How Much Longer?

There's a poll about me going on at my primary job. I say primary because I actually work at two jobs in order to make everything work. I hesitate to say "make ends meet," because that isn't happening yet, but we are surviving.


Well, as I was recently hired and got a decent pay increase, I now make enough at my primary computer job to cover all the expenses provided I get everything caught up. My secondary job is pretty simple to relay: overnight stocker at the 2nd largest employer in the United States. The first is the federal government. My schedule between both jobs runs 8-5 Monday thru Friday on job 1, and 10p-7a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. If you work out the math, you could say I work 64 hours a week, but let's face it -- I'm at those jobs 72 hours a week, and longer away from home if you add in drive time.


A week contains a total of 168 hours, and you tend to sleep for anywhere from 42-56 of those (that's 6-8 hours per night). Drive time will add about an hour per day, and morning prep time amounts to about an hour as well, so there burns another 14. The children actually sleep more than 6-8 hours; their schedule can run up to 10-12 hours of sleep. So let's see how much time I have left: 168 - 72 - 14 - 42 = 40 spent with the Queen or 5 per day on average; 168 - 72 - 14 - 70 = 12 hours for the kids (allowing only ten hours of sleep per night average) or less than 2 hours per day.

To some, I just said, "blah blah blah," and I can respect that. The bottom line here is that the family is going nuts over my schedule and that schedule has been going on since last June. I'm wearing out, and the Queen is more than occasionally unhappy about the arrangement. She understands, of course, but understanding it and happy about it are two different things. For that matter, I'm not happy about it.

But as you can see from the numbers above, the real impact comes from the children, who apparently barely see me. And with everyone barely seeing me, there's no time for just me either. I used to watch tons of movies, but now, there's no time. I used to have memberships with Blockbuster AND Netflix actively running AND get movies from the library, but I can barely make enough time to watch one movie a week. Life is demanding is many more ways than one.

No one knows how I keep this schedule, though. The other guy in my department at work, who has given serious consideration to changing his name to Optimus Prime (it's that serious), is blown away by my ability to maintain my level of consciousness after working such long hours, especially from Sunday to Monday since I go basically non-stop from 9pm Sunday to 6pm Monday without a rest or nap or anything. It's very hard, but it's coming to an end soon. I said I'll evaluate in May, and I plan to uphold that (even though the current opinion of Optimus puts me quitting right after my first full check, or about March 1st).

But as I came in this Saturday morning from my overnight job, I was met by The Socialite, who dubbed herself "the Middlest" shortly after Sassy Pants was born. She wasn't the biggest, and she wasn't the littlest, so she came up with the term when she was four, I believe. As far as I know, no one gave her the word; it was her own creation. Actually, when it comes to actual height, Sassy Pants is nearly her height already. The Socialite will end up being the shortest of all three girls, but knowing how she is, it won't affect her.

Sassy Pants is sick. And she's not one to admit being sick. If you ask her if she isn't feeling well, she'll get mad and say no, but when she's really not feeling well, she'll be totally honest about it. She'll also take care of herself fairly well too. She's not hard-headed about resting; in fact, she got up for a moment earlier to use the bathroom, and of her own volition, went right back to bed. She actually woke up and said she had to throw up. We went to the bathroom, but she didn't want to throw up in the potty. She wanted a bowl. I got her a bowl and she leaned over a couple of times before complaining, "It won't work!" in that little kid voice that says "I don't understand." Little thing is never like this unless she really feels bad.

At the moment, everyone else is fine. No other known illnesses. There is a minor concern as my mother just learned on Friday that she has the flu, and we saw her on Thursday. Crud. I'm hoping Sassy Pants isn't that bad off. We won't have insurance for another 30 days, so no one is allowed to need a doctor visit until after then. We've got her doped up on Tyenol, mostly, and it's helping her to feel better.

The Queen is sleeping restfully in our bed a short distance away here. The biggest bummer of working nights is we sleep different schedules. But at the moment, I think it's high time to get off here and curl up behind her...

Geek Porn

So your favorite geek is hunched over the keyboard, staring intently at the screen. Comments such as "Look at the rack on that one" and "Oh, it's so big" come drfiting out, and you know something's up. You walk up behind him and sure enough, he's staring at some techie site lookie at a server PC with three terrabytes of hard drive space, more RAM than anyone has any business with, multiple processers, eight USB ports, firewire, and a blu-ray DVD-R built in. Yup, it's geek porn.

A 32 Gb flash card...wow, I could store anything on there... Eight USB ports? You compu-whore. 6-in-1 card port... Holy cow. Look at the size of the chips on that board. And the Mac air? It's so skinny, with a full size keyboard... Mmmmm... so good.

Around here, ThinkGeek.com is far more popular than any Pr0n website can claim to be because it is so awesome. So many cool gadgets and doo-dads. Give me a lightsaber or wi-fi detector or USB missile launcher any day over some magazine.

Anyway, life on the present day side of things runs very well. I've been a contractor at the computer job for the last seven months and joy of joys, I'm finally getting hired. They decided I'm worth keeping around, so I will get some vacation time, some higher pay, and insurace too. Can life get better? Well, a Wii would help, but let's not be picky.

Life with the Queen continues to be awesome as well. Today, it threatened to snow and right now, it is, so she kept the kids home since we only have one car and while the drive in wasn't bad, picking me up later might really suck, since it's supposed to get bad around here. I remember when it got year before last, it got really, really bad. I lived closer to my job then, and the drive was still rough. From where I am now, that drive would have been near impossible.

So they're at home, and last I spoke to the Queen, Rock Girl was playing Webkinz, which is that Sims-like game online where you buy a stuffed animal, enter a secret code online to get a year free, and play with your critter in a Sims-ish environment with games and such to earn kinz-cash to "buy" stuff. Rock Girl is a lot like me in that she's AD/HD, one of the smartest in her class (and that's not a father thing either; her test put her in the top 1% of her age group), and her name comes from her interest in playing guitar. I seriously need to get at least a PS2 at some point so she can play Guitar Hero. It'll help with rhythm management. I'm teaching her music, but learning rhythm is best done through practice, and the game could help a lot.

By the same regard, she is stubborn, and even growing a bit reclusive, as I am still. Since she is a girl, she won't grow totally introverted, and I would prefer she doesn't, but she likes her quiet time to read and play video games away from the younger two, who more than occasionally annoy her.

The other two were playing together. Siblings are interesting, since theyt tend to play best with the sibling immediately next to them in age. Sassy Pants plays with The Socialite, and The Socialite plays with both of them, since she's in the middle. The Queen says The Socialite is most like her at this point, since she has the intelligence to do well, but prefers to socialize instead of doing the work. She proved this when she and Rock Girl went to a chess tournament recently.

I spent a week trying to teach her the finer points of chess, and she was just playing and blowing me off. It was very, very frustrating. But lo and behold, on the day of the tournament, she (being the only kindergardener) not only won one and lost one, but she had, like, six draws. The people in charge said she was giving the 1st and 2nd graders a run for their money on this game. This means she was playing me all week, when she really knew what she was doing. Little pill.

The youngest is Sassy Pants, and she is all attitude. Now, what would make me really happy with that one is if she would poop in the potty. Yes, as parents, we all have dreams, and right now, that is what I want. I want the poop in the potty and not in the panties. I don't know if she gets involved in other things or if she is being like the Socialite and refusing, but I want to scream so often.

Ad to this, an attitude of not exactly defiance, but shall we say, one that tests the limits of how far she can push herself before stepping over that line. She's been in trouble more than once, but she adjusts to it. She gives us some lip, but she's learning where the lines are and she pushes...hard.

So far, she hasn't settled that little personality into anyone's really yet, and we're not certain she will. All of the girls are their own people, but the older two picked up on the Queen's and my personalities, while the youngest might be quite unpredictable.

The Queen did ask me if on that 32Gb Flash card, there was a video of plugging it in, taking it out, plugging it in, taking it out, plugging it in, taking it out, and then finally plugging it in and downloading something, before finally removing it. Had to let her know that the capacity actually means you can leave it in there longer before finally pulling it out...

Mmm.. nothing better than a lot of good storage to make life grand.

Prince Ali Ababwa

Blogs are easy to conceive, easy to start, but can be hard to get going. Like an old vehicle they seem to stall quickly right after the initial creation process, and like something with a pull cord, it takes quite a bit to start it back up. What causes this phenomenon? Time and dedication, mostly. You have to devote some level of time into going with this, and it has to be important enough to keep going. Not that you have to be talking about life, the universe, and everything, but just something important to you.

Something important like the drama of my second and final chance in high school to get with the queen. Following this trip, no real oportunities exist and when I talk about the interrim, you'll find why I was still not terribly encouraged by what happened. If you know what a "Crowbar Award" is, you'll get the idea.

But on the bus ride to Washington, D.C., though, we also had the joy of the Queen's mother (aka Queen Mother) and brother (who we'll call Darth Vader for reasons w'll learn later) tagging along. The weird thing here is that I don't remember them on the trip at all. I guess I never gave them a thought, and only regarded the Queen Mother as another chaparone. To make it double strange, they did remember me.

The bus ride didn't start so well. We got onto the bus at about the same time, but we were almost immediately split upsince there wasn't a seat together. Yup, she actually intended to sit next to me. Isn't that cool? Anyway, I was in one seat and she in another, but at some point in the ride to D.C. (which is one seriously long bus ride from Oklahoma), we managed to get to sit together.

The first time my hope began to fade was following that point in the ride. Being the music guru I am, I was toting a lot of different cassettes and CD's (oooh, wasn't I cool?) and one of them was the soundtrack for Aladdin. Since Crackhead was on a different bus (he preferred to hang with his buds), the Queen wanted to write him a note as girls do. So, during the writing of this note, she wanted to know how to spell "Ali Ababwa," as in the song from Aladdin, "Prince Ali, amorous he, Ababwa."

Well, being the eavesdropping spy that I am, once I'd given her the lyrics book for the soundtrack so she could write out whatever she wanted, I glanced over her shoulder, and saw the flowy handwriting of a girl writing a note to her little beau. Any other geek would be heart-broken and upset and never want to speak to her again. Not me. Oh no. I didn't want to part from her side and continued to stick with her the whole time.

I'm such a glutton for punishment. Still am for the most part.

Well, despite the fact that I never forgot "Ali Ababwa," the ride was still pretty good. If it weren't for that cloud hanging over my head the whole time, I might have thought I had a chance, but with "Prince Ali" out there earning her notes, I was too afraid to ask. Like George McFly, "I just couldn't take that kind of rejection." In the logic of my age, I figured if I didn't ask, I couldn't be rejected. But in the logic of retrospect, since I never asked, I was never accepted.

Nothing else of note happened on the bus ride down there. We reached the hotel, which was in a town in Virginia bordering D.C., and everyone got unpacked and settled in for the festivities that awaitd us in our week in D.C. A trip for an event that would ultimately last only a few hours, but a trip, nevertheless, that still made an indelible impression on the Queen and I, even though my feelings would remain quite unrequited for many years to come.