Back Patio Ghosts

Here is a nice picture of Chelsey and I on the back patio. What I like about it is that she looks really beautiful, and I look like I am 50.  I also like the flame licking at the bottom. We added that because it's so dark. And because we are telling a ghost story in the picture.

Blue Cheese Crusted Filet Mignon with Port Wine Sauce



Fancy Ass

This is what Chelsey and I are making for Valentines Day this year.  We are trying to save money by not going out and not spending money on each other.  Instead we are going to try and make this fancy recipe.  Of course it can't be that fancy.  It's off of allrecipes.com.  But look at that picture!
I can't wait to make little beds of mashed potatoes.  I wish all my foods had little beds of mashed potatoes under them.

This Valentines is going to kick so much ass.

The only hiccup here is that we need an oven-safe pan.  I don't know that we have one.  But Chelsey just sent me this, so we should be able to figure that out as well.  Now if she could just send me a link to make our kitchen big enough for two people.

A while back we decided to start using the station method.  Where we each have half of the kitchen.  It makes me feel like we are working at some fancy restaurant.  I act like I'm the sous chef, and Chelsey is my demanding but genius chef de cuisine. 

 

December 14

This date is special.  The following things happened on December 14.

1) Chelsey and I met (2004)
2) I proposed to Chelsey (2005)
3) We got Deuce (2008)
4) Chelsey got her scooter (2009)
5) Edith was conceived (2010)

Which means something really badass will most likely happen today.  Maybe we will get rid of Deuce.

Chuck, what happened? Where did the movie challenge go?

On an unrelated note.  I'm so lucky to be married to this person.

Look at that hair!  

Thankfulness

Killing time at work!

Top 20 things I'm thankful for:

1. King Edith - my compass spun when she came on the scene.  I have no idea what was important to me before she showed up.  Now every single decision I make starts with her. She is beautiful and I love her so.
2. Chelsey Erpelding - My beautiful wife who kept King Edith safe for nine months, and delivered a beautiful baby without any complications.  I can't believe how someone who needs sleep so badly suddenly operated on like four hours a night without showing any ill effects.  She made the most graceful transition to motherhood, and she will always be the love of my life. 
3. Side Door - Chelsey's dad put a new door on the side of our house this year.  It's so great.  Not as great as the baby, but pretty darn great.
4. Weekend football - Every weekend I get to watch football with my brother while he holds Edith.  It's a scene I never ever imagined we would participate in, but it's become a weekly ritual that makes me happy to have such a great brother. 
5. Presents - So many people did such great things for us in advance of King Edith's arrival.  Hand-made blankets, cute outfits, lots of Target gift cards.  And then after we arrived, having in-laws help take care of her, or bring us sustenance when we were too tired to eat.  Nice families.  Nice friends. Amen.
6. New Tom Waits and Okkervil River albums - two of my favorite artists made two great albums this year.  Hallelujah.  Now I just need the Silver Jews to get back together.
7. Trip to Logansport with siblings - this should be way higher, but this trip to our old hometown was really special.  Seeing stuff I barely remembered.  Seeing stuff I remembered very well.  Getting to spend time with my siblings again.  Eating Noble Romans pizza.  A wonderful trip that couldn't have come at a better time. 
8.  The two weeks of FMLA I got to spend with my mom and Edith - I don't normally get to hang  out with my mom for that length of time.  We were able to visit museums and malls and eat breakfast together.  Obviously it would have been nicer if she wasn't going insane over grandma at the time, but realistically what would the likelihood of something like be?
9. My new computer at work - My old computer hated me, and then I hated it.  And then we hated each other at the same time for a while.  And then it would lock up.  My new computer has two screens and hurts my neck, but it's still way better.
10. My dumb dog - Deuce has tested the limits of what is lovable this year.  Acting like a dick, needing expensive surgery, getting up in the middle of the night.  Sometimes that dog can be a real pile of garbage.  Yet there is something unsinkable about him.  He serves as a constant reminder that chaos rules in our house.  He hates everything but us.  And he loves us so much it's annoying.  I don't know what we'd do without him.
11. All the people who reached out when Angelique died - I was blown away by how many people who did and said kind things when we lost Angelique.  Amazing.  Humbling. 
12. The Superfriends Movie Club - I like watching and writing about movies.  Finally there is a group for me. 
13. The Cake Gallery - this year we found a bakery that makes the most delicious cakes.  Giant, five-layer, knock you over, super-moist cakes.  They are super expensive.  I love them.
14. H&M opening in Kansas City.  What great news this is.  Now I can buy my dress shirts (the only ones I've found that fit me right) without having to go to Chicago. 
15. Adele - I'm so happy that everyone likes Adele.  I hope she gets her voice fixed.  I hope she keeps making albums that everyone likes. I hope she keeps naming them by her age at the time she makes them.  Conversely, I wish Katy Perry would stop doing whatever she's doing immediately.  Are you aware that her album is now tied with Thriller for having the most #1 records.  What god would allow this?
16. I Love Toy Trains - When we got Direct TV I was excited to watch two shows - I Love Toy Trains, and The In Crowd.  One is about Toy Trains.  The other is about high-society homosexuals.  Predictably the trains proved to be more entertaining.  This is the format of ILTT - in the 1990's this hobby store decided to shoot video of all these sweet toy train set-ups.  That's it.  They even have a camera that fits in the engine, so you can see these set-ups from the train's point of view.  I watch it every week. 
17. My sister's recent visit to Omaha - few and far between that I can hang out with my sister in Omaha without a 92-year-old grandma in-tow.  This should also be ranked higher.  This year I got to eat at the Radial Cafe with both my mom and sister.  Talk about great!
18. Kent Woynowski and his ever-expanding music library - This should definitely be higher.  Thank god for Kent, and his willingness to join me in wading through lots of crappy music each year, in the hopes of finding the good stuff.  And then we talk about it.  And get mad.  It's the best.
19. Omaha - while I dream of leaving someday, it's pretty great living in a town that has the following:  a) great farmers market  b) cheap everything  c) no traffic ever  d) pretty old buildings e) nice people  f) good bands coming through and g) lots of trees.  If it had less hills and white trash, it would be perfect. 
20. Tragedy and Elation - I walk around this world largely unconnected to the emotional overtures going on around me.  Emotions embarrass me.  They make me go in the other direction.  I don't understand how to interact with them.  Which is why the extremes appeal to me so much.  I get them.  It's obvious.  So I'm thankful for the humanity I feel during both.  They remind me that I can be a human, just like the rest of you.          

Welcome Back to Work!

Today is Edith's first day of childcare.  Likewise, I return to work from a 2 week sabatical, and Chelsey returns to full time employment for the first time since Edith showed up.  This is a sad day in the Kosterpelding house.  The kind of day that makes you reevaluate your life.

For instance, what sort of cost-cutting measures would allow one or both of us to stay at home?  We don't need our badass cable or our badass cell phones. There's $200 in savings right there.  And who says you need utilities?  That's another $100.  Anyway I add this up, it's not enough.

I have tried to talk Chelsey into going off the grid.  This seems easy enough.  Sell both our cars.  Take the money.  Go to Bolivia.  Disappear.  She points out that this plan is no good, as we don't have the title for either of our cars.  She is right.  The only option is to cash out our 401k's.  There's a good-sized chunk of money in there.  We don't have to worry about the taxes because of our new "off the grid" lifestyle.  This could work. 

In the meantime, I'm reading about how when Tom Waits had his first kid, he was in the process of taking over his management, and finding out he was broke.  He was also moving to New York, and completely changing his musical style to something that his label told him would not sell.  They ended up dropping him over it.  That album turned out to be Swordfishtrombones, which restarted his career, and turned him from lounge act to what he is today.  Of course he did all of this at the prodding of his wife, Kathleen Brennan.  Thank you Chuck, for the fine book.

The answer is clear.  I need to develop some sort of artistic and start to get paid handsomely for it.  Then Chelsey is going to have to come in and make it like twice as good.  Then we move to New York.

5 years of marriage by the numbers

1 baby
1 dog
1 scooter
1 house
1 apartment
1 graduates degree (Chelsey)
1 trip to Holland
1 Chuck Koster smoking cessation
1 Lombardi Tropy
1 stress fracture
1 retaining wall
1 Tom Waits show
2 digital cameras
2 Mardi Gras
2 TV's
2 blogs
2 sets of stitches (one set each)
2 half marathons (Brent)
2 trips to the beach
2 birds (dead)
3 Neko Case shows
3 lawnmowers (and 1 snow blower)
3 computers
3 cars (Hyundai, Versa, CR-V)
4 couches
4  jobs
4 Okkervil River shows
5 bikes
6 trips to New Orleans (3 including Chelsey)
7 cell phones
7 ipods (4 Brent 3 Chelsey)
7 email accounts
7 credit cards (currently 3)
8 pairs of Chuck Taylors
9 glorious days with Edith

Birth By Music

We were about a third of the way through the pushing, Chelsey made a request.

"Can we turn the music up?"

I had prepared a delivery mix, full of songs that I thought might help Chelsey relax during delivery.  They had been playing most of the afternoon, but I think she just needed them louder for delivery-distraction purposes.  What she couldn't have known is that it ended up providing the perfect soundtrack to our meeting Edith.  I was able to skip backwards through the playlist afterwards, and here are some highlights of what came on in the moments leading up to King Edith.



Right after we turned up the music this song came on. In between pushes we the nurse said to Chelsey "This is kind of your song", which was funny because Wendy had said the same thing about herself on this blog during the music challenge. It was also funny because I had never thought that before, but it completely made sense when she said it.

Jason Anderson - Thanksgiving

I don't have a youtube video for this song, but it's linked, you can click on it if you want to hear it. Jason Anderson is a singer Chelsey introduced me to during a trip to Chicago. She kind of new him through someone from Omaha, and we saw him at Schuba's, where we had seen Wolf Parade the night before. Wolf Parade was crazy good. I had low expectations for Jason Anderson. Which turned out to be dumb. He is one of those people - similar to Monotonix (for those of you who saw them with The Silver Jews) - who just has so much positive energy when he performs it overcomes all the jadedness in the crowd. And there is always plenty of jadedness at an indie show. It was a great show. And it felt so right that one of the few optimistic voices in my music catalog was singing my daughter into the world - albeit with a sad song.



I happen to know that Chelsey loves this song. Partially because of its tie-in with Twilight. Partially because it's a real beauty of a song. My ipod could not have picked a better song for her.



We never listen to this song. I have no idea why I put it on the mix. But it has such a good feeling. And it came up as we were getting really close to the end. And I remember thinking "What is this? It's perfect."



Speaking of perfect. Well, maybe not so perfect, but whatever. At one point Chelsey had to stop pushing, because our doctor wasn't there yet, and Edith's head was going to come out if she kept going. So imagine, if you will, being forced to wait with a baby's head wedged between your legs. Not comfortable. Actually really shitty. It was also bizarre, in that we were like five pushes away from having a baby, but we had this weird opportunity to stop and consider the fact we were like ten minutes away from being parents. There's nothing about New Slang that really speaks to that situation, but it's just good background music for contemplation. I'm sure Chelsey was just like "get this fucking baby out of me" the whole time, but for me this was the most emotional part of the delivery. Sitting there, listening to New Slang, and thinking how close we were to having a daughter.



So the doc finally shows, and we start pushing, and to the best of my knowledge this is what was playing when Edith made her grand entry to the world. It was either this, or a cover of "Papa was a rodeo" by Bright Eyes. Let's go with this, since it's much more inspiring for the moment of birth.



There are a few songs I remember from the aftermath, "Godspeed" by Jenny Lewis, The Good Times Are Killing Me" by Modest Mouse, and "Random Rules" by the Silver Jews. But this is the one that got the doctor's attention. The album version of it just has that piano line for a very long time, which confused her. She finally asked what that sound was. I told her it was a song, and she said "Oh, this music has been great. What are we listening to?" To which I tried to explain it was a mix, though not very successfully.



This is the second to last song I remember. This is a song Chelsey and I spoke about in detail a month or so ago. I finally took the time to look up the words to it, and I forwarded them to Chelsey saying I was surprised how such an avant garde artist wrote such a straight forward song about love. I think it's such a beautiful song about how bringing someone into your life makes you stronger - makes your life better. I completely agree with that point of view, but until Wednesday, it hadn't even occurred to me how much it applied to Edith. This is the song that I will take from the day she was born.



This is the last song I remember hearing in the delivery room. After that it was all cord blood donations and pictures. I'm so glad that I was able to recreate the sequence of these songs, so I can revisit that moment as the years go by.

Scenes From a Delivery Room

So having a baby seems to suck.  I guess I already knew that.  But it's a much more visceral suckiness to watch your wife go through little moments of agony every 2-5 minutes.  She's doing a very good job of breathing through the contractions, and she's discovered cussing.  "Jesus Christ" seems to work the best.  But I hope "motherfucker" starts making an appearance when it gets worse.

Just in general, this has served as a reminder of how unrestful hospitals are.  This seems like the regiment they should employ in prison.  Wake you up every hour.  Fuck with you.  Give you drugs that make it worse.  And repeat.  I realize there's not a better way to do it, but it doesn't help matters to be sleep deprived and having labor pains.

The nurses are all nice though in their own way.  Our night nurse was a little annoying.  Our day nurse seems like she has more on the ball.  She calls us both by name, and she's very familiar.  And not in a "let me share some stories from my home life" familiar.  I hate those nurses.

There is so much pudding here.  It's amazing.  But no spoons.  Only forks.  Which isn't really a problem until the end.  You can't really scrape the bottom of a pudding cup with a fork.  We did have a nurse track down some spoons for us.  We now call her "Spoon Nurse."  Which is a shame because her real name is Candi.  And nurse Candi sounds like a porn name.

Chelsey is doing really good.

Edith Watch 2011

I guess everyone knows this, but Edith is scheduled to show up on the 31st.  We saw the doctor on Tuesday, and she scheduled it for us.  Chelsey is going in on the 30th, and she's getting induced the following morning.  We are so excited. 

It's funny how all the dread about being a parent melts away when faced with the fact that Edith is showing up on a concrete date.  I told a co-worker today that I'm so fired up, I plan on going in shirtless and oiled up.  Not sure how that would help, but that's how excited I am.  We both agreed I'd most likely be asked to leave.  So I'm not going to do that after all.

Also, because God hates us for not naming Edith after a saint, my car's muffler appears to have a hole in it due to rust.  The Versa sounds like some Asian kids souped up Honda.  It's embarrassing.  This happy little incident helped us learn that our car is no longer under the super-warranty we have enjoyed since we bought it.  Now it's just under a powertrain warranty.  Thanks for that too God.  Now that I think about it, we did name the dog after a Saint. 

So we have to pay for that.  And Deuce has a kidney stone so we may have to pay for that too.  But who cares?  I got a big fat promotion this week.  Well, it actually doesn't go through until January, but still.

King Edith is going to be so rich.

King Edith Shows Face (Sort of)

Based on yesterday's doctor visit, sounds like Edith is still a week or so off, but we finally got some decent pictures of her. Do these look good to you? They look good to us. But we go to ultrasounds every week, so we're kind of used to the figuring out what's going on in the pictures.

The first one has her face, and what looks like her arm in the way. It actually looks like she's getting ready to flip us off, but I assume that is not the case.

The second one is more of a profile, but it looks like she is no longer flipping us the bird, so that's nice.

The third one finds her looking pissed off in general.   

Again - they look great to us, but if you can't see it so well, don't feel bad. We've been looking at these types of images for like 2 months now.

And we're both losing it a little.

Hospital Beds

Last afternoon we went to the hospital! King Edith has to pass all these indicators each week during our doctor visits so the doctor knows she doing ok. In order to pass these however, she has to be awake. Yesterday she was asleep. So they couldn't watch her breathe. So they sent us to the hospital. They hooked her up to a monitor. The King Edith did what she was supposed to do, and we went home. In the meantime Chelsey ate a sandwich, and I had some pudding. It was great. How we know where to go when the real thing happens. And now Chelsey knows how to turn on the TV.

For anyone interested, I still think she is coming on the 13th. That would be like four weeks early, but she's 6.5 pounds. She's ready.

30 Day Music Challenge - Day 23

Song You Want to Play at Your Wedding

I'm glad someone asked.  I love the songs we picked for our wedding, but if I had the chance for a redo, I would play this song for our dance.



Chuck, thank you for fulfilling your destiny and bringing homoeroticism to the 30 Day Music Challenge



Kent's song. This is in the holy grouping that is Brent's favorite songs.



Wendy's song:

30 Day Music Challenge - Day 3

Song That Makes You Happy

Also very difficult. I have many to choose from. And it's hard for me to discern happiness from amusement, and I feel confident there's going to to be a "Song that makes you laugh" category at some point. So I will go with Elliott Smith - "Bled White".  There's nothing intrinsic to this song that makes me happy.  But I've been listening to it for as long as I've known Chelsey.  And in that time, I can always count on her to sing the Ah Ah Ah Ah part at the 2:00 mark.  No matter what she's doing.  She always sings along to that part.  We can be in the middle of an argument.  It doesn't matter.  I probably just ruined it for us both, but that's one of my favorite Kosterpelding things. 

It also has an F-bomb in it, which would have to be a prerequisite for any song that makes me happy. 




Kent's song.  I actually considered this song too.  But then I started thinking of other songs on that album and realized that I might enjoy "Bottle of Smoke" more in that way.   And then I was like "Do I even own that album?"  And I decided to look elsewhere.




Chuck's pick.  What I love about this song is that for the longest I had a copy of this album that didn't include this song.  So to find out that there was yet another song on this album that I already loved.  And then to find out that it was the best song on the album.  Well that was a really great feeling. 




Chelsey's song.  Just like with the other three, I have a connection to this song.  Peter Ryan and I used to sing it to eachother with great expresssion back in New Orleans.  Now he's dead.  But that's one of my favorite memories of him.



Wendy's entry.

Whose Up for Some Cloud Watching?

Please look at this picture and try to make out some dicernable parts, aside from the massive ear.  It appears we may be having a blob.  We will love her just the same.

King Frank Updates

These will look a lot like Chelsey/House updates:


· Chelsey is still tired all the time, and very vomitty. Although not to the point where she actually vomits. It’s kind of like when I met her, and she used to be hung over all the time. Except then she used to vomit out of car windows. Which was awesome.



· We had a spirited discussion about nursery colors. We both like yellow, but we have this weird piece of furniture that is also yellow that we would like to incorporate somehow. So now we think maybe yellow isn’t the way to go. We talked about it for 10 minutes. Then we stared at the wall for 10 minutes. Then we watched some tv.



· The following things have moved Chelsey to tears in the past week, Big Love Finale, How I Met Your Mother, Pawn Stars. I made up the last one, but I wouldn’t rule it out.



· We are trying to figure out if we want to do that screening that tells you if your kid is predisposed to spina bifida and downs syndrome. I was against getting it. Chelsey was in favor of it. Then I looked at the photos of spina bifida.  I am also now in favor of it.  Spina bifida is very scary.


· We are also divided on whether we want to know the sex or not. I don’t. Chelsey does. So we’re going to have her find out, and attempt to keep it from me through the duration of the pregnancy. If she can do so, she wins a prize.

Happy Valentines Day to My Sweet Wifey

Few and far between are the people who can put up with my shit.  Let alone, put up with my shit each and every day. 

Thanks for being my wife.  I promise to get it together.