Regurgitated Breast Milk

Have you ever had someone regurgitate breast milk into your belly button? Because I have. As someone who professes to be an artist/writer (as opposed to an actress/model) I try to really drink in every experience and really think about what it feels like to, say, have my teeth drilled. What kind of light is in the office? What time of day is it? How many people are in the room? Does the friction of the drill cause your tooth to smell like it's burning? What's burning tooth smell like? (It's not all 'what's sex like in a field of clover?') 

So this morning in bed when Julia passed me Elliot after she'd finished feeding him and he sat on my stomach then spit up straight into my navel I thought, Ahh, here's a chance to experience something few people probably have. After thinking about it for awhile I've boiled down what it feels like to have someone, hopefully your baby, spit up breast milk into your belly button: It's kind of cute, and kind of oogy. 

You can trust me on this. I'm an artist and a writer.

I smell a series!

You're FKM. God damn, this pope is soooo much more entertaining than the last pope.

Quote of the Day

"I need that damn drug they gave those monkeys."

-me*, referring to this

*I know it's against the unofficial rules as well as the spirit of Quote of the Day to quote myself, but since I often wake up in the 4am range when our 5 month old wakes up I consider myself in the third person often. There's the well-rested, alert, cognitively able me. That's the me who goes to bed sober at 9pm and wakes up fresh at 7am, ready to tackle any challenge life gives me with a smile and charming comment. You would love love love this man. You would cheerfully give this man seed money for whatever crazy scheme he'd cooked up. Why? Because this man is an achiever. This man makes an appearance randomly once-a-year.

Then there's the normal me. This is the man who gets six frequently interrupted hours of sleep. He's used to this after so many decades and it's nothing a couple of cups of coffee and fifteen minutes of angry, fast music can't fix. 

Then there's the heavily sleep deprived, fully caffeinated me. This man has zero to four hours of sleep and a pot of coffee in him. He's the guy cooking breakfast for his family while his wife sleeps (she needs it), while his three year old bitches about something or other, and while his remarkably peaceful five month old craps his pants. This is the man who said the above quote. 

The Fall

(click image to make it big like ox)

So a few weeks ago I fell...hard. Like most awful moments, life-changing moments, or tragic moments, "the fall" happened so fast I had no time to react, and it was over before I realized it'd begun. In fact, by the time I realized I'd fallen I was already sure I'd broken my back. And to a degree, I had.

It was the Tuesday morning the week before Christmas. I was working on a model of a school for a card and Julia had taken charlie to Waldorf. Adela had just arrived and was taking Tommy for a walk. Before she left I asked her to make a trip to Fischer lumber to grab some plywood so that I could anchor the school to something more solid than foam core. I knew she'd need to know the measurements of the board so after she left I ran out to the new garage with my tape measure.

As you can see, provided you have sight, our new garage is sunken and requires the descent of four steps to gain entry. Initially these steps were plain old poured concrete. That's all we wanted, nothing fancy, but as the garage was built and started looking hot we needed something better than just grey concrete. That's where those tiles come in. Those are Saltillo tile, 12 inch. The same tile, though many years newer, as the tile we have all over our house. If you happen to live in Los Angeles you'll recognize these tiles because they're everywhere and they don't draw attention to themselves, not like some fancy Moroccan tile that thinks it's better than you.

At this point it had been raining for several days, nothing deluge-esque but enough to water the grass and make things wet...things like tile.

Our older Saltillo tile has acquired a not unpleasant grittiness to it. These tiles are weathered, experienced and they aren't afraid to show their age. They are the clint eastwood of tiles. The new tiles are young and pretty, shiny and smooth. They're the fresh-faced "it" girl of hollywood before her soft core porn hits the net. I'm officially stopping that metaphor here. Why? Here's why: When you get these tiles wet, you slide ride off.

I found this out the hard way. I also found out that wearing slippers to "run out and take a quick measurement" is le stupid. Look at the picture and imagine my footing. My right foot was on the very top row of tiles and I'd just stepped down with my left foot onto the second step. That was when friction disappeared. The next thing I felt was my spine cracking against the edge of the tile step. I bounced to the bottom with a jerk and lay motionless, alone, moaning, in the rain. 

I was sure I'd broken my back and was relieved I was able to wiggle my toes. But panic immediately took hold. Being convinced I'd broken my back I was also certain the odds of inducing paralysis by movement were pretty decent. I screamed as loud as I could for Adela to come back from her dog walk, she'd only just left after all. And these were not timid screams, these were blood-curdling-please-help-me screams. These were screams meant to draw attention to a desperate situation. 

And no one heard.

Now fear of paralysis began giving way to fear of death. Keep in mind that I felt my spine hit the thin, acute edge of a tile and concrete step. It not only hurt extremely bad, it was terrifying. All I knew was that I could move, but I was 100% positive that your spine couldn't take that kind of trauma without experience significant damage. I also figure my odds at internal bleeding at about 50/50. So I began to drag myself, not crawl, drag, up the steps, across the yard, up more steps, and into the kitchen. 

I usually can't find my cell phone, but fortunately it was sitting on the table where I came in. I called Julia and moaned, "You need to come home right now." Actually she was home already. She was just walking in the gate, which I heard slam. She ran in, and got me to the hospital. On the way over I called our contractor and left a message similar to this: "We have to do something about those steps. Rip them out or something. I don't care. I'm going to the hospital."

I was examined by Dr. Mcdonald in the ER and he said the examine went well but that I needed xrays An hour or two later those results came back and showed that my T12 vertebra was "narrowed." Apparently that indicates a possible fracture, but not a serious one, and one that requires no treatment beyond pain medication on common sense. 

So for a few days I could it easy and downed Advil. I was given a prescription for Vicodin, but apparently it doesn't work on me because three advil were more helpful than two vicodin.

Julia was super awesome. She picked up all the slack and took care of the kids virtually by herself, I helped by holding Elliot as much as I could and by reading stories and stuff. Even weeks later I'm in decent pain, but frankly I'm amazed I'm not in more pain. In fact, within a few days I was wanting to work out again, though the thought of sit ups freaked me out. The worst part is the memory though. I can still feel my spine hitting the edge of that step, and every time I think about it I shiver. 

I learned a few things:

1. We need a handrail (we now have two)
2. Slippers are not substitutes for shoes.
3. Focus, stay alert, think before you act (Are you going down some steps in the rain? Take a moment to make sure you aren't doing something stupid, like wearing slippers.)
4. It's amazing how much punishment the human body can take. When I see someone in a wheelchair because of a traumatic accident I'm going to be amazed they survived because as hard as I hit the step, and as much pain as I was in, I did very little actual damage. Someone in a wheelchair because of an accident, I can't even begin to imagine the force of that trauma. Jesus. 

Ahhhh, priests.

These priests need to get a maid service or something.

Quote of the Day

"Look! I've got a big, white butt!"

-Charlie, discovering the wonders of putting a balloon between his legs

Quote of the Day

"Nothing sounds as good as a miniature Snickers bar."
-Julia, longing for a Snickers bar

G'tmo, supreme court, etc.

where's caulder.com?

Does lifetimewebsites suck? Where'd my site go?

Quote of the Day

"Why can't I yell 'Meatball! Meatball! Meatball!'?"
-Charlie, yelling Meatball instead of taking a nap.

Atheists believe in Pete

Pete in '08

Fight On!

Instant Karma

This is a story that does not speak well of me, but we all get what we deserve and sometimes we get it within seconds.

We share a very small alley with the neighbors on the next street over. It's very small, too small for a car to share with a bike. Because of its size all the trashcans for houses on both sides of the alley are on our side of the alley, furthermore they're all smooshed together making for a fair simlucra of 17th century Paris: overflowing garbage, rats, smell, water runoff trickling down the middle of the cracked road, unwashed human scavengers eking out a miserable and scant living from the same place they too oft urinate. It's not the worst place in Los Angeles back there, but it's not a place you want to spend a lot of time (though you do get the occassional teenagers smoking pot and copulating).

There one natural resource the alley provides is space to put your refuse. But being such a small alley there's limited space, and complicating matters further is the fact that our city government has decided how many and how big our trashcans should be. Plus the actual trash cans have to share the alley with lawn clipping cans and recycling.

In truth, even with two kids, a dog, two businesses, and major construction we don't generate more trash than we have room for in between collections. Sometimes we do. Sometimes everyone does. After Christmas or a kid's birthday party there's fair amount of overfill going on. When this happens we, and everyone else on the alley, spread it around to various trashcans. We all do it, no one likes it but what are you going to do? You put up with it when people do it to you and you remember that people do it to you when you do it to them.

Some people make a mockery of the system, however. On the other side of the alley a few houses up from ours the people generate loads of trash, which regularly finds its way in our trashcan, the one located most conveniently next to their own. How do I know it's theirs? I've seen their address on many items. Usually there's no problem, but sometimes their abuse of the system has consequences, we regularly are unable to use our own trashcan because it's so full of their stuff. You have to spread it around bitches, it's unneighborly to hog someone else's trash.

So the other day I was throwing some trash out and we'd had a bunch of contractors working on our garage all week and our trash was pretty full. I was going to throw some trash into another can and I looked into the offending neighbors can first (of course) to find that it already had some of our trash in it (some extra floorboards a contractor was installing). It wasn't a huge amount of trash but I felt that fair was fair and although I WANTED to pile on with more trash, I just couldn't in good conscience do it. So I walked down the alley and spread it around.

Last night I was taking out the recycling and I discovered that all the floorboards from their trash had been unceremoniously dumped in front of our own. Okay, given the amount of crap of theirs I'd dealt with over the years this pissed me off. My feelings didn't stop there though, I went from pissed off to vengeful fairly quickly. So as a response I walked to their trash can, removed the topmost bag, and tossed it into the alley. What I hoped to achieve by doing this was to annoy them at the very least; to make them stoop over and pick up their bag of trash. But what I really hoped for was to seriously ruin their day. I hoped a rat would get in it, or a cat (rats by another name), or maybe a car would run over it. In some way, I'd hoped, their trash would scatter all over the alley, and their green guilt would force them to pick it up.

Even as I wished this I felt it was wrong. I felt I should reconsider and put it back in the can. But the momentum of the act took over and I ignored my urge to reconsider.

About one second later I pushed the gate leading to our yard instead of pulling it and locked myself in the alley. Did I mention it was raining? Did I mention I was wearing slippers? I didn't curse my luck, how could I? I knew in my heart that I'd earned a trip to the karmic retribution woodshed; so I picked up their trash and put it back in the can, then trudged around the block in the rain in my sweats and slippers and slid into our kitchen where Julia asked where I'd been.

So there you go. I got what was coming to me. And while I learned a lesson, I'm also going to be strict about what finds it's way into my trash can in the future.