This January was possibly one of the most epic months ever. With all the stuff going on, both personally, locally and globally, you’d think someone like me, who has a tendency to get easily distracted by bright, shiny lights, would have a hard time focusing on anything, and you’d be partially correct.
The holidays were nuts, as usual, but I’ve learned to expect it given the size of my wife’s family. I got drunk on New Year’s Day with some of them for the first time. It was a bonding experience.
Work has been intense, both with the day job and any freelancing I’ve done. The magazine schedule has been hectic and everyone on our mag wonders if the people upstairs are ever going to give us a moment to breathe and collect our thoughts. We’re not counting on it, so we soldier on.
The freelance gigs are nice, and come in handy with the baby on the way. I just wish I could get paid in a timely manner. Every client I work with these days seems to think that 30 days is the standard for paying bills. Unfortunately, my mortgage and my electric bill don’t have a 30-day option. There’s some animosity there, but I’m working through it. Luckily I’ve built up enough projects month after month to keep the money flowing, albeit slowly.
During the last couple weeks, California got hit with the most rain we’ve had at one time in years. We need the rain, so I’m glad we got some, but I’m not so stoked on all the heavy damage sustained. We had a sewer clog, one side of our fence completely demolished. huge bamboo shoots that fell over and plenty of flooding in the yard. We also had a refrigerator problem that killed nearly all the food inside.
All these expenses have been relatively minor so far, but along with not getting paid quicker for freelance, we also have a rental unit in back that’s still unoccupied and probably will remain that way through February. Top that all off with income taxes and property taxes coming up. My normally composed mode of, “don’t worry, we’ll make it work”, has faded a little and beads up sweat are starting to show.
Of course, at least I have a home. The people in Haiti were in a bigger world of hurt even before the massive earthquake they sustained, so my problems seem pretty small. I do think about those people a lot. I’ve sent what little I could in hopes I could help, but I know it’s just a drop in the bucket and I should give more, but I’ve got this self-preservation thing going on in my head right now that I can’t kick.
So Why Is It So Easy to Blow Off?
Despite all that crap, I can easily shut all of the other noise out the minute I start thinking about the baby growing in my wife’s belly. I’ve never been so preoccupied with a single thought in my entire life, and the last few weeks have been the worst.
Leslie and I had a pretty big scare this month. Her initial blood tests came back and she came up pretty high for possible Down’s Syndrome and the Genetic Consultant wanted us to come in to talk about the situation. When Leslie drop the news on me, my world shattered. Perhaps I was getting ahead of myself, but my head was out to lunch for the remainder of the day. I was pissed at the world and cursing the heavens for taking this chance away from us. I thought the most important event in my adult life was about to be stolen from me. Thankfully, not all the information had been provided and our chances went up that we would have a healthy baby. So things are looking up, but we’re pensive just in case.
Aside for the bad news, all my other thoughts have been powerful, good things about the future. All things seem to come back to the idea that I’m going to be a father and I can’t help but feeling it’s the coolest thing ever, like it is my goal in life, to be the best dad I can. Of course that should be the goal of every dad, but I really want to be awesome at the task. Everything else seems secondary.