Battling Through the Homestead

Hey players...

I'm beginning to appreciate the trials and tribulations of America's house dweller.

Over the course of the last week or so, we've slowly but surely moved in all of our belongings and begun the after-work/weekend process of moving, unpacking, cleaning, hanging up, consolidating, and rearranging.

This process is oodles of fun.*

Fortunately, Dad and Cindy flew down and were able to help us out a ton (which was nice of them, seeing how when they bought their tickets initially, they had do so under the pretense that they would be enjoying a peaceful, low-key weekend with the grandkid in our old place - apologies have since been widely distributed).

Again, the Voigts were also able to help us out a ton, which was also nice of them. Adam spent an afternoon in our attic in an attempt to remedy our dryer dilemma (yes, we can't dry clothes for whatever reason - good times, but to no avail.

Aside from repeatedly borrowing his tools and manual labor, we've had to purchase all sorts of new home/lawn pleasantries - all kinds of crap for the place, as well as a lawnmower, weed wacker, tools, fertilizers, pesticides, and everything else one could think of - in order to turn three years of negligence into awesomeness.

That's been met, thus far, with moderate success.

Part of our rental agreement was that we'd pay less in rent each month if we put some work and 'love' into the place, so we knew going in that we'd have odd jobs around the place to keep busy. Making the place livable from the get-go, however, definitely proved harder than we once had anticipated.

Again, it was because of others that we can really claim victory, here. My folks and the Voigts were invaluable over the last week or so, and now that we've got most of the big stuff out of the way, there's some breathing room. Breathing room, folks, means we can now turn our attention towards work (hooray), grad school (double hooray), and bills (mega hooray).

Cheers,

- Brian

* I wanted to try using this word in a sentence. Having done so, and not feeling great abou it, this will mark the only time in this blog's existence that I do so.

Grad School = Big Pain in the Ass

i already hate grad school, and i haven't even started classes.

as stated before, i have no head for financial figuring-out, using fax machines, scheduling through various departments, calling different agencies and waiting for 3 to 5 business days for answers to simple questions, etc. etc. - all important aspects of the applying-to-graduate-school process. it should come to no surprise, therefore, that i've been having one hell of a time with the whole ordeal. this is absolute hell, folks. and is turning out to be even more of a pain in the ass than the peace corps application i had to undergo. not very much fun.

as it stands - and again, this is from what kris and i can gather (she's been doing her best to help me out with this, as i'm clinically retarded with this crap) - it looks like all i have to do in order to obtain my professional certification (the five-year renewable teaching certificate that allows me to keep my job) is complete my second year of teaching and take the graduate courses outlined in my masters program. that's it. i was convinced that i'd have to take a crap-load of undergraduate courses, thereby stalling my graduate classes and blowing handfuls of loot just in order to keep my job. that would've sucked big time.

then again, when you owe over $26,000 in student loans, what's another $20,000? i've already come to the realization that these loans are never going away, that i'll have to pass them on through subsequent generations as family heirlooms. i'm sure my great-great-great grandchildren will appreciate this.

...though by that time i'm sure we'll all be ruled by space gorillas and robots, so it won't really matter. (see picture)

fortunately, that's not the case. i get to start right away with the mega-hard classes... which i'm not looking forward to in the slightest. like i said before, folks - i hated college (classes). i'm not good at studying, i'm easily-distracted, i can't stay on top of due dates, and i'm arguably the world's worst procrastinator. so, more or less, i'm screwed with this whole grad school nonsense.

so why am i putting myself through this gauntlet of hell? because the houghs are on a timetable, that's why. when kris and i moved down here to florida in january of '07, we expected to live in florida for four to five years - long enough to obtain teaching jobs, finish grad school, and find work elsewhere. i think i've spelled this out before. ideally, i'd like to find a teaching job in illinois or indiana - somewhere in the midwest, close to michigan (there's practically a zero percent chance i'm going to find any work in michigan any time soon). it'd be nice to be able to make the drive from our place to home in less than 10 - 12 hours. now it takes about 22... and that was driving straight through, without a kid. that drive would be absolutely hell now.

sure, you can fly. but around the holidays, you get screwed with ticket costs and all those crap-fees. $700 - $900 to fly home for christmas for four or five days? not worth it, as far as we're concerned.

and so, with grad school out of the way - hopefully by the fall of 2010 - i'll be in prime positioning to start scouting out job prospects in the great white north.

...at least that's the plan so far.

- brian

Reproducin', Part II: Bring It On Home

(continued...)

kris shot out that baby she'd been carrying around (for the last 17 months), the hospital wheeled her over from the delivery room to our post-labor room. this room, in which we would spend the next 48 hours, had a fridge, a bathroom, a couple beds, a DVD player, and a big, flat-screen TV that was bigger and better than our own TV in our house. it was a decent little set-up for the kid's first two days of post-vagina living, but nobody got much sleep.

alayna, upon bursting out of her flesh-walled prison, weighed about 6 lbs. 1 oz. and measured approximately 19 inches in length. for those of you who are as oblivious to the knowings of babyhood as myself, that's not quite dangerously small, but its definitely underweight.

being underweight isn't necessarily bad, i guess, but it does bring about some small problems. problem #1: low blood sugar. or high blood sugar. i forget which one it is, but its something to do with her blood sugar levels. one of those two. anyway, she had to have a series of blood samples taken during her first 12 hours out, which meant kris had to breastfeed more frequently and, as a result, lost a crap-ton of sleep in the process. and, as a result of her losing sleep, yours truly didn't sleep much either. this sucked.

problem #2: jaundice. i'm not sure what this condition is, really, but i'm pretty sure it has something to do with pirates. or maybe that's scurvy. i'm not sure. what i do know is that jaundice turns the skin yellow and has something to do with her liver. i guess most babies have some level of jaundice when they're born, but underweight babies are more susceptible to it. and, a sure-fire way to treat this condition is to stick the baby out in the sun and let the UV rays cook the jaundice out of her. or so i'm told (i'm not a doctor).

anyway, back to the tale... we spent about 48 hours in the post-delivery hospital ward. we had to attend some boring, pointless discharge class on how to take bathe your baby, how to hold your baby, etc... boring rubbish, and i was the only dude in a room full of newborn-wielding moms so it was pretty awkward as well. we also had a bunch of old ladies man-handle kristina's titties on a regular basis and show her how to 'appropriately breastfeed' the baby (note: if you ever want to be really creeped out, knock a girl up and stick around for the "lactation specialists...). then, finally, on wednesday, they let us take the kid home... which ruled.

hospitals are great and all, i guess, but after awhile you get sick of old ladies bossing you around and the constant smell of disinfectant and rubber. i also hate hospital food and the clammy feeling you get from the air conditioners. anyway, we brought alayna home on wednesday and introduced her to fezzig, who was not nearly as cordial as we would've hoped (though we kinda expected that from the get-go).

...and there you have it. baby-birthin', hough style. keep a weather eye out for more updates and pictures to start popping up on here. if you guys need me, i'll be elbow-deep in baby shit.

stay outta trouble...

- brian