Black Friday a HUGE disappointment

I went out early with my wife to hit up a few Black Friday sales. We headed out as an entire family excited for what we were going to be able to grab together and hoping to have a bonding experience. The race started out at Wal Mart where we stood in line hoping to grab a few big title DVD's for 2 bucks, No real issues here, That is UNTIL I see a woman over in the gaming section who had been pushed down, She is laying on the ground across a cardboard pile of Xbox games, the contents of her purse, meds, phone, etc scattered across the floor.. I could not believe what I was watching as people attempted to roll her over to get to the games underneath her and nobody stepped up to offer their assistance to this woman who was very obviously in need of someones helping hand.. I could barely  make my way over through the crowd of people throwing elbows and walking over anyone who didn't have the strength to push through the crowd. I didn't make it and luckily a few good people stepped up and helped the woman to her feet. I doubt that she got the items she was after. My only thought at this moment: "When did the need to save a few bucks on a game overcome our natural human ability to show compassion to someone in need".. I was literally blown away..  The next terrible experience came as my wife and I left electronics and headed over to TOYS to find an item that my daughter had fallen in love with and sat down in the isle to play with for 10 minutes a few days prior, It took us standing for 30 minutes before we were able to move at all towards the toys section because people with carts were blocking the isles and would not move their carts stating that they "Don't want to lose their place in line" This is where my wife stepped up, and I love it! "MOVE" she yelled, a variety of negative comments came her way about how shouting wasn't going to do any good, They didn't want to lose their place in line for items that wouldn't be going on sale for another 2 hours... An older woman in front of us in line had been asking very politely to have a few inches to squeeze through for several minutes and nobody gave her any attention, It wasn't until my wife shouted that people began to recognize another simple need.. It didn't take much to move the carts and let those of us who just wanted to get through room to squeeze by. I stepped in when people started yelling at my wife saying that "Shouting wasn't needed" by saying something along the lines of "Well, Asking politely wasn't working very well for any of us, Was it?"
 Wal Mart on Black Friday: I won't EVER be returning.. That is unless I return as an EMT on a Truck or Ambulance..

Next we went and joined my brother in line at Shopko, We had fun standing in the freezing weather for the next hour and a half waiting for the doors to open, It wasn't until about 10 minutes until the doors opened that I again saw a general lack of respect or decency by people attempting to save a buck or two.. The lines wrapped around the building in both directions. We were near the front, At 10 minutes to, families and people started gathering in the parking lot in front of the doors giving no respect to anyone who had been standing in the freezing cold waiting in line.. People were getting roudy and a chant was started by everyone in line. "Get In Line! Get In Line"... The people in line behind us grew more roudy and I saw several people come up and start calling people out: The doors opened and the rush came in, My pregnant sister stepped up, stood there and started calling people out directly.. I wanted to stay there and make sure that she was going to be OK but I was being pushed through the door: My wife stopped in front of me, planted her feet, and put both hands up on the standing theft detector systems she was standing between. In front of her 3 young girls had been pushed over and she was trying to protect them.. In the meantime and in an attempt to join my wife in slowing the crowd, my hand was smashed between the doors and is still swollen. Once inside the madness seemed much more organized than Wal Mart, Still I was disappointed at the reaction of people in general..
 We finished our shopping experience at Kohls with the family, standing in line and laughing at jokes we were telling and this was the best experience we had all night long- Perhaps due in part to the fact that door-busters were already inside.. We were at Kohls for what seemed like endless hours but made friends with the people in line around us, Overall: Kohls wasn't bad, Just terribly boring..

To top it all off: I was on-call through out the remainder of the day- Every ambulance in the valley was out simultaneously due to a huge demand for EMS services, I ran several calls related to Black Friday, and a few other general medicals.. I'll sign up to cover EMS for Black Friday any day, But count me out in the future when it comes to any shopping!

Adventures in Parenting, Fatherhood

I sit here at my computer trying to stay focused and working, I'm quite tired. As a Father, I don't have the shall we say "Goods" to feed my baby girl, So I don't have to wake up every time she is hungry to feed her, I can generally stay comfortable and sometimes even sleep right through a night feeding. I make up for this time every few days when Princess decides she doesn't want to go to sleep, Take last night for example, Princess had just finished feeding at 1 AM and didn't want to go back to sleep, Empress had already been awake feeding her for the last 45 minutes, so I took my turn playing with my daughter. The first 15 minutes are great every time because she's just eaten and is happy, I place her between my legs looking back at me, and we have some Daddy Daughter time. When she gets fussy, I pick her up and start making the rounds, I have no idea how many laps I make at night walking from one side of our apartment to the other but it keeps my girl comfortable and happy until she can fall asleep again so I don't mind doing it one bit. (Maybe I should get a step counter) We walked from 1:15 until 2:45 AM when she finally fell back to sleep. I had a great post filled with humor that I was thinking about as we were pacing back and forth, Then I fell asleep and I can't remember it much anymore.

During our walking time last night, I went to change her diaper, As I was doing this I didn't really think too much about making sure that she was done pooping, I simply stuck my finger in the side of her diaper to see if she was wet or poopy as we were walking and my finger came out dirty, So we headed to our changing station and I began my duties. As soon as I removed her diaper, She pooped again, (Now: These are baby poops) Baby poops have a watery consistency, It splattered all over our changing station, washing machine, mirrors and a few other surrounding structures, Laughing, but trying not to wake my sleeping wife in the room next door, I cleaned up and laughed at the thought of this now happening to me because it had already happened to Empress once before.

My wife Empress and I are learning parents and we love every minute of it. We couldn't possibly love our baby girl more, Nor could we possibly be a happier family at the moment. I firmly believe in Karma, I think that if someone does good in the world around them that good will return to them. Princess has been sleeping very well during the night, However I'm afraid that Empress and I may have jinxed ourselves by boasting about how well she sleeps, Instead of the 4-5 hours of nightly sleep we've been boasting about, Last night we only got about 2 at a time, Still... I wouldn't change it for the world! I've never felt this way before. Fatherhood is amazing. As far as my cussing is going from the last post, I think I'm doing well, With one exception, I went golfing with a buddy of mine and I didn't play well... I'll leave the rest up to the imagination. I must admit though: I don't think that time on the golf course should count.

Cursing: What's in a word?

With parenthood, I have recently noticed come LOTS of changes.. Changes within our lifestyle, as well as changes from within.. First off, I apologize to some of my readers, Recently I haven't had much to blog about except for parenthood because as stated in a few recent posts, My wife and daughter are still the only thing that I can manage to think about. I tried to bring a bit of Humor to this post with this Jeopardy Photo taken off the TV and a few small stories:



One of the changes that I'm trying to make myself is to cuss less. As a Firefighter, EMT, Husband and Father, I've developed quite a mouth, I have lots of friends and family that cuss and honestly, I'm personally not really even offended at the crudest of words when I hear them anymore, I've even found myself using them from time to time. (I don't use this as any kind of an excuse) Sadly, I doubt that this will last very long. I'll certainly keep you all posted.

In a nut-shell, I've recently made this decision to try and cuss less because of my baby girl, I don't want her growing up in a home where she will learn these words. I'd hate for some of my girls first words to be "Shit" or "Damn". I don't make it a goal for myself to quit swearing entirely however because I've made that goal a few times before and fallen quite short. I don't know if I'll ever be able to quit entirely. For me, I guess I've yet to find anything that helps me vent my frustration in a moment's notice like throwing out a few cuss words will, Even better, I think they drive home the extra emphasis when trying to make a serious point.

In a short story, When I was just a kid, My Dad built cabinets in a shop in our back yard, While hanging out with him in the shop, he was moving a cabinet from one spot to another and dropped it in between. The cabinet broke, scaring the hell out of me, and I heard my dad scream the words "Damn-it!" Later that morning, I was back inside the house playing with my set of tool-toys Dad had bought me and I purposely dropped them while screaming like Dad "Damn-it!" Mom wasn't very happy, and I got to scrub out my Dad's tongue with soap. These memories make me smile, But this is what I'd like to try to avoid with my baby girl, I don't like the taste of soap but I think if I managed to teach my girl a cuss word, Like my Dad did, I'd have to pay the repercussions for it.

I have a high deal of respect for people who don't curse. For example: I have a close friend who broke his ankle in several places in a freak accident while hiking in the wilderness, My other friend and I managed to make a stretcher out of our sleeping bags to get him from where we were at to a point where it was flat and near the trail, There I provided what limited medical care I could for him while waiting for our other friend who had run out of the trail to get in touch with Search and Rescue to return and get him in the late late hours of the night. His ordeal lasted for 8 hours before S&R were finally able to get him out of the canyon and into a hospital bed. I bring this up because he went through all of this antagonizing pain all without swearing or cursing Once!

Everywhere but the diaper.

I have a great wife! Now that I'm back to working everyday and our baby girl still isn't sleeping through the night, I offer several times before going to sleep to wake up and take the baby if she needs to be awake for a while. However "Empress" (My Wife) knows how much I love my sleep and never wakes me, She leaves that up to our baby. I get to spend most of my time with our girl during the evening when Mom decides she needs a nap, Although I recently slept through this encounter at 3 AM, She shared this story with me last night, It made me smile, and also wish in a strange way, that I was a part of it. Perhaps its just the story telling itself that makes me wish so.

We have a sheepskin rug next to our bed, Its nice to wake up in the morning and rub our toes on it. At some point during the night, Empress woke up both to feed and change Princess's diaper. "Being half asleep and changing diapers does not mix well" She told me in the morning. Curious, I began to wonder what had happened, and as I looked down I noticed that our sheepskin rug wasn't there anymore. Apparently, As the story was told to me; Empress, being exhausted from an already long night picked Princess up to feed her, and rock her back to sleep all without noticing that one leg of the diaper wasn't secured and it was loose. Empress put Princess back to sleep set her down in her bassinet, she felt something wet as she walked towards the bathroom to wash her hands but didn't think anything of it until she made it to the bathroom and noticed poop all over the side of her shirt, Empress then returned to the baby, picked her back up and noticed just a LITTLE bit of poop on her clothes but none on her body and none in her diaper.. This poop managed to make it ONLY onto Mom and our Sheepskin Rug as she was trying to rock Princess back to sleep.

Our rug now sits in the hallway, Folded up, We're not really sure how one gets a sheepskin rug clean, We'll most likely have to send it out.. Now Honey, I know you're probably reading this, Let me know if I have the story correct, Since I slept through this whole story, To my own knowledge I have it correct, Also... As I say each night. Feel free to wake me, Although I've also had my share of being up with Princess during the night, I'll happily do it more often. I'd love to take my turn staying up with Princess at night. Its like "Shift Work" I LOVE being a Dad and I still can't get enough of my baby girl!