At long length, I finished my thesis, but not without the support of my loving bride. As a matter of fact, Delores did the most supportive thing she could do while I was racing frantically to complete it: she left me. Just for a week, mind you. That week made all the difference in the world.
One morning, I wake at the crack of dawn and, as all student bachelors do, get to work without dressing. Strangely, when I am alone I close all the doors behind me, as though there exist unseen eyes lurking around the corner.
I think to myself, as I close the basement door behind me, "Self? Doesn't the doorknob feel funny?" Click!
Yup. Locked in the basement.
Upstairs, far out of reach, are yesterday's trousers with my keys. The phone in the kitchen could have been a thousand miles away for all the help it was to me trapped below. All the external doors to my house are locked. There I stand, barely wearing a thing, wondering how I am going to get help.
I notice the door hinges are on my side of the door, so I slip into the garage to get tools to remove the hinge pins and open the door backwards. No dice. The door fits too snugly to squeeze over the bulges in the hinges without doing damage to the door.
Then I remember that this door has a ventilation grate. Off to the garage for a screwdriver, and a few moments removing the grate, and... there was another grate on the other side of the door.
Next up, I try wires and screwdrivers to walk the latch back into the door. The door clicked again as the extra pin latched. I was then twice as locked in my basement as I was a moment before!
You might ask, "So, how did you get out?"
Truth is, I'm not all that sure myself.
Abigail is a loquacious little charmer. Among her repertoire of complete sentences are: "Hi, Lil'lin!", "I found the cat!", "I want to go Gramma's house again", and "No eat the feet! They feet, not food!" It's really a thrill to see her communicate, and grow.
We can't quite get her to say "pink blanket", though. Oh, she can say "blanket" with such clarity you might think she were much older than two, but "pink blanket" infallibly deteriorates to "Pink Bobbett". You see, Pink Bobbett is the name of her most-favorite-above-all-things-in-this-world blanket.
And more importantly, Pink Bobbett is a member of the family.
I should explain...
One evening, we sang Here We Are, Together with our family, where Abigail's job is to point at each member of the family so we can sing their names. It went something like this:
...Here we are together with our family. There's Mommy and Lillian and Abigail and Pink Bobbett, too...
... Oh, and Daddy. Here we are together with our family.
One other day, Delores tells Abigail she is a princess, and then asks, "Is Lillian a princess?"
"A huh, and Pink Bobbett a princess too!" came the reply.
On yet another day...
"Abigail's cold. Lil'lin's cold. Pink Bobbett's cold!"
What could be more fun than being the father of two delightful girls...
And one scrap of cuddly personified fabric.
Delores spent the week in Provo to enjoy her family, a little extra help with the kids, and to give me some uninterrupted time to work on my thesis. That leaves me reminiscing on how remarkably dull life was as a bachelor.
To spice things up, I decided to prepare a small, gourmet meal, which consisted of two turkey franks in a pot of boiling water. With an early pre-winter chill starting to settle in the valley, I warmed my hands a moment over the stove, and then settled myself in a basement couch to work on my thesis.
Forty-five minutes later (yup, a whole forty-five minutes) I smell a musty smoke smell in the air and thought, I'll bet that's the last barbecue of the summer... wait.... Is my house on fire?
I sprinted upstairs to find my turkey franks, black and brittle and billowing smoke all through the house.
I think that warrants an embarrased Idiot Bachelor of the Month award, eh?
One of the reasons I love Abigail is because she is an excellent teacher. Here are a few of the many things she teaches me:
She teaches me gratitude. We were eating dinner, Abigail poised on my lap. Our plates were identical, except for portion sizes and degree of florescence in the platter. Although her plate was not empty, mine held the greater appeal, so she cautiously retrieved noodles and broccoli from my plate, one piece at a time, and placed them on her plate followed by a jovial "Thank Yooo".
She teaches me etiquette. After nearly clearing my plate, she pointed at the center of one of the few remaining morsels and gently informed me "There,". I placed my fork where instructed, ate the noodle, and she pointed to another. "There." And it was so that, under her tutelage, I finished my meal.
She teaches me compassion. I had a bad cold, with coughs that sounded six times worse than they felt, and they felt pretty bad. After each, Abigail's eyes would fill with worry, and she would plead to know that I was "Okay. Okaayee. Okaayee.". There was no consolation until we reassured her I was fine.
She teaches me love of the gospel. On the way to church, Abigail was so excited, so unabashedly thrilled at going to church, that she sprinted down the sidewalk shouting "Runrunrunrunrun! Runrunrunrunrunnnn!". Not even bruising her forehead in a fall on the way diminished her enthusiasm. She was going to church and that was the highlight of her day.
I love the daddy job.
There was an accident in a campsite near where we were camping with Delores' family. A helicopter arriving on site to fly the girl out of the canyon caught the interest of all the nieces and nephews.
In particular, little Abigail chased the helicopter down the lane as it lifted off, shouting Bu'bye! Bu'byeee!
Then, as the helicopter disappeared over the other side of the mountain, Abigail began to call out, Cop'er! Co'per! Wh'are you. Co'per, wh'are you! It made me smile.Not long after the elating daddy experience last Sunday, Abigail turned the tables when Delores told her "Daddy will give you a bath".
Abigail crouched in her mother's arms, flailing her arms and trying to climb away from her watery fate, shouting:
"I l'you! I l'you! Gu-bye! Gu-bye!
I suppose I was dismissed. And the folks at church think she adores me. :)
My little angel has an amazing super power. She can thoroughly distract no fewer than five pews, forward and back. Not with tears, mind you. She distracts us all with pure, wide-eyed 2-year-old love of life.
A few weeks ago, the local high school's Madrigal choir sang in our church service. Normally, in our services, there is no applause after a musical number, so that members can meditate and internalize the message of the song. Not so with Abigail, who was on her tip-toes, hands on the pew ahead, drinking in the melody. When the last chord ended, she stood up, clapped her hands vigorously, and shouted "Yaaayyyy!!!" in the otherwise reverent chapel.
Today, during our sacrament meeting, Abigail added her "Aaaaymen. Amen. Aymeeeennn!" to the opening prayer, parroted the words of the priests blessing the sacrament, and added several more emphatic amens to each subsequent prayer.
Then our ward choir sang, which I joined in response to the bullying of a sweet, grandmotherly sister in our ward. We sang "Abide with Me", one of my favorites, which concluded with Abigail adding her fervent "Daddy! Dadeeeee! Preddy. Preddy. Daaadeeeee!"
I'll tell you, its moments like these that make the daddy job the best job in the world.
My computer desktop has been an absolute mess. Some software required for one of my graduate classes was incompatible with my PC, and my laptop monitor was broken. I rearranged my computer so I could get at the back easily to move my monitor back and forth from the PC to the laptop. This made getting at the front of my PC a touch difficult, but it did the job.
So, now that school's over, I wanted to relax by dropping a DVD into the computer. It wouldn't work. The computer just said "Please insert disc."
Sigh
I tried several discs, did some research online, re-flashed the firmware on my DVD player, and finally gave up. My drive was broken.
So it was that we purchased a new DVD drive, which I subsequently plugged in to my PC and...
I noticed that the other drive was also a DVD drive.
As it turned out, my DVD drive wasn't working because it was my CD drive!
Ha ha. What a joke on myself.
A long time ago I realized I would never again be known as "Keith" except to a select few. For example, when I married Delores, we moved in to a new neighborhood near the university and started an exciting life together. Attending church with a charismatic, lovely red-head got me a lot of attention. "Look, there's Delores' husband!" Only the bishop and a few friends new Delores' husband's name.
Then I became a daddy, and we moved again. Now I attend church with the same wonderful red-head, and a darling, precocious toddler. Everyone knows Abigail, so the nondescript tall brunette dude walking alongside Abigail must be "Abigail's dad". No "Keith" there.
One of Abigail's best friends comes to visit from time to time. One day, his mom asks him: "Would you like to go see Abigail?"
"No," was the reply. Not today I suppose.
However, his mother continued, "Abigail is going to see her dad. Do you want to see Abigail's daddy?"
"Yeah!"
And so it was that they walked in to our driveway with a little toddler boy chanting "Abidaddy, Abidaddy."
There's an old saying that goes: Fathers are those people who keep pictures where their money used to be. I suppose we lose our name with our money, but I don't mind so much. For a few minutes, Abidaddy was a cooler fella than Keith ever could have been.
From Michael: Oh, the joys of parenthood. I'm sure you've noticed the same thing when you walk through Mom's door. "Oh, Abigail's here!" Not Keith. Not Delores. Just Abigail.
We gave Abigail a small bowl of dry Raisin Bran to munch on this evening. In a grand moment of irony and profundity, Abigail picks out all the sugar-coated raisins and gives them to mom, explaining that they were "dirty". Delores didn't argue.
I was visiting my parents' house last week. Abigail's cousin Isaac (2) was visiting Grandma's house while we were there.
Grandma: Isaac, how come are you so cute?
Isaac: I'm just handsome
Grandma: oh
Isaac: I'm a big boy
I'm glad he knows these very important things
The closer I get to completing my Master's degree, the less impressed I am with Master's degrees, because I am not very impressed with myself.
Case in point: when I was young, mom would send me to the basement to retrieve a can of soup. From time to time, I would trot down the stairs, and by the time my right foot touched the basement floor, my purpose in going downstairs was blissfully forgotten.
That is until I heard my name shouted full-force ten minutes later.
"What is that?" I ask, having raced halfway up the stairs.
"Where is the soup?"
Oh yeah!
It even happened, a few times, that after this dialogue, I again forgot my purpose the moment my feet touched the basement floor.
So, flashback to the present, I give up looking for a lost textbook after my fifth day of searching. Not even the absurd cost of textbooks can thwart my blindness. Is this the kind of absent-mindedness to be expected from one who is less than a year from the fantastic title, "Master Keith?"
From M. Nelson: Don't worry nobody with be calling you, "Master Keith," that's a right only reserved for karate instructors.
Good luck finding your book.
From Keith: I once said to a fellow at work: "Those who fear me call me 'Wild Side'"
Then he said: "I've never heard anyone call you 'Wild Side'."
"Yeah," I said, "No one fears me yet."
Abigail was playing under the bathroom sink while I was doing my hair. She pulled out Q-tips and maxie pads. She opened one rather large maxie pad, took it out of its wrapper and laid it out on the floor. She then lay down next to it and pointed to her diaper indicating that she wanted it changed and replaced with the "diaper" at her side.
I did change her diaper, and one day she'll even get to use special diapers like the one she opened.
From Wendy: Darling!! Just don't ever tell her they're special "napkins" or they might show up at the table for company!
From M. Nelson: Don't call them "bandaids" either. Next thing you know, they'll be stuck to her shin.
I have the most excellent pleasure of attending school with my younger brother. We had never done so before, because he is seven years younger than I. When I started middle school, he started Kindergarten, so we never met. Now that I am entrenched in the eternities of graduate school, Kevin caught up and we meet from time to time after classes to chat and joke around.
I was remarking to Kevin how I cope with lectures that move too slowly. For example, tonight I took notes on one sheet of paper about relational databases while on another sheet of paper I was planning disk space estimates for a massive program I am installing at my work. Then I started getting excited about my job and explained how we organize whole farms of servers to support this single program, and how the disk space costs add up, and how this and how that. My brother seemed to be catching my enthusiasm.
Then, in perfect non sequitur, Kevin informed me:
"They have new sandwiches at Arby's!"
From Tammy: I love Kevin! He is such a goof!!!
From M. Nelson: Kevin is hilarious!
From Janell: Kevin always seems to have the perfect comeback!
Today I was taking a shower and heard Abigail coming in and out of the bathroom. I think, "what is she doing" as I hear a "clink, clink". Upon emerging from the shower I see the cover of the heat vent removed and Abigail coming in to drop coins down into it. I look and see about $3.00 of Keith's coins in the vent.
Perhaps she was looking for a safe place to save up her money for college.
From M. Nelson: You may as well start handing it over the money now. Kids get it all in the end anyway!
The cold had on the back is hilarious. I like to get Randal with my cold feet right before he's about to fall asleep. Make's me laugh.
From M. Nelson: Okay, let me edit:
You may as well start handing over the money now...
And...the cold hand.
Sheesh! I must be tired.
From Wendy: That's hilarious! At least she wasn't eating it!
Delores is now writing her first blog entry....
Yesterday I was sitting on the floor in the hall. Abigail came up from behind me and plays with my shoulders for a minute. She then carefully lifts up my shirt and places her cold hand on my back. I gasp, she laughs and laughs. This is repeated three times before I tickle her and she stops.
I wonder who taught her that?!?
The culprit came home from work and laughed long and loud when I told him.
From Wendy: Oh man, if ds learns from dh, I'm in trouble!
