Last night at midnight, Calfgrit5 woke up and hurried to the bathroom. Unfortunately, he lost his stomach contents before reaching the toilet bowl, or even the tiled bathroom floor. The hallway carpet caught most of it, with only a trail leading into the bathroom. We joined him in the bathroom to help him. We traded off soothing him and cleaning up the mess.

We were up with the little guy for over an hour, but eventually we got him back in his bed, with a towel under him and a wastebasket beside him. He got up another couple of times before finally falling to sleep around 2:00 a.m. The poor little guy was pathetic.

We eventually fell back to sleep ourselves. But then at 4:00 a.m., Calfgrit9 came into our room saying he felt sick. He then ran to our bathroom and asploded! We jumped up and ran to him.

We both pulled up short, shocked by the mess. Oh. My. God. I could only see his back as he stood leaning over the toilet. Judging from the mess on the floor, on the toilet, and on the walls around, I expected the front of his body to be opened like some slimy alien had burst from his chest. (I actually had the thought cross my mind: take a picture, ’cause no one will believe this story.)

Once finished vomiting, we got him to step into the shower. While he got washed down, and his clothes taken to the washer, I commenced cleaning the room.

I had to turn on the overhead fan to pull the stench out. I almost threw up from the sight and smell. After thoroughly cleaning the room, I had to get in the shower, myself. My pajamas and t-shirt were taken to the washer, too, but they could be burned for all I care to have them back.

CG9 went to bed easier than his little brother did after his episode. I really hope they both sleep plenty long this morning. I won’t be going to work tomorrow today. If we’re lucky, we’ll be sleeping late. That’s all I’m hoping for right now, as I expect the day to be horrible and disgusting.

I’m pretty much wide awake, now, at 5:00 a.m. Dammit.

Bullgrit

Leaving Calfgrit9’s Cub Scout Pack meeting, we had to walk up stairs to reach the ground floor exit. While walking up the stairs, I asked CG9 if he had counted the steps he goes up and down in his school (his classroom is on the second floor). He hadn’t counted them, but he guessed there are probably 20-30 steps.

At my office building, I always take the steps rather than riding the elevator. I said, “You know how many steps I go up in my office building to get to my office?”

“How many?” he asked.

“Ninety-six.”

“Wow,” he said. “That’s almost a hundred.”

“Yep,” I said. “Ninety-six up to go to work, down to go to lunch, up to go back to work, down to come home. That’s almost four hundred steps up and down every day.”

We exited the church school building, and walked through the parking lot to our van.

“That’s a lot,” he said. “That’s more than I walk up and down in a week. Why don’t you just take the elevator?”

“I can use the exercise,” I explained.

We got in the van and went home.

96 steps up, twice a day (plus down twice a day). It sounds like a lot, but it’s just four flights – 1st to 5th floor. Judging by how I feel once I reach my floor, I doubt I could make it up to a 10th floor without having to sit down and rest. I’m not completely winded, and I’m not sweating, but I figure another couple of floors would be difficult.

This is rather pathetic and disappointing to me. I was in excellent physical condition less than 10 years ago –- I earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do just before Calfgrit9 was born. As little as 5 years ago, I would have said I was in decent physical condition. But now walking up four flights of stairs wears on me.

I can run and play and climb with my boys at a park, but I can’t keep it up for as long as I used to could. I have to beg off the play after 15 minutes or so. Watching Calfgrit5 dash at full speed for the full length of our neighborhood street amazes me. His little short legs have to run four strides for every one of my own, but he just goes and goes after I’ve had to stop and slow walk at just halfway.

I haven’t had a really good, extended exercise session for many months. Maybe more than a year. Sometimes I think I can feel my body getting older by the minute. When I get up off the floor from building Legos with my boys, my bones crack, my muscles ache, everything just screams, “You’re closer to senior years than youth.”

Man, if I’m feeling this now, at just 42, what will I feel like at 62? Hell, I couldn’t imagine what 42 physically felt like when I was 22. I’ve got to get my shit together and get back to exercising regularly.

Maybe I can start something this weekend. It’s been unusually cold the past few weeks, but it’s warming up a bit, now. So maybe me and the boys can get to a park and run and jump and climb to get me back on the exercise fun.

Bullgrit

Calfgrit8 turns Calfgrit9 today. Sadly, for him, he won’t get his birthday party till this coming Saturday (at Adventure Landing — laser tag for two hours).

Every day, this boy shows himself to be so much like his father. Strangely, this makes me happy and sad at the same time. He has my imagination and creativity and inquisitiveness. But he also has my introverted and self-centered personality.

He loves to play imaginatively by himself. He evens plays with some of my old Star Wars toys in the same ways that I did. Watching him play sometimes is like looking into the past at myself. As much as this makes my heart glow, seeing him as a reflection of myself, it also worries me that the personality traits he got from me will lead him to make the same mistakes become the same man that I am. I want him to become better than me.

But how do I bring out more and better traits in him when I don’t even know how to find them in me (if they even exist in me, at all)?

When he blows out his nine candles on his birthday cake, I’ll be making a wish, too. My wish is that he can rise above my genetics and personal example and become more and better than his old man.

Bullgrit

I have my new computer, and wow almighty! Computer tech has come a long way since my last computer purchase.

For my previous computer, I specifically looked for something that could play the then latest hot new game: Half-Life 2 (November 2004 — almost exactly 5 years ago). This time, my game benchmark is Modern Warfare 2. So I now have:

Intel Core-2 Duo 3.0 GHz
1333 MHz Front-Side Buss, 6MB Cache
4GB RAM
Video card: NVIDIA GT 220 1G

These numbers amaze me — they’re all around 3-4 times the specs of my previous computer.

I haven’t picked up MW2, yet, (I will this week), so I pulled out my old HL2 game disks and installed them on this slick new hotness. With my old setup, I could run the game with the graphics set to a medium-high level. It looked great, then, but now . . .

I set all the graphics levels to the maximum, even the resolution to 1920×1080. With the 16:9 ratio on my new 21.5″ monitor, the visual quality is magnificent! And framerates are plenty high. I’m amazed at how nice this old game looks with everything cranked up to their max. I can only imagine what something new, like Modern Warfare 2, will look like.

Calfgrit8 was with me on my last computer shopping trip, and he heard me tell the tech that I wanted a system that could run MW2. Afterward, he asked me if he could watch me play the game (like he’s seen World of Warcraft and Portal).

“Um, I don’t know,” I said, “it’s an adult game. I’ll have to look at it first and see. It’s probably pretty violent.” (I know it’s pretty violent.)

“Yeah, I’d like to see it,” he repeated. “It could give me some good ideas.”

“Wh-what?” I stammered. “What kind of ideas?”

“For playing army,” he answered.

Hmm. I don’t think I’m going to even let him find out when I’ve bought the game.

Last night, I did let both boys watch me play through the opening sequence of Half-Life 2. In the opening, there’s no weapons in hand, and there’s no real violence or scary stuff, so they can watch it. All I did was run from the bad guy aliens through an urban landscape while exciting music played. It was thrilling and fun, but once the unarmed opening was done (and I came to the first gun in the game) we stopped.

Afterward, while the boys were in the bathroom (one in the tub, the other on the pot), I overheard them telling how they would deal with the bad guy aliens chasing them.

Calfgrit8: “I’d set up a trap for the aliens chasing me, so when they came after me they’d hit it and fall off the building. Or something would hit them on the head.”

Calfgrit5: “I’d get a gun that shot poop and pee at them.”

Their plans and plots and tricks and traps got weirder — so weird I can’t really think of how to write out the conversations. I’ll just say that if the Half-Life 2 scenario ever plays out for real, (aliens take over world, enslave humanity), my Calfgrits will have a unique place with the Earth resistance. A unique, and probably lonely place.

Bullgrit