Nostalgic Feelings

26
Feb 2012

Today is the last day with only one child. If our baby girl doesnt show up today, we will go to the hospital tomorrow and she will be induced.

We’re doing all kinds of cleanup around the house today to finish getting ready. One of the things I have been doing is moving files from my netbook to the Mac we bought last fall so that the netbook will run faster.

I just finished uploading almost 5000 pictures to the Mac. Watching the slideshow of the last few years of my life being loaded into the Mac made me feel like Clark Griswold when he got stuck in the attic and ended up watching all the home movies of his children growing up and his marriage.

B came in and watched some of the pictures swirling by with me for a little while and then he got bored and went to play outside with Grandmommy. So I here I sit, a little misty eyed watching my son grow up, me get married and all of the highlights of my life for the last 8 or so years. Wow!

I think I need a Blackhawks sweater with a Griswold 00 on the back and a family member camped in my driveway. Merry Christmas the shitter’s full

Category: Andy Freeman, fatherhood  Leave a Comment

To be a kid again

14
Feb 2012

 

 

 

A few days ago B was wearing his cowboy hat and came with me as we went to the grocery store. He’s a kid and can get away with it.

This morning B was excited about his Valentine’s Day party. So excited that he didnt eat breakfast because he was saving room for all of the cupcakes and candy that he will surely be dining on later today.  I drop him (and the cupcakes) off at school and a little girl and her dad were coming in the door as I was walking out. She was dressed in a snow white play dress.

There are days that I wish I didnt have all of the adult responsibilities that I have to deal with. I wish that there was cupcake parties at work immediately after nap time. I wish I could wear a costume out in public and nobody would think anything of it or if they did, I wouldnt care.

Somedays I really wish I was a kid again.

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Whatever happened to Gratitude?

29
Dec 2011

The last couple of days my son, who is 3, has been complaining about Santa night bringing him everything he had requested for Christmas. My wife and I have tried to explain that he should be grateful for what he did receive. We have talked about the Toys for Tots drives that we helped participate in and how not every child gets something for Christmas.  We tried telling him that he could ask for those things for his birthday but he retorted, “Santa doesnt come on birthdays.”

I even tried saying, “A wise man named Mick Jagger once said that you dont get everything you want but you get what you need.” Yeah that didnt work either.

We keep working on that with him but toddlers arent the only ones that complain and seem ungrateful.  Yesterday I tried to do something for an adult. It was something that would greatly help this person. We arranged to meet up but he was a no show and didnt call or email me.

Several years ago, I had a roommate that had moved to Atlanta to be near the girl he was dating. He had no job when he got here and she paid for everything. She eventually got tired of being his Sugar Momma and told him he needed to find a job. I asked what he had done where he was from and made a few calls on his behalf. I lined up an interview for him and he suddenly decided he wanted to be in law enforcement. That night I ran into a Sheriff that I knew. I told him about my roommate and he pulled out a business card, wrote a name and number on the back and told me to have my roommate call that person. The next day he called and was told to come in for an interview. He went in for the interview and was hired on the spot. Normally you would have to go through Law Enforcement training immediately but they were willing to have him start immediately and when the next training started pay for him to go through training. Unfortunately he decided he didnt want that job and only wanted to work law enforcement if he was in a patrol car cruising the streets.

I guess the moral of this story is 1) be thankful for what you have 2) dont act like a toddler if you are an adult and 3) say thank you every now and then.

Category: fatherhood, parenting, Uncategorized  Leave a Comment

It’s a small world

17
Dec 2011

Several years ago I received a call from a friend. He was interviewing some people for a job with his company. This company was not located in Georgia where I live but in a state in the Mid-west. This one particular applicant had claimed to work in Georgia. Several of you know that I have done a lot of political work. People that do this kind of work for a living are a fairly close knit group. A fraternity of sorts. We know lots of people in lots of places around the country or world that do what we do.

Anyway, this applicant claimed to have worked on a down ballot race in the mid-90′s. My buddy wanted to know if I knew the guy. I said it didnt ring a bell but I would make a couple of quick calls.

I hung up with my friend and thought “What are the odds that someone would list a job on their resume and the person interviewing them would randomly call, of all the people in the world, the person that ACTUALLY HAD THE JOB YOU LISTED ON YOUR RESUME?”

I called the guy that had been the campaign manager for that race and asked if he knew the person my buddy had called about. I figured he might be trying to help someone out with their resume. He didnt know the guy either.

I called my friend back and told him the truth that the guy had dumb luck to list a job on his resume that he didnt do and in fact was the job that I had held. He thanked me and called the applicant to tell him it is best not to lie on his resume.

 

Category: Andy Freeman, business  Leave a Comment

Is it all in my head?

11
Dec 2011

When I had my kidney transplant, the transplant team spent a lot of time giving me a list of symptoms that would signal that I was having a rejection episode of lefty. (Lefty is the name of my kidney. Even though it is on my right side, I call it lefty because it was my donor’s left kidney so thus it is lefty.) Some of the list was quite specific but other items were vague enough to cause me to worry about little things.

I left the hospital scared of what might happen. Scared of losing my new kidney. The first month I was at the Doctor’s office daily (at least Monday through Friday). Every little thing that felt different would lead to me asking my transplant team if everything was ok. “Yeah I know you said the labs are fine but how accurate are the lab results” was asked pretty much every day. Talking to other recipients, I know that this isnt unusual.

I know several people that are what could easily be classified as hypochondriacs. If they see a new disease on the evening news or spend a little too much time on WebMD they convince themselves that they have something rare, exotic and deadly. I dont think that I am a hypochondriac but I do worry more than I probably should about my health and the health of my kidney.

I know that my transplant team knows what they are doing. I trust them when they tell me that everything is fine with Lefty. Everyday is a gift from modern medicine and from my donor but I still worry that something might not be 100% and that I will end up having to return to dialysis and look for a new kidney. The odds are good that one day this will happen but until that day, I am just trying to worry less and enjoy each and every day

 

Category: kidney, organ transplant, Uncategorized  Tags: ,  Leave a Comment
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