beeped again, but remained locked and was displaying an error code. We hit the off button to stop the obnoxious beeping and referred to the manual for the error code. Call the service center. FUCK! And the beeping stated again. Hit the off button. Three minutes later more beeping. Damn it already! Unplug the stove and plug it back in again. Still locked, still has the error code and - beep beep beep. GODDAMNITALLTOHELL!

We kept the stove unplugged for the night and called the service number in the morning. They’re only open on weekdays. Bastards! After a weekend of cooked meals that required us to plug the stove in and hit the off button every three minutes to control the incessant senseless beeping and eating out with an infant (she’s actually really good if the timing is right) I called the service number on Monday. I went through the press one for Spanish phone maze down to press three for repairs I was directed to a live person who then asked me not what the problem was but what is my name, address, zip code, and phone number. Damn data collection crap. Now I’m probably going to get calls about winning a point one percent discount on a plasma tv after answering a “short” survey that winds up eating into an hour and a half of my life. The woman finally asks me what the problem is. I give her the error code that the stove is giving me and so she asks for the model and serial number. I had the manual with me so I told her the model is one of the these two - and rattled them both off to her. To make a long story somewhat shorter, a general, “it’s one of these two” just wasn’t good enough. I found myself on my hands and knees on a kitchen floor that hasn’t been cleaned in an amount of time I don’t want to discuss and reading numbers from inside the drawer under the oven. The only light side I can see about the whole situation is, at least I wasn’t nine months pregnant.

After all that the woman at the service place asks for the error code again. “hhmm, did you try unplugging it?”
“Yep”
“Well I guess we’ll have to send someone out there. The soonest I can do is next Wednesday.”
“NEXT WEEK? How much will it cost?”
“$55″
“And that’s just to have the technician come out?”
“Yes”
“I’m going to have to think about that” CLICK

Since my cast iron pots weren’t trapped inside I didn’t have to think about Jack Shit! Waiting until the day before Thanksgiving for a technician to come out just to look at it is wholly unacceptable. “Just use your microwave” you might say. I don’t own one. Anything that can turn the outside of something into molten lava yet still be completely frozen in the middle is evil. As a side note I also don’t usually eat things that come in packages with “microwavable” on the label. Cause if something needs a package and can’t be identified without a picture and or map - It ain’t food.

Monday afternoon I got home from my “Living with baby” group and Kurt and I went shopping for a new stove. We figured it might be a good selling point for when we put out house on the market. We also bought a new dishwasher to replace the twnty-year-old suds producing hot water consuming semi sanitizing dish-holding unit. I should be getting the stove today. YAY! The dishwasher we have to wait on because we are going to have them install it for us. I’m sure it would be easy enough for us to install ourselves, but when the sales person asked if we wanted it installed Kurt pondered, “hhmm do I want to deal with the hassle of installing it?” “No” I corrected him “Do I want to deal with the hassle of you installing it?” Ask me sometime about the bathroom that we couldn’t use for two years. He finally finished it July of this year and it’s gorgeous, but TWO YEARS under construction!

A couple weeks before Sophia was born Kurt and I went to see a lawyer about ensuring paternity rights, drawing up our wills, and creating a trust for our spawn in the event Kurt and I die of spontaneous combustion or we go out on a date without the kid and develop a severe case of road rage and the S.W.A.T. team is required to take us out Bonnie and Clyde style. Anyway, we signed our wills on Wednesday and none of you gets anything so even ask. Although I may allocate a boot to the head to a few special people, one of them being my ex. Sit down this might be a long story.

My ex and I have been legally divorced for NINE YEARS. We parted as friends and didn’t use lawyers for our divorce. We were stupid and thought that because we were parting on good terms we wouldn’t need them at all. Stupid stupid stupid! We agreed on everything as far as who would keep what and who pays which bills. We filled out one of those “do it yourself” divorce packets, filed it with the court, and $130 in filing fees later that was it. The problem is that we had and STILL have a house together. In the divorce decree the house and all the bills associated with it are his, but no where in those do it yourself papers did they have a place for me to write in a deadline for when my name should be removed from the title or the LOANS. We removed each others names from the credit cards we kept and have since sold all the vehicles that were owned by us jointly, but the house, the fucking house is still in my name.

We bought the old 1930’s home as a fixer and intended to uumm fix it up. It wasn’t in bad shape when we bought it. There were a couple highly fixable oddities, but it was livable. Not the case anymore. While we were together, he upgraded all of the single pane windows. He also ripped out all of the cloth wiring, which meant insulating and adding sheetrock as well. It still needs the sheetrock, doors for the kitchen cabinets, siding on half the damn house, but that’s not what makes the place unlivable - oh nnnnooo. It’s the dry rot from not finishing some of the outdoor type projects, the dead 60 year-old tree next to the house that is so infested with termites that they spread to all the trees on the property and the house, and the transients he lets store all their crap all over the place and live there rent free. Now according to our divorce decree the house is his and he has been making all of the payments, so I really don’t care who lives there or what condition the house is in, but my name is still on the title and the loan. That means two things to me. If one of the many people or their kids get hurt in the house of perpetual construction or anywhere in the half acre landfill junkyard it sits on and they sue the owner of the house…that includes me! Also the three late payments to the house affect MY would-be pristine credit.

I’m ex military but he isn’t and we took out a VA loan. I think if he had been military it would have been as simple as dropping my name from the loan through VA. However, the actual loan is not through VA it’s been shuffled off to a mortgage company just like everyone else’s home loans. You may sign the papers at a local bank but they often sell it off to some other company, so the fact that it started out as VA is moot now. I’ve called VA and they tell me to do a “quitclaim deed” - oh hell no! That means I have no interest in the property, but I DO! As long as my name is on the loan and my credit is affected you had better believe I have a very real interest in that property. VA said that I need to go to the mortgage company to find out how to take my name off the loan. I call the mortgage company and they say that HE must refinance and qualify for a new loan, and here is where the big problem lies. How the fuck do you drag an unwilling adult to the mortgage company?! And the really big question how do you get a mortgage company to agree to give a loan to the person who has been making all of the house payments by himself for the last NINE years when he has no actual job? That’s right, legally, on paper, he has no job! He’s paid under the table for construction work.

So sell the house ye may say. Nay says he. We tried that route about two years ago. I brought out my real estate agent (I keep one in my pocket at all times). I gave her full warning about the property before I had her meet with my ex. We set up a day for her to come out and view the place for pictures and a value assessment, and afterwards she privately said to me, “You know what this is right? This is a practice house for the fire department”. I’m not kidding, that’s really what she said. Of course, before she said that she said she legally had to ask me, “Have there ever been any drug ‘cooked’ there?” I really have no idea, but I don’t think so. I was so ashamed to be associated with that property. She knew but I had to tell her anyway, “That is not how I live”. He has made that house THAT bad.

He found a sucker in one of his friends and we and came very close to selling. He wanted to make the purchase without agents and I reluctantly agreed, but he didn’t qualify for the loan. I should have seen that one coming, so that was it. My ex didn’t really want to sell for the price my real estate agent gave. He has put WAY too much money into that shit hole and for some fucked up reason he thinks he can get much more and actually gain a profit from the sale. Across the street from the house is a fourplex that sits on the exact same size lot. I was hoping that she could give a number that he would like by focusing on contractors wanting to build apartments, but the property just isn’t worth it when you factor in demolition of the house and such.

This whole ordeal is what finally ended my friendship with my ex. Actually, it ended when he called me a “stupid bitch”. So enter the lawyer stage left. When Kurt and I first talked to our lawyer about getting my name off this house, he made it seem like something definitely could be done and that it might not take much at all. After I sent him my divorce decree and we talked on Wednesday - he doesn’t seem so eager for the job. He said I would have to submit a revision to the divorce decree, but the way he said it sounded like that sort of thing isn’t approved often, or it would somehow be very difficult. I didn’t ask for details as to what had to happen to make that happen. He said he would look over the decree again to see if there might be another option.

A couple weeks ago, it came to Kurt’s attention that it really hurts when Sophia latches onto my boobs. The actual breastfeeding doesn’t hurt, but my nipples are incredibly sore. “Just from normal use?” he asks. What? Normal use? Up until the birth of Sophia it wasn’t normal for my boobs to serve about eight meals a day. It has never been customary for anyone to latch onto my nipples and gum them eight times a day for ten to twenty minutes at a time – Not that they never got attention just not with that frequency nor the same intensity. The only person that I can think of that may consider that the norm would be the psychotic woman from that family in Arkansas with 17 kids. “Yes” I said, “From ‘normal’ use”

“Wow, that’s just bad design.” He says.

Years ago after Kurt and I watched the episode of friends together where Phoebe talks about her “lobster theory” Kurt started to call me his lobster. And he really gets irritated if I don’t mimic the claw thing Phoebe did by taking my index finger and thumb and lock it with his.

Phoebe: Hang in there, it’s gonna happen.
Ross: What? Okay, now how do you know that?
Phoebe: Because she’s your lobster.
Chandler: Oh, she’s goin’ somewhere.
Phoebe: Come on, you guys. It’s a known fact that lobsters fall in love and mate for life. You know what? You can actually see old lobster couples walkin’ around their tank, you know, holding claws like…

This morning he was teasing me about something. I was really too tired to care which of the many things he was teasing me about, but as usual I told him I hated him. He gave his usual reply, “You LOVE me! I’m your lobster.” Then he goes on to say that I’m his lobster and I wondered out loud, “Do lobsters ever get big bellies that hang outside their shell a little?” Big fat lobsters.

Because this week’s heads or tails theme is keys I’m going to cheat a little and link to an old post about Kurt and the mini Christmas treasure hunt I did last year.

For more Heads or Tails Keys go over to Skittle’s Place where Heads or Tails Tuesdays were invented.

Kurt woke me up. By the urgency in his voice it seemed important, but when I sat in front of the TV to see smoke pouring from one of the twin towers I was confused. It looked like a Saturday Night Live skit. I couldn’t figure out why Kurt woke me up. Both of us sat and watched quietly. He was shocked and I was still sleepy at that point.

I worked the swing shift (3pm to 11pm) as a security guard. It was the only job I could think of that would allow me to do homework while working. I was going to start my second year of college that fall.

As I started to wake up to the fact that this was in fact live and real TV it was time for Kurt to leave for work. I stared at the TV and figured it must be a horrible mechanical error. Maybe something happened to the pilot as in a heart attack or something. The idea that some group would attack the US never occurred to me.

Kurt gave me a kiss and left for work. I don’t remember discussing what we were watching on TV at all that morning. Normally we would be tossing ideas around and possible scenarios, but this was too big. It was too shocking.

I watched Kurt leave from where I was sitting on the couch. We were living in a rental house that we fondly refer to as the house of mold. I could see him through the picture window as he left the driveway and went down the street out of view.

My attention went back to the TV. I watched in silence as the second plane hit. Clearly, this was no accident. Some very well organized group or country was making a strong declaration. I knew immediately that my phone would be ringing soon and I would be called into work. Within minutes I received a call from the day shift supervisor. “Are you watching the news?”

“Yes”

“Can you uumm come in?”

In a daze, “Yes” I told the day shift supervisor. He explained that the powers that be wanted to beef up security at the site we worked. Considering the industry of that site, it was highly understandable. I didn’t want to miss a moment of what was happening on the TV screen, but I went anyway. I kept the TV on as I got ready to leave for work again and left just after seeing footage of specs that were clearly people jumping to their death.

I arrived at work to find the day shift supervisor hunched over listening intently to an old one-speaker clock radio the sight of which would have been hysterical if it weren’t for the situation. About fifteen minutes after I arrived at work we heard news that the South tower collapsed. We listened to the radio all day and during our rounds would stop and chat with the workers. I arrived back to the security center after my first set of rounds to hear on the radio that the second tower was collapsing. Everyone that had any kind of radio was listening to it and had at least two or three others listening with them. I don’t think a single bit of work was done that day. At the security center, people would stop by and chat with us, and we would compare the news of other airplanes being involved from one station verses the news from another. The whole day felt like the most realistic nightmare I had ever had. I was in an odd sort of trance that kept me very alert in regards to my job.

In the weeks to follow, it was simply amazing to see what seemed like the whole world rally around the US. It felt like we had finally come to the realization that the world is a tiny close-knit community and the differences between us were temporarily removed. It’s terrible that a tragedy is required to make us aware that we’re all the same. The bumbling idiot president rose to the occasion and did well until loose connections to Iraq were made and split us in half again.

For more 9/11/01 go over to Skittle’s Place where Heads or Tails Tuesdays were invented.