I think I am becoming a “barbie” doll stylist…

I don’t know what the hell happened but I am pretty sure that  I am becoming a stylist to the stars, well at least to the barbie stars. I went from this hard drinking, hard fighting, old school man’s man in my twenties to dressing and undressing dolls in my thirties.

I hate to admit it but I can change Barbie’s outfit faster than most eight year old girls. It seems like it happens all over the house, I will be sound asleep on a Saturday morning when A Bird comes bounding into the bedroom and up onto the bed with a fistful of barbie dolls and odd mismatched clothes. She immediately grabs the remote, flips on Spongebob and shouts directions to me like a practiced diva designer. I don’t even have my eyes open and I am stripping boots and picking out accessories that are ungodly tiny in my giant meat hooks. Once they are dressed to A Bird’s liking she whisks them off to a glorious vacation in the Barbie RV.

Fine, I get it. It’s part of being a father to daughters but there is something I can’t understand when it comes to Barbies and it centers around bath time. Bath time is prime time in the Barbie fashion world. Everyone has to be undressed to take their turn in the tub and there are specific instructions. So tonight A Bird is playing with her new dolls when its time for the bath, she instructs me to take off their clothes and lay them out neatly so they won’t get wet.

Yep, her new dolls apparently are roller derby girls from their helmets to their kicking tiny skates.

A Bird now proceeds to play with them through her whole bath until its time to get out and here is where my questions comes in. If I have to spend all this time carefully undressing them and laying out their clothes neatly so they can put them back on, why do they always end up like THIS?

Yep, they are all still buck naked, jammed into that weird little handle that is supposed to help you up from the tub but you know if you grab it, it will snap and send you crashing back on your ass. That’s where they will reside until A Bird’s next bath, just sitting there staring at anyone who enters the bathroom and dares to look behind the shower curtain with their creepy little eyes. What makes it creepier is if you look closely the pink doll is going all Venus De Milo and missing her arms from the elbow. A Bird told me it was OK, because her arms are on the rail next to her.

Now every morning I shower with five women, and taken out of context if I told that story I would be a LEGEND. But when you are exhausted and trying to wake up and you get goosed by a sharp little probing plastic hand it goes from cute to severely annoying.

So is this just an A Bird thing or do all little girls leave their barbies naked in the bath tub?

One more straw ? I don't know ...

This old camel’s legs are wobbling, his back is sagging and I’m not sure he can take one more straw without collapsing. It really has been a rough month of sickness through our house, coupled with long restless nights of no sleep due to erratic sleep/feeding patterns of Nat Bird. We are all stretched so thin that we might just break if something doesn’t give.


It all started a week and a half before Nat Bird was born. A Bird had this thick, gross cough that just didn’t want to go away, I was sick with a bad cold and cough and was petrified that L Bird would deliver and I would be forced out of the delivery room and not be allowed to hold Nat Bird because I was contaminated with germs. Luckily both A Bird and I recovered long enough for L Bird to have Nat Bird and for us to bring her home. Once we had all been home for a couple of days A Bird’s and my cough returned in full force. With Nat Bird being only a few days old we limited A Bird’s contact with Nat Bird, and I lathered myself with Vick’s Vaporub and pitched in as much as I could, but the bulk of newborn care fell to L Bird. So L Bird was getting little to no rest and stressed out because the ever present threat of germs in the house could get Nat Bird very sick.

That’s when the fever hit. A Bird was not acting like herself and was very sleepy and not eating, so we checked her temperature and sure enough she has spiked a fever of 104 F, so we instantly started our regimen of children’s Tylenol and Motrin while constantly bribing her with Ginger Ale, Gatorade, and popsicles to take the medicine. So there were a few meltdowns and blow ups over medicine and she threw up an entire dose of medicine because she had gotten herself so worked up but then she finally took it. This went on for two days, then we thought her fever had finally broke. She was acting more like her normal self and had no fever throughout the day, it was AWESOME, until 5 pm when the doctor’s office had closed then her temp spiked again to 103 F. So when I got home from work I took her into urgent care where they promptly diagnosed her with strep throat. Because I was in close contact with her and we had a one week old at home the doctor was nice enough to check me too and said that I could possibly have it too. Antibiotics were started, which was about as much fun as the other medicine. For 10 days we tried to coerce, bribe, beg and plead for her to take a “bubble gum” flavored antibiotic and after much, much, much more stress than it should have been she took it all.

Great, no more fever, no more strep throat and A Bird is back to school. Then BANG another straw drops on the camel like a two ton acme weight you see in the cartoons. Guess who has strep throat now, L Bird. She had been running on low energy keeping us all together and trying to get us all healthy and she get its. That was a week ago, she has taken her 5 days of ZPAK and seems to feel better. Things were going good this past week and throughout the weekend until round 3 when we got hit with an entire straw bale.

A Bird came down with another fever on Monday. She was burning up, lethargic, and hadn’t really eaten much of anything all day yesterday before we could get her to the doctor. She asked for a few goldfish crackers for the ride to the doctor’s office, so I thought that was a good sign. She munched on goldfish and stared glassy eyed out the window as we made it to the hospital. We had just gotten out of the car when she threw up all of the crackers she ate in the parking lot. I felt so bad for her and it must have looked horrible. There we are standing out in the freezing weather as she is bent over puking while I am rubbing her little back and holding her hair. I get her cleaned up when she is finished and we got right into to see the doctor. After he checked her all over, he is leaning towards strep throat AGAIN, with a cold or a “something viral” on top of it. He took a throat culture and said we would know by today if she had strep. He sent us on our way with antibiotics to get us started last night, and he would call in a prescription today if she needed it. We are patiently waiting with fingers, toes, legs, eyes and whatever else will cross that she doesn’t strep again so we don’t have 10 days of medicine fighting coming, because honestly I don’t think I have it in me.

So that’s where we are, so I apologize to anyone that has called the house to see how we are doing. I know L Bird and I haven’t been the friendliest on the phone. We are physically and emotionally spent. I know in the big picture all this sickness is small potatoes and it will pass. I know things could be a lot worse as far as sickness and disease, it is just strep throat not something worse or life changing. I am eternally grateful that these are small things and we will get through them, but right now all I see is a giant pile of straw around me.

Here’s to a getting it out of the way now and hopefully a healthier 2013.

Man, I really hate politics....

Man, I really hate politics. I try to stay away from getting into discussions about politics and religion because those two topics can turn the best of friends into enemies. People feel so strongly in their views that they tend to get blinded by anger and things just get out of hand. Everyone that really knows me knows that 95% of the time I am more than content in just listening to a conversation than actually participating in it. But it seems that anywhere you turn these days you just can’t get away from the gun control discussion. This discussion is being had all over social media, the radio, the television and all over the internet, and believe me folks it is getting intense, so with that in mind I am just going to voice a few of my views here. Please remember that these thoughts are just my personal opinions and I am not trying to force them down your throats, I am just saying what is on my mind. So here goes…


I am a responsible gun owner who has obtained guns through the legal process. I don’t believe the issue is with the type of gun, I believe it is with the person holding the gun. I think that we SHOULD have stronger background checks and we should close the loopholes in gun laws that require background checks for sales of guns at gun shows. If background checks have weeded out roughly 1.5 million people in the last 14 years that shouldn’t have had guns, then maybe more thorough background checks can continue to weed out more people that shouldn’t have guns. I am not pro-big brother for checking our medical records, but when it comes to mental illness I think mental health providers should be held to task when it comes to notifying authorities if there is any risk of violent behavior. I think that some, NOT ALL, mental health practitioners can fall in to the trap of complacency or greed, that can happen with many other professions. Either they get so comfortable in their job that they miss subtle clues and misdiagnose them or they are so happy that they are collecting a weekly paycheck from the client that they keep stringing them along week to week with a “if I try this or this or this treatment I can fix them, I know I can” approach. All I am saying is we need stronger mental health checks and reporting.

I have heard the arguments for the ban on assault weapons, I get it. If you label a gun as an “assault weapon” it sounds scary, but the truth is these “assault weapons” are shooting the same ammo as regular hunting rifles. Almost all of the AR-15’s that people can buy are shooting .223/5.56 ammo which is the same ammo that feeds your Grandpa’s Remington bolt action rifle. So can you use an “assault weapon” for hunting? Of course you could. It’s the exact same thing as firing a traditional rifle. I think that the issue is not the AR-15, it is the magazine capacity and the fact that it is semi-automatic. In NY you can only have a 10 round magazine, unless you purchase larger magazines that were manufactured before the first assault weapon ban. So instead of banning the AR-15, reduce the magazine count to 7 rounds and make any magazine larger than that illegal. This would close the pre-ban magazine loophole and limit the amount of shots in the gun. The “assault” rifle would still be able to fire 7 rounds in a rapid succession but not that much faster than a traditional rifle where you are racking the bolt or lever. Finally, there is already an “Assault Weapon” ban in place for the general public. The general public cannot purchase Class III weapons that are used by the police and military. These are the much, much more powerful weapons like M-16’s, M-4’s etc. The AR-15 is simply a dressed up hunting rifle that is made up to look scary like an AK-47.

Finally, I just want to say that the world is getting to be a scary place. If the government sets the precedent of making one set of guns illegal they could keep going and make all guns illegal in the name of making the country a safer place. I know that this will sound crazy to people but through history a lot has been done to make a country “safer” and “better” for its people then turned into a dictatorship or military regime. I know that there would be a huge outcry against taking our guns and how it affects our 2nd amendment rights, but it could happen and if that does happen it could throw our country into a civil war thus breaking down our infrastructure. We have all seen how even a temporary breakdown in infrastructure (Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, etc) has led to violence and looting. When future disasters occur wouldn't you want to be able to defend yourself, your family and your home? By banning types of guns the government makes it easier to ban more guns, then they might start to ban things like what you can eat (Michael Bloomberg and sugary drinks) or what you can watch. Sure these things sound small but when put together it puts us one step closer to becoming a police state.

I guess that is all I really want to say. I know that some people will think I am some sort of crazy gun nut, but just think about these things before you rush to judgment. Take care.

Similarities and Differences

I know I haven’t posted in a long time and I have had my reasons but I am not going to ramble on about that. It has been a wild couple of months, after making some “foot wine” with T Dizzle which by the way turned out very well, L Bird and I got wrapped up in A Bird starting Kindergarten and L Bird’s pregnancy. So before we even knew it, it was December and the waiting game started for L Bird to have the baby. With A Bird, she was born exactly one week before her due date which was nice. This time around everyone was telling L Bird how “the second baby always comes early”, well that’s not exactly true. L Bird and I went to the hospital twice before her due date only to be sent home for “false labor”, then L Bird’s official due date came and went and still nothing. L Bird had a follow up appointment for the day after Christmas which was a week and a half after her due date. Christmas came and went with L Bird being pretty uncomfortable and us impatiently waiting for the 26th. We were very hopeful that the doctor would induce L Bird so we set up a spend over for A Bird with my mother just in case. As it would happen, L Bird starting feeling some stronger contractions that morning, so I rushed A Bird up to my mother’s and got L Bird to her appointment but by the time we got to the doctor’s office her contractions weren’t as strong. We finally get to see L Bird’s doctor and L Bird’s exact words were “I’m not leaving this hospital today without a baby!” So the doctor decided to keep L Bird for monitoring AGAIN. We sat in the hospital hooked up to a fetal monitor for four hours before the doctor final made the decision to induce L Bird. Eight hours later we welcomed Nat Bird.

She was born happy and healthy at almost midnight on Dec. 26th. One of the first similarities I noticed was how much she looked like her sister A Bird. What do you think?

  Nat Bird December 2012 A Bird May 2007

I think that they have the same nose and mouth.

As we were sitting in the delivery room after we had Nat Bird, I was holding her and thinking about how the days they were born on were so different. When A Bird was born it was a bright, warm beautiful day in May. I had just been at my new job for about a month when Lauren called me and said she was going to the hospital. It was 7:30 in the morning and I flew from work to make the 45 minute drive to the hospital. I can still remember how vibrant the colors of the trees and fields were in the early morning sunlight as I flew by them. When I think of the day A Bird was born those colors are one of the memories that flood my memory first. Then you have Nat Bird who was born a week and a half late, at night and in the middle of Snowstorm Euclid (When did they starting naming winter storms?). When I think about that day I think about sitting in the hospital all day and looking out the window and watching the snow pile up as we impatiently waited for Nat Bird to be born. I can’t wait until they are both a little older and I can tell them about the days they were born.

So that’s what has been going on, now we are all home and getting used to having a newborn again. Everyone is trying to get set into a routine to  make life easier. Well, that’s all I got for now. Happy New Year to you all.

Making Good Ol’ Fashioned Foot Wine

My cousin and her husband have been renting a beautiful A Frame house overlooking Keuka Lake while house hunting. This house overlooks quite a bit of vineyards and T had expressed an interest in making some homemade wine. I said it sounded good to me and once the grapes got ripe to let me know and we could go picking and we get get working on some homemade wine.

Well, the grapes were ready yesterday and there is no time like the present to get started so we took the kids down and started picking. All of the grapes that were available to us were Vitis labrusca meaning that they are not the classic or “noble” grapes like Merlot, Cabernet, Chardonnay, Riesling, etc. They were Concord, Catawba, and Niagara grapes, but they were what were available to us and they will still make a decent homemade wine if treated nicely.

We set the kids up with a bucket and T and I set about picking a mix of Catawba and Concords.

A Bird and M were good for about two buckets half filled then they decided it was much more fun to eat grapes as they chased each other though the vineyard rows.

After we had a couple of totes of reds, T an I filled three 6 gallon buckets full of Niagara grapes, and then we were off. By this time, it was getting late and the kids needed dinner so T and I made arrangements that he would take the reds and process them that night and I would take the whites and crush them and get them going. So T and M dropped A Bird and I off at home and were off and rolling to get home for some dinner.

A Bird and I woofed down a quick dinner and were out on the deck for some old fashioned grape stomping. Yep, we were using her little feet to crush them up.

Here we are as I am just lowering her in.

I think she likes it.

Then she started to get the hang of things. Two buckets at once !!!

L Bird was shocked as you can see, lol!

Then L Bird got into the act.

Finally all of the grapes were crushed and the girls left to hit the showers to rinse the sticky juice off their legs and seeds from their toes and left me with the job of straining the skins and pulp from the juice and transferring the juice to a carboy. IT TOOK FOREVER, well at least it felt like FOR-EV-ER. After it was all over, three buckets of grapes worked out to roughly 3.5 gallons, it doesn’t seem like much compared to the amount of grapes but it definitely is not a bad using your feet compared to a real basket press.

So now all of the juice is fermenting, both the reds and the whites. I’ll keep you updated on the progress of the foot wine, and I’m sure there will be some interesting tasting notes.

How did you spend your Sunday???

Look Out Kindergarten, Here Comes A Bird!

Well, its official I have a kindergartener. A Bird started her first day of school yesterday. I don’t know where the last five years have gone. It seems just like yesterday that it was just L Bird and I sitting in a dimly lit hospital room holding A Bird in our arms. She was so little and cozy wrapped up in her receiving blankets, now here she is a full fledged 5 year old embarking on a brand new adventure without Mom and Dad. I knew it was coming but I can’t believe it is here, it was one of my happiest, proudest, and saddest moments sending her off to school. But anyway here is how the day shook out….


She was a little nervous about riding the bus, but luckily our daycare provider’s daughter took it upon herself to sit with A Bird for the first week until she gets used to the bus ride. So that set A Bird’s nerves at ease. We all got to daycare a little early to snap a few first day pictures, then she gave L Bird and I a big hug and a kiss and hopped onto the bus like she had been doing it for years. The bus driver stopped her and introduced herself and told A Bird where to sit and then they were off. The whole process took less than five minutes.

I have to admit I got a little misty when she got on the bus and was gone, but L Bird was pretty upset and nervous about her getting off the bus and into the school. So we drove to the school and parked in the lot trying to see A Bird get off the bus. L Bird just wanted to gauge her reaction getting off the bus to make sure she wasn’t upset after the bus ride. We got really lucky and were able to see her get off the bus without her seeing us. A Bird looked confident as she hopped down and followed other kids towards the door. She was just about to enter the door when she gave a clear sign she was excited about school that put L Bird’s mind at ease. Ever since A Bird has been a baby whenever she gets excited she balls up her fists at her sides and kind of does this little shake with her arms, it’s like she has so much energy and excitement in her that she can’t contain it and it just comes out in this little shake. Just before she hit the door, she did this and we knew she would be OK.

L Bird and I tried to fill the day with tasks to keep our minds off of worrying about A Bird. We went out to breakfast, then came home and L Bird painted the nursery while I brought down the crib and changing table from the attic and reassembled them. Then finally it was time to go and get her off the bus. We got to the daycare a little early to make sure we were there in time for the bus, but apparently there are more kids this year so we waited what seemed like an enormous amount of time for the bus to finally show up and drop her off.

She got off like she got on, just hopped off the bus like she had been doing it forever. The bus pulled away and L Bird and I tried not to bombard her with questions but failed miserably. To A Bird’s credit she answered almost everyone. I think the highlight of her day was gym class, she looked at me and said “Dad, I had P.E. today.” I asked her what she did and she told us about playing some sort of music freeze game. She talked more about P.E. class and the P.E. teacher than she did her regular teacher and anything else she did that day.

All in all, it looks like her first day was a big success. She came home happy and ready to go back today. I know she’ll be fine but L Bird and I are going to take a little while to get used to this. I can’t believe I have a daughter in school, crazy right??

Harvest Time……

This has a been a crazy summer with a ton of stuff going on, so instead of making excuses/explanations of what has been going on I am just going to jump back into this blogging thing. OK? OK, so here we go.

We have planted a pretty big garden this year. This is the second year we have tried raised bed gardens, I have 6 - 4 foot by 4 foot raised beds and it has been working out well for us. We planted tomatoes, peppers, hot peppers, carrots, potatoes, onions, cucumbers, green beans, peas, eggplant, yellow squash, zucchini, watermelon, cantaloupe, and a lone pumpkin plant. We have been harvesting a lot of produce all this summer, but now fall is upon us we went out did a bunch of picking tonight since a ton of it is ripe.

That is about 40 Roma tomatoes, green beans, jalapenos, and a couple of eggs.

Fresh Carrots

Now, I have been growing potatoes by the bucket method for the last two years. Last year I didn’t get a whole lot out of the potatoes but this year I did a lot better. The bucket method is pretty easy, you take any old 5 gallon bucket, drill holes in the bottom for drainage, lay a layer of topsoil down, then place 3-4 sprouting taters in the bottom then cover with another inch of soil. Once the potato shoots break through and grow 4-6 inches high cover the shoots with top soil to just above the top leaves, then repeat this process until the dirt is at the top of the bucket and the potato shoots are growing from the top of bucket. Then keep watered and in the sun. It will flower, grow and at the end of the season die back. Once all of the shoots have died back, leave it sit for a week or two before harvesting. After that its pretty easy harvesting, just flip the bucket over, dump out the dirt and search for fresh potatoes.

I dump the buckets in the chicken run, because after I finish getting the potatoes the chickens like to peck and scratch through the dirt for bugs or whatever else.

I probably got about 3 – 4 pounds between the two buckets. Not too bad right.

So now I have to figure out how to can the tomatoes and make “dilly beans”.

How did your garden do this year???