Yes, there really is an upside to the stomach flu circulating around these parts. The upside is being the one who doesn’t have it. My oldest suffered from it for about 12 hours. My wife got it for 60 hours. My youngest and I are so far unscathed. Sure, this meant some crazy frantic mornings and amazingly busy daily schedules of running around both in and out of the office. I even suffered through partially sleeping on the couch one night as a preventative measure. I say partially because of ll the times I woke up in the night even with the sleep meds.

The upside to all that mess is the extra time I got to spend with my daughters. There was plenty of whining and plenty of all that comes with having a 5yo and 4yo girl. Just not a lot of it. There really never is. What I did get was loads of extra time to play, bond, and dream of being a stay at home parent. Yep, I dream of it. All you out there who don’t have to work every day are so very lucky to be in that position. Sure, it’s lots of work and you don’t get paid money for it, but it’s way more rewarding than the paycheck I get every other week. And this week I did both, I was Mr. Mom and I went to my full time job. At the end of the day, I was exhausted. Tired in a good way though, tired from keeping the house clean, the kids fed and clean, and putting food on the table.

I wouldn’t do it forever, I know eventually the kids will just be consumed with their school inspired social lives. Until then though, that would be a great career. I’ve learned via my last 4 employers how important it is to need to enjoy what you work on, not just what you do. I entered the non-table waiting world 13 years ago with a programming job in a dot com. Well, it became a dot com 2.5 years after but it always was a dot com. The company dealt with auto parts. Tremendously boring. Except when we sponsored the M&M’s car in the big Nascar series. I got to manage it and write about it because I was the only one who knew anything about the sport. That was the best 4 months of my career. However, the mad men that ran it started losing cash and I was one of the first to go.

They did me a favor. I had a new job within the week. This time I worked for a theme park ticketing company. Well, theme parks and other access control venues. I was there just over 3 years. This was the most fun I’ve had at a job and it was as hard to leave as Charlie Sheen leaving half-way through a bingo game. I got to work with theme park people every day and the place itself had people I still talk with today, 5 years after I left. I miss that place and the people there, but financially I had to make a change.

Which brings me to where I spent the last 5 years, minus one in the middle. A health care company. Home health care services to be exact. I couldn’t tell you what any of the stuff I write code around actually does, save for a few obvious things and some stuff my dad once had. What I can tell you is it’s insanely boring. Add my current gripes I’ve written about in the past and it makes for very uncomfortable moments when you just want to scream and run away. Except if I did I wouldn’t have a place to run to. Yeah, I’ve been there for 5 years because the money is ok and the environment is top notch except the whole windows thing. Meaning we have no windows. Seriously, none…zero…zip…except for the lobby. The atmosphere is casual for the most part and that makes it easy to be comfortable.

The moral after all that is quite simple. Anyone that says you need to love what you do is only telling you half the story. You need to have a genuine interest in what you are doing it for. So I am keeping my eyes peeled not for anything. But for something I want to make better or enhance or learn something more about. Not because I have to, but because I want to.

Wow, I totally drifted off my original topic there. Sorry about that. What I meant to add was this great picture of my girls dancing to a performance I have on my DVR of en Folds playing a duet with Guster.

Oh yeah, one more thing.

So Saturday we had a protein spill at the most magical place on Earth. Another one that night but all was quiet on Sunday and Monday. This morning though, the misses exploded from both ends and totally wrecked a day in the state of sunshine and happiness. I hope to God I don’t get this crap next, I really want nothing to do with it. I’m busy enough at work without adding more sickness. Seriously, for the past 2 days I was running around like a mad man. Except yesterday, yesterday I had the pure joy of sitting in a meeting for 4 hours. 4 fucking hours that only had 60% of it stay on the topic of the meeting itself. It was awful.

All this crap kind of gets me down. Especially with a weeks worth of meetings scheduled ahead of me. I need a pick me up, something positive.

Last night at my soccer game we fought to a 1-1 draw and I scored the goal. I felt pretty good but didn’t really celebrate the goal or the great effort from my team.

Somethings askew right now and the ultra sensitivity to stupid things really bother me. I know I know, I got nothing to complain about. Blah blah blibbity blah. If you have ever had a bout with depression, you’ll know it never really goes away. Ever. It’s a daily, sometimes hourly battle and there are times where you struggle and times when you thrive.  The last few days have been a struggle. Especially with the events of today. Got up, had 20 minutes to get 2 kids ready for school, get them to school, then get myself to work. Did I mention work was crazy? As in from 9:20 until I left at 1:00 58 emails crazy. I’m not even kidding. Shit was blowing up left and right and it’s all calm now, but still… Then it was pick up the kids and take care of them and their sick mama the rest of the day. Thankfully, work was quiet after I left and I did get to miss 2 meetings today.

Anyway, I don’t want to e a whiner here. I have 2 beautiful kids, a wonderful but presently sick wife, a job that pays me anything and a roof over our head. Our bills are paid, although now I’m totally broke until next Friday. The weather….perfect.

However when you get into one of these struggle modes, nothing that is positive ever stands up to you. The negative always consumes your mind and how poorly you seem to do everything else. A look in the mirror and only your imperfections stand out. My self image is poor to begin with so I see more than usual. A reflection on your day and only the mistakes are remembered. Only the tears or complains when you denied your kids something, anything, no matter the valid reason. I’ve lived with this way of life for a very long time but I am trying to work on it. Off and on with therapy, currently on, so I’m not doing nothing. Still though, it’s the failures that linger the longest. The lack of ability to release real emotion also hurts and builds up and that is not healthy. I’m working on that too, but that’s the hardest. Don’t want to burden anyone with my crap. Other people have real problems to contend with compared to mine. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been a bit more chatty here lately.

What do I need? want? I dunno. This song though, would certainly sound like a good start.

Spent the day at Disney World today with the kiddos. Always a good time and after leaving the hall of Presidents I felt all inspired and patriotic and had some grandiose post churning in my head. That isn’t this post.

All Good Here

Yes, I am the dork wearing a Star Wars shirt to the park. When you do, you know who the other nerds are because they all tell you what a great shirt it is. My kids though, LOVE it, and so do I. Suck it nerd haters, I will make your computer slow. Muahahahahaha.

You can't see the fairy dust on her head.

Yep, all 3 fairies in one picture.  You need connections for a picture like that, and I just happen to have a really good one with the fairies. Wait…

Anyway, it got to be close to leaving time, but we still had about an hour and a half to kill before we left for a birthday party. A party we were all looking forward to as kids could come since their would be other kids their age as well as some serious blogger turned real friends. Our oldest daughter though, couldn’t hold on. Our first sign of trouble came while waiting to meet princess Tiana from the newest flick. Instead of being all whiny from having to wait more than 20 minutes, she sat down on the ground and laid her head on her mothers leg. After turning down a bite of ice cream, she promptly fell asleep.

Uh-Oh

4 things that make this significant. 1. We’re at Disney World, her most favorite place on Earth. 2. She LOVES ice cream. 3. She hasn’t taken a nap in about 2 or 3 years when not in a car. 4. It was only 5 in the afternoon/evening and had been just perfect ALL day.

When we woke her up to meet said princess, she complained of being cold and just seemed out of it, but we waited 30 minutes, we were gonna get a picture. She did her picture and off we went.

Not wanting to walk due to being tired, she was on my shoulders. With 90 minutes to play and no plan we asked what she wanted to do next and she cried a little bit before saying she just wanted to go home. WHAT??? This is coming from the same kid who almost cries every time we leave the parks and stalls every possible minute to delay the exit. So being responsible parents we decide we’ll just go kill some time browsing in the big store until we had to leave for the party. The thought was once we get in the car, a nice hour long nap will fix her right up. Maybe even a little Tylenol. After all we were ALL looking forward to the party.

As we were perusing all the overpaid sweatshop merchandise, I felt a little tug from the little hand I was holding. I looked down to see her promptly finishing barfing up all she had eaten this day. Poor thing had a look on her face as though she had just offended every human on the planet.

That’s when something amazing happened. I looked up kind of freaked out by what was lying at our feet in the middle of the BIG store in the BIG park to see 3 managers and 4 employees already converging on the scene. I had barely got the napkins out of my pocket to wipe her mouth when the protein spill was quarantined off and one of the 3 managers was sprinkling some not so bad smelling brown powdery stuff on the ground. Everyone was trying to make her feel better and not so embarrassed before mom came and whisked her away to the rest room. Lucky for me, she missed all pieces of merchandise and my shoes and everything except a small spot or 2 on her dress. I took her sister, checked out the 2 things I did have and when we left I got smiles and best wishes from the human wall built around what looked like some sawdust on the  floor. The speed and effectiveness was just amazing.

My complaint about the tour groups leaders today can wait another day. But they still suck and need to not be so damn pushy to other guests. Seeing the way the kids behave, they’re also unnecessary.

Needless to say, I am writing this post instead of bringing pure joy and entertainment to the birthday party. I hope it still goes ok.

More importantly, we’re supposed to have brunch with the princesses tomorrow. I sure hope she’s feeling better after a good nights sleep.

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Last night we played real scrabble, with a board and stuff. Upon drawing my first group of letters, I got this and an S. I thought this was cool though and thought I cold use it at the end of my blog posts. Or, I’m just a helpless dorky nerd who wears Star Wars shirts to theme parks and takes pictures of his scrabble letters.