Emma's first fishing trip

I grew up fishing, I thought I'd fish until the day I died. In fact, keeling over while reeling in a big one while in one's 90's is one of the better ways to go. Way back in the old-days when my Dad used to take me fishing I would think about taking my own kids fishing some day and telling them stories about their Grandpa.

Then, about five years ago, just before my wife got pregnant for the third time, the first two ended in miscarriage. My Dad died suddenly from complications from diabetes. Dealing with my Fathers loss and them the stress of another pregnancy, which thank God ended in a healthy baby girl, I gave up fishing for a season out of respect for my Dad. Then life got really complicated and simple pleasures like fishing and sleeping for that matter suddenly became less important. Occasionally I would see my tackle-box or my poles behind the hanging clothes in the closet and feel a pang of regret like neglecting a old friend, but still had no time or money for my old companions.

Then this Labor Day weekend a friend invited us to Crestline for the day at Lake Gregory and mentioned that her boys wanted to go fishing and if I had any tackle for Emma I should bring it. My first thought was of my friends gathering dust in the closet. Its amazing how good a old tackle-box can smell, dried fish guts and old bait are great for bringing up memories. Then I saw the date on my fishing licence, 2004, and realized its been way to long. I couldn't justify spending the money on a licence that expires in December or a ticket that was $500 10 years ago so Emma fished and I supervised. We didn't catch anything but we got to spend some father-daughter time with Em and tell her stories about her grandpa while we sat in lawn chairs at the lake shore. I like to think her grandpa is fishing in heaven, if there's no fishing in heaven its not heaven, and smiling knowing his granddaughter is following in his muddy bootprints.

First day of school

It finally happened, my daughter started kindergarten. Surprisingly there were no tears, from her anyway. I cant say the same for me. I was very proud and a little sad. Emma was very excited, she had new school clothes, back pack and supplies. She was so excited to be going to "Big Girl School". We all got up early and made pancakes, with sprinkles of course. Em got up and dressed with very little argument, watched a few cartoons and was ready at the door with her new back pack. We drove to school and had our first experience with school morning traffic, both auto and pedestrian. WOW, what a ride. People double parking, whipping in and out of non existent parking spaces, doors opening into traffic without warning and my personal favorite, parents walking their kids out into traffic without looking. Great role modeling Mom's.

OK, after taking our lives in our hands to get their we finally arrived at the gate. This is where tomorrow I'll be saying goodbye to Em, I'm already scared. But this being the first day we get to stay. The class room is very airy with big windows and lots of colors and things to see and do and best of all very clean and well maintained. It has been a very long time since I was in a kindergarten classroom but I remember my high school as being not very well maintained.

We all survived Emma's first day of kindergarten. Now we are well into the second week. Em has a new friend, I'm taking him home every day until September 21 when class goes until 1:30 and he can take the bus, his grandmother is very sweet old-school Filipino. Em wants to stay at her friends house all the time, now I know why, grandma spoils all her grand kids, Em and even me. I can't get out of their house without at least a soda and more often a meal.

We all really like Em's school, teachers, class mates and the parents we've met so far. We are joining the PTA and I am even running for the school over site committee. Somewhere along the line, my wife and I have grown up. It seem like just yesterday PTA didn't mean Parent Teacher Association but Pass The Alcohol

Emma's Head-trip

On a recent trip to my four year old daughter Emma's and my favorite hangout, Sam's Club, we play hide-and-seek in the aisle's, eat all the samples and really enjoy the pizza ad ice cream. Em was riding piggy-back when I realized just how far off the ground she really was, I go about six feet seven inches. I told her to get down because I was afraid she would let go of my neck and flip backwards and go head first into the concrete. She must have heard that as let go...and she did. Sure enough she went right over backwards onto the floor but since I let go of her feet as soon as she let go of my neck (or so I thought) I thought she went down on her feet and then fell backwards and hit her head. I was wrong.

A long, long time ago I was a EMT so I know just enough to be dangerous, I did a quick half-assed assessment and determined she was in no immediate danger. Again, I was wrong. Thinking she just had a bad bump on her head I took her home, put ice on it and checked her level of conscienceless every fifteen minutes or so. A few hours later my wife Vicky came home and Em was in pain and somewhat lethargic which I attributed to the fall, fear and crying. Then she started to vomit. After we beat it to the ER, barely slowing down for red lights and passing two police cars and a fire truck (not really, but we did make it in record time). They did a CAT scan and determined that she not only had a skull fracture but a slight amount of inter cranial bleeding. They suggested sending her to Children's Hospital of Orange County ( C.H.O.C.) and of course we agreed. C.H.O.C. sent their own ambulance with their own crew, mom rode in front while Em got to watch a movie in the back and I followed in our car.

When we arrived, Vic went with Em and I parked then had to find my way to the front entrance. A very nice security guard asked me how I was and the first thing that came to my mind is how the hell do you think? My daughter has a fractured skull! But thankfully before I spoke I realized I was doing much better than many of the parents there that night and said so. After that realization I felt strangely calmer. I went up to the I.C.U. and spent the night with my wife and daughter on a pull out bed made for people no larger than about four foot eight inches.

We were allowed to bring her home the next day, Friday. She vomited and complained of a terrible headache thought the night and walked with her shoulders hunched until Sunday but when we saw her pediatrician on Monday she was completely back to normal. He assured us after the first forty eight hours we were pretty much home free. We still have to see the neurosurgeon in two weeks but I feel very confident.

George Carlin once said, "There are no innocent victims, we are all guilty of something." I'm inclined to agree but feel that doesn't apply to kids. Kids are the only true innocents in this world. I can't help but wonder if God was aiming for me and missed. No, God doesn't make mistakes but He does give grace. After the way I have lived my life I deserve a cracked skull, not a daughter as wonderful as Emma.

Sorry

First and foremost I need to say I am sorry to all the stay-at-home-mom's who may see this. If I have already stopped you on the street and apologized, you get a 2fer. I used to believe, with all the conviction of somebody who has never been there, that stay-at-home-moms had a great deal. Play with the kids, watch TV, go to the park and sometimes do a little housework. OK mom's, done laughing? I was WRONG!! Oh so wrong.
I have worked as a bricklayer, heavy lifting and long hours in the heat and cold. A nurse, more heavy lifting and long hours with the addition of cleaning (and sometimes dodging) various bodily fluids and occasionally fending off angry family members and confused patients. And the one I thought was the worst, life coach for developmentally disabled adults with behavior problems. Still more heavy lifting, still dodging fluids and solids (sometimes while driving), still fending off clients with the added fun of angry citizens. Only in that case I was out in the world with no back-up.
When my wife became pregnant and we decided I would do the Mom thing because she had a better job with better insurance, I jumped at what I thought would be a vacation. Again, I was wrong. At a "real" job you get to go home after your shift. My job is waiting for me when I wake up in the morning and my shift does not end until after bedtime stories are read. At a job you are responsible for your work. At my job I am responsible for a life. At Farmer's Market in La Verne last year I let my daughter Emma dangler her feet in the fountain in front of the University, I should have seen this coming, she jumped in. OK it's a warm night she'll be fine, until she starts screaming her foot hurts, BLOOD! Did she step on a rusty pipe? The next thing I know I'm running down a crowded street with a screaming, bleeding three year old in my arms. Funny, nobody asked what the hell I was doing. It's good to be six foot seven inches and change when one is in mama bear mode. Everything turned out fine, she stepped on a piece of glass and I disinfected and bandaged the cut when I got to my truck. Now she loves to hear the story of "Emma's fount ion", I think she earned the right to have it named after her. At least in our house.
So, once again let me say how sorry I am for thinking mom's have it easy. This is absolutely the hardest damn job I have ever done. And the most rewarding one that I wouldn't change or trade for anything.

The Terrible Tooth

Like many adults I am afraid of the dentist. But unlike most I am terrified of the dentist, but at least I admit to it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a coward who faints at the site of blood. In fact, I like to consider myself as fairly tough. I have survived two knee replacements and one hip replacement surgeries, numerous dirt bike crashes, job site accidents, including one where I tore my lower leg open on a water pipe. It was just like in anatomy textbook, I could see the bones, muscles and yellow blobs that turned out to be fat. YUCK. That time I simply put the flap back, taped my leg closed with duct tape (there is a use that's not on the label), cleaned my tools and then drove back to Glendora fron Northridge. And not one but two bouts with MRSA. The round MRSA scar is on my side, I show it to people and tell them it is a mistake to teach your woman to shoot. They get all wide eyed and ask if she shot me, i just smile and say yea but she missed, that's from a infection. So far everyone has laffed. I have a lot of scars and a story to go with every one. Some have more than one story, the truth and the one that's fun to tell and I hope fun to hear.
Having a wife, two daughters and enough school loans to pay for a very nice car, money is tight at my house. But a abscessed tooth is a perfect way to get a infection in a prosthetic joint which could cost me one of my new knees, hip, a leg or even my life. So when I first noticed a pain in my tooth in December I naturally figured (hoped) it was refered pain from the tooth opposite, which had a large cavity. The dentist soon assured me that not only do I have a huge cavity but a infected root-canal in the tooth opposite. I had a root-canal redone a few years ago, it cost $400, hurt like hell and lasted less than a year. I like walking around even more than chewing so I opted to have the offending tooth pulled. Sure said the dentist, it will cost $700. After I got up off the floor I explained to him what he could kiss for $700. My mother-in-law and wife go to a dentist in Mexico, I know what your thinking, I thought the same way. So I went with them to show them what a mistake it was to go to a third world country for dental work. I went in there like Lee Strobel (The Case For Christ) would go into a church, I used to be a nurse so I looked at their techniques, autoclave, diplomas, asked a lot of loaded questions and finally became a convert. This particular dentist was not only very professional but incredibly gentle and patient with my phobia. Needless to day now I'm a regular patient. It is a long drive but if I can get the mother-in-law to drive...not so bad.
Because I was afraid, needed a passport and simply did not have the time I waited from December to July to get things fixed. When I said the first infected root canal hurt like hell I was lying. This hurt like HELL, the other was a stubbed toe. After 3 hours, a gallon of anaesthetic and lots of reassuring words and distracting stories it was still killing me and would not come out! Finally I took hold of the armrests and assured my 5 foot 6 inch dentist there would be no repercussions from his 6 foot 7 inch patient, just do it. And he did. I swear that tooth had roots like mammoth tusks.
The moral of the blog is of course not to let things go no matter how scary and more importantly, do not judge a book by its cover. Or a dentist by the city he practices in.
If anyone is interested my dentist's E-mail is DrSolorio@ DrSolorio.com

Waiting room or time warp

I had the unpleasant experience, again after many years, of having to wait in a hospital waiting room. While waiting for my beloved wife to come out of surgery, elective surgery can be just as scary, I was taken back to the many waiting rooms of my childhood. My mother had congenital heart problems and spent a lot of time in and out of hospitals. Although these problems eventually caught up with her several years ago and I have not had to sit in that particular Purgatory since, but it is still hard.

They are all different and yet all the same. Uncomfortable chairs, old magazines, a TV bolted to the wall that never shows anything interesting, the same worried expressions on different people with the same thoughts and fears and the most common thread, time has stopped. There are seldom windows and 10 minutes or 10 hours feels the same, like years. Over the years I have developed the skill of sleeping in a chair or in extreme cases sleeping on the waiting room floor, although, as a former nurse I believe that any floor in a hospital is the dirtiest place one can find. Sleeping is obviously important and sometimes an escape, waking up and not knowing where you are and then the anxiety comes crashing in when you remember where you are is terrible.
My wife is now fine, sore but getting better I still feel for anybody caught in that particular corner of Hell where time does not exist and all one can do is wait and worry.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Copyright or Cheatingright?
After reading the articles and other blogs I must agree with just about everyone else, although I still hate to conform, that copyright laws are more confusing than the tax code. And a lot harder to enforce.Even though I have knowingly broken the law by stealing hotel towels (some are sooo soft), eating grapes in the grocery store and even copying CDs and videos I have never done it for financial benefit. It seems to me that's what the copyright laws are all about, MONEY!!!! And in fact the laws make criminals out of ordinary people by crimes committed out of ignorance. I can think of several incidents since I have been at ULV where I have used pictures off the web in presentations and I suppose the argument can be made that doing something for a grade could be misidentified as financial gain, but that was never my intent. But at least I can say I never violated the law on the Internet while in high school. Probably because there was not Internet when I was in high school. Ha Ha.Some of the sites like Creative Commons have great intentions but are handicapped by the confusing wordings of the law and in reality are not very helpful. Both the public and the lawyers need to be better educated on this subject. It is wrong to use someone else's work without credit but when you put something on the Internet for the whole world to see it is going to be used for better or worse by somebody.I guess it all comes down to personal responsibility. If you don't want somebody to use your stuff, don't leave it where they can get it.

https://creator.zoho.com/vmaliszewski/food/#

Crystal Blogg

In nineteen seventy seven when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was in junior high school one of my teachers predicted the future of education. He claimed that when our kids were in school the desks world recognize the particular student and automatically mark them present or absent, every student would have their own computer terminal at their desk tied into the master classroom computer and all the students information would be stored on punch cards. Punch cards looked a lot like a Scan-Tron forms but were thick with holes that the computer read. Of course this was back when only NASA and big companies had computers, they were huge and slow and one needed a engineering degree to operate one. I image things will change quite a bit because of new technology, some bad changes but mostly good. Probably the biggest social change is that technology is making the world smaller and better known. Even if a person living in La Verne California has never met a person living in Baghdad Iraq, they can still read each others blogs and maybe by some miracle have a little less hostility toward each other. Hey, its a start. Students having laptops is certainly a wonderful thing. Anybody remember encyclopedia books, or having to run to the library to do research? All that is now at our fingertips and with a Wi-Fi equipped laptop we can access it almost anywhere. I like to imagine in a perfect world students from anywhere in the world would be able to attend a virtual classroom at any school, anywhere in the world at little or no cost. Students in third world countries with Nicholas Negroponte's OLPC program could attend a virtual classroom at Harvard, MIT or even ULV.

Technology

I was raised a bricklayer like my older brother, my father his father and his father before him. But this is truly a whole new world and I am scrambling to keep up. My daughter is 4 and she will never own a record, a film camera or a rotary phone. What really brought it home is when we saw a typewriter in my insurance agents office and, at FOUR YEARS OLD, she asked me where the screen was! The YouTube video was just a reminder of how fast things are moving and will move in the future. I have a responsibility to keep up with technology for myself, my daughters and my future students. There are so many things we now take for granted. Remember the old days when we left the house with a wallet/purse and our keys? Now we have those and a cell phone, Blackberry, pager or Nextel. We get in our cars and turn on the navigation system when we used to use a Thomas Guide. These things are great but I feel we have a serious responsibility to ourselves and the next generation NOT to be lulled into a false sense of security by technology that can break-down. I always carry a small tool kit, a flashlight, maps and change for a payphone in my truck and I teach my daughters they need to do the same. We are on a E-ticket ride but even Walt Disney knew that rides occasionally break down.
As far as the weeks activities go, I am a little worried about making things work. I keep sending pictures from my cell phone to Gmail but they seem to get lost along the way but I'll figure it out. One way or the other. If resiliency is a class requirement I think I'll be OK. Surviving two knee replacements, a hip replacement, two daughters and ten years of marriage. I think I qualify as resilient. But really, I've never been happier. I love my family, the sun rises on my wife and sets on my daughters. Or vis-a-versa.