Caddickisms

If you’re not a parent or don’t want to talk about the logistics of sickness, move along… nothing to see here.

You’ve been warned.

So after Thanksgiving dinner was over and we were all about to head home, my nephew got sick. Really sick. Suddenly and explosively. And voluminously. It was very surprising, so for a second everyone just stood there not sure what to do. (I feel bad for my nephew, too. Not only is it not a lot of fun to be sick, but to have your entire extended family standing there staring at you when you do couldn’t have helped.)

When people got over the shock and reacted, and it was obvious it wasn’t over yet, the first snap decision that had to be made was where to take him to continue his purge. It’s here that I want to dwell today.

So the options were:

• Stay where he was: in the dining room, which he had already soiled, with its hard-wood floor.
• Move to the next room, the kitchen, where the dishes were mostly, if not completely, done.
• Try to make it up the split-level stairs and down the hallway to the bathroom. The entirety of that trip is carpeted.

On the way home, my wife and I were debating the best action to have taken. My vote was for the kitchen. Her vote was to stay where he was (which, incidentally, is what happened). We both had valid arguments to back up our positions.

My position is: contain as much of the mess as possible with minimal movement and maximum “cleanability.” That means getting to a toilet, sink, or trash can as quickly as possible. In this case, given that the kitchen was one room away, I’d have gone with the kitchen sink. The kitchen trash can was also a possibility, but given the situation it was probably full. Speed is not the hallmark of someone getting sick, especially a child, so it would be the adult’s job to move him/her, even if that means picking them up or dragging them (safely, of course).

My wife’s position is to stay where he was because the mess is already there after the first explosion. Better to clean one location than two.

Her problem with my position is that there’s a real chance the next spew could happen in transit, plus she thought there would be splashback that could escape the sink and cause a larger cleanup. Both valid points, but I stand by my preference.

My problem with her position is that you’re creating a deeper, and probably more significant, mess in the one location. I’d rather clean smaller messes in more locations than a huge, saturated mess in one. It’s also more likely that a significant amount of material will end up coating the sick person and their clothes, which completely grosses me out. As the sick person, one of the worst things to have happen was finally to be done with the unpleasantness and then get a nose full of soiled shirt wiping itself on my hair on its way by. Getting to a container minimizes, if not completely avoids that problem.

So, I leave it to you, the brave few who got through this post, to settle our dispute. Which way would you handle the situation? Vote below, and support your decision (or propose other options) in the comments.

 Loading …

Related posts

• Whatever you do… (0)
• What I’ve been thinking (0)
• Review: Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (0)
• Little Mommy moments (1)
• Kids in the movie theater (4)

I’ve got a swirl of thoughts going on in my head at the moment. This one’s gonna ramble. Hopefully it comes out making some kind of sense.

I want to end my life. Well, part of it anyway. I would prefer to continue breathing, let’s just get that straight right away.

I want to excise the part of myself that wants “stuff.” Wanting stuff is the pursuit of temporary pleasure. As soon as I get something I want, I feel better for a little while, then I want “stuff 2.0.” All that stuff costs money. That means I have to work, because I haven’t figured out how to get paid for doing nothing yet. That takes time from other tasks I have to do. Time is finite, so I have to figure out how to get those other tasks done faster, which means either paying someone else to do it for me, or buying some other “stuff” that helps me get it done faster. But that means I need more money, so I can pay for that, which means I have to work more.

Nothing new there. You see where I’m going. It’s the same cyclical problem everyone has on one level or another.

I want to drop out of that cycle. I could. I know I could. For example, I could sell my current house and move someplace smaller and cheaper. It’s an option. Other people have survived with much less than I have. I won’t though. I like it here. It’s too hard to give up what I have now.

That makes me think of how hard it is for a rich man to enter heaven. When approached by a rich man wanting to know what he must do to gain eternal life, Jesus said he should sell all his possessions and give it away to the poor. In other words, he had to stop coveting “stuff.” (if you’re wondering, the passage is Matthew 19:16-30). There was a time when I thought I’d have no problem with that. That was before I had this much stuff. Intellectually, I knew what the story meant, but now I feel the guy’s pain. It’s hard. In fact, not only do I not want to give up stuff… I want more stuff.

That gets me to thinking about church. I used to be much more involved in church activities. Part of me feels like I’m not involved enough now, but I am in the choir and a small group, and I’m not sure I’m willing to commit more time right now.

And then there’s the heart of the matter: the choir connection that at some level probably kick-started this post much earlier today (well, yesterday, at this point as I write this after 3am). A friend of mine from choir has cancer. It’s apparently progressing very quickly, and hospice has recently been mentioned. I haven’t seen him since early this summer, before he was diagnosed. He and his wife are very active in our church. He’s a very nice, happy, intelligent, funny, godly, loving man. He’s one of the first people to offer help in any circumstance and has been a source of support when my family was going through some tough stuff over the last 5 years. I have an immense amount of respect for him, and it pains me greatly that he’s going through this, as does the knowledge that he may not be around for much longer.

Thinking about that and other reminders of mortality coincided with another friend of mine reflecting on “Hurt” as performed by Johnny Cash. He noted that the video for that song shows Cash “sitting there looking back on all that he had accomplished and realizing that, save a few precious things (his faith, his wife, his kids), it was all meaningless.”  “Stuff” isn’t in that list. I imagine my choir friend is having some of those same thoughts.

I need to end this life as it currently exists, and refocus. The way I want to live and the way I’m living are not lining up as well as I’d hope. I’ve got a lot of inertia, though, and I’m lazy. It’s hard to get started.

Related posts

• Personal Finance advice from “Dilbert” (6)
• C.S. Lewis on living by hope (2)
• Why I don’t have a dog (11)
• What futility doesn’t feel like (5)
• Unexpected costs, things that have broken lately, and lessons learned (0)

What is wrong with parents?

Today, my wife and I went to see two vastly different films, Wall-E and The Dark Knight (reviews to follow). In both films, there were families in the audience that made me want to go up to the parents and say “What are you thinking?! You have an important role to play as a parent, and you’re screwing it up!”

For the family in Wall-E, that would have been a bit of overkill, I grant you. The father was there with his two boys, probably around 5-7 years old. I don’t have any problem with kids being in that theater - in fact, I expected kids to be in attendance for that one. The problem was that the younger boy was repeatedly, and loudly, talking during the movie. I don’t blame the kid (much). He was just excited and wanted to show his dad that he understood what was going on (it’s possible that he’d seen the movie before, judging from some of what he said). The problem is that the father didn’t take the opportunity to teach the child to be quiet, and courteous to others. Eventually the brother said something to him, and then his dad chimed in, somewhat ineffectively, in telling the boy to quiet down. That’s just backwards. Why was the brother taking the lead there?

There were also a pair of older kids - teens - loudly bounding up and down the stairs and across the front of the seats, so that may have made me a bit more irritable toward the talker. But still… if the father doesn’t teach their kid to be courteous now, he’s just setting the kid up to become that bounder in a few years.

But the one that really bothered me was the family in The Dark Knight. They didn’t bother me because they were disruptive, mostly, but because they were there. These parents brought a 2 or 3 year old girl to an extremely loud, very violent movie. The second the movie started, she began to cry. And who can blame her? The noise alone was an assault to her senses! The parents didn’t take her out of the theater. They did comfort her in her seat, but come on… for the first 10 minutes of the movie, every time the audio quieted down a bit (which was not often), I could hear her crying. Eventually, that stopped, but I am still really disappointed that these people would subject their young daughter to sitting still that long (3 hours, from the time they first sat down) without relief, let alone for a film that is so clearly not something she should be seeing. It’s just wrong.

Parents have the responsibility for teaching their kids, and for protecting them - in big ways, and small ways. These examples are two of the small ways. Sometimes the small ways bother me more, because they’re easy to overlook, but add up to more problems later.

Related posts

• What I’ve been thinking (0)
• What I’m going to do with my summer (1)
• Trailer: The Dark Knight (0)
• The Dark Knight - Batman sequel (0)
• Superman Returns, but not as expected (0)

For all you dad’s out there, and mine specifically, Happy Father’s Day.

Thanks for all you’ve taught us, thanks for all the fun we’ve had. Thanks for the trips to the parks, the encouragement, and the discipline. And most of all, thanks for not killing us when we put a hole through the car battery (that may only apply to my Dad…).

Thanks for the support and the love.

And now, a message from the younger generation…

fathers_day_poppop

Related posts

• What I’ve been thinking (0)
• Things overheard in my house lately (0)
• Star Wars: A Cute Hope (0)
• Not for the queasy - where to get sick (9)
• Little Mommy drops the… um… ball (5)