Note: One of the words in this story has been replaced with an abbreviation. So whenever you see the word f'ing, know that the ' equals uck.

When people meet me for the first time they usually can't place where I'm from, as I really don't have an accent. I went through two years of speech therapy when I was very young, which rid me of the serious "Joisy" accent prevalent amongst my extended family. Honestly when my Dad's side of the family gets together, it sounds like an episode of "The Sopranos", except there's no talk about "whacking" anybody! As everyone knows my family only perpetrates misdemeanors, not felonies! (read Arrested Development for the details)

I met my future wife Andrea when we were both working for Nextel and I flew out to Southern California on a business trip. A few months after we started dating I flew out to California with my friend Brian to attend a tennis camp, and the three of us went out one night to go see the sun set in the Pacific.

Now Brian is my brother from another mother, but he's also totally "white bread" looking and the son of a minister, so people think he's a goody two shoes. Well the three of us are standing there looking at the sunset and the spirit of my "Joisy" ancestors took over and I started my wise guy routine:

Me: Ya' know Brian, that's a f'ing b-e-a-utiful sunset.
Brian: Yeh, yeh that is a f'ing b-e-a-utiful sunset. Look at that sunset, have you ever seen a more f'ing b-e-a-utiful sunset. F'ing b-e-a-utiful!

At this point Andrea was looking at the two of us like we were completely nuts, so we had to explain to her that this was how people back home really talked (some of my family can weave a beautiful tapestry of obscenity!), but of course she thought we were kidding.

Flash forward a couple of months and Andrea came to visit me in New York. We took a drive up to Bear Mountain (or as Andrea calls it Bear Hill - she's a west coast mountain snob) to do some hiking and see the bald eagle that has lived at the Bear Mountain Zoo for many years. While we're standing there a couple of wannabe wise guys showed up wearing shark skin suits & gold chains, looking like they just whacked somebody and buried them out in the woods. As soon as they walked up I whispered to Andrea "wait for it". She gives me a look like "what the heck are you talking about" and then...the wise guys started talking:

Wise Guy 1: You know Joey that's a f'ing b-e-a-utiful bird. Look at the f'ing feathers on that bird.
Joey: Yeh that is a f'ing b-e-a-utiful bird. F'ing b-e-a-utiful!

At that point I could see that Andrea was trying really hard to hold it together and not laugh out loud, which was good because I'm not sure how Joey and his buddy would have reacted to that! After they walked away we just lost it and from that point on Andrea understood that at least in New Jersey (and New York) "f'ing" is an adjective!

In case you're wondering that's Job as in the Bible, not job as in employment. When my neutropenic (no immune system from chemo) daughter spiked a fever, at the same time that the doctors told me my wife wasn't going to make it through the night, while my preemie son was in the NICU, I'll admit that I was pretty PO'd at God. I might not have screamed out (or written) "God, why have you forsaken me?", but I was thinking it!

I also call it my "Sophie's Choice" moment. My wife Andrea was in the Tacoma General ICU with a staph infection that was killing her, my son Nick was in the Tacoma General NICU and Alex was home with me recovering from chemo. I was on my way out the door to go back to the hospital to see Andrea and Nick. I stopped to give Alex a kiss before I left and discovered she had a fever (102F). When your child is neutropenic and has a fever, you have one hour to get them to the hospital or risk them going septic. So I got ready to take Alex to her hospital (Childrens Seattle), which was 50 minutes away, and the phone rang. It was Andrea's primary doctor calling to tell me that Andrea had taken a turn for the worse and would have to go back into surgery. He told me I needed to get back to Tacoma General immediately. My Mother-in-law was there at the time, so I had to make a choice. Send Alex to the hospital in Seattle with her and get to Andrea's hospital or vice versa. Now my MIL had only driven to Alex's hospital a few times and doesn't have the best sense of direction, so I made the only decision I thought I could, I took Alex to Seattle and my MIL went to Tacoma. In the end it turned out to be a really good decision.

For some reason Andrea had always thought she was allergic to Ampicillin. It was in her medical records and when the doctors asked her, she confirmed that she was allergic. When Andrea's Mom got to the hospital that night, she was told that Andrea wasn't going to make it through the night. As Andrea lay dying in the ICU, the doctors asked her one more time if she was allergic to Ampicillin and she said yes. Right then her Mom spoke up and said that she wasn't allergic to Ampicillin, she was only allergic to Penicillin. They immediately started Andrea on Ampicillin and within 24 hours she started to show improvement. It probably wasn't the Ampicillin alone that saved her, but my theory is that it triggered some sort of response from her immune system that allowed her body to start fighting the infection.

At the same time that this was going on I was in the Emergency Room at Childrens Seattle waiting for Alex to be admitted. While I was sitting there an intern and nurse came in to start Alex on antibiotics. It was an intern I didn't know, so just to be safe I asked him what antibiotic they were putting her on and if you can believe it, it turned out to be one that she was allergic to. For some reason that info had been left off the ER chart.

So basically if I had made the opposite decision and sent my Mother-in-law to the hospital with Alex and gone to be with Andrea, there's a good chance I would be a widower today, not to mention what would have happened to Alex as a result of the allergic reaction to the antibiotic. I'm not a particularly religious person, and maybe it was just blind luck, but for whatever reason I made the right choice. Three days later Alex got out of the hospital as her fevers disappeared overnight. One week later Andrea was released from the hospital. Five weeks later Nick was released from the hospital, four weeks before his original due date. And then a week after that we all boarded a plane to North Carolina so Alex could have her second Cord Blood Transplant at Duke. I won't bore you with the details of that, just suffice it to say transplants suck, but they do work.

It's now almost 4 years later and I have a healthy, nearly 4 year old son, a relatively health (almost) 9 year old daughter and a wife who's alive, but remembers very little about what happened to her. As hard as it was, it was all worth it. I've known too many parents who lost their kids, so I honestly feel guilty if I complain about what we went through. And let's just say that I no longer consider myself a latter day Job. I do keep telling my wife though that I'm owed one long hospital stay of my own, preferably in a padded room!

-- T

P.S. The photo at the top was taken by one of Nick's nurses while I was doing kangaroo care. During kangaroo care the preemie is typically placed on the Mom's chest, but because of Andrea's health problems, the job fell to me. To this day I'm worried that Nick will have an unhealthy attraction to hairy chested women!

When I was in college I used to drink a lot and most of the time it was with my best drinking buddy, Therese. A typical night drinking with Therese started with 7 or 8 shots of tequila and ended with the two of us stumbling home to her parent's house and passing out. Lucky for the two of us there were several bars located within a mile of her house, so we never had to walk far!

Even though I was obviously a corrupting influence on Therese (or more likely vice versa), her parents liked me and as long as we didn't drink and drive they tolerated our escapades. One night after a particularly bad drinking binge, which ended with me passed out in the parking lot of the bar, Therese and I stumbled to her house where I fell asleep on the couch in the living room.

About four hours later I awoke to the sound of rockets. On the scale of things you don't want to hear when you have a hangover, rockets rank somewhere between barking dogs and Fran Drescher's voice (TV's The Nanny)! I ignored it for a few seconds until I realized it was getting louder and figured it might be a good idea to find out why there was a rocket in Therese's living room. Bleary eyed I looked across the room at the television where I saw a space shuttle being launched into space. The TV's volume was turned all the way up and my head felt like it was going to explode any second. Then I saw out of the corner of my eye, Therese's Mom with a TV remote in her hand and a wicked grin! Needless to say that was the last time I had a hangover around Therese's Mom!

Now that I have my own kids I've started making plans for ways to torture them when they get their first hangover. Thankfully with today's technology I can do so much more than just hope for a shuttle launch to be planned for the morning of their first hangover!

A couple years ago we started looking for a new house, preferably one on the water. Looking online we found what looked to be a great buy. A house on the water that was about $50,000 less than any other comparable house in our area. So we called up our friend who's a realtor to find out why it was so cheap and she told us that the house was a little odd, but we could could still take a look. We were about to find out just how "odd" the house was.

When we pulled up to the house I immediately felt like someone was staring at me. I looked up and could see the outline of a person behind the curtains in an upstairs window. I was a little creeped out, but I figured it was probably just the owner checking to see who had driven up.

So we walked through the front door and the first thing I saw was a mannequin that's dressed to the nines (i.e. really dressed up). I thought okay that's a little strange, but maybe the owner is a fashion designer. We walked into the first bedroom and there was another mannequin standing next to the bed, and through the bathroom door I saw a naked mannequin in a tub filled with marbles. I was officially freaked out at that point!

It turned out that there was a mannequin in every room of the house, including a female mannequin looking out the upstairs window (which I saw when we drove up) and a homeless woman mannequin with a shopping cart in the garage. In the basement there was a walk-in closet filled with clothes, jewelry and other accessories...all for the mannequins. I learned that the owner was an artist, that each of the mannequins had names and back stories, and that their clothes were changed on a regular basis. So now I understood what our realtor friend meant by "odd"!

Even after seeing all that I was still considering buying the house (after all it was a great buy), but then my imagination started to work overtime:

Scenario 1: The mannequins represented the people the owner had killed and then buried in the back yard.
Scenario 2: The mannequins were the people the owner had killed, who had been encased in wax or plastic.
Scenario 3: Even if the other two scenarios weren't true, my wife would somehow find a way to scare the crap out of me, if we bought this house!

See my wife knows all too well that I have very vivid dreams. Well into my twenties I was still sleepwalking and even today I have intermittent night terrors. My personal favorite is the time I looked up at the ceiling fan in our bedroom and saw angry monkeys coming through the ceiling! (analyze that Carl Jung!) Usually when I have one of these night terrors I jump out of bed and turn on the lights, which of course really ticks off my wife.

So I figured if we bought the house my wife would exact her revenge on me for waking her up so many times over the years. She'd wait until I went to sleep, place mannequins around the bed and then go sleep in the other room. Then she'd wait for the screaming when I woke from a dream and saw mannequins surrounding my bed! That is if I didn't die from fright before I started screaming!

For obvious reasons we ended up not buying the house...

I hold the distinction of being the only male on my Dad's side of the family in three generations not to be arrested. And I'm not just talking about my immediate family, I'm talking extended family (cousins, 2nd cousins, Uncle, etc...). For the most part none of the arrests were anything serious, just your run of the mill "Drunk & Disorderly" charges. My favorite family crime story involves my two brothers. When my brothers were 17 and 15 they went out drinking one night. Well my brother Jimmy decided that it would be a good idea to go visit his girlfriend Lisa (not her real name). The problem was that it was after midnight and she was asleep, so Jimmy did what any drunk teenage boy would do. He climbed up to the second story of his girlfriend's house and banged on what he thought was her bedroom window. Sadly it was her parents' bedroom window. I'm not really sure what transpired next, but I figure it probably went something like this:

Lisa's Dad: What the f$#k! Lisa get in here!
Lisa: What?
Lisa's Dad: Who the hell is this guy outside my window! Do you know him?
Lisa: Dad, I never saw him before in my life!

All I know for sure is that Lisa's Dad called the cops and they arrested Jimmy. They also arrested my brother Greg who was trying to get Jimmy off the roof. Now my parents were down in Florida on vacation with me, so it fell to my sister Lynn to bail them out. We found out about their adventures the following day when we called Lynn from one of the public phone kiosks at Busch Gardens. I'll never forget the first words out of my sister's mouth after exchanging hellos. "Your idiot sons got arrested last night!" ;-)