Wednesday, July 21, 2010

The Big Sleep Over

I am still alive and doing well. Nothing new to report about my health. I have been busy working and have been picking up extra hours to help pay the bills.

We had a big event at our house last week. Zach and Katy were invited to spend the weekend with their Aunt Dawn and Uncle Dave. Dawn is my big sister and their God mother. When we asked the kids if they wanted to go they were both jumping and screaming with joy. I wanted to do the same but I knew my wife wouldn't find it so cute since she always has a hard time parting from the kids. I on the other hand look forward to the alone time with Sally. It proves that I love her more then she loves me.

Friday, the kids and Sally packed their bags. It looked like they were packing for a week stay. I was thinking to myself that was good. Maybe I would get lucky and the kids would have that much fun and my sister would enjoy them that much to keep them awake. After the kids were packed we took the kids to one of their favorite places to eat, Panda Express. When we got home, Katy took her suit case and sat on the porch outside waiting for her ride. Zach on the other hand started crying and kept saying he didn't want to go. Dawn and Dave were on the way here. They were coming from Illinois and were stuck in heavy traffic. It took them 2 hours to get here so Zach was going with them if he wanted to or not. We figured once he is with them he would be fine. We ended up meeting them by Teibels to hand over my pumpkins. On the way there Zach sobbed. Sally and I were trying to be silly and make him laugh but it didn't help. Once we got there, Zach sat on Sally's lap and cried.We gave him my cell phone and told him he could call us when ever he wanted.He seemed a little better. We sent him on his merry way with his aunt and uncle. Katy on the other hand. said "bye" and jumped into their car without looking back. When I drove off I almost had to take a double look. I thought Zach was back in the car when I heard crying, it was my wife. At that point I felt a little bad because I was happy and felt like dancing the jig being a free man without kids for awhile.

I am not naming names but who ever was the master mind of giving Zach the cell phone was a fool. Zach called us about an hour later. Then there was no phone calls for a couple of hours because he went to a Hip Hop party at their church. When they got home, the sad and pathetic phone call began. Zach kept calling crying. He sounded very pathetic. We knew if he made it through the night he would have a fun day on Saturday. I have to admit even though this might damage my manly ego, I did miss not having the little ones in bed. The phone calls continued but we thought it would be better not to answer. So instead, Zach left us the saddest messages ever. We knew once he fell asleep he would be fine. Wrong! 4:45am he called crying again. This time he said Katy was awake crying too. If she was awake crying it was because he woke her up and he was crying. Sally told him to lay back down with her so she could fall asleep. The next phone call we got the kids were happy and excited to be going to the water park. The phone calls thereafter were from 2 happy kids. Even though Zach was happy again he still wanted to come home that night. When I got off work, Sally and I went to Olive Garden for dinner. It was so wonderful to go out for dinner without the kids. The food was really good as well. I talked about the delicious dinner all the way to my sister's. I had Chicken Parmesan and Sally had the Egg Plant Parmesan.They were both excellent.

When we got to my sister's and I knocked on the door in anticipating for the little ones to run and jump on me and hearing the words "I love you and miss you daddy". I heard little feet running before the door opened. Katy ran out and jumped on........... Sally. She had nothing to do with me. Every time I tried to touch her or talk to her she got mad. As soon as we got in the car both kids were talking about how much fun they had. They had a blast at the water park. Zach met a friend and talked all about her. They both talked about how good dinner was. They both loved the chicken and the corn on the cob that was on the grilled. Zach wants Sally to make chicken and corn on the grill like Uncle Dave did. I was a little upset to find out they had ice cream cake for desert and Dawn didn't offer me any. Before we made it to the express way Katy had fallen asleep. Zach continued to talk all about his adventure. A little while later it got quiet in the car. I turned around and saw Zach's sleeping as well. Kaity was so exhausted she didn't wake up until 9 the next morning. Zachary slept until 11.

The next morning when Katy woke up the first words that came out of her mouth was "I want to go to Aunt Dawn's". It continued through out the day. Now she says she wants to go to Aunt Dawn's with mommy. At mass on Sunday Katy started clapping during a song. She must had picked that up at Dawn's church, It was cute but know one else was clapping. I am glad they kids had a lot of fun. Thanks Dawn and Dave for being brave enough to take them.

I have to admit it was nice to get a break from all the turtle question. I am sure you must be thinking I am over exaggerating about the turtle questions. Believe me I am not. Here is an example. This morning I was woken up by the following questions"
Dad....... "Which is the slowest turtle?" "What turtle is the smallest?"'What is the fastest turtle?" "Do turtles have belly buttons?'" "Do turtles grow there arms or legs first?" "Do soft shelled turtles shell's get hard when they die?" "How do turtle's hold their heads? Up high? Down low?" "What kind of turtles did you have?" "Did you ever feed turtles people food?"Are there yellow turtles, red turtles orange turtles, the questions went on and on.

Zachary went to day camp this week which put a hold on the turtle hunt. I am going to take him Saturday morning so I am sure I will have a lot to write about.I was just informed that Zach doesn't want to go to his day camp next week. He wants to go turtle hunting all week,ARRRRRG.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Turtles, turtles, turtles

One must take time out for the little things in life like writing in my blog. I am doing well. I feel about the same as I normally do which is tired all the time. I started to get cramping in my hands again for a couple of days as well. I am sure if you are checking my blog, it's to hear about me complain how I feel. Even though the blog started off to keep an updated on how I was doing. Has now evolved into embarrassing ramblings about my family, myself, and others who I have encountered along the way.

I spent the last two weeks working midnights. Friday morning was my last midnight for two weeks. I went to bed Friday morning thinking about having almost a 4 day weekend. Looking forward to a few hours of sleep first before the fun began. Sally was fighting another headache and laying in bed with me. The kids were up destroying the house. I heard Katy go in the room and get Sally. A little bit later Sally was back in the room waking me up. When I finally woke up enough to realize what was going on, I heard Zach crying and moaning. He was fine when I went to lay down but he said all of a sudden he got a sharp pain in his ear. He wanted to go to the doctor and didn't want to wait for Sally to get ready. My little boy was hurting and all I could think about was making him feel better. Less then 2 hours of sleep was enough for this super hero dad to the rescue. Sally went on line to check where I can take him since our family doctor wasn't able to see him. She told me to take him to an express care that was located in a small hospital. On the way there Zachary was groaning. I get there and drive around the hospital. I saw signs about express care but didn't see an entrance. We get out of the car and I walked inside to ask. I was told there was no longer an express care there. I told the nurse that she has to be kidding and that there were signs stating otherwise. I said its not like I was looking for the bread aisle at my local Stracks store(the official grocery store of Bill's life with cancer), but that I was looking for medical care for my son, that your hospital states outside that it could provide, "Sorry sir" seemed insignificant. I was frustrated and decided to take him to the Hammond Clinic. Not sure if the insurance will cover but at this point I didn't care. It seemed like forever just to have him registered. We sat there and waited for another 2 hours. With me sleeping( I am certain my head was bobbing and I was drooling and snoring) and Zachary sitting there with sporadic out breaks of moaning( like the moaning you hear from the beginning Scooby-Doo cartoons ) we were sight to be seen and heard. At last we were given prescriptions for Zach's inner ear infection. Once again my only goal was to making him feel better. I jumped on the express way to get to Walgreens as fast as I could. I knew only meds would help me achieve my goal of making my son get back to his old self (not sure if that's a good thing or not). As soon as I get onto the express way I realized it was backed up. I couldn't catch a break at all. Since everything I was doing was being defeated, I left it up to Zach if we should stay on or get off the next exit. He made the bold choice of getting off, I stayed on. Eventually we made it to Walgreens, had the meds filled and he was back to his self.

The other day I was doing some lawn work. Once again, Sally forced me away from my husbandly duties and demanded me to go shopping with her. Actually, she asked if I wanted to go and I needed to take a break. The first scenario sounded better though, because it makes her sound like a Brut and me a hard working husband . While we were running around I realized I was hungry. Seeing lots of restaurants usually provokes me to have a hungry stomach. We went through the Taco Bell drive through . Zachary wanted cheesy potatoes. We forgot they put sour cream on it and Zach does not and will not eat anything with sour cream. Sally gave Zach money and told him to go inside and order them without sour cream. Us being the good parents we are, sat in the car to eat our nacho supremes. A couple seconds later Zach came back to the car asking for more money. We gave him more money not realizing that we already gave him a little over a dollar (they are only a dollar and nine cents). and shooed him away so we could eat. He comes back to the car with a burrito in his hand and tears streaming down his face as he is saying that he's going to die, and that he is so hungry. He said they gave him a burrito instead of potatoes. Hence the reason why he came back for more money. How they got a burrito for cheesy potatoes minus the sour cream still leaves me confused. Although the burrito was beefy with potatoes and cheese,but hey no sour cream. With Zach being my main concern, I grabbed Sally's nachos and sent her inside to get my kid his cheesy potatoes minus the sour cream, damn it. By the way we still have the burrito in the fridge if anyone wants it.

Zachary has been fascinated about turtles. Endless questions about turtles he has been asking. Just when I think he asked every question possible he comes up with a new one. Zach is like me. When I was younger I loved turtles, snakes, birds, etc.... In fact I have a collection of books about them somewhere in the garage. After the shopping trip I decided it was time for me to go into the garage and try to find the books. Not an easy task though. There is some force of nature that happens in my garage. Like a huge magnetic force. Every time I clean out the garage everything seems to migrate to the front of the garage. It's so bad, that I can't walk in there without tripping over something. As I am pulling everything out of the garage the neighbor kids run back there to play with everything. After everything calmed down and the dust settled, I was able to scare the kids away. I was finally able to get into the totes. I found the totes with all the turtle books. Zachary was very enthused about the books. I took them in the house for him and continues to sort though the totes. I found a tote that was marked "legos" on it. Opened it up and it was full of legos. Zach's snatched up the box and ran off. We haven't seen him since. My awesome books took second place and now it's all about the legos. At least I don't have any more questions to be answering at this time.

Talking about Zachary getting into turtles and all the questions he was asking me. It really makes me feel good to know that he has such an interest in what I love. It really brings back the great memories I had being in the Calumet river up to my waist in polluted water. Oh the memories.... So any way, I took him and Katy to a lake in Merriville .On the way he was asking me all sorts of questions about the different ones that I have caught. One of the questions was "Dad what do turtles do?" My reply "They swim, They swim a lot." I thought that was a good answer. Zachary replied "OOOOOOH Dad, what do turtles drink?" I paused for awhile and said with most certainty "Margaritas!" His reply "OOOOOH,Whats a Margarita?" I finally replied "Zack, I was kidding. Turtles swim in lakes, ponds and rivers,etc... They drink the water silly boy." We are planning another excursion to happen soon. More funny stories I am sure to follow.

Take care and God Bless you all.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Wax anyone?

I need to get back into the habit writing my blog at least weekly now that we have a computer running thanks to Mr. Kern. So the last of couple weeks not much out of the ordinary has been going on. I have been feeling good. Tired but good. Sally read an article that said the tiredness from chemo can last years after the treatments. Goody, that was a breath of fresh air to hear. There has been a little friction in the Cummins/Ceiga house hold. My dear wife reminds me on how much work there is to do in the house. However, every time I decide to take on a task she sabotages it. For examples, I planned on mowing the lawn before work the other day, and she suggested I go with her to the mall instead, or last Sunday, when I was getting ready to put together the armour for Zach's room and she decided it would be a good day to take the kids to Fuddruckers, or the couple days later when I told her I was going to try in the evening to assemble it and she gathered the neighbor's and had a bon fire. Yet, I know it's going to be a matter of time she is going to start complaining about the things I still haven't done around the house. I can never win with her but what is a guy suppose to do?

As I am typing, I am thinking about all the the things I could be writing about. I decided on the most recent and will shortly write about the others. A couple of days before chemo I woke to a spinning room (reminds me of my younger days). I was dizzy and felt nauseated. As long as I remained still I was OK. I couldn't remain still thought because I had to leave for work in less then an hour. I managed to get to a point where I was able to get myself out the door and into the car. As the evening went on I felt better. Not sure what caused it. Sally thought maybe it was my ears since my ears have been bothering me sometimes. At my chemo appointment Sally mentioned about dizzy me and my ears as well. The doctor said he would check out my ears. I was waiting for him to say "Your ears are fine" or " You need to see an ENT specialist". I never expected the response I got though. As soon as the doctor looked in my ear he jumped back and almost fell out of his chair in shock. Which shocked me. He said I have so much wax build up he couldn't see into the canal. Both ears are like that. I turned to Sally and said "See, I really can't hear you", so I wasn't kidding. Which the doctor said that not hearing your wife is a married thing and not a wax thing. I said I know that but, she isn't suppose to. I was a little embarrassed by the reaction of the doctor and all the wax that are in my ears (I wonder if I have enough to make a candle or two). Sally was trying to comfort me by saying "At least it's wax and not a ear full of hair". That is one of my biggest fears is getting hair in my ears. I replied to her "There is to much wax for the hair to grow". I wasn't trying to be humorous but Sally and the doctor got a good laugh out of it.

Talk about laughing. Sally has asthma and sometimes when she laughs she sounds like smidley, that cartoon dog from my youth.The other night at the bon fire, for some reason Sally decided it was pick on Bill night. She shared some personal information about me which everyone thought was funny except for me. What was funny was the way she laughed. She has to catch her breath and has a delayed laugh in between her laughter. I couldn't help myself but to copy her. She didn't think it was funny but the neighbor next door, Laura did. I didn't think it was to funny of her story telling about me either. The other night after chemo, I was hungry and Sally and I went to Purple Steer at 1 in the morning. Her laugh came up again but this time she video recorded me with her cell phone and told me I had to watch myself make fun of her laugh. Well,,, while watching it I realized I am a very ugly man when I am trying to mimic her and I bet Laura is actually laughing at me, not because I am making fun of Sally but how I look doing so.

That is all for now. I have a lot going on in the next few days and a lot of stories to share. Hopefully, my next blog will be sooner.