January Blues

This month sucked.  I hate January.

The first part of the month, it was warm - 40s, 50s - and it felt like March.  There was no snow on the ground and we were all led along in a false sense of security in all things non-winter.  Then the ice-storms came, and we lost two days of school to really shitty road conditions (I had to take a personal day one of those two day because my district opted to stay open one of the days Midland Schools closed, so I had to stay back with the girls.)  The ice eventually melted, but temperatures plummeted, and you couldn't go outside without every square inch of your exposed skin began screaming in rage.

Think Hoth.

Then the snows came, and Yours Truly got sick.  Not just 'oh man, this is a really bad cold,' or, 'this flu sure is kicking my butt!'  No, more like, 'you have the sort of strain of influenza that can very quickly turn into a bacterial infection or pneumonia, and you can end up in a hospital if you don't spend the next few days on confined bed rest.'*

*actual doctor's quote.

Probably didn't help things that I went to work with this crap all week long, and that I was only able to take a solitary day off due to the fact that it was the last week of the semester and everything (which means reviewing, tests, and last-minute grading.)  Couldn't afford to take any time off, so I soldiered through it. . . and my body paid the price.  Eventually I had to leave work early the last day of work, where I saw a doctor who ordered me to remain on bed rest until my condition improved.

Thank God my weekend of mandatory bed rest coincided perfectly with Kris' Mom Group Weekend away down in Grand Rapids.

Guess how much fun it was battling influenza in sub-zero winter temperatures and single-handedly watching both kids while my spouse was two hours away having cocktails and shopping?

. . .

So yeah.  All things considered, my January was straight-up garbage.

Check it out. . . .

For years, we members of the Sausage Pad (as myself and a group of close friends from college refer to ourselves as) have talked about getting some kind of a tattoo together.  I once mentioned this in front of Alayna, who, months later,  took it upon herself to design one for us.  I passed it on to the rest of the 'Pad to see what they thought.

Towards the beginning of the month, I attempted starting the Cub Cadet (I try to periodically over the winter, if only to charge up the battery and keep fluids moving in the engine.)  Well, after multiple failed attempts, the damned thing wouldn't turn over.  I had Stabil (whatever it's called) in the gas tank, I charged the battery, checked the spark plugs, checked the oil, the fuses. . . nothing.  So when we had Kris' friend Kim and her husband Matt come over one Friday for dinner, I had Matt (who's a mechanic) take a look at it.  He tried everything I did, then pulled out this can of awesome.  After a few bursts into the carburetor, it started up.  Turns out our battery is half-dead, and the cold was a factor in the lack of turnover.  So it looks like we'll have to buy a new battery in the summer.  And a can of this, for sure. 

Speaking of machines not working, our treadmill started making a really weird noise one day (see video), and so I took it upon myself to give the machine some maintenance and try and fix the engine noise.   I loosened the belt and lubed up the deck, readjusted the thread and secured all the bolts, took off the front casing and adjusted the belt drive, and realigned a few other things (thank you, Youtube.)

The After.  (I'm kinda awesome.)

I took an old flat screen TV off Dad's hands one weekend, with the hopes of it replacing a faulty TV we had set up in front of our treadmill (which is now far-less squeaky, if I do say so myself.)   Well, as it turns out, Dad's TV didn't have an HDMI input (yes, it was that old), so I could use an Amazon Fire Stick to stream Netflix on it while running.  In the end, I found a better use for it. . .

Abby has become a big fan of this game, which I left set up for her to mess around with whenever she wants. 

I recorded her playing it for the first time.  She's since then become far better at it than I.

Kris and Abby at Midland Cinemas, about to check out The Grinch.

Alayna's new bed canopy (which eerily reminds me of the mosquito net I used to sleep under in Ghana.)  This picture, dear readers, is the one I should have included in last month's post, but ultimately forgot.  Now the wrongs in this world have been righted.  Aaaand you're welcome.

Watson and his kills.

Yours Truly, in his natural environment.

More weirdness from the Cannonball.

Jam time.

Harry Potter Checkers.  And a rare display of peaceful sister interaction.

I have no frickin' idea. . .

So it turns out that Abby's eyes are slowly getting worse.  Nobody was surprised by this development, honestly:  both Kris and I both wear corrective lenses, all of our parents do/did, so it was only a matter of time before one (or both) of our girls ultimately needed them.  Abby's eyes aren't all that bad yet, but it's slowly getting worse:  she's starting to have difficulty reading the board at school, etc. so we took her in to try out some pairs. 

These two pairs are her current favorites.  The optometrist's office was expecting another shipment of girls' glasses in the coming weeks, and promised to call us when they came in.

Abby decided - without prompting at all - to start shoveling the driveway.   Not that anyone's complaining.

Yes, that's Abby.  All the way down at the corner of the street. . . still shoveling the driveway.  This kid's a beast.

When I picked her up from Girl Scouts one night, Alayna came out from her meeting with an orange peel with a face drawn on it in black marker.  She had accidentally ripped the orange peel in half, so she asked if she could bury her 'pet' in the front yard under the rock bed.  'Cause that's the kinda shit that happens in my family.

It had been a while since Chris and I had gotten together for a session of Nightmare, so we decided that it was high time for us to do so again.  Mom was good enough to come over to our house and watch the kids for us so we didn't have to bring them with us over to Chris and Nicole's (the twins were sleeping upstairs the whole time.)

Oh, the sweet, sweet corniness of this '90s classic.

The day has finally arrived.  Our oldest daughter is officially enrolling in Middle School.  What.  The.  F***.

Remember when I said I had to leave work early because I was nearing death and had to go see a doctor?  Well, I was supposed to go directly home and get right in bed, but I had promised the girls that we'd make a special run to Kroger for some much-needed 'supplies' for the weekend.  So that's what we did. . . though it nearly killed me. This is what we came home with.

This is absolutely disgusting, but that's how we roll when Mom's not around.

Mom went out and bought the kids donuts on Saturday morning, which I had originally promised I'd do for them, but I could barely get about the house without going into horrible coughing fits. I told Mom to just buy a dozen of random ones, and she came back with everything the girls asked for, as well as a couple 'Detroit Lions' donuts.

This is where I spent the entirety of my weekend. I hooked up the Nintendo Switch in my bedroom, stocked up on Vernor's and cough drops, and more or less logged about fourteen hours a day playing Skyrim.  I've spent far shittier weekends, rest assured.

Mom took the girls to Five Below to buy some presents for Abby's friend Archa, whose birthday party Abby was attending later that afternoon.  While there, the girls wasted more of their allowance on crap they don't need.  Alayna requested I take pictures of her loot and said it to Kris, who was away for the weekend down in Grand Rapids for a girls' weekend with all the moms we usually hang out with.  This is a water-filled stress ball thingy.  So glad she spent money on this thing.

Another stress ball.

This is filled with sugary water/corn syrup grossness, but she bought it for the sole purpose of using it as a water bottle for her dolls' hair once she ate it all and cleaned out the spray bottle.  So, all things considered, this wasn't too stupid of a purchase.

And some gaudy jewelry.

Kris and her gaggle of moms prepare to head out for dinner and a night out on the town. . .

(You'll note that when Yours Truly goes out with his friends, we don't do this whole group picture nonsense.)

Meanwhile, back at the Hough House. . . battling illness and watching TV until our eyes bleed.

Shortly after Kris returned Sunday afternoon, the snow began. . . and it didn't stop.

School was cancelled Monday, as we were absolutely buried in snow.  The entire state, actually, was buried in snow.  Everything was closed.

A brief break from the blizzard, late Monday morning.

I attempted to shovel the driveway, but the cold air was absolute murder on my lungs, and after fifteen minutes I could barely breathe, so I had to come inside.  The girls tried to help me for awhile, but the snow was coming in sideways, so they, too, stopped.

We managed to shovel out a pathway for Watson to use so he could go to the bathroom without becoming buried (you can't really tell from the pics here, but the level of snow was above his head.)

Later on in the day, my neighbors must've caught wind that I was inside dying from near-pneumonia.  Dave (our neighbor on our right) was nice enough to shovel our driveway, and my neighbor on the other side (Ken) snow-blowed our walkway and sidewalk.  Super nice of those two guys - there was absolutely no way I could've done any of that in the state I was in.

Hours later.  You can barely see they did anything at all.  God, I hate snow sometimes. . .

The next day - after three days of confined bed rest - I was still in rough shape, but could at least move about without coughing violently and struggling to breathe.  Coincidentally, the expected shipment of girls' glasses had finally come in, and the optometrist's office called us to see if we wanted to bring Abby in to try out some new pairs.  The roads were absolute garbage - snow so deep some roads were nearly impassable - and it was bitterly cold, but we had promised Abby we'd take her to pick out a pair of glasses, so I said 'pneumonia and blizzards be damned,' loaded up the girls, and set off for the optometrist's. . .

It took us nearly a half an hour to get there (it usually takes ten minutes), we were going about 10mph the whole way (thank God there was little traffic in town, because 'braking' and 'stopping' was next to impossible.)   I had to pull into the office's driveway, which had a super steep grade to it, and had to gun the car to about 60mph just to make it through the snow.   But it was ultimately worth the effort in the end, because Abby found a pair of glasses she liked more than the two previous pairs, and we finally pulled the trigger on them.

So in about a week, the newest generation of Houghs will get glasses.  And hopefully, by then, Yours Truly will FINALLY shake this damn illness I've been battling for weeks now.  Cross thy fingers.

- Brian