I’m a confident father who is ready for whatever life can throw at me.  If my wife wants to go to a family event, blogging conference, or anything else, I’m more than happy to watch the kids solo.  Most times, it’s father-son-son bonding time.  Fun times at the park, going out to eat, or just hanging around watching TV.  These things I can more than handle.  I live for these moments.  However, when something doesn’t go right, though, I feel my wife’s absence.

Don’t get me wrong.  I miss her when everything’s running smoothly.  It’s just that, when things are going well, everything’s going according to plan.  I’m comfortable on-plan.  The boys are having fun, B’s having some much-deserved time off, and I’m getting extra bonding time.  It’s win-win-win-win.  When bad things start to happen, though, I miss her insights into what we should do as well as her assistance in handling matters.  I just don’t feel as sure of myself when flying solo.

On Friday, B left for a family function.  That night, after going to sleep, JSL woke up with a coughing fit.  It sounded like he was congested and having trouble breathing.  I tried getting him to settle, but it wasn’t happening so I pulled him into my bed.  Usually, this helps him breathe better since his head will be elevated more.  It didn’t seem to help much, though.  I was up half the night with him.

The next night, after talking with B on the phone, I tried to get JSL to drink some liquid children’s Mucinex.  Now, JSL is afraid of taking this medicine.  He’s afraid it’ll make him puke.  He’s so afraid that he gets himself all worked up and… you guessed it.  He puked.  All over the hard wood floor and carpet (and again in the tub.  Somehow, he missed most of his clothes.

At this point, he was not only sick, but overtired.  There was obviously no way he would take his medicine.  Normally, I would change him and then B would stay with the boys while they fell asleep and while I cleaned up the mess.  Instead, I needed to stay with them.  I tried cleaning up the hard wood floor’s mess while asking NHL to get JSL in his pajamas, but that only resulted in NHL laughing at JSL’s shirt being on backwards.  *sigh*  Over I went, corrected the error, got the boys ready for bed (teeth brushed and gone potty), and asleep.  Then, I cleaned the floor and rug.  Then, I cleaned the tub out and reexamined JSL’s clothes just to be sure.

I’m so glad that B’s home again!

I was going to write a review post today, but that will need to wait for next week.  Last night, I got the news that Steve Jobs passed away.  While I might not own any Apple devices (B has an iPod Touch that her parents gave her when they didn’t use it anymore), Steve changed the way I use computers many times.  He designed computers with graphical interfaces when needed to type in commands.  He saw a future in computer animated films and helped make Pixar what it is today.  He saw a digital future for music and pushed the music industry towards this future at a time when illegal file sharing was seen by the industry as pushing them to ruin.  He innovated in smart phones, tablet computers and many other areas.

Steve wasn’t just a technologist, though.  He had some pretty wonderful views on life in general.  Here are some quotes from a commencement speech that he gave in Stanford in June of 2005.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Of course, for full effect, don’t just read his words, but watch and listen to them too.

Rest in Peace, Steve.  You will be remembered for changing the world for the better.

During the recent open house at NHL’s school, we spoke with his teacher.  During the conversation, she urged B to relax about some things, saying it is under control.  B admitted to being quite a Type A personality.  That got me wondering: What type personality am I?

In most respects, I’m a Type B.  I’m laid back and am willing to let things happen.  I’ll take action when I need to, but I try to stay calm about it.  Perhaps this is my mother’s influence (she always told me not to “rock the boat”) or perhaps this is the result of being bullied growing up (staying unemotional was a way of protecting myself).  In any event, I’m willing to just accept what happens and make the best of it.

This aspect of my personality makes completing projects difficult.  I find myself relaxing about deadlines and putting off important work to relax with video games.  I often-times need a Type A personality pushing me to move past the deadline.

On the other hand, I can be very Type A at times.  I don’t like going out without some sort of plan as to what we’re doing.  Just “seeing what happens” isn’t my kind of outing.  I might not plan out every second of the excursion, but I’ll want to know the basics.  Furthermore, once I have a schedule of events in mind, I’m very resistant to changing it.  When Irene threatened to ruin our Disney World trip, I clung to the schedule up until the last moment.

With projects, my Type A personality kicks in during the middle of a project that I love.  I begin to chart out every aspect of the project, assign an estimate for completion and plan my work over the course of the next week or so.  I’ll spend hours coding one little feature because it needs to be perfect.

I can see the buds of this duality in NHL.  He’ll be very laid back about some topics, not particularly caring when (or if) something gets done.  Suddenly, though, Type A NHL will kick in and he’ll obsess over whether something is perfect or exactly when something will be done.

Of course, at this stage of his development, it’s quite clear where the A-B line is.  If you ask him to do something, it gets put into the B bucket.  Clean the toys on the floor?  Sure, that’ll happen.  Eventually.  (Maybe.)  Meanwhile, if it is something that he wants, into the A bucket it goes.  What TV show is on right now?  Sorry, mom and dad, but right now Looney Tunes Show is on and it’s a new show and I’ve got to see it right now and I know it’s being recorded on the DVR but it’s ON RIGHT NOW DON’T CHANGE THAT CHANNEL!!!!!!  (insert Stabby Face ala The Animated Woman.)

I guess, as NHL grows, I’ll be getting a taste of my own Type AB medicine.

Most people who know me would say that I’m very even tempered.  Perhaps to a fault, even.  I can take abuse after abuse and keep my calm while trying to resolve the situation.  Indeed, if we’re ever in a situation where we need an even head, I’m the person who makes the call.  When we need someone to be forceful and perhaps even raise their voice a bit, B handles it.  (See?  We compliment each other’s talents nicely!)

However, I have a confession to make.  I actually have a very bad temper.  A horrible one, in fact.  The problem is, my temper doesn’t usually flare against people unless they are very close to me.

Growing up, I was bullied mercilessly, but I rarely lost my temper.  Meanwhile, my sister could make me blow my top with a single word or action.  She was so good at it that she made it into an art form.  She would do something to me designed to make me lose my temper.  I would blow my top and get physical (e.g. push her down).  She would cry to my parents.  They would see her down and me standing over her and I would get punished.  At the time, I thought it was horribly unfair.  It still is, but I understand it more now that I’m a parent.  When you have 2 kids with conflicting stories as to what happened, the best you can do is rely on what you have seen occur.

Later, my sister got married and moved out.  My father became the person who pushed my buttons.  In this case, he didn’t mean to do so.  It was just that I was living back at home after the freedom of college and was having trouble following the “it’s my house, you’ll do it this way” rules.  So we’d fight (verbally, rarely physically), not talk to each other for a week and then (spurred on by my mother who hates conflict) would make up just in time for the next fight to begin.

Once I moved away from my parents, we got along much better.  He’ll still get on my nerves from time to time, but not to the “I’m not talking to you for a week” level.  Now, the people close to me are my wife and my kids.

I’ve written before about how I get quiet during arguments with B.  This is primarily because of my temper.  If I talk while I’m upset and my temper flares, I’m likely to make sweeping generalizing statements that are highly hurtful and not true at all.  This will not only hurt my case (nothing shatters your argument more than a poorly thought out personal attack), but will hurt B’s feelings.  While it might feel better in the short term to rant and rave rather than hold back, it’s better in the long term to calm down before discussing sensitive topics.

That leaves the kids.  Ideally, I’d like to say that I keep an even temper at all times and never yell.  This isn’t an ideal world, though.  I try to keep an even temper and not yell, but lately it seems like the boys have conspired to push my temper to the brink.

First, NHL will refuse to do what we tell him to do and insist that things have to be done the way he wants them done, WHEN he wants them done.  Then, JSL, having just seen his brother get in trouble, will repeat his brother’s actions perfectly.  NHL will yell and scream while JSL will make mocking faces.  My blood starts to boil as I raise my voice telling them to behave.  Finally, I’m yelling outright at them and sending them to their room.

When they’re in their room and I’m calming down, I’ll get hit by a streak of guilt.  They’re testing boundaries and need to be given firm reminders of what is and isn’t appropriate, but I feel awful when I yell at them.  I *want* to be the fun loving parent who plays with them all the time and has a blast.  I don’t want to be the rule-setting parent who comes down hard on them if they decide to scream and try to run away from us in the middle of a store.  However, I have to be both.  It’s a tricky line to walk sometimes.

I definitely have room for improvement in not letting my temper get the best of me.  I’ve had success in the past with the “repeating things three times” method.  (Tell them once.  Say “Second time… [repeated message].”  Then say “THIRD TIME! [repeated message]. Do NOT make me repeat myself AGAIN!”)  I need to force myself to rely on methods like that more than yelling.

Do you ever find yourself losing your temper with your children?  What do you do when this happens?

Some days, it just doesn’t pay to be a grown up.  I remember, back when I was a child, “expenses” was a fancy word which my dad might use to tell me why they couldn’t afford to buy me that new toy that I wanted (after I had gotten tired of the other once-new toys I had).  Money was a boring subject which only got interesting when you found some on the sidewalk.  As an added bonus, the perspective of monetary value was all skewed.  That’s a fancy way of saying that I thought I was rich when I found $10 on the ground.

As I got older, I began to understand more and more what money was and how important it could be.  To some degree, I was still protected from the harsh realities.  My parents paid the bulk of my tuition and other assorted costs.  The rest were paid by loans.  Oh sure, I’d need to pay those back, but to a college student, paying by loan (which wouldn’t need to even start being repaid until you graduated) was essentially the same as free.

Once I graduated, I decided to get a job.  This wasn’t so much because I needed the money, mind you, as because I wanted to accomplish something.  I had decided against graduate school because that seemed like more theoretical work and I wanted to make stuff.  Meanwhile, having left the college dorms behind, I moved back in with my parents.  Yes, I bought a car and thus had payments to make, but the lack of rent, repair costs and more kept me from feeling the harsh sting of reality.

Still later, I got married and B and I lived in an apartment.  I was finally in The Real World.  We made rent payments, paid our phone and cable bills and made sure all the other expenses were taken care of.  I saw that splurging on something for me made a dent in our saving account balance and so I tried to rein in my urge to splurge.

When we had NHL, of course, the expenses multiplied.  Suddenly, there was this little guy who almost literally ate money.  We needed money for clothes for him (which he went through all too quickly), money for diapers for him (which he’d fill up for us), and, once he began eating solid foods, money for food for him.

Next, we moved into a house.  This was the American Dream, right?  Own your own house?  Well, at times the Dream seemed more like a Nightmare.  Some days, it felt like everything in the house gathered in a great big conga-line waiting for its turn to break.  It felt like money went out for repair costs as fast as it came in.  Add in a second child and I often felt like I was running on a monetary treadmill.  One that someone turned up to level 20.  Jane!  Stop this crazy thing!

Why the sudden interest in money?  Well, as you know, we booked a trip to Disney World for just the two of us.  This is a splurge for us as our usual “time to ourselves” is a meal out (preferably someplace we have a coupon for) while B’s parents watch the kids.  Still, it’s our 10th anniversary so we figured we’d do something special.  Considering that our honeymoon was also in Disney World, this will, in some ways, be a second honeymoon for us.

Still, once the trip was booked, that conga-line marched on.  First, our bedroom TV went dead.  This was an old, CRT, non-HD television so it was bound to die eventually.  I lugged it downstairs and brought in a spare TV we had.  (Also, an old CRT, non-HD set.)  Except, that set was dead too.  So we had to buy a new TV.

Then, last night as I was shutting down and preparing to go to sleep, I tried to close my laptop.  I felt something odd, like it was snapping in two.  Alarmed, I opened it up and saw that it was coming apart.  Panicked, I booted it back up.  Luckily, it still worked.  I just couldn’t close the lid.  So I backed up my laptop, shut it down, and carefully put it to the side.  Now, I need to find a place to repair it and hope it doesn’t cost too much.  If it does, it might be cheaper to just buy a new laptop.  Either way, it’s another expense that we really didn’t need.

Some days, being an adult is overrated.  Can I go back to being a kid again?  Maybe just for a day?

If I ramble a bit today, it’s because I’ve been burning the midnight oil lately.  I came up with an idea for a Twitter application (more on that later) and, after a few false programming starts, suddenly found myself in a coding zone.  I would come up with new ideas and then implement them quickly.  As midnight approached each night, I would suddenly get a burst of energy.  My mind would race with ideas and bug-solving solutions.  I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep because I needed to “just code this one last thing… or maybe this one then I’ll go to sleep…”

Of course, I’m not 22 anymore.  I can’t code all night, sleep for four hours and then take on the new day full of energy.  Well, I can to a small degree.  Being a parent has shown me just how little sleep I can survive on.  When your baby wakes up every hour or two and stays awake for hours on end completely oblivious to the fact that it is 2:30 am, you find out just what sleep deprivation is like.  Luckily, our boys aren’t like that anymore (usually).  They go to sleep (albeit with various degrees of cooperation) by 8:30pm and sleep until 6am (when NHL, weekday or weekend, wakes me up to ask if it’s ok for him to go to the couch).

Still, I’m turning 36 in a couple of months.  Thirty-Six.  I’ve got to start realizing that I’m not a young man anymore.  After three late nights, I was really tired.  I probably should have gone to sleep early last night.  Still, I stayed up until midnight.  I might have even been fine with that, but other events conspired against me.

First, it was a call from work with an issue.  I helped as much as I could and then went to bed.  At 3 am, I got a second call from work.  At the same time, NHL woke up and asked to come into our bed.  After a half an hour, my call was done and I tried to get back into bed.

I got less than a half hour’s worth of sleep before JSL woke up crying.  He asked to come into our bed, but that just couldn’t happen.  One kid in our bed is a tight fit.  Two kids and there would be no room for us grown-ups.  So I asked him if he’d want to sleep with me in NHL’s bed.

I grabbed my pillow and cuddled with JSL in NHL’s bed but couldn’t fall asleep.  Right outside our window, some birds apparently decided that 4am was the perfect time to tweet and squawk incessantly.  This went on for about another half hour.  I finally fell asleep and slept fitfully for an hour and a half when B woke me up so I could go to work.

I think I’ll go to sleep at 9pm tonight… Unless I get some coding ideas for my new Twitter application.  Then maybe I’ll go to sleep an hour later. Or two hours.  Or… wait, how’d it get to be 1am so quickly?!!!

Ok, I know I said “more on that later” about my Twitter application, so here’s a teaser.  It’s an application designed to make it easier to manage your friends and followers.  I’m quite proud of the work I’ve done and can’t wait to release it.  My biggest obstacle right now is that I need to figure out a good name for it.  I’m hoping to find something catchy with an available dot com and Twitter handle.  I’m open to ideas if anyone thinks of anything catchy.  I’ll even credit you in the application when it launches.

Yesterday, the rain held off.  It was the perfect time to catch up on some yard work that needed to be done.  I mowed the lawn, put down some grass seed (our lawn still hasn’t recovered from the burst water pipe last year), trimmed some hedges, and potted some plants we had purchased the previous day.

While I was doing this, the boys were inside with B.  They could have come out, but they don’t like the noise that the lawn mower puts out.  JSL, who came out for a little bit, freaked out that every small flying bug was a bee coming after him.  Besides, I had set up NHL on my computer and he was having a blast playing Angry Birds, Gravity Duck and other games online.

So I had the time to myself.  It was nice.  I had peace and quiet and could think while I lugged heavy bags of dirt or pushed our mower up and down the yard.  I began to enjoy my “Dad’s Day Out” until it hit me.  This *was* the closest thing to a dad’s day out that I’ve had in awhile and I was doing yard work.  Some day out.

I began to think about how I’d rather spend a day out by myself.  Suppose B came up to me and told me that, this coming Sunday, she would take the boys and I could do whatever I wanted.  What would I do?

I don’t have any family or friends here and it often feels like I switch between “Worker Mode” (where I’m in an office all day with little to no social interaction beyond “we need you to do this for us”) straight to “Dad Mode” (where I try to cook meals, take care of my wife and kids, clean up, etc).  If I’m not in “Worker Mode” or “Dad Mode”, who am I?  Who is TechyDad when he’s not coding web sites or being a dad?  I’m not sure I have an answer for that question and it scares me.  I love being a web developer and I love being a dad, I don’t think it is too much to ask to be able to be “just me” from time to time. 

The dream I had last night isn’t helping my mood, either.  I was with B and my parents visiting my grandparents’ grave site.  Only, I didn’t know exactly where it was.  Somehow, I got separated from everyone.  As I tried to find them and the gravesite, they visited the grave and then prepared to leave.  I tried to explain to them (via cell phone) that I still needed to visit the grave, but they told me they’d leave without me if I didn’t get to the car.  Then, B came by to bring me back to the car over my objections.  I was almost in tears over being denied the opportunity to visit my grandparents’ grave when I woke up.

I’m not sure if the dream is somehow related to the “Who am I” feelings from the previous day, but this wouldn’t be the first time that I dreamt about something bothering me.  Between yesterday’s identity crisis and this morning’s bad dream, you’ll excuse me if I’m feeling emotionally on edge today.

Today is Wednesday. Usually, this would mean I’d be posting some fun or interesting photo I took for Wordless Wednesday. Sadly, I don’t have any photos to post. I don’t mean that I don’t have any fun or interesting photos. I mean I have *NO* photos at all.

The past week or so has been hectic.  Between room cleaning, snow and ice clearing, freelance work, a website I had an idea for and the various other “normal life” things that take up my time, I’ve had no time or energy to wield my camera as of late.

I’ve seen plenty of things that would make for great photos: colorful, cloud marked skies, snow covered trees, cars that haven’t been moved in weeks which are buried in snow, sparkling ice on a bush.  However, as I’m noticing these things I’m either driving (stopping in the middle of the highway to take a picture of the sky isn’t too safe) or running late (if I need to drop NHL off to school in 5 minutes, I’m not going to stop to take sparkling ice photos).

Hopefully, things will calm down in the next week or so and I can resume taking photos again.  I need to practice with this camera as much as I can because I’ll be taking tons of photos when we go to Disney World!

Last night was a rough night.  I was already tired from staying up too late.  So I vowed to get to sleep early.  Yeah, right.  I wound up watching TV and reading articles online until midnight.  Finally, I shut down and tucked myself in for a nice, long, uninterrupted sleep.  What was that about uninterrupted sleep?

JSL woke us up once with a coughing fit.  He and I have been having these for weeks now.  No fevers or any other symptoms.  Just really heavy, congested-sounding coughs.  And, of course, he refuses to take any medicine.  (And, of course, I keep forgetting mine.)

After the second JSL-cough-wakeup-call, I pulled JSL into our bed.  Then we had a restless sleep until around 5am when NHL woke up.  He had had a nightmare.  I encouraged him to go to the bathroom and then go back to sleep.  He woke back up (or, more accurately, shouted questions at us since we don’t think he really went back to sleep) at 5:30am, 5:45am, 6am, and 6:10am before we finally dragged our tired selves out of bed, set him up on the couch and I pulled myself into the shower to get ready for work.

Now I sit here exhausted and thinking, “I really need to get to sleep early tonight.”

Yeah, right.

Today was not my best day.  In fact, it was filled with FAIL after FAIL.  It started off promising enough.  I got NHL ready for school and myself ready for a day of training.  I dropped NHL off and began into work.  Halfway to work, I snapped out of “auto-pilot” mode realizing that I wasn’t going to my office today.  I was going to training!  And training was in the exact opposite direction.  Note: Face-palming while driving is *not* recommended.

After I got to training, things looked up.  I arrived on time and the training session was going well.  Then we broke for lunch and I went with my boss to a local sub place.  Exiting his car, I happened to look down at my two brown shoes.  My two MISMATCHED brown shoes.  I was mortified but resolved not to mention a word lest I suffer more embarrassment.  Instead, I went out of my way to (as subtly as possible) make sure both shoes weren’t in his field of vision at the same time.

At one point during the day, I had needed a password for a site.  Now, I usually carry around a USB flash drive with passwords and some other documents.  So I plugged that in and got my password.  After I arrived home, I realized that I couldn’t remember putting the flash drive away.  Yes, I had forgotten the drive at the training center.  I called and they were closed for the day.  I was able to reach my account representative who said he’d put it aside for me.

So, after all of that stress, I’m looking at the big To-Do list of things I should get done tonight and thinking “I *really* want to just veg out with some Kirby’s Epic Yarn until it’s time for bed.”  I think I’ll justify it by saying that any development work or housework I do tonight is potentially cursed.  Who knows?  I might delete the database instead of copying it or drop the dishes while trying to load the dishwasher.

Here’s hoping tomorrow is better.