Week 7 - Little Ms. Grumpy Fuss, and Radiation

Fact: babies love being held.  They really do.  Ours also seems to hate not being held recently.  These past few days, any time we put her down, she gets angry, unless she's asleep.  Fact part two, it's getting really hard to stay awake with her.  This is mostly due to the new job that I have, which is awesome, but leaves me ridiculously tired.  I'll get to that later.  Because of the job, I have already been getting less sleep than when I just had school.  I didn't realize how much this was hitting me until this morning, actually. 

When I feed the baby, I sit with my back against the arm of the sofa, with my feet pointing toward the other arm.  Then, I raise my knees, and sit the baby with her back resting on my lap so that she's leaning back a little.  This puts her in a sort of sitting position so I can have the bottle horizontal and she's not getting too much formula at a time.  Well, this morning, I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open.  During the feeding, I fell asleep, and when I did, my head fell back.  I was very suddenly woken up by the back of my head hitting the arm of the sofa...twice.  Ouch.  

Also what was difficult this morning was that the baby decided to spit out the bottle when she was about half done.  This wouldn't have been a problem if she didn't start immediately crying when she realized the bottle was no longer in her mouth.  I tried to put the bottle back in her mouth, and she fed for a few seconds, then the whole process repeated a few times.  Needless to say, that got a little frustrating.  Eventually she calmed down, which was nice.  

So, this entry is going to be more about me than about the baby.  

A few weeks ago, I posted on my facebook asking what my friends would like to read about in the blog.  I got a few responses asking me to talk about the job, so I'll do that.  

One of the worst feelings was not being necessarily able to really support the baby these past few weeks.  See, I'd been unemployed since before the baby was born.  Let's see, we're about fourteen weeks into the semester, so for eleven weeks I was unemployed, starting when the project I was supposed to work on for my last job got put on hold, and then was started back up with a schedule that didn't fit my school schedule.  I applied at a few different places, even a place where they would "hire just about anyone" but couldn't find anything.  Then my father told me about Cardinal Health, who someone he knows works for.  I ignored it at first, but then, just out of the thought of "well, noone else is hiring, might as well apply," I did so, and got an interview.  

Most of the interview was us trying to hammer out what would be my schedule, which was weird.  

Then, a couple weeks later, I got the call from an HR representative at Cardinal.  Her words were "Well, we'd like to offer you the [official name of position] position at the [pharmacy  location]."  

I'm not a big crier.  The last time I had cried before that call is when I had found out I was going to be a father, and before that, uh..... good question.  But when I realized I had gotten the job, I teared up, both from joy and relief.  For once, I was going to actually be doing something.  

About two weeks later, after I did all the pre-employment stuff, I had my first day.  And I loved it.  

So, to those that want to know exactly what I do, I'm a courier for Cardinal Health.  They're a medical supply company.  The pharmacy I work at specifically manufactures and distributes nuclcear isotopes for imaging in hospitals.  I'm the person that takes the isotopes and drives them to different hospitals in the San Antonio area, takes them to their hot labs, and takes their finished doses back.  Then, with any down time I have at the lab, I break down and clean up the lead tubes (called "pigs"), dumping the syringe into lead barrels.  

For those that know me and would worry about it, don't do that because the exposure I deal with is less than walking out into the sunlight.  The company has very strict safety policies regarding our materials.  

The part of this job that I both love, and hate, is that I work weekends, and weekend shifts begin at 4:30 in the morning, ending at 1:00 in the afternoon.  On one hand, this is great, because I'm done with work really early and have the rest of the day to do with whatever I want.  On the other hand, If I'm not in bed by 8:30-9:00 p.m. the night before, I'll have to load up on caffeine pretty early.  Also, I get super tired pretty early on in the day.  For example, last Saturday was my birthday.  I had promised a few friends I would hang out with them later in the day.  That ended up not happening because by about 6:00pm, I was too tired and groggy to go out.  So I stayed home and played Halo 4 (not complaining, that game is incredible).  This is sort of a regular occurance for the morning shift.  But, overall, I love it.  The job is fantastic, the pay is good, and hell, just having something to do again is glorious.  

But, that's it for today folks.  Enjoy your day/night/weekend/holiday/whenever the heck you read this.  Good night!

-Jack, the Dude Dad

Week 6: My Absence and The Science Channel

Holy holy crap, it's been four weeks since my last post.  Sorry for that, I hit a major writers block, plus, I've been pretty busy and sleepy as ffffffuuuuuuuu......

So, that being said, how are you guys?  What've you been up to?  Oh, really!?  Wow!  That just sounds so awesome/terrible!  Well hey, I gotta split, but here's my number.  Call or tex me sometime so we can get together and hang out or somethin'.

Well that took a weird direction... Folks, this is what happens when I start writing a blog during my psychology class while the other students give really boring presentations.  I end up just throwing words at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Allow me to explain my absence.  First, the writer's block.  I haven't really had any ideas.  You know the saying "the hardest part of running the mile is putting on the shoes?"  Well, the hardest part of writing anything is coming up with the idea.  And I haven't had too many ideas for what to write these past few weeks, and any ideas I did have, I couldn't really develop.  Secondly, I've been really frickin' tired, which is probably definitely a major contributor to the lack of ideas.  In the last entry, I wrote about a night where I only got about four hours of sleep.  Well, as I was told it would, that night has sort of become a regular occurrence.  Which leads me to my next thought:

I don't really believe God.  I mean, I do, just not in the same sense most people do.  One of the biggest differences is that I don't believe in divine intervention such as blessings, miracles, etc.  I believe in those things, but I don't believe they are acts of God, nor do I really believe in the power of prayer.

That being said, there is a group of people that I do hope to whom God gives the best, happiest lives imaginable.  these people have done so much for me without ever knowing it, and I simply cannot thank them enough.  These are the people behind the creation of the Science Channel, and any people involved in their decision to not show infomercials at the wee hours of the morning.  I explained in the last entry how an infant can basically be the embodiment of sleep deprivation, and what exactly that's like.  Half-hour to hour-long periods of being awake for feedings, sandwiched between two, maybe three hour periods of being asleep can be murder, and you can't fall asleep during the feeding.  Afterward?  Sure.  During?  Nope.  And that half-hour to hour is assuming that the baby falls asleep or is okay with being put down right after the feeding and the burping.  Depending on your baby, that might hardly be the case.

So, it's 3:30 in the morning, and you're tired as all living hell, but you have to stay awake.  How do you accomplish this?

Focus your attention onto something that doesn't require you to have use your hands.  What could that be?

Television, of course.  But you flip through the channels, and here's what you see: infomercials, infomercials, infomercials, televangelism, infomercials, infomercials.  But then, hey look!  A show about String Theory!  Sweet!

I had stopped watching the science channel, despite how much I love it, due to not really watching T.V. in general anymore, but ever since the sleepless nights set in, I've started watching it again.

Enough about T.V. though.  I'm going to end the entry here, it's getting late and I have to be up early tomorrow morning.  I'll try to post again later this week, but that may be kind of difficult seeing as i'll be busy as hell with this new job and the holiday and my birthday.   Also, I got a new job, and I'll probably talk about that in the next entry.  Finally, I'll probably be moving this entire blog over to tumblr very soon.  With all that said, peace off, have a happy Thanksgiving if I don't post again before then.