Normally I reserve my more bitter comentary for this blog ... and of late, gun reviews, some game reviews, etc. But I a recent even has occured which makes even a grumpy old misanthrope like me smile a bit each day.
Thursday night our first grandchild was born. Yep. All kinda unexpectedly like, too. Well, she was due in about a week and a half, but there we were, The Missus and I, exausted after spending an entire day cleaning up a building and getting it ready to become the new dojo for our jujutsu system ("our" as in the one I am so active in, that Herself is the semi-official "dojo mamma-san", not "our" as in we run it. I'm one of the instructors, but the other instructor owns the system, thus it's "his"... although methinks he'd prefer it if everyone involved in the school used the possessive "our"). Anyway, lest I take yet another unscheduled jaunt on the digression express, let me get back on track here: Last Thursday, the wife and I spent the entire day running hither and yon getting supplies, planning-on-the-fly, cleaning, scrubbing, mopping, repairing, etc. to get the new building ready. Then I rinsed off, donned my doji (those heavy pajama-like things we wear and, oft as not bleed all over), ran and taught the night's two classes. I ended the adult class a wee bit early and the students pitched in and helped us move the mats and everything from the place we had been using to the new (and MUCH BETTER) location. By the time we got finished it was nigh on 9:30 pm and Herself and I were, to put it plainly, worn slap out. We elected to eat out since neither of us could even begin to summon the energy to cook. Having burned countless calories, we didn't feel too bad about deciding to patronize our favorite Mexican restaurant. Heck, I even had a regular (as in non-light) beer! To hell with carbs!
Anyway, there we sat, tired but quite happy and even a wee bit proud of what we had done. The head honcho was (and is at this moment) out of town for some urgent and very important business. This meant we could both exercize our not-so-latent OCD and make a lot of decisions as to what went where, etc., etc. We'd done a lot of work for one day and though a lot more needed doing, we were actually proud. Then came the phone call. Youngest daughter, BLK calls Herself's phone (thinking I was still at the dojo) and let us know that the pregnant eldest, SAK was at the hospital. Once I got the phone and started asking questions (hey, give a man credit when he knows the diff 'tween regular contractions and Braxton/Hicks contractions!), BLK put her mother on the phone (gee, thanks, kiddo, le sigh). Come to find, there was some fetal distress going on but it looked like SAK was stabilizing and would be sent home in a wee bit. She wanted to see me ASAP, though, big ol' Daddy's girl that she is. I called the waitress over and told her to bring the check as soon as she could as we might have to jump and run. She complied and about five minutes later, I get another call from BLK ... t'was time for an emergency c-section. Oh, boy ... but I did not panic. We jumped up, paid up, and made it the three miles or so up the road to the hospital. There, amid the ex's constant gloom-and-doom predictions, espousing of medical psudo-knowledge, implications to my wife (who has known me all our lives) that she (the ex) knows me better, we got to my daughter's side. I told her to ignore the gloom-and-doom, c-sections are relatively routine, "and besides, you were a HELL of a lot more trouble than this and look how good you came out!" They wheeled her away, and moments later we heard the baby cry ... I mean CRY!!! What a set o'lungs! And, sweet child though she seems to be, when she is displeased, she has no trouble getting that point across and making sure EVERYONE knows it! ... I ... um ... I wonder where she ... inherited ... that particular ... trait?
Baby girl, Riley (or NeBWuFf, as I call her ... they had NBWF on her bassinette for New Born White Female so I announced that must be her name, as per the medical staff, right? ... um ... not, as it turns out, everyone shares my sense of humor. Who knew?), is quite healthy as is her new mama. Tiny, tiny, but very, very healthy. Puts a lot of things into perspective for me, that's for sure.
So, amidst all my whining and grumpy comentaries, let it be known that this man is smiling! Well, okay, not all the time, I mean I wouldn't want the fabric of the universe to split or anything, and I'm more determined than ever to open some people's eyes so our Granddaughter has all the freedoms we enjoy today and maybe even more. But, yeah, I'm happy and proud and all the usual cool grandparent stuff. Methinks I need one of my next gunsmithing projects to be builing her a first rifle, and I already told her mother I'm ordering a size triple zero dogi. Heh-heh-heh. ;)
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