The Job

There was a small scare recently with regards to my wife's job. A little one with mine also, but happily both seem to have worked out fine. First mine, because the story is shorter.

The school district has two positions with my job title, and the other person has decided that the time has come, after over 30 years, for her to retire. So her job is being eliminated after June, which is the end of the fiscal year. The only reason this could affect me is if she changes her mind on retirement, which would then push her to my job since she has seniority, but there are hopes for me to have my job reclassified in order to account for all the web development that I do for the district.

My wife's job is going to be eliminated, however, there is a new position being created that will oversee two other people putting her into a supervisory position. There is no pay raise at this point, but she'll be pushed into a new bracket. Right now she's actually being paid above what her position is capped at. She will be working some nights and weekends now, but this will allow her to spend more time with the kids on school days and take them and pick them up occasionally. Which is very exciting for the kids who are almost always shuttled to and from their schools by our parents. Except for the very special occasions where either my wife or myself will pick them up. So what started as stressful news ended up being happy news. Nothing will be official until around the 23rd of next month and as I understand it, the actual job won't change until the 7th of March. So we'll see how things go until then.

In other news, baseball is starting up again. I should get my team on Tuesday, which is the season premiere event of Lost. I gave an interview to the local paper about the new season about a week ago. I talked to the reporter for about 20 minutes, and out of that 20 minute conversation, one line made it into the article. It's kind of disappointing, but I've known the reporter for a while now and have had my fun being in the paper a few times now. And since I don't actually subscribe to the paper, I really shouldn't complain at all.

And just to document this, Little E is still determined that we will be getting a dog soon. We'd love to get a dog, but if it was up to her, one would come home with me today. I think she still wants to name it Sam Lightswitch. Which I guess could work as a girl dog name also.

Finger

Post number 200. And to mark the occasion. Some photos of the marks on my finger. These are up by request, so a couple warnings. One, these are blurry, they were taken with my phone, and it's not great at close-ups. Two, they could be disturbing if you're really, really, really squeamish. So here they are. Four images of my finger injury.

Taken the night of the injury in poor lighting, but I was lightheaded and woozy and didn't take the time to go to a more well lit area. I had stopped the bleeding at this point.

48 hours after getting my stitches in. This is the first time I removed the bandage that was put on at the hospital. You can see the stitches fairly well here.

Took this one in the hospital just before getting the stitches out. You can really see the improvement in the finger here. I was told just three days prior to this by another doctor, so seven days after getting them put in,  "Wow, you're healing really well, it looks great. Come back in three days to have those taken out."

Later that night. My finger, stitch free.

So I hope you enjoyed this little scrapbook journey. And if you didn't, not my fault. I didn't do this for your enjoyment. I really didn't.

But to end on a high note, here's the boy with his winning car, and all the loot he got at the derby. Three ribbons, trophy, and a medal. Not bad for his first time.

On The Mend

Well, my hand is healing pretty well, I'm typing a bit better with a few more fingers, the car is no longer in need of cutting, and the first paint job has been applied. Things are moving along fairly smoothly. The cutting of the car was done by my dad, as my wife and my mom both are trying to keep me away from sharp things for a while. I think my dad's in on it too. Even though I learned how to injure myself with common objects from him.

We are on a bit of a time crunch now with the car as we're supposed to take it to somebody's house this Friday to have it weighed, measured and impounded until the race on Saturday. I figure that if he doesn't win something, then I must be a fairly big failure, since I've literally put my sweat and blood into this little block of wood.

In Stitches

Well, I made it over 30 years without a broken bone or stitches. The broken bone streak is still intact, but, the stitches streak ended last night.

I was working on my sons Pinewood Derby car with a wood chisel. I was almost done with it when it slipped through the back of the car and through a couple inches of my hand. It started bleeding pretty good, and because my daughter was playing in the back of my van in the garage at the time I cut myself, I ran into the house yelling for my wife to go get her. My wife came in and followed the trail of blood to the bathroom where I was pretty near passing out and asked if I still had my finger, so apparently, there was a lot of blood, because my wife doesn't freak out that easily. So I got a towel on it and was able to stop the bleeding after a couple minutes. My wife called the advice nurse and after talking to me, they gave me an appointment at the minor injury clinic at Kaiser. I cut myself around 6 or so, and the appointment for us was at 7. My wife called her parents, who were over by our house trying to escape the Texans currently holding her house hostage, and they agreed to come watch the kids so I could be driven to the hospital. There was nobody at the minor injury clinic when we got there so we got right in and they put some numbing stuff on my hand and took my blood pressure on the arm without the gash and sent me in to see the doctor in the same room I had just recently taken my son to for his foot. I was far less anxious this time even though it was my own hand that was going to get that shot of Lydocane and stitches.

Now,since you can't see my hand and I don't think you want to see the picture I took with my phone, I'll describe it's location. If you were to lay your left hand on it's palm, and then notice where your index fingers knuckle is, the knuckle closest to your hand, the cut runs from near the palm most of the way up to the knuckle, and about a half inch deep, according to the doctor. But also according to the doctor, I was lucky enough not to sever any tendons or nerves and I still have full motion of my finger. I also have four stitches holding it together now. It was going to be three, but in conversation with the doctor, he asked me what my lucky number was. I said 14. I don't know if that really my 'lucky' number but it's a favorite of mine. He said that made my lucky number 5, because 1 + 4 = 5. H sait that there wouldn't be that many stitches. He said that three might be enough, but since 4 was his lucky number, that's how many I got.

I didn't get a pic of the stitches right after he put them in, but I wish I would have, since I have to leave the bandage on until tomorrow night. But I'll take a pic when I change the dressing and hopefully it's not getting infected right now. It does hurt now, but it's kind of a burning sensation with some bruisish aching with it. I can't type really well because I can only really use one hand to do it. Otherwise, thankfully, I'm fine. I hear I'm going to get a scar from this. It will be a lasting, loving reminder of my sons first Pinewood Derby, which is  much better trophy than anything he could win at the race next weekend.

Explanation

So it's a day or so later than I said it would be, but it's been busy lately. Seriously, it has been. Not just making excuses. This past week I was off from work was great. We went somewhere everyday, and since my darling wife had to work during the week, most of these trips were just me and the kids. We saw Princess and the Frog last Sunday, went to Pump It Up on Monday with my wife's brother-in-law and his kids, golfing Tuesday and Wednesday, where I spent money to have Little E hit range balls off into the distance with her brand new pink putter. Thursday took us to Chuck E Cheese, we went bowling and Big T bowled a 99, which is his new high score, and then we went up to Big Trees with my parents, which is where those pics came from.

My parents brought their dog, Tule, up with them, and she'd never been to the snow before. She's only 8 months old, though. One of the greatest things I discovered about her is shown in one of those pictures, where I'd make snowballs and toss them to her and she'd leap into the air to catch them. She also pulled the kids around on their sleds, Iditarod style. And that face that Little E's making? That's her Evil Queen face. She also used it at Pump It Up when she became Queen of the Mountain after fending off a boy with a pugil stick. She raised her hands and slowly turned to see if anyone else would dare try to remove her from her perch. No one else did.

And my wife's sister and brother-in-law and their adopted twin sons are still living with her parents. This is two months now. And as Thumper said, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." So I guess that's all I have to say about that.

No Explanation

Today some fun pics of our day at Big Trees in the snow. Tomorrow (hopefully) some explanations and a little report on what we did over our Christmas Vacation.