Hope at Home!!!

After over a week, our Hope is home! We now have Hope again starting each new day and although our Hope is reduced having lost probably over 30 pounds with clothes dripping off her skinny ass (sorry grandmama) the Wise Boys are happy to have Hope again. We never gave up Hope and never will, but it's been a long 8 days with Hope not at home so she could be at her Mom's to concentrate on nothing but getting better and getting past the worst of the detox. What she went through over the last 2 weeks was worse then any chemo and radiation combo you can imagine, but although weak and weary she's past the worst of it (we Hope and yes pun intended). As I type I'm listening to the greatest rock band ever, the Counting Crows, and if you're not a fan just listen indulge yourself into August and Everything After. That's us now, August is almost over and we're ready to enjoy everything after. And to quote our experience since June from another Counting Crows song on another album, Long December:

The smell of hospitals in winter

And the feeling that its all a lot of oysters, but no pearls

All at once you look across a crowded room

To see the way that light attaches to a girl.

The light is shining on our pearl and even if she turns sideways and we can't find her, we're willing to wait out until she turns again and we can find her. Any group with a song named Colorblind is my kind of band. It doesn't hurt that the lead singer has knocked off half of my list (2/5ths from the Friends cast alone). One more lesser known song from the Counting Crows is "I'm not Sleeping" and it describes how I felt when Hope was gone and now that she's back:

She comes to me at night when I'm sleeping

She comes to me when I'm alone

She comes to me, she holds my head when I'm crying

She comes to me, she shuts my eyes

She brings me home

But I'm not sleeping anymore, anymore

Hope is tucking in the boys as I type, and I feel like Zach in Saved by the Bell the College Years when he had to go the first half of the first season without Kelly Kapowski, and then Tiffani Amber-Thiesen returned and all was right in the world. Even Screech had a guest appearance by Lisa, so for an episode the nerd got his girl back (alright that is much more like me because Zach is way too cool for me to pull of Tiffani). I'm more like Elaine dancing in Seinfeld then Sam Malone working the mother-daughter combo only to find out it's Rebecaa's Mom and sister.

We have a long way to go for recovery, right now walking to the mailbox is too much and it takes pills or feedings every 30 minutes during the waking hours of the day including over 40 pills per day to fight the good fight. We are up for it, having trained like Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas (Bob and Doug McKenzie) for their jobs at the brewery their entire adult lives including mind controlling hockey in what has to be the greatest drunk movie of all time. To this day I still hum, dummm-dumdumdum-dah-dum-dum-dum all the time to the kids. That means in the mind control of black and white hockey, it's on! Any movie with a drunk flying dog that looks like my old Shadow and a bit like my old Cody when he smiled (yes our old dog Cody smiled and Hope will back me up on that one) has to be an instant classic.

I'm no longer playing a single dad, although the role was entertaining and I loved every minute of it. Reese unfortunately started to pee in his bed at night again after Hope left so I was daily washing his sheets and comforter. The first day I did it I washed the comforter first and while I was cleaning up their rooms upstairs they came running up to me saying "earthquake daddy." The washing machine was off balance moving across the room so I had to pull out a sopping wet comforter dripping all over me and the floor to try and rebalance it. I've been more dry after doing a cannonball in the pool before.

Reese just came downstairs which is a rare occurence unless it's 3 AM and he just peed the bed, and he told me had to tell me something. So I asked what is it sweetie, and he said, "remember on SpongeBob when he had too many night lights?"

"Yes I do, and then Patrick broke through his wall also scared," I responded. Reese smiled and said, "yes Daddy." There's nothing better then my own future blogger coming down in the middle of the night to quote a SpongeBob reference as I'm blogging about the same. Reese has now added "got a little captain in you?" as he lifts his leg up along with his response to what's the first rule of Fight Club, "don't talk about Fight Club." We're still working on, "can I borrow your towel, my car just hit a water buffalo" from Fletch.

That night I had to hit the grocery store so I asked the boys to pick together any dinner they wanted and they picked hot dogs and Doritos. It was late by the time I got back so I didn't have time to fire up the grill like I normally do, so I thought I'd microwave the dogs for the first time in years. Hope likes us to get nitrate free fearless franks and they're too long for regular buns so when I microwaved them the ends exploded. Then I put them in the short buns with blown out ends and a stack of Doritos for a vegetable. The next morning the kids helped me crack eggs for scrambled eggs. Well I did the daddy surprise with some cheese in them and when Reese saw them he screamed, "I don't like cheese in my eggs!!!" So colorblind boy spent the next 20 minutes trying to separate the dark yellow from the light yellow. As I always say when Hope makes a casserole, with enough hot sauce I can eat anything. I think that's why I like Mexican so much and the scrambled eggs the boys helped me make.

Another night I bought some fresh pizza dough, rolled it out and let the boys do the toppings. They put on spaghetti sauce, cheese, pepperoni, and then had me cut up hot dogs too for the toppings. Finally I had to draw the line at gummy worms. We still had some left over from Mother's Day/Papa's birthday when the boys and I made Dennis, Mom, Hope & Hope's mom chocolate cake with chocolate icing and then decorated the cake with M&M's and gummy worms.

I've had quite a few phone calls, friends calling other friends, and e-mails asking for updates on Hope. My mommy always told me if you didn't have something nice to say then don't say anything so the updated blogs have been as scarce as the identity of what was in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction that lead to John Travolta accidentally spraying brains all over his getaway car after they hit a bump. Which by the way was taken care of by the cleaner, played by Harvey Keitel, who has nothing on Hope when she sees a carpet without proper vacuuming lines in it.

Michael Phelps has nothing on Hope either, 8 gold medals is nothing compared to what she has overcome in the course of almost two Olympic games. She has crucified the world records in strength, durability, toughness, gumption, and love and support from you guys. Like Kitt in Knight Rider (movie to be coming out soon as previously blogged about from the Hoff fan club president) she's virtually indestructable no matter how big the enemy. Kitt even took on an 18-wheeler made out of the same material three times with the Hoff barely taking on a scratch. Luckily Bonny still had that one swipe of grease across her cheek in her spotless white overalls to keep us watching.

Tonight the Floirda Wise boys have a new Hope on life...