Daddy is Mommy This Weekend

It started off innocently enough. Kara goes to work on Saturday's, and on this particular Saturday, she let me know well in advance that she'd probably have patients all day long, and not get home until four or five. On days like that, and there really haven't been very many of them, I get to experience the full housewife thing, since the traditional roles are reversed. Today had a hitch, though, in that we had a housecleaner come in to clean the house. It's just impossible to keep up with, and Kara got Rosie, the woman who cleans for two of our neighbors, to come in.

So Rosie shows up just before 9, and starts right in on the cleaning. I played with Katherine downstairs until 11:30, when she was so exhausted, she fell asleep on my lap in the living room. Rosie had just finished the upstairs at that point, so I put Katherine to bed, and lay down for a nap myself. I got up around one with Katherine, fed her, and had an interesting conversation with Rosie. She's Brazilian, you see, and she started in on me. "In Brazil," she says, "men don't care for babies like that. They make babies, but they don't take care of the babies. They go to work, then they come home and sit down and relax. In Brazil, they'd think you were gay. I like it here better, though," she continues, "maybe I'll get married here".

OK. And on with the story. So now, things are getting dicey. Katherine likes to walk from the TV room to the kitchen, then back to the TV room, and so on, and so on. But Rosie was in the kitchen cleaning, so the next half hour consisted of me following Katherine from the TV room to the dining room, picking her up, taking her back into the TV room, following her back into the dining room, and so on, and so on. So finally, I decided to go out and do errands. Kara had asked me to pick up some meds because she wasn't feeling well, so I did that, and dropped them off at Lifecare. But when I got there, she was really sick, and she couldn't even drive home. So we left a car there, and I took her home. Her condition got rapidly worse. She had terrible stomach pains and a rapidly rising fever. She had the kind of fever when you cannot get warm, and you are shivering uncontrollably, and your skin crawls at the slightest touch. So I tried to make her comfortable while watching the baby at the same time, and finally, I put her up in bed. She felt a little better around dinner time, but that's a relative term, she was still really feeling lousy.

She constantly felt like she was going to throw up, and her fever, which we had gotten under control with Tylenol, came back with a vengeance. I got Katherine into the bath and into bed, and I moved the furniture around for Kara so she could lie on the couch, but that didn't help much really, and she went back up to bed around nine. I did a bunch of chores, and checked in on her every hour or so. She's having a very rough night as of this writing, and who knows what tomorrow will bring, but it probably won't be good.

So I'm the mommy this weekend, I guess. I'm pulling double duty with both of the females in my life.

Medford Star

And no, sorry, it's not Tommy Divine, it's Kim Davidson, who was robbed of a chance to proceed on to the regional finals of USA Network's Nashville Star competition by judging so terrible it resembled Olympic figure skating.

There were 10 finalists competing at the Brewhouse Cafe and Grill in Lowell last night. Of the ten, three stood out to me as being clearly very good. Kim was at the top of my list, but I'm a little biased. At any rate, none, NONE of those three won. Instead, they picked this waify Berkeley student that was inaudiable from where I sat and completely without stage presence or any real audience participation.

When they announced that Joelle had won, there was a lot of murmering going on in the audience and out in the parking lot afterwards. The people that I talked to generally all had the same opinion. Why did she win, when there were better performers? Most were there cheering on someone, but most, like us, acknowleged that there were several really good performers there, and most were really confused that one of those performers did not win the competition.

Kim, you rocked last night. Your version of 9 to 5 had the audience clapping and stomping their feet before the crowd had even built up to the end-of-competition levels. I think they should have made the judges sit in the back, where we were. There, they would have seen the difference between performers who were engaging the audience, garnering participation, projecting properly, and generally worthy of consideration for advancement, and those that were not. Joelle has a good voice, she is attractive, and she picked good material, but she did not beat the top three on every count.

There is still the chance that USA Networks will review the tapes and decide to bring someone else along. For the sake of the pride of Kim and the other top two, I hope they do.

Bite Me

So Katherine is still teething. It's pretty funny really, except she's a crank when she teeths. We thought she was sick because she was running a low-grade temperature, but there was no drool or anything. But then this last Saturday, when I have her all day, I saw a new tooth in the bottom. This makes three - one on top, two on the bottom. Pretty goofy. Now the second top tooth is just about in, so at least she'll be aesthetically balanced and crap. More are making their way up the side, but she still likes to eat the soft stuff.

Twinkle, twinkle, little Leonid

The Leonid meteor shower was last night, and early this morning. Last year was supposed to be, like, the best year ever, so I stayed up late bundled up in all my winter gear on a lawn chair in my driveway, and I was supremely disappointed. For though there was a clear sky, I saw doodly.

So this year, the hype was that it will be the last best year ever until something like 2099. I was unimpressed, and decided to blow the whole thing off. Then, I went out to take the trash out after Kara had gone to bed, and so I said, what the hell, and I looked up at the sky for a few minutes. Wowie. There were huge Leonid's every minute or so. I was totally impressed. So then I had this great idea: I'll go to bed and get up at 4:30 or so, and take my camera out for the once in a lifetime Leonid photos.

Unfortunately, at 4:30, this did not seem like a very good idea. I woke up Kara, and she couldn't go back to sleep. I looked out the window and didn't see anything happening, and saw some clouds starting to set, and I blew it off.

Then, at work, I saw on Yahoo that people were heralding this brilliant shower of meteors, and I felt foolish. Of course there wouldn't be any at 4:30, the peak was supposed to be 5:30. I felt like I missed the boat. But on the evening news, reality set in. Yes there were Leonids. No, there weren't thousands of them. The moon was too bright, and the predictions were a little off. Cameras set up by the local news channel only captured two all night long, although there were clearly more than that. There was a great film clip from Alabama or Georgia or somewhere down South, though, with what I expected to see. I no longer feel foolish, and I am well rested. Hah!

Water, water everywhere

This weekend was an experience in good 'ol water. Except that it was mostly bad 'ol water. It rained for 48 hours straight in Medford. 48 hours! And it was a cold, bone-chilling November rain. But that was only part of the water experience.

Our house has a "California" room. So called, apparently, because the walls and most of the ceiling are glass. It was a feature that sold the house, but it turns out to be less than practical. You can really only use the room a few months out of the year. Too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter. Just right occassionally in spring and fall. I used to read the paper in there on Sunday mornings back when I got a paper. Then they stopped delivering it, but I hadn't stopped paying for it, and I cancelled it, and was all grumpy and stuff. But I digress. Anyway, the California room sprung a leak last year. We weren't that surprised. The home inspector pointed out some water damage, and although it held up for the first year or two, we sort of expected it. So I got a big can of roofing tar and sealed it up. Surprisingly, my handiman work worked, and it's been dry ever since. Until this weekend, when it sprung another leak. Last time this happened, it ruined a carpet, and had us putting buckets everywhere. I think we got it in time to save the carpet, but now I am in a real dilemma. You see, contractors hate these rooms, because they are really hard to work with, and really hard to seal. They generally don't want to touch it unless the original builder or manufacturer will work on it. I don't know who those people are, though. So I have to do it myself, again, but I think I need to wait until the temperature is above 50° or so to be within the range of the tar. Unfortunately, New England chose right about now to start being cold. Worst case, it won't happen until spring, and I'll be in a world of hurt. I may actually have to break out some duct tape and tarp.

So that's bad enough, but then, on Sunday night, I throw in a load of laundry, and sit down on the, um, porcelain throne to do my business, and a few minutes later, I notice a wave of water coming through the bathroom door. I open the door, and the washing machine has not stopped filling, and has put a half inch of water down the middle of the basement. Since the bathroom is on a riser, it didn't come in until it had soaked the basement. So after an hour of bailing, Kara finally gets a look at the washer, and it turns out that if you don't have the "water level" selector exactly on the mark (low, medium, high), the water apparently doesn't stop filling. Is this the stupidest design for a washer or what? It should have an automatic arrestor that stops the fill when the water hits the high mark regardless of the setting, don't you think?

So my carpets are still soaked. I couldn't put them outside because it was raining, and most of it is wall to wall anyway, and I'm still soaking soapy water up from the laundry room via some old towels.

Ah the joys of home ownership. NOT.