The Good, the Bad, and the Baby

 Some of you are already aware that my Dad was stuck in the hospital over Christmas after suffering a heart attack. He'd actually gone in for a severe sinus infection, something I also had at the same time, but they found the more serious problem there. Later he also tested positive for the flu, so we'll see how well Emily's and my flu shots hold up.

Today (Thursday) Dad had angioplasty, and they put two stints in. Blood had found a way to flow around a second blocked artery, so they left that alone. A third artery was also partially blocked, but there were complications with the procedure, and the doctors decided not to proceed due to his age and health problems. At 86, sometimes the best thing to do is not to do the thing.

By the time you read this hopefully he'll be home, where my sister Traci should get extra credit for taking care of him.

By good luck Uncle Ishmael was up visiting from Alabama, and stopped in to see him. That's Ishmael in the middle, and of course me on the right. The other guy would have to be Dad, or else we really confused some other patient.

Meanwhile, on Monday night, at another hospital in Fort Wayne, my youngest daughter Jill gave birth to her third child and first son, Zander Repine.

I think he looks kind of grouchy--he had a rough day.

He was a little jaundiced so they kept him an extra day, but he and Mom are home now. Including the step-kids, I now have eight grandchildren! I think. That's awfully high to count.

So this is how our December calendar goes: Zander's sister Willa has her birthday toward the beginning of the month. Then Emily's birthday is on the 21st, Zander's is on the 23rd, pretty much everyone knows what happens on the 25th, and Jill's is on the 27th. I believe I'm missing something.

Close enough to a Christmas baby!

 

Then comes the 31st, and we start the whole darned thing over again.

Personally, I think we should have spread things out a bit more, but a lot of this stuff tends to schedule itself.

Oddly enough I'm exhausted, despite having very little direct involvement in everything.

Please order some books--I have presents to buy!

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Remember: Every new life is a potential new reader.

Baby Shower Photos ... spoiler: It's a boy!

 It was baby shower day for my newest grandkid, and the cake was good. Don't tell my doctor.

Jill explained to me that it's not Xander, because she doesn't want people to call him Alex. I predict people will call him "Zee".

 

The soon to be parents again. Could they have any more diapers? Yes, and they'll need more.

It's helpful to know if it's a boy or a girl. Due date? Late December. Just like half the family.

Including steps, we've got five granddaughters (and soon three grandsons) ... and do you think we could get them all in one photo? That mop of hair on the left is Distracted Willa.

So I just took another photo, and there's Willa in the center!

Five older sisters. I kinda feel sorry for the kid.

We and our books can be found ... everywhere:

·        Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

·        Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

·        Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

·        Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

·        Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

·        Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

·        Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

·        Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

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·        Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

·        Substack:  https://substack.com/@markrhunter

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·        Smashwords:  https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

Remember: Surround a kid with books, and chances are they'll read.

A Hairy Situation Added Color to Our Lives

My youngest daughter wanted to color her hair. Brown. Remember brown, it becomes important later. My oldest daughter volunteered to do the coloring. She’s good at that kind of thing. (At least she was then--this all happened years ago.) I couldn’t identify where that feeling of impending doom came from, so I kept my mouth shut.

Big mistake.  

We picked up a box of coloring from a big honkin’ market, which I’ll call BHM (for Big Honkin’ Market). It had a beautiful woman on the front. (The coloring box, not the BHM.) Things were looking up.

That's Charis on the left and Jill on the right, at about the same time. No, I'm not pulling them apart--they really did get along, usually.

It didn’t start out badly. Nothing was thrown, no pinching, I didn’t have to guard the knife drawer. Charis did her job to perfection, her timing impeccable, and soon she freed her sister’s hair from the confines of plastic and foil –

And the room lit up, as if a natural gas explosion had engulfed the kitchen. Believe me, I know what those look like.

 

I know a little about propane explosions, too.

Remember, they were using brown coloring. The problem was, Jillian’s hair was now orange. Bright orange. Florescent orange. State highway worker vest orange. People from two blocks away called 911 to say my house was on fire. People two miles away reported UFO sightings. On the other side of the country, the psychic who inspired the TV show “Medium” woke up screaming.

Charis sucked in her breath so hard her face actually disappeared into the back of her head.

Jill headed for the bathroom to look in the mirror, then stumbled out again, temporarily blinded. She saw spots in front of her eyes for two days.

After several minutes of wailing and gnashing of teeth, we took stock of the situation and did the only logical thing: called their mother, who used to be a professional hairstylist. She lived twelve miles away, but already knew – she’d seen the reflection of my daughter’s hair in low hanging clouds. She informed us that we needed to bring a stripper home.

A stripper? All right! Things were really looking up.

But she meant a product that strips color out of hair, which made a heck of a lot more sense. We would strip the orange out, possibly with the use of a nuclear accelerator, then put a different color in.

So back we went to BHM, for more coloring. There Charis discovered a box of the same stuff we’d used had been opened on the shelf. She looked into the box, and discovered contents that were not the same as what we got before. In other words, the reason the brown coloring hadn’t worked is that we didn’t have brown coloring. Just the box the brown coloring was supposed to be in.

Someone had been opening boxes and trading the contents back and forth, no doubt thinking it was quite funny to imagine, say, someone dying their hair red and ending up with blonde. Ha. Ha.

We spoke to the people at the service desk. They were shocked – shocked, I say -- to discover someone had done such a thing, and promised quick retaliation in the form of automatic weapons and surface to air missiles, and a refund.

Having picked a new box with the seal firmly in place, Charis applied the stripper and the new, really brown this time, hair coloring. Soon, in geological terms, she finished her work, and presented me with her sister’s new look.

Jillian makes a fine redhead. Problem is, her hair was supposed to be – say it together – brown.

If you really want them to get along: Put 'em on a boat.

 

Apparently only so much can be done to repair hair that once glowed with the same intensity as a red giant star. Still, I thought things worked out okay, even if the one hour job stretched out over a weekend. In the end her hair looked okay, and eventually she turned up with a different color. Besides, no one died.

Several days later I went to my regular stylist for a haircut, and related this story to her. She explained that BHM had been fighting this problem for some time. So much for the people at the service desk being shocked, huh?

Somewhere, some poor soul who wanted orange hair was very upset. And brown.

 

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