The American Way

I just got my state tax refund. I took 4 days, unpaid, off from work to attend the birth of my first grandchild and took a hit in my paycheck. I don’t regret doing this and am thrilled that my employer allowed me to do this.

My plans had been to buy a big-screen, LCD TV for my kitchen with my federal refund and the bracket to hang it on the wall with the state refund. Now, I’m going to have to use the money for bills and to keep my household going.

Maybe I’ll get my economy “stimulated” this summer and I can do it then.

Get money from the government, even your own, and you buy a big-screen TV, right?

It’s the American Way!!

:-)

Welcome to the world!

Cole Vincent Thrasher

He arrived at 7:18am on February 5th.

I got the call from my sister at midnight that my daughter was in the hospital in labor, hit the road by 12:30am and was there in time to help her push him out by holding her leg.

How special that was! The whole “miracle of birth” thing was just that! Wonderful!

I made it to the hospital by 6:00am. She was just starting to push. Since she didn’t push for very long, his head wasn’t very deformed and rounded out quickly. He is so pretty!

He’s keeping his mother up at night, of course. I stayed for a few days. The old mommy skilz still work; I could get burps out of him when no one else could. And rock him to sleep, too. He’s very sweet.

We call him Squeaker because of the little squeaky noise me makes when he cries. When he really gets going, he does the stereotypical baby-cry: Wah Nuh-Wah! It was so funny the first time he did it! We just laughed and laughed. Of course, now it’s not so funny, especially in the middle of the night!

Now I’m back home and I miss him terribly. I may not see him til May. He will be almost 4 months old by then; he will be an entirely different person by then and won’t remember me.

I have a 3-day weekend coming up for Good Friday. I might just go to see him. It’s only 5.5 hours, right? Nothing! :-)