Marchie's World

The Barenaked Ladies (BNL) came to a Borders Books in Birmingham, MI last Friday, May 9th to play songs from their new children's album, Snacktime. As it was only 20 mins from our house, of COURSE the Gallups were in attendance (there wasn't much short of a baby being born that was going to stop us)!

BNL announced that not only would they be performing, but they would be signing autographs afterward as well. In order to attend the signing portion of the visit, you had to go to the book store when they opened to get a special wristband. As I had just had slight health scare the day before (see my other blog entry), Archie was a bit concerned about me being out and about, but I assured him that I would take it easy. It turned out there was no reason to worry, as procuring a wristband was absolutly no problem whatsoever. There was probably somewhere between 50 and 75 people ahead of us, so it was just a small matter of waiting in line for maybe a half hour.

Fast forward to later in the day. I decided I wanted to try to get back to the store by around 1 or 1:30 as it seemed a lot of fans were going to just camp out at the store or in the immediate area all day, so I didn't want to get shut out of a good spot. When Rachel and I arrived back to the store (Archie was going to meet us closer to showtime - 3:30), I was somewhat glad to have come back earlier since their decently-sized parking lot was full, so I had to find other accommodations. We were glad to have gotten there when we did - even though we got "seats" pretty close to the front (it was Standing Room Only, but due to the kid-friendly nature to the show, everyone was sitting on the floor), the crowd filled in pretty quickly behind us.

We caught up with some folks that Archie & I met on the BNL cruise in January and online, made some new acquaintances through necessity (one of the neighboring moms with 3 kids hadn't brought any activities for her kids to do, so we shared our books), and Rachel played with some kids around us. Archie arrived somewhere between 2 and 2:30. As it got closer and closer to showtime, many of the kids who had been there for a while were getting antsy (along with the parents). So, we were all pretty glad when they came out to do a quick sound check and to rev the crowd up at 3:00... of course some of us with 2 year olds that have no idea what it means when they say the band will be out 'soon'.

Well, they did finally come out, and rocked all of our socks off, parents and kids alike. They played:
Raisins
Ninjas
Polywog in a Bog
Adlib
7 8 9
Another Postcard (a previous release)
Eraser
One Week (another previous release)

We got in line for our autographs, and after about a 20 or so minute wait in line, we got to meet Ed, Steve, Jim, Kevin and Tyler in person. The only way I could figure out to not come across like a grinning speachless (or babbling, I don't know which would be worse) idiot was to introduce each of them to Rachel. This worked out wonderfully to get things rolling.

First I had Rachel tell Ed Robertson what her favorite song was - "7 8 9" was her reply, and I told him ever since the video was released online she's always talked about it. Ed very well could have just been like, "that's great, kid, who's next?", but he was really great... as if I should have expected anything else? He started to tell us about how a fan actually was the person to do that video, and I immediately told him how we knew Nancy (the woman who did it). He told us how they had just seen her the day before at the performance and signing in Framingham, MA. At this point, there was getting to be a pretty big gap between me and the people in front of us, and saw Steve Page sitting there kind of trying to be part of the conversation to at least get us to move on down the road, so we kind of quickly did our intro thing with Steve, and kept moving.

Next was Jim Creeggan, and after the intro, I realized we'd bought ourselves a second or two of chat time by zooming past Steve so quickly. So I told Jim that we really were missing Natasha's background vocals when they performed Polywog in a Bog live (Natasha Hebert is his sister-in-law who performed with him and his brother on the cruise). He went on to say wat a treasure she was and how talented, and I could do nothing but AGREE. Very nice in person, to boot. She and I had chatted several times about babies and pregnancy (I was about 5 months pregnant, and she had her 3ish month old infant on board with her). Us with Jim:



After Jim was Kevin Hearn, the keyboardist. He just has a very friendly nature about him and though we didn't have much to say beyond how we enjoyed the show, he asked Rachel for a high-five, which of course she obliged.

Last but not least was Tyler Stewart, the drummer, who is not known for being super chatty with the fans. I thought about possibly mentioning to him that we almost brought our cruise pamphlet with us to get the ONE bandmember's autograph on that we were missing (again, he's a bit elusive with the whole fan thing), but the line was pushing us along at that point. So, we just left with a quick intro and thank you.

I hope that the whole experience left some impression on Rachel, even if it is just her enjoying the songs even more. One thing that tickled me was that as we were walking towards the parking lot outside the store, Rachel said "I want to see Kevin". I was just floored at that, since there was no other Kevin she could have been talking about (we really don't know any other Kevins that she would know/remember). Archie and I are pleased that Rachel will always be able to say that her first concert was the Barenaked Ladies!!


You can check out our pictures and videos on
our photosite.

Last Thursday I decided I had the need and the time to get my hair done. I had planned on getting one last appointment in before the baby is born. Plus, we were going to see the Barenaked Ladies perform the next day, so I wanted to look somewhat presentable. However, I woke up Thursday morning feeling VERY tired, and I had a hard time getting out of bed, but I had appointments set, and a 2 year old hollering for breakfast, so I got up and motivated.

When I arrived, I immediately thought it was (overly) warm in the salon, but passed it off as them having the heat on due to the cool weather we were having outside. I just took my cardigan off, and sat down in the stylist's chair. While getting my hair done, I was still very warm, and tired. It then developed into being woozy, and light-headed as well. We took a quick break for me to drink some cold water and put some damp washcloths on my neck and face. I thought I was feeling, if not better, at least stable. Well, I proceeded to pass out in this poor gal's chair after she got back to work. I guess I was out for a minute or so, and shook a little bit while I was out. When I came to they told me they had called 911, and very shortly after two paramedics came in to assess the situation. Then another two paramedics came in, these guys with the stretcher. Then ANOTHER two (for those not keeping track, that made a total of SIX). I attribute this mostly to the salon's VERY close proximity to the hospital (the shopping plaza is literally in the shadow of the hospital), not necessarily the nature of the call. Then to top things off, a sherrif's officer came in as well. Needless to say, I think they had their bases covered.

Archie got a good scare when he got a phone call from the Sherrif while at lunch with coworkers saying I had had a 'seizure' and he needed to come meet us at the hospital (I TOLD him to tell him I was fine FIRST, but of course he completely freaked Archie out). As the paramedics were checking me out, Rachel was completely calm, taking everything in, and chatted it up with the paramedics. There was some concern about how Rachel would get over to the hospital as they weren't allowed to take her into the ambulance with me. Initially, one of the guys was just going to walk with her, but the Sherrif brought her over in his car. So, she got an exciting 2 minute ride over to the ER in a police car.

The stylist was *mostly* done putting the foils in my hair when I passed out, she just hadn't done the top part of my head (I was getting highlights put in for those who don't know what that means). When the paramedics showed up, I still had them all in. Luckily the gal doing my hair said that she'd like to take them out and rinse the stuff out "if it was ok" so it didn't "eat my hair" At this point I was feeling much better, so they had no problem with that. Then, when they put me on the stretcher and stuff, I still had a towel around my head from the wet hair. When they pulled me onto the ambulance, I took the towel off and one of the (SIX!) guys says, "Hey, why is your hair bright pink?" Which was kind of nice, so I knew what kind of crew I was dealing with.

So, from here on out the rest of the afternoon was very boring, a lot of sitting around and waiting. They gave me an EKG, checked blood, urine, etc, and what they came up with was I had a freak "vagal episode". Basically, I had low blood pressure (mine is normally on the low side) and passed out. They SAID it had nothing to do with the pregnancy, but I don't see how with 3 weeks to go to my due date, that ANYTHING to with my health is NOT related to the pregnancy. They then had me go up to maternity to have a non-stress test done to make sure the baby looked good... which he did.

To sum the day up, I'm fine, the baby's fine, Rachel had a grand old time getting lots of attention from paramedics, police officers, nurses and doctors, and now Archie has an itching worry in the back of his mind if I don't answer the phone that I've passed out and Rachel is helpless. Oh, and I still need my hair done! LOL! Hopefully I make it to my follow-up appt next week. :)

During ‘spring break’ near the end of March, we were able to spend a beautiful week in Lake Tahoe with my parents and my sisters family. We got in six days of amazing spring skiing at some of the largest ski facilities I have ever seen. But the best memory by far was the day we decided to see how Rachel would do on skis.
During our second visit to Alpine Meadows; Martha, Rachel and I headed down to the rental shop about a half an hour before the lifts started up. We had heard that they have very small ski boots for rent, but we were not sure they would be small enough. After sliding our rental form over the counter, the attendant sent his partner over to the ‘kids room’ to grab the smallest stuff they had. We sat Rachel down and tried them on her, and while I can’t exactly say they fit, they didn’t fall off. She was actually able to walk around in them, and as those of you who ski know, that is not an easy task. We then took the equipment over to the technician to have the bindings adjusted to her boots. He couldn’t believe that they made boots that small! Now Rachel was fully equipped for her first day on the slopes.

We took Rachel’s equipment back into the lodge where the rest of the family was getting ready to head out. Rachel was getting excited to give skiing a try, on with her snow pants, sweater, coat, hat and mittens. I decided that we would start out on flat snow to see how she reacted, so kept my work boots on. We headed out and picked a very flat piece of snow by the ski racks. Got Rachel clicked into her skis and she was able to shuffle her feet! She appeared very comfortable. This made me very happy. Martha and I played catch with her, I carried her about 10 feet away and she was able to shuffle her skis over the Martha all by herself! I’m such a proud papa! We then found some slightly steeper snow and she had her first wipe out, no crying or complaining, just wanted to get up and try it again. For these faster attempts, I was running next to her holding her hand. After about twenty minutes, we all headed back into the lodge. Rachel was very excited to tell Grandma all about her skiing adventure. Rachel and Martha got themselves some hot chocolate and I got my ski boots on to catch up with the rest of the skiers.

After a couple hours of skiing and heading in for a yummy lunch, we decided to give Rachel some more snow time. She was very excited about skiing, so we took her out to a little steeper (bunny) slope. I put her between my skis and we wedged down together. After the first couple feet, I could tell that Rachel was going to love skiing. We were right next to Meadow Chair, a beginner lift to an easy run. Rachel and I skied up to the lift, scooted out and I picked her up onto the chair. The heights didn’t appear to bother her at all, we had fun waving at Martha and talking about all the other skiers. I think she really enjoyed riding up the lift. As we approached the top of the hill, I picked her up to get off the chair. Then, with her between my legs again, I wedged down the hill with Rachel between my skis. I couldn’t go fast enough for her! She loved it! Martha was half way up the slope taking pictures and video. A couple more runs and my legs were killing me, so we all headed back into the lodge to relax. Rachel had a huge grin on her face as she told Grandma all about it. Now I just need to remind her when she is 6 years old that she really did enjoy skiing.

Sometimes it's scary. I mean we know she's smart and all, and we're really proud of her, and of the job we've done thusfar as parents, but when it comes back and she shows you, it is a very strange (but good) feeling.

We took Rachel to the Big Brother/Big Sister preparedness class at the hospital the other night. The fact that they even took her into the class should speak for itself, since the class is for ages 3 and up, and Rachel's not even 2 1/2 yet. But, I think anyone who meets her and talks to her for any amount of time can tell that she's a pretty precocious little girl.

So, fast forward to the class on Monday night. We were the first to arrive in the classroom, and Rachel immediately starts talking the instructor's ear off about how she's going to be a big sister, and all of her "new baby" material that she had in her tiny arsenal. Then the other 3 children (all girls - aged 3, 3, and 5) arrived and the class began. The instructor started by going around the room and asking all of the girls to introduce themselves, and then she proceeded to ask each girl what they liked to play with and some other things. Well, it just so happens that the first two girls said they liked dolls, then she asked how many dolls they had. It was nearly identical conversations with both girls, and Rachel didn't appear to be even paying attention. Then she started the same line of questions with Rachel, and when she asked Rachel what she liked to play with (and mind you, it could be ANYTHING, because there's not one thing that she particularly gravitates towards, except books), and Rachel IMMEDIATELY says, almost cutting off the instructor, "I like to play with THREE dolls". Archie and I both looked at each other in amazement :lol: She had apparently gleaned from the previous girls' answers that that was the appropriate toy and thought about how many she had, before she was even asked... without even appearing to pay attention. Oy.

Here's a picture of all the big sisters getting a chance at holding, feeding, and burping:


So then she showed us for the second time in a couple of days. We've been having some issues with our new HD tv lately. We thought they were fixed, but when Archie tried to change some of the cables around the other night, not only did it not work, the old configuration of cables didn't work either, and totally aggrevated Archie. Rachel disappears for a few minutes, and comes back from the front room where we have all of our books, with a pretty big book in her hands. She brought it to Archie, pointing to the picture on the front, saying "You need this Daddy". It was a book that we have on "Small Household Repairs", and the picture she was pointing to, was of a plug being rewired. To my knowledge, we have never shown her that book before, but apparently she knew about it from exploring on her own, and knew it was what Archie needed to fix the TV. Double oy. We certainly can expect to have our hands full with this one for many years to come.

In other news, the bribery system has not been working as well for us as we had hoped. She just doesn't want to go to the bathroom in the toilet, or she just doesn't care when she goes in her pull-up. She CAN totally do it, she just doesn't care. I think the next step will be just putting her in underwear and seeing if she still feels the same way about going in her pants. Its just a matter of figuring out when we want to do this, BB, or AB (Before Baby or After Baby).