My mother once told me that if you couldn’t say something nice, you shouldn’t say anything at all. Yep, she was the one who came up with that.

Luckily I didn’t listen, otherwise this blog wouldn’t exist.

So two days ago I posted about Desi and our family and how we were sick. Little did I know that within a few hours of that post we’d be in the ER. Desi has a fever. Teresa burst into tears like we had already failed him as parents, and I went into “let’s get done what needs to happen” mode, and got us to the hospital tout suite.

So generally, in medicine, the way they find out what’s wrong with you is by seeing how your immune system is fighting. The problem with this method is that 2 week old babies don’t yet have and immune system, so there’s nothing to check. So what they have to do is take blood samples, then put them in petri dishes and try and grow various bacteria. If it grows, then it’s in his blood. If not, then he’s clear. This is a process that takes 2 days. So we get to stay in the hospital for 48 hours. To top it all off, they have to check for spinal meningitis. Yep, spinal. So you know what that means?

My son, at the ripe age of 2 weeks, got a spinal tap. This means Noah is going to have to step it up if he wants to kee the “I survived my father” title for long. If Desi keeps on this course, he’ll be fighting giraffes by 3 months.

Your move Noah…your move.

Filed under: family, health by tonybullard
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So Desi has been in the house for 10 days and we’ve already gotten him sick. I knew this would happen when I started feeling my through hurt the last day in the hospital.

Tree and I tend to play parasite ping pong, then Noah came, and with the addition of Desi I guess we can now play doubles. It’s good to know that we’ve informed him that he’ll always be safe with us, his new family, as long as he can weather the minimum of one-per-season cold that I get, and then spread around the house.

Last night was awful. Tree and I had been dealing fairly well with the less sleep thing, but last night was bad. Desi had gas, and I suppose starting to feel the cold too. He was miserable, and was sure to let everyone else know about it.

Upside, Noah spent his first night in underwear. He woke up around midnight to use the bathroom, and made it the rest of the way through morning without incident. This would be more exciting if he had pooped in the past two days though. He pees fine, but he will run around demanding a diaper to poop in. He simply doesn’t understand the idea of popping in the toilet. He will openly admit to preferring to poop standing up, hiding behind a curtain like that ghost kid in Three Men and a Baby. That’s a not a joke. I’ve actually caught him standing behind a curtain, with that blank stare cats have when they poop.

Today I’m back at work, Tree’s first day alone with the boy. Noah is at school. Personally, I’m envious of the woman. She’s probably sitting at home right now with an unconscious kid on her chest, watching Arrested Development on Netflix Streaming, dozing in and out of consciousness.

Meanwhile I’m here, at work, working my fingers to the bone. Yep. Busy, busy, busy.

Filed under: family, health by tonybullard
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Looks like little Desmond is doing just fine.  All this commotion was simply a perfect storm of circumstances that brought up a lot of questions, which couldn’t be answered until today.

So, Bullard Baby Watch 2010 is officially downgraded from magenta to puce.  You can all sleep sound tonight.

Note: This was supposed to have gone up at around 2pm yesterday, right after the tests, but it would appear my phone failed to upload it successfully. 

Filed under: rambling by tonybullard
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You may recall from my last post, I quickly mentioned this:

“So despite sleeping horribly last night, interrupted by a vomiting toddler…”

Now, many of you may have read this as the whining of a jaded, careless parent. But no, you’re wrong. That right there is what is called a narrative device. More specifically foreshadowing.

Any amateur writer can come up with a story and use foreshadowing to create intrigue about a plot point he devised earlier. But imagine the sheer creativity, neigh, genius it requires to foreshadow an unknown future event. Some may call it luck, some coincidence. Those people can leave, cause I call it tonybullard.com.

(You can tell how serious I am by all these italics. ITALICS!)

So on to the point. Yesternight (the proper term for “the night before last night”) Noah threw up. I was sure he did it because he got to worked up crying and screaming, coughed to feign sickness, and gagged himself. Yes, he’s just that scheming. So I blew it off. You know, ’cause I’m fricking parent of the year.

JUMP CUT TO: Tonight. Noah refuses to take his vitamins. He usually chows down on these things like it’s the end of the world and we’ve given him anti-zombie tablets. In my effort to coerce him, I eat one. It’s a kids vitamin, I doubt it will kill me. This tactic doesn’t work. We basically force him to eat the thing. Thumbs were pressed into mouths.

Within 3 minutes I feel what can only be described as “gross.” This is fairly low on the scale of “Fine” to “Chest Burster.” None the less, it’s no fun. I say to Teresa, “no wonder he doesn’t like them, I feel kinda gross.” (See that folks? that’s called “consistency.” It’s also known as “doesn’t own a thesaurus.” ITALICS!)

OK, so prayers, lights out, I sit at the computer while Teresa settles him into bed. I here “Tony?” faintly from Noah’s room. I poke my head in.

“How gross did you say that thing made you feel?”

Then, as if carefully planned, I hear the indistinguishable sound of vomiting.

“Geez! Not that bad!” is the first thing that pops out of my mouth. Lights come on, Noah has covered his bed in his dinner, and Teresa runs from the room claiming she’s going to join him in his “Ode to Leftovers.” Cleaning, Changing, blah blah blah.

So there you have it folks. We, Teresa and I (if I go down we all go down!) force fed our child a vitamin that made him vomit. If we can do this, brag about it on the internet, and not get arrested, then anyone can have a child.

Here’s lookin’ at you future parents!

Filed under: family by tonybullard
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Another year has come and gone.

Forgive me if I don’t have a cheerful holiday tone in this post. I’ve not been motivated enough to post in a long while, and I’m essentially forcing myself to write this one. So to those who yelled at me about posting again…happy holidays. Here’s your gift.

About a month ago I was given the treat of being able to sleep in. This is a very rare occasion, as Teresa would probably starve herself to death if she knew she could get a few weeks uninterrupted sleep. The only mornings she gets up before me is when she works, and Noah tends to wake up from her moving about the house, so even my weekends start pretty early. I rolled around in bed waking every so often, trying to ignore the growing worry. Something was amiss. Teresa NEVER gets up before me if she doesn’t have to…

And boy was there a catch. I walked into the bathroom, to find this:

There’s always a catch.

So there you go, for those who don’t already know, we’ve got another one in the hopper. August 5th due date. Birthday will be right after mine. Hope he/she doesn’t get too jealous when we blow all the party money on my birthday each year. Them’s the breaks.

So Christmas happened. I wanted to say that this year went off without anyone vomiting through the night like last year, but Tree is pregnant, which means there’s plenty of it happening.

Noah got more presents than God. Our den looked like a wrapping paper monster committed seppuku. He literally ran from present to present, trying to figure out how to devour as much fun as possible before it somehow slipped away. He was like someone at a radio station event in one of those cash snow globe things. And this was before the in-laws came into town. Two days after I cleaned the house, finding wrapping paper bits like sand in your body after going to the beach, it all happened again. It took Noah about 40 minutes to lose his favorite toys. We spent hours looking for them. Since Christmas day I’ve spent most of my days searching for some toy Noah can’t find. It’s maddening.

Seeing the Korte’s was nice. I didn’t get to see them much because of work, but I know Teresa appreciated having someone else around to take care of Noah while she was sick, and I’m sure they loved hearing her complain about being hungry, but unable to eat anything. Their visits are always good and bad. Good, because they leave behind things like half eaten Hershey’s Chocolate Cream Pie. Extra good cause with tree being so sick, it’s all mine. But bad because, despite their host’s many objections, they continue to use the ice crusher in our fridge door, which leaves crushed ice for 3 days following their visit. So every time I get something to drink I’m attacked my ricocheting ice pellets that end up on my floor, later to be soaked up by my socked feet. But you know…then there’s pie.

So New Year’s came and went. Tree and I celebrated the clock turning by sleeping/sitting at the computer. You can guess which one of us did which.

I managed to miss my 1500 mile cycling goal by just 74.42 miles. I tried hard to finish it, even learned that i could do 20 miles in just over an hour (which surprised the crap out of me) but the last 3 days of the year were bitterly cold, and I simply don’t own the right clothing to go biking in 20 degree weather. So I’ll reset the 1500 mile goal for 2010. February last year I barely road at all, so I’m sure if I just try to avoid lulling months I can overcome it pretty quickly. That, and now that I’ve discovered riding 14 miles straight to the train station in the mornings, skipping the bus, is quite refreshing, I’ll probably do that more often, which will certainly up my daily mileage.

(This is why skipping the bus is worth the extra 8.5 miles)

Oh,there’s also this:

Get the Flash Player to see this content.

I was playing a game on my phone that Noah likes to watch called “Abduction” where you make a cow jump from platform to platform by tilting your phone. As I was playing Noah just started counting out of the blue. We didn’t prompt him to at all. he got all the way up to 13 before starting back at 1 again. As always, once we tried to video tape it, his performance tanks, and he insists nothing in the world is more important than cars.

Filed under: cycling, photography, rambling, video by tonybullard
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Princeton.edu defines “Vacation” as “leisure time away from work devoted to rest or pleasure.” It defines “Torment” as “intense feelings of suffering; acute mental or physical pain.” One of these things happened this past week.

It didn’t start with a V.

For me personally, everything Started Saturday morning as I participated in my first ever bike race. FM24 was a 24 hour Alley Cat race in downtown Atlanta. From noon Saturday to noon Sunday my 5 man team had a man on the road. By the end we had done 32 laps total. That’s just under 400 miles in all, 83 Miles personally. Needless to say, I was tired. Despite this, we took off Sunday afternoon, after the race, rather than try and travel through Monday morning traffic.

Everything was moving along fine until about 7:30, when my car headed up a hill, and seemed to refuse to change to a higher gear. I cut off my cruise control and as I began to slow down I heard a rattling sound coming from my engine. Yay. My oil pressure light came on. I pulled into a station, checked the oil, it was very low. Funny, the oil change the month beforehand said everything was working fine. 3 quarts of oil later my dipstick finally said I was at full, but it was too late. My hopes that enough oil could drown out an klinking engine were in vain.

We found a hotel and stopped for the night. This is where the adventure began. I’ll try and keep this brief.

Morning. Hotel guy recommends a mechanic. We go into town at 15mph, klinking along. Can’t find the guy. We pull into the first shop that appears open. Two men walk out of the garage with the most pained looking faces I’ve ever seen on a man not currently suffering kidney stones. They say bad things like “melted bearings” and “replace engine.” They send me over to “the only other guy in town I’d trust.” Oh, that really instills hope.

We find THAT guy, he seems to know what he’s talking about. Teresa comments that he’s completely unlike any other puhy mechanic she’s ever talked to. Ray of sunshine in the storm. Thanks Scott of Mike and Sons. We call up some rental places and everyone is out of cars until the afternoon. We find one that has a single car on the lot. I bike over to them (Thank GOD I had my bike with me, so useful throughout all this) and get a van. 500 bucks. Oi. At least we have plenty of room for people and luggage.

We finally get to St. Augustine. The condo is wonderful, literally across the street from the ocean. Monday goes on just fine.

Tuesday starts, and both Teresa and Noah feel bad. Noah is coughing up a storm. Tree soon follows. Sore bodies and fevers.

We find out fixing the car will cost us 3 grand. We go for it, figuring I’d rather spend 3 grand on MY used car than buy someone else’s used car for 8 grand. Also, the new engine is 30,000 miles less than the current one. So we’re a couple days into our ‘vacation’ and we’ve already spent about 4 grand. Yay! The time we spend in Historic St. Augustine is always cut short by Noah looking over-heated and barely conscious.

We finally decide Noah has been sick for too long once Thursday comes around. We go in to a walk-in clinic, and Noah is diagnosed with Swine Flu. We can only guess that we picked it up from the hotel. Upside, it’s just Tree and Noah. Still got one guy up and running to care for the others. (Consider this foreshadowing.)

Friday is spent sitting around the condo. The rest of the gang go down to Daytona Beach. I realize that cable really isn’t worth paying for. We decide to cut the vacation short and leave Saturday. After all, moping around home is always more satisfying than someone else’s place.

Saturday comes, and I wake up with a cough. Yay! We spend the day in the car. 7.5 hours to get home. Everyone is miserable and couching and generally no fun. Every time we stop we have to keep Noah and Teresa out of the public as much as possible. This is more difficult/annoying than it sounds.

We get home. Toby practically mauls us all night. We sleep.

It’s now Sunday. We awak slowly, mull around the house till noon, dreading the trip BACK to Valdosta to return the rental car. Yeah, since everyone else was out of cars, we went with the local place, and now we have to return it ourselves. we think it’s a 3 hour drive. It’s actually a 4.5 hour drive. A second day with three sick people in a car for 8 hours. Yay!

The drive down is wonderfully uneventful. I burn 5 CDs so I can be entertained on the ride down, but I find the CD player in this crappy rental barely works. By barely I mean it plays the first 20 seconds of the first track of each CD. Another day of listening to awful radio going in and out.

So, after all this, we finally arrive in Valdosta, pull into the rental place, find the key drop-off box, and it turns out God is not yet done with trying to kill me. The big, fat keyless entry key does not fit into the envelope-thin drop-off box slot. Awesome. We call several numbers (Thank God for internet enabled phones) and finally get a hit when we dial the number on the top of the credit card receipt. “Andy” tells us to hide the key somewhere. I just know the car will be stolen and this “Andy” character will no longer exist and we’ll have to buy them a van.

4.5 hours back. We’re home. All three still sick. I have to take off work now that all my vacation time has been used up by this week of wonderful family time.

And sometime next week I’ll have to drive all the way back to Valdosta to pick up my car. Yay!

Filed under: family, rambling, travel by tonybullard
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I stepped off the train with my bike, ran down the length of one car, and tapped on the window rapidly, trying to get my son’s attention. He had his usual “I’m just here, doing my thing” expression. Teresa had her over-joyous mom smile on, “Say bye-bye to daddy!”

I hate when she leaves. It always feels like a tragedy. I’m always convinced she’ll be kidnapped at a rest stop, or in this case, the plane will crash. Something.

So now I have 4 lonely nights ahead of me. I tried to fill them with nights out with friends, but Juan has been struck down with the grade school plague known as Pink Eye. Yeah, I know, next thing will be chicken pox and maybe lice. He should get cool adult illnesses like me. Prostatitis is where it’s at.

Tree and Noah will be back Friday afternoon. Until then, I’ll have to keep myself happy with this:

Filed under: family, health, rambling by tonybullard
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tonight i watched “super size me.” you may have heard of this movie/documentary a few months ago when it first came out in theatres. soon after followed the onslaught of “we’re gonna get you healthy” advertising from mcdonalds. well, i must say that you should give it a gander. while i know better than to take it all as truth, cause as we’ve seen lately, documentaries can be a whole bunch of poo, and even when it is all real, compacting it all in an hour and half creates the idea that it’s a bigger part of life than it really is. and while i don’t want to say that i’m a changed man, cause i’m kinda the king of broken resolutions, it’s certianly changed the way i think about eating. i think my biggest problem is i really like what i call “hearty” meals. things that you can take big bites out of, and have to chew, and you can feel it hit your stomach. things that when you’re done, you know you’ve eaten. the problem comes with the fact that when i visualize these foods, it’s all burgers, or hot dogs, or breakfast skillets made of nothing but onions, hashbrowns, and three kinds of dead pig. that’s right…three. cause two kinds of dead pig is for pansies.

my month on the blockbuster “we can beat netflix” deal is over, and yeah, we’re quiting, and signing up for netflix. plain and simple, one month, and we’ve watched most of the movies we want to see, and havn’t gotten to rent many that we wanted to see. (so to you, the guy who’s had “day of the dead” for a month…you suck) and here you see one of the things that comes with being married. i now sound all pretentious, like i’m refering to myself in the third person when i say “we.” but no, i am referring to the entity that is “the bullards.” so don’t think that this website has gone to my head, cause i gaurentee you, one glance at the stats, and my self-worth takes a nice dive. something that only a sweet kiss some my sexy co-host can cure. so anyways, you should all rent this movie, and watch the extras, simply to know that after we all die from all the nuclear bombs the 80′s action movies told us about, the only things to survive will be cockroachs. and they will feed entirely on mcdonalds french fires.

Filed under: entertainment, health, marraige, movies by tonybullard
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one of two things is happening: a) i have someone escaped death’s design, and it is hunting me down much like it/he/she did in final destination, or b) God is teaching me a lesson in patience in that way that i hope He and i will laugh about later. either way…i’ve had a tough week.

now i do know that there are people out there who have things much worse than i do, but i’m judging on a scale of middle class white guy grade. let me explain further, using dates and details compiled via official government documents and whatnot. heh.

May 17th: driving up north 75 in the rain, a puddle mistakes my truck for a pair of waterskis, and i begin to hydroplane…which sounds a lot cooler than it is. as i think to myself, “don’t oversteer, don’t slam on the brakes” i notice out of the corner of my eye, the gaurdrail located in the median is laughing at me. i decide to show it who’s boss, and we get into a short fight. the gaurdrail won. much thanks to my sister, driving three hours from alabama to pick me up, we both ventured the other three hours to atlanta, leaving my truck in a salvage yard to be dealt with at a later, and dryer time. i manage to get everything out of my truck except for the tool box mounted in the truck bed, and my ever so beloved stick shift skull, steve. it was hard leaving him behind, reminding me of when my children would die in oregon trail. worse was knowing that i couldn’t drown my sorrows in a good round of rabbit hunting.

May 18th: i found out i have rental reimbursement on my insurance…and thusly i get a rental car. i can now work while i wait to hear about the fate of my truck. i am told i can use up to 30 dollars a day and a total of 900 dollars.

May 20th: learning of an airsoft game in daytona florida on the 5 of june, i decide the best plan of action, if the truck is in fact totaled, to drive down with my roommate on the 4th, pick up my fiancee’s old car, and then play airsoft on the 5th, heading back up to atlanta on the 6th, and all would be well. happiness ensues.

May 21st: i get a call from my insurance company, letting me know that the car is in fact totalled, and they’ll get the settlement numbers out to me asap, most likely on monday. with this news, we decide that going down on the 4th is a good plan. all is well.

May 24th: insurance updates me, settlement is, well, settled, and i am then informed that i only have three days left on my rental reimbursement. so that means i’ll have no car after the 27th, and that i can’t work after that. fun. i call about 5 different insurance people, who all use the same tactic of “tell him no until he gives up.” i give up. so now i’m stuck with no car, no money from my insurance company (yet), and no way to get down to florida to get my fiancee’s old car.

May 25th: after explaining my situation to many rental car agencies, i get several estimates for renting a car and leaving it in florida.

May 26th: i decide the rental car idea is a good one, and call hertz, who quoted me the lowest price. after verbally filling out forms for a nice long time, i discover that the guy from yesterday failed to explain that hertz doesn’t rent to people under 25. yay. i call back all the other places i called the day before…same deal. i start to look up plane fares…but at this short of notice, they’re all in the 200 dollar range. it finally comes down to a greyhound bus.

may 27th. plans are set. but then issues come up about having a tag for the car. can’t get a tag till after memorial day, can’t work until i get the car…it’s decided that coming to florida on the bus that i can’t get a refund of is the best idea…and i’ll just wait in florida until tuesday comes.

May 28th: i stay up all night to ensure that i’ll sleep as much as possible on the bus. i take an hour long nap. i wake up at 5:30am with an instant feeling of nausea. i manage to get one cheddar and peanutbutter cracker down. arriving at the greyhound station, after getting lost, i realize it’s much like an airport…only tiny, and dirty. i wait for my bus for an hour, head in hands, praying to God for relief from my horrible nausea. the bus ride is very long, and i am sick the whole way. ten hours of bus and sick. lots of fun. i transfer buses in some small town, and the bus driver gets lost. i arrive an hour and a half late, and i wait almost another hour because my ride was being haggled by a salesman.

May 29th-31st: if i don’t eat, i get sick. if i eat…i get sick. this is pretty much the game throughout the weekend. i spend some time with my best man, seeing kill bill vol 2 again, (just as awesome the second time around…odd how i was sick the first time i saw it too) and thank God that as i hang out at my best man’s house and watch the lightning game, i eat hungry howie’s pizza and don’t feel sick.

June 1st: i am amazed at how quickly we get through both the tax collector’s office for the tag and title, and the circuit court for our marraige license (little side trip). but i’m so scared of having another sick day, i worry myself sick. we take my new (to me) car to tire kingdom to check on a funny looking tire. they say “two hours” i wanted to leave town my 9:30 am. i make a comment about not getting out of town till 11. my fiancee says it’ll be fine and i’ll be out before then. we wait at her house…i’m sick…and tired. i nap. we get a phone call, car’s done in 30 minutes. hooray. we arrive at tire kingdom. they don’t know who called, but the car hasn’t even moved yet, and they send us back up. 11 o’clock passes. I make another comment, this time saying 4 o’clock. we get another car, the car is done…for real this time. two new tires, alignment, and 220 dollars later, and i’m ready to hit the road…sorta. gotta get some safety pins to pin up the sagging roof cloth so it doesn’t drive me nuts touching my head the whole trip back. by the time everything is ready to go, it’s 3:45. i believe i am a prophet, until i cannot manage to part my pepto bismal like moses did the red sea. I drive off, make it down the road, only to get a call from my fiancee telling me she forgot to show me how to check the water levels in the car. i turn around, and we figure it out, i’m on the road again. i discover that the AC does not work, and at a rest stop i break the belt buckle cover. as i travel onward, through the area i crashed my truck it, it rains slightly, as if to mock me. i turn on the windshield wipers, and i watch as a drop distored view becomes a streak distorted view and notice that the wipers are half desintegrated. mind you, i’m sick through all this too…hungry…but nauseous.

and that brings us ’round about to now. i didn’t get home till around midnight. and now i’ve spent an hour writing this, and it’s so long, no one will read it. well, that’s not true. i’m sure teresa will read it, and leave a comment about some innacurate date or something. cause she hates me. but that’s my story…long, annoying, and i have to say i left out about 15 little annoying detauils that just made the pile seem bigger and bigger. i don’t have the accuracy of memory to properly recount just how daunting this past week has been…but i do believ this is the part where i would wear sack cloth, put dirt on my head, a mourn publicly. but in the weirdest way, i’m very much at peace with God. during all these events, as frustrating as it all was…i knew it was for some reason (yet to be revealed) and i knew that in the end things would end up better. i did get to spend some nice time with my best man, and i certainly appreciate seeing my fiancee again. so while i do complain alot…i know that i’m blessed with far better things than well working cars and good luck.

Filed under: health, travel by tonybullard
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so just as i was getting the acid reflux thing under control, my evil fiancee had to give me a cold. this always happens. every time she’s sick, she gets me sick, but i get it worse. except for that one time i gave her strep throat and she was in the hospital for a week…but that one doesn’t count. so now that i finally can eat food, i can’t taste it. on the good side, i’ve lost ten pounds but id’ rather have done it some other way. i guess this will have to do.

Filed under: health, rambling by tonybullard
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