The Exculpatory Journal

Today was a day of fail.

It started out simple enough. I planned on staying home today, since we don’t have a babysitter. I was going to play with Sean and maybe go to the supermarket (we’re low on milk). However, fate had a different plan.

The first fail of the day: I missed my 9:30AM phone call. The phone was upstairs. I was downstairs. It was my life insurance representative giving me an update on why I don’t have life insurance yet. On the message, she said that the insurance company can’t proceed because they never got my pathology report (which doesn’t exist) for my cancer (which I don’t have). Ulgh, more phone calls for tomorrow, I suppose.

After playing back voicemail, I decided that since I already had a phone in hand, I’d go ahead and make an appointment for my doctor. I’d been rubbing my eye lately and it was starting to bother me a little bit. I thought maybe something had gotten into my tear duct. I called up Kaiser and they found me a same-day appointment.

The appointment staffer asked “can you make 10:50?”

I said, “Yes, I think I can, but I’d prefer something a bit later in the day. It takes me a while to get going since I have baby and a wife with a broken leg.”

“Well, we can get you something tomorrow…”

“Never mind, I’ll take the 10:50″ I started upstairs to scrub the bed stink off my skin and to shed my daddy-is-staying-home-today outfit.

On my way up, my wife asked me for her other pants so she could be more comfortable looking after the baby on the floor. No problem. I ran upstairs, grabbed the pants, and headed back down. As a rounded the landing, I saw my son — who just started crawling Saturday — had managed to get his torso on to the first step. I was impressed. Such progress so quickly! I said, “Hey, look at our boy!” As I did, Sean looked up to see me, lost his balance and fell backward from the step smacked his head, hard, on the tile floor at the base of the stairs. Oh, how I hate the noise of bone on concrete.

After a bit of crying, Sean got over his fall and continued on playing as if nothing had happened. Of course, Mom and I were devastated. Fucking stairs. Once it was obvious that Sean was okay, I sulked back upstairs to rush through a shower and head off to my soon approaching 10:50 appointment (with a 10:30 check-in).

Fifteen miles of typical freeway shenanigans later, I’m at my medical office, waiting for my name to be called. Weight, temperature, BP: all normal. Martha, the RN, closes the door to my exam room and I wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. I read a bit of a six-month old AAA magazine and tried to ignore the wind-tunnel worthy fan trying to cool the PC across from me playing the “We love Kaiser” screen-saver. Finally, after what seems like forever, my doc comes in. The first thing out of his mouth: “excuse me if I get called out in the middle of this.” Immediately, he proceeds to jump on the the computer.

“Are you still smoking?”

WTF? “No. I had a cigar. Once. Two years ago.”

Then I wait as he clicks away with out saying a word. Seriously, he must have clicked on fifty things, about once every two or three seconds.

Finally, never looking away from the computer, he asks “So, what are we seeing you for today?”

“See this eye, it’s been bothering me off and on and the eyelid around the tear duct seems a little red.”

“Uh huh. Anything make it worse?” He’s still clicking away, not looking at me.

“Not really. Rubbing it, I suppose.”

“Uh huh. Any wateriness? Any discharge or mucus?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s just a little itchy.” I pause. “Hey, if it’s nothing, that’s fine with me. I just thought I’d get it checked out since I had the opportunity today.”

Finally, after some more clicking, he turned to actually look at my eye. “Ah ha, it’s pink here with the sty. No wonder its itchy. I want you to take these eye drops four times a day.” He paused. “What kind of work do you do? Are you going to back to work today? It’s better if you don’t go in to work.”

“I do computer stuff and I sort of have the day off today. Why? Will these drops affect my vision?”

“Well, no. It’s just that you’re contagious.”

Oh shit, he didn’t say “pink here” he said “pink eye!” “I have pink eye? Like pink eye pink eye?”

“Yes.” And that finished off my morning.

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I told my wife about the whole pink eye debacle and in response she wiped down all the common surfaces, threw away our toothbrushes, put all the towels and bedding through the wash, and told me to stay the hell away from her and the baby. I love her when she’s practical.

Stay the hell away lasted until Sean became daddy deprived and wouldn’t stop fussing. We compromised. I was allowed touch my family so long I became a hand wash fanatic and kept Sean away from my eyes. I lulled Sean into a nap, put him down in the crib, and settled in to do a bit of work from home. Oddly, the work at home bit was probably the high point of the day. Everything was straightforward, no drama.

After Sean woke up, Claire and I decided that we’d go to Lowe’s to pick up some baby gates as a knee-jerk to Sean’s fall. Lowe’s is about three miles away but it took us about 20 minutes to get there. Class at the university had just let out and we had the poor timing to join the mass exodus. Compounding the issue, the lane we were in, the one we needed to get to Lowe’s, is typically used by Type A personalities to get one car ahead in the mad queue to get on the freeway. I used to bitch about having to keep our huge son in a rear facing car seat, but after the crazy braking I did to avoid those aggressive types, I take it all back. I’m happy he was rear facing today. To make things worse, our left turn signal burnt out. Again. Eventually, though, we did made to Lowe’s. And they had baby gates!

We brought the gates home. Our purchase consisted of a $60 deluxe “high-traffic” gate and two $19 econo-gates. I placed the deluxe gate between the kitchen and living room. It went in like butter. It was something a drunk, one-armed caveman could install. We let Sean loose on the gate and it held him back to both Claire’s and my satisfaction. A+.

I gathered up some tools to install the econo-gate. The box advertised it to be “ideal for the top of the stairs.” Who was I to argue? I took the gate and tools upstairs. With daddy freshly out of view, Sean bawled, making it hard to concentrate. All I had to do was put four screws in a stud, but with that kid at full volume, I screwed up with massive amounts of fail.

I drilled four holes and mounted one hinge with two screws. When I went to get the screws for the second hinge and realized that I’d used the wrong screws for the first hinge. “Aw man.” I took the wrong screws out, put the right screws in, and mounted the second hinge. I then hung the gate on the hinges to discover that I’d mounted hinges on a stud that didn’t line up with the opposite wall. There was no where to mount the second set of hardware. “Damn it!”

I marked a new set of holes, unscrewed the misplaced hinges, and screwed them into the new holes. When I tried to rehang the gate, I saw that one of the hinges was upside-down. “Fuck!”

Sean was still screaming his bright red head off. “Exculp, you’d better get down here.”

Defeated, and still mid-project, I sulked downstairs. He instantly shut-up, the spoiled little punk. It’s flattering, true, but come on! We played and after a bit he was back to entertaining himself. I motioned to Claire “I’m going a back upstairs to finish my gate project” and she silently agreed to watch after Sean, despite her oncoming pain. Thanks Claire.

I went back up stairs, walking on eggshells, but Sean’s no dummy. He noticed my absence and started up the waterworks. In a counter-offensive, Claire intervened and managed to distract Sean with the “Count-n-Play” guitar. Go Mom!

I took the bottom hinge off the wall for the third time and set it in right-way up. I hung the gate, swung it up to the opposite wall, marked it, put up the drill template, and drilled four more holes. I took out the mount plate and tried to screw it to the wall, but the holes seemed too close together for this plate. “Aw, don’t tell me.”

I turned the drill template over. One side said “Hinge Template” the other said “Mount Plate Template”. “God damn it! Fuck!”

I drilled four more holes. I screwed in the mount plates and worked on adjusting the width of the gate. The gate catches a bit more than it is supposed to on the top plate and a bit less that it is supposed to on the bottom. Maybe the gate is screwed up. Maybe my walls are are not true. I don’t know, and I don’t the care. The fucking gate is fucking installed and the fucking kid can’t fucking fall through it. I’m done. The bottom of the stairs, the place where Sean fell in the first place, remains gateless.

On a positive note, my lab results got posted on-line not to long ago. You can all rest well knowing my liver function is normal and that I’m negative for chlamydia.