The Servant's Quarters

An Amazing Discovery on Olivia's Birthday

Today, the Butler's celebrated Liv's 13th birthday. Her special day is actually on Saturday, but since we don't like crowds and I'm always on the look out for an excuse to take a vacation day, we moved it to today.

We started with the typical - breakfast with Dad at the little cafe down the street from our house. I was a good boy, ordering oatmeal, dry whole wheat toast, and milk. Liv plunged into an order of french toast, which I fully expected to be able to help her finish. (You couldn't expect me to be satisfied with oatmeal, right?) Unfortunately, she finished all of her food without a scrap for me. Man, this girl has suddenly started eating like a teenager.

Wait.....

Anyway, Liv chose to spend her birthday at COSI, the wonderful science museum in Toledo. We had a great time, and everyone was happy with their visit. Home again for dinner (pork chops), homemade ice cream cake, and presents. A great ending to our day.

What did we learn at COSI, mecca of scientific education? Plenty. For one thing, I learned that the PCs in the Water Works section are not locked down, and it's possible to take a monitor that's intended to educate young visitors about the dangers of global warming (what a waste of computing power) and the threatened extinction of some beautiful animals and use it to check the Drudge Report. What a triumph for science!

But most importantly, I learned that Tim Butler is one seriously good looking man.

Sort of.

You see, in one part of the museum, there was this special camera that took pictures of your face. It had three monitors on its console - one that showed the unaltered picture taken by the camera, one that showed a composite picture of what you would look like if your whole face was composed of the left half of your face, and a composite picture of what you would look like if both sides were the same as the right side of your face. Nobody's face is perfectly symmetrical, and this camera showed you what you would look like if it were from both the right and left perspectives.

I was absolutely amazed by the results.

The picture that was built exclusively from the left side of my face was..... incredibly good looking. I couldn't believe it. We're talking George Clooney good looking. We're talking sexiest man alive. It was truly shocking.

The right-sided face was.... not shocking or good looking. When I looked at him, I was sort of staring at a big, dopey broad shouldered guy who frankly seemed a little challenged. He looked like the kind of guy who likes to pass the time crushing beer cans against his forehead while watching Lions football. Like a big, stupid, spud man. Not very sophisticated, while his counterpart looked dashing, worldly, and sophisticated. He was a guy who would order a martini (shaken not stirred) while he was on his way to kill the human spud in the next picture.

Butler. Left-Faced Butler.

Now, the real shocker - I don't know why this is, but when I looked at spud man, I could see..... ME. Granted, it wasn't a perfect match, but I could definitely recognize myself there. No doubt about it. Spud man was Tim Butler. The other guy I would not have recognized at all if I come face to face with him on the street. There didn't seem anything about him that suggested a resemblance to the man whose face he was based on.

I can't explain this. I would have thought that both faces, while being different, would have been close to how I look. But that was clearly not the reality. I can only guess that since I'm right handed, maybe the right side of my face is dominant??? That's weird, but I can't think of another reason.

You know, I've never been extremely vain, but I do find myself wondering,"God, couldn't you have made me a lefty?"

Dark

Over the long weekend (I had Monday off of work for Martin Luther King Jr. Day), we lived under the dire prediction that Michigan was about to be inundated with the worst kind of winter weather. Rain that would freeze on the roads and may driving a life threatening activity. Later in the day on Sunday, the rain was due to turn into snow and bury us under about 2 inches of the stuff. Yuck.

However, it seemed that little of that mess actually materialized. Yes, we got the rain, and while the temperatures plunged enough to coat all the trees in ice (which was beautiful), the roads remained largely wet and not very slippery. By Monday, snow started to fall, but not enough to be of any concern.

I began my holiday by sleeping in. Until 10:00 AM, to be precise. That's something I hadn't done since I was a teenager. I finally rolled out of bed only because my dog, Walker, insisted on leaning over the bed and licking my face. (He's taller than the bed, so this was no problem for him.) I got up, ate a leisurely breakfast, and started a day of puttering around the house doing a lot of small chores.

Until around 4:00 PM.

I was on the computer doing something or other. Suddenly, the screen in front of me died. So did the lights in Homeschool Room. (Otherwise known as the Dining Room that had long ago been inundated with textbooks and school projects. At this particular time, it was the home of a large paper mache bull with some acrobatic guy on its back. The kids had just completed it a bit earlier and it was in the process of drying.) Local power outages are not unusual in the Butler house. Because of the "unusual" electrical wiring that we enjoy, one can black out portions of our home by using the microwave for over 30 seconds without turning off every other light on the circuit.

However, this is not what happened yesterday. Everything in the house was off. The lights flickered on briefly three times, and then all went dark until 10:30 PM.

At first, we were optimistic. The weather wasn't that bad. My theory was that the DTE Energy guys were in the neighborhood trying to repair something, and for their own safety (and my inconvenience), they had shut off the power until the job was done. This was an idea that I shared with two of my neighbors later when the three of us met in the middle of the street to discuss the situation. (Three men who know nothing about the situation offering their "expert" opinions.) Because my idea offered the hope that the blackout would end soon, it was embraced as the absolute truth.

Confident that the power would soon come back, we retreated to our houses.

It had started to get dark, so I broke out the candles, and Rita was well into fixing dinner.

Now, for the kids, this was a huge party. They love blackouts. They didn't care that the heat was off, and the temperature in the house had noticably taken a dive. They didn't care that Rita had just gone to the store two days before and had spent hundreds of dollars on groceries that could spoil if the power stayed off too long. This was darkness, and candles, and fun!

To me, this was a nuisance, and a pain, and not much fun at all. I started to become grouchy. My bad attitude was made worse by their wild enjoyment of the blackout. Suddenly, I realized that monsters in the dark may be a very real danger and that I might be the thing that's going bump in the night. I paced around the house, looking at the darkened neighborhood out of different windows. I could see flashlight beams dancing on the windows in the houses with children, and I knew that in each of them, there was a foul tempered Dad grousing about wasting the batteries and making a lot of noise. (Just like our house.)

Most of us ate dinner together. (Philip and Isaac were at Young Marines and would eat later.) Everything was going fine until Rita asked, "Honey, can I still go out with Michele tonight?"

I groaned. I had forgotten completely that my dear wife had an appointment for coffee with Mrs. Pastor Philip. My jaw muscles clinched at the idea of managing a powerless house. Of keeping control of six kids without the benefit of electricity. Of facing the cold, dark, lonely night of Butler House without the company and assistance of my helpmeet.

Somewhere, deep in my brain, a response formed and headed towards my mouth -

"Mind? Why should I mind? I can't imagine anything easier than trying to keep track of 6 highly excited children and one dog in a cold place where I can't see a thing while you drink coffee and eat bon bons with your friend in some warm, lighted, comfortable restaurant somewhere. I mean, I really love it. Take your time. Feel free to stay out all night."

I told you I was a bit testy. Fortunately, my Husband Survival Instinct, honed by nearly 20 years of marriage, took over, intercepted the message before it could be uttered, and edited it down to this less inflamatory response -

"Of course not, dear. Have a good time."

That was close.

So we hunkered down. I got the little kids to bed, and they fell asleep fast enough. Nathanael and I played Parcheesi outside their room so I could be sure that there were no scary moments and the candle on their dresser wasn't going to be played with. Isaac and Philip came home from Young Marines, and while they ate a late supper, Nathanael turned in. Liv eventually showed up, and while my three eldest had fun, I sat in the living room listening to old time radio and Thru The Bible on my Pocket PC. Eventually, all the children were in bed, and I had the house to myself. I spent some time playing with the dog in front of the fire, and I had just begun wondering if I should start moving food from the refrigerator to the garage or should I go downstairs and haul up the cold weather sleeping bags when God answered my prayers.

The lights came back on.

Wonderful. I turned on the heat and started resetting the clocks. Suddenly, I realized that all the children who I had previously put to bed were running around the upstairs screaming about the power coming back. They had immediately gotten into a competition around blowing out all the candles in the house.

Sigh.

The lights were on. The kids were up. All was sorta right with the world.

Update on Mom

It's been quite a while since I posted anything about my Mom's struggle with cancer. That's probably mainly because it's been going fairly well. No news is good news, right? That's not to say that there haven't been struggles. (She had her last chemo about a month ago, I believe. It was the worst round she received in the months since her surgery last summer. I spoke to her yesterday, and she's still feeling the effects.) But for the most part, things have progressed as we expected them to without set backs or disappointments.

Ah, if only I could end this update right here.

But I can't.

Mom's original treatment plan called for several infusions of chemotherapy, which she completed at the in late November/early December, as I already stated. (Wish I could nail that down more precisely, but I'm just not remembering the timeline that well right now.) After that, her doctor told her that he would give her a break to get past the holidays and rest up prior to beginning the seven weeks of radiation treatment. We were delighted that we would celebrate the holidays with Mom feeling reasonably well.

The news got better. A couple of weeks ago, Mom told me that she had been told by one of her doctors that the radiation follow up was optional. She could take it or leave it. It was up to her. Mom decided that she had had enough. She was going to refuse the radiation infusions, which were supposed to be administered Monday through Friday for the entire seven week course. We brushed aside any concerns about whether or not refusing the radiation was a wise decision. At least for me, it didn't really enter my head. I was just so happy that the ordeal was over. Granted there were still upcoming hurdles. Mom had decided at some point to have a mastectomy on the other side to help prevent a recurrance of the cancer. That surgery would have to be faced eventually. She still had 52 weeks of infusions of an anti-cancer druge to overcome, but these would be delivered intravenously once a week and cause side effects only in rare cases. And of course, the countdown clock is running on her five years. If she can stay cancer free for five years, she earns the label of "Survivor."

None of that matter, at least not to me. For now, we had dodged a bullet, and I could stop worrying about Mom receiving these terrible treatments that make her so sick.

A couple of days ago, we talked again on the phone. The doctor in charge of her case had overruled the doctor who told her the radiation was optional. We were back to facing seven weeks of radiation, five times a week. The first treatment is scheduled for tomorrow. The doctor has assured us that the radiation will not burn her. The skin around the site may be come pink and a little irritated, but that's all. (The only other person I've known who received radiation treatments for breast cancer was a man who was horribly burned by the procedure. His chest was burned black by the treatments, and the pain was incredibly intense.) However, I'm sure that the radiation will sap her strength. She may end up laying in bed or in her recliner, feeling like a limp dish towel. She'll drive herself on Friday, but how long will it be before she's not up to taking herself? Will we be able to find enough people to drive her to the clinic every day for several weeks? (It's about a half hour each way.)

Like the chemo, we won't know what's what until the treatments begin and we see how she handles them.

I really wish we could have dodged this bullet.

Lord, please walk beside Mom and the rest of our family through this. You have been so faithful throughout the chemo. It was difficult, but we didn't come up against anything that was insurmountable. Please stay with us through this, and bless Mom. Let her handle the radiation treatments with few, if any, side effects.

We give you the glory for everything, Father.

Amen.

Christmas Moments

This is the third time I've started writing this entry. Let's see if I make it through without something crashing this time.

Obviously, events and activities prevented me from continuing with my blog throughout the Christmas season. No excuse except to say that when you've got six kids, stuff like this does happen.

So, I'm just going to cover a two or three really special (in my mind) that went on this past Christmas, and close the book on it until next year.

Christmas Day was great. Really a nice time. Memorable gifts included the Shooter Bots that I bought for Than and Philip on a whim early in the year. Philip was jumping up and down yelling with excitement when he opened his. Isaac received a very nice iPod from Grandma and Grandpa, and it has quickly become his new best friend. For myself, I was completely happy with my haul. Probably my most memorable gift was the complete Star Trek Original Series on DVD from my parents. (For anyone who doesn't know, I am a complete geek when it comes to Trek.) Also, my very good friend, Mr. Brooks Carlson, gave me a used copy of William Shatner's latest album, Has Been, that he picked up at a library used book sale. The music is so mind-numbingly awful that it is wonderful. Really funny stuff. Lest I forget, my darling wife came through with an item that I've needed for a while - a new car stereo. My old one croaked last summer, and we've never had the cash to replace it. But that was my one and only gift from Rita this time around, and I love it. The best part - it has an auxilary jack in the front where you can plug an iPod, MP3 player or some other music machine in and play the content over the car speakers. I use this feature daily with my Pocket PC and the MP3s of old time radio shows (Jack Benny, the Shadow, Gunsmoke, etc.) that I love so much.

I think that, without a doubt, my most memorable moments came with my trip up to Mom's and Dad's house at Higgins Lake between Christmas and New Years. We'd had some company at the house in November (another family who my Mom had loaned the house to), and I'd promised my parents that I would take a trip up to ensure that everything was buttoned down for the winter. I took my three oldest boys with me. It was really nice. We got up to the house on the first day after dark, and after unpacking the car, we headed out to the nearest Wendy's on nearby Houghton Lake. We had the joint to ourselves, and I gave the boys pretty much free reign to order what they wanted. Frosties all around for dessert. By the time we finished up, a few other people had started to trickle in, so we went back home. While I cleaned up some rough areas of the house and did some straightening, the boys hunkered down in their sleeping bags and turned on some DVDs that I had checked out from the library just for this occasion - Season 1 of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. (Note: This was a show that I loved as a teen back in the early 80's. I watched it first run, and after going on to college, watched it every night after dinner in reruns with a group of my friends. We'd eat at the dining hall and then go up to John Anderluh's room and watch his old black and white TV set with the screen the size of a postage stamp. We had a blast laughing at the campiness and thrilling to Buck's latest adventure. Flash forward to Higgins Lake. I was appalled at how very seriously bad this show was. I mean, it was horrible. It hasn't held up at all. Very dated. The boys enjoyed it well enough, but I was completely turned off and couldn't help regretting the many hours I had wasted watching this tripe. Here's the best measure of how truly bad it was - one episode featured a very young, pre-fame Jamie Lee Curtis as an inmate in some desert planet prison who Buck has to rescue for some reason. Jamie spends a lot of the episode running around in a fairly form fitting tank top because.... I guess it was the prison uniform. This gratuitous display had no interest whatsoever for me. Was it because I'm 43, married, and shouldn't be interested in such things? NO. It's because that's how bad the show was. Wow. A real stinker.) The next day, I finished the work, and we headed home, stopping at Big Boy in West Branch for brunch. All in all, we were gone a little more than 24 hours, but just the chance to get away with the boys was a blast.

New Years Eve was great fun. We hosted Pastor Philip, Michelle, and Austin. There was lots of eating, talking, and laughing for all. Because Pastor Philip starts to fade out super early (like around 8:00 AM), the Harris beat a retreat well ahead of the ball dropping at midnight. The younger children went to bed shortly after they left, and the rest of us played games until the countdown to midnight.

Regrets this past Christmas? Oh yeah. If I had it to do over, I wouldn't have allowed the Ford situation to cost me a week of the Advent season. My discouragement over my buyout offer and the resulting depression saw me moping around the house for several days. As a result, we lost a lot of time and didn't do some of the activities which I usually champion. (Like going to the Wayne County Lightfest and watching all of the classic TV Christmas Specials. No Grinch this year. YIKES!)

But next year's coming soon. Only 349 shopping days until Christmas. And I've already started.

I kid you not.