Brent's space

Original URL: http://creeva.com/2009/06/26/michael-jackson-was-my-first-hero/

When I was eight years old and the Thriller album came out, this was the first album I was completely in love with.    Nothing topped it.  I remember getting a pair of red parachute pants as a present and thought they were the greatest thing in the world.   About a month later I had put holes in the knees of them from constantly sliding across the floor.  I lusted for a few years after that to get the red jacket, but it never emerged.    I would have still bought one up to a couple years ago - it was never meant to be though.

I was in Greenville at my Godmother’s house and her son staying up and waiting when the Thriller video had it’s world premiere and we thought it was the greatest thing ever made.  I think they aired it a few times that night and we watched it everytime - to think this was on MTV back when they actually showed music videos.

Lastly I participated in Hands Across America - Michael was into it and through this chain of millions of people I would be connected with him and everyone else in the world.   Even though we lived in Elyria at the time, our place in the “Hands” line was literally about 2-3 miles away from the town we would eventually move it.  We were at the Ford Plant on route 6 in Lorain, which is a literal stones throw from Vermilion.   I remember thinking that Michael organized the whole thing - I know better now.   He was one of the prime reasons I was into it though.

As I remember people were just mulling around, no one wanted to hold hands until it was time.   When the correct time happened there was this line of people holding hands as far as I could see to the east and the west.   It was a moment in time that struck me even at the age of ten that this was a monumental thing.

Time passed and I can say any fascination with Michael passed out of my life.   We’ll skip the controversy years, but slip in that I loved that he owned a monkey.   Recently I heard about his gearing up for the London concerts and was hoping that if toured the states that I would get a chance to see him.   He is a concert I would have paid 100-200 to see.  To capture a bit of that childhood - the memories of the parachute pants and never getting moonwalking down.

Some people have gone so far to say he is our generations Elvis or Lennon.   I may give him Elvis, but he was no Lennon.  Either way he was a larger then life superstar that did have an impact on me, and it will be with me for the rest of my own life.

Original URL: http://creeva.com/2009/06/24/the-first-solidish-food/

Last night Lex got his first taste of real food from a spoon instead of from a bottle or the breast.   He seemed to enjoy it, though there was a partial bowl up turn in the beginning.

The pictures of the incident are below.

Click for a larger version.

Original URL: http://creeva.com/2009/06/22/becoming-a-parent-part-3/

I was in a meeting at work and around 3:45 a call came into my cell phone.   Since the meeting was ending soon I didn’t even look at the call and sent it straight to voice mail.  As I left the meeting a few minutes later I walked out and saw it was Xie calling me.  I called her as I was walking back to the car.   Her mother had her and she was on the way to the hospital.  I rushed back to my office and rushed through everything I had to get done, get the paperwork filed for the maternity leave I was taking and try to rush out there.   Now my hiring company (I’m a contractor) was in town preparing for the following week to do performance reviews - while I was waiting for my boss to show back up they rushed me through my review.   My boss finally appeared and I rushed him through what needed to be known and done, and had the paperwork signed.   Thirty minutes after talking to Xie I was on the road to home. My commute was an hour, then another half hour to the hospital.

When I got home I rushed taking out and feeding the pets since I wouldn’t be coming back that night.  I also grabbed everything Xie and I needed, but she didn’t take with her.   While the dogs were eating I managed to get out the announcement on the blog that we were heading to the hospital and things were happening.  I had actually written that a couple weeks before but had it ready in preparation so that took only a few seconds to get it marked as published.  Everything said and done, I was at the hospital about two hours after Xie.

When I arrived she was in a staging area, where they get you ready to have a baby.   A room where you are not far enough along to move into the next room.   They had her on medications, but she was still feeling quite a bit of pain.  Her mother was there comforting her and feeding her ice chips, essentially wrangling it so I couldn’t get in at all.   Now I have stated that I may not always be the most comforting person in the world, but I didn’t have a chance.   At one point Xie interjected and pleaded with me to talk to her.   Now I’m normally a guy with too many words and would just keep talking about anything and everything, but I blanked - and felt like total crap over it.

Continued in part 4 coming soon

Original URL: http://creeva.com/2009/06/21/fathers-day-for-my-dad/

My father, what do I say.   I love the man to death, but for me he wasn’t the perfect father, but neither was I the perfect son.   I can say now that he is one of the closest family members I have.   Part of that is my nature, part of it is the relationship we strengthened when I was traveling on the road and my dad and I had many hours of long conversation.   Either way we have a great relationship now.

Though he will say otherwise, I’m not exactly the child he wanted.   I wouldn’t worry too much about that though, my son could easily turn into a mustang driving jock, very far the opposite side of me.   I’m sure I’ll have to deal with the same problems my father did; not understanding the time period, not understanding what I was going through in school, and not understanding me.   Part of this is par for the course of being the oldest child, and part of it was the differences that sprung up in interest.   My father collected alot of books growing up and said he enjoyed reading, I would say this is one thing we have in common over the long course of years.    The problem is I don’t ever remember my father reading a book.

If we set aside some of the truly negative memories we can focus on some of the more interesting memories:

For being a decent father to a rotten son ;P I can say he did an ok job.  He taught me to take acceptance of the consequences of my actions, that I need to be my person.  That I can do things my way, and as long as I was making forward progress he wouldn’t stand in my way or get mad.  While I didn’t see it growing up, I can look back and say my father made me a better man.

Happy Father’s Day Dad.

Original URL: http://creeva.com/2009/06/19/becoming-a-parent-part-2/

Xie and I had been anti-kids our whole relationship.   Well, anti-kids is pretty strong.  We will leave it at the fact that we had no plans to ever have any children.  Even after the ectopic pregnancy we didn’t have any plans.  It was something that if it happened we would handle it, if it didn’t we wouldn’t feel that we were lacking anything in our lives.  So when we found out Xie was pregnant again, six months after the ectopic pregnancy we were a bit surprised.   Keep in mind that up until 2007 Xie had never been pregnant - so we assumed that it wouldn’t happen.   So within eight months she had been pregnant twice.

After what we went through six months prior we still waited a couple months before telling any family.  We didn’t know what to expect or if we were going to have a repeat.  Well eventually we passed the information across the family.  It also shows that even though I don’t speak to my mother, some news passes across borders.  I told my father and then the next day drove up north to tell my grandmother, well they feigned surprise - but I found out from my sister who I visited after leaving their house that they already knew.   I confronted them on the subterfuge, but they said they didn’t want ot ruin it for us.  Welcome to the back channels and gossip that runs in the back current of my family that no one wants to admit occurs.

During the pregnancy mostly things went normal.  There was a couple concerns the first and one that still exists is that he had a multi-cystic non functioning kidney.   So essentially today he only has one kidney.   This is something that they have only been tracking in the last few years, and one in every 750 births there is instance of a child being born with only one functional kidney.  My sister through different circumstances has had a single her whole life, and things have been normal for her.   I don’t anticipate it effecting my son’s quality of life too much with the exception of what sports he can be involved with.

The other issue was that a couple of tubes in the cranial cavity were enlarged that could lead to learning disabilities in life.   This test was reversed on the next and subsequent visits.   So this is really a null issue, but something we dealt with.   One thing they kept trying to pressure to get done was the test for Down’s Syndrome.  It’s not covered by insurance and unless abortion is an option for you if it comes back positive (which wasn’t for us) it’s completely useless.   Every doctor visit where I went along they kept trying to push it.   The thing with this test is that there is nothing they can do one way or the other, it’s just to be informed.  I guess there are just somethings we were willing to leave to surprise.  Xie had to hold appointments at two different doctors and at the end of pregnancy was going to one or both every week.

Depending on who you asked the baby was due either February 16th or 18th.  We had bags packed and procedures in place.   Xie even bought a new (used) car on February 23rd in preparation.   We were getting ready to start planning to have the baby induced when I got a call on Thursday February 26th….

Continued in part 3 coming next week.