Disappointed

Well,

Last night kind of sucked. It sucked a lot, actually. I decided to go to the doctor's office because I've been getting head aches an awful lot at work lately. I was on medicine for high blood pressure for a few years in college and they brought me off of it a few months ago because it seemed like I was doing pretty well. I guess not.

I still have high blood pressure. It wasn't good either. 136/98 (close enough), and that's really bad. When I was in college, I'd get anxiety spurts a lot; especially when I went to the doctor to have my blood pressure checked. This time around, I wasn't nervous at all. In fact, I was pretty confident it would be fine. Boy, was it a shock to see it high again. My heart sank in my chest when they read the numbers to me - mainly because it makes me sad knowing that I have this problem and I'm only 23 and I'm not overweight. I don't eat like a health freak, but I don't eat horribly either. It just seems like this is who I was born to be.

The main thing that scares me about the high blood pressure is the fact that it is so dangerous and that I've got Shannon, Jayden and soon-to-be Jaxson in my life now. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be nearly as upset about it. Luckily, it can be easily controlled with medicine - but I'm only 23, so what if it gets worse? My biggest fear, probably in the entire world, is leaving my sons behind and not being able to be a good dad for them. Ever since I was a little kid without my dad around, I made a promise to myself that I'd be the best dad in the entire world for my kids. I get scared when I think about something possibly happening to me. It's also gut-wrenching to think that, although Jayden plays with me every day and he smiles and laughs when I wrestle him around or tackle him like we're playing football, he won't remember any of it. So if something happened while he or his soon-to-be little brother were young, they'd never even know who their dad was. That scares me a lot.

But, one thing I need to realize is that God is up there and whatever his plans for me are - those are his plans. There's no sense worrying about anything - heck, that causes high blood pressure to begin with, hah! All I can do is my part - exercising, eating right, etc. It sucks some times because with work and the family, I don't always have a lot of time to get involved in my hobbies. I shouldn't complain though, because Shannon has a lot less time than me, and she probably complains half as much as I do :). I really was blessed with an amazing wife. Speaking of which, I felt really good today because I was able to put away some laundry and do some dishes before Shan got home from work because I took a sick day.

Work has been extremely stressful lately - probably a main reason why my BP is so high. The economy is really bad right now; it's very scary. About a quarter of my company got laid off about a week and a half ago. I'm an account manager and we have about 158 or so accounts at my company. On top of that, each account has anywhere from 5 to 950 or so locations that we have to manage. At any given time, one of those stores could lose their internet connectivity and along with it the ability to process credit cards (at which point they call me and I pull some strings and get things fixed). It's really hectic right now because we only have two account managers left including me and my boss Andreas who doesn't really know how to do everyday account management stuff because he was our boss before the lay offs, and it was our job to do the grunt work. Now we've got the 158 or so accounts split between three people. It's a nightmare.

Last night when I found out that my blood pressure was high again, it sapped a lot out of me emotionally, so I decided to call Andreas and ask him for a sick day today. I have like 60 hours of PTO because I never really take time off, and he was understanding so I stayed home. I didn't do much - just playing the newest fad LittleBigPlanet. It's a really awesome game - lots of fun. Last night my friend from high school, Deric, came over and we worked on a level we've been creating based on our inside jokes from high school. Every few months Deric throws a gaming tournament that is aptly named, "The Tournament of Gaming". We usually set up several games in a bracket-style tournament and include a scoring system that goes with each game to determine the overall winner. Each game is split into a category that tests abilities that we believe the "ultimate" gamer must possess, i.e., Hand-eye coordination, Reflexes, Logic, etc. It's a lot of fun and I look forward to it every time we do it. I finished second last year behind Deric, but I'm pretty sure that happened because we played several games I'd never played before that he owned. I remember I took 1st in a few games, including a lot of the retros from my Ballinger Home days with my friends Joel, Hong and Jordan: Mario Kart 64 and Goldeneye 64.

So anyhow, I pretty much just worked on our level for TOG2 all day. I made some decent progress, but I've kind of hit a "creator's block" of sorts and can't figure out where to go with it next. We'll see.
When I finished doing that I downloaded some Final Fantasy 7 mp3s to get the nostalgic emotions going on my PS3 while I folded laundry.

Sure enough, while I was doing that, Shannon got home from work with my little J-man! It always makes me so happy when I see him and that cute little smile he always gets when he sees me. It makes me melt every single time. I wrestled with him a bunch today - I love spinning him around and listening to him laugh. He gets his pay back though - man does my son love to hit his dad. He seems like during every given moment he's got something in his hand and he's smacking me in the face with it hahaha!! I try to tell him no, but sometimes I can't help but laugh because he thinks it is so funny when he hits me and I say "ow!" Man, he is so cute and he's growing up so fast. He's getting so incredibly smart. I'm so proud of him - I love my little dude!

Speaking of which, I should probably go to bed. It's getting late and the little munchkin could wake up at any moment - and I've got J-duty. AAAAHHHH!!

Tomorrow's a big day! I'm excited to see Jaxson in 3D - but I really don't know what to expect. I don't think it's really sunk in that I'm going to be a dad again in a little over two months - HOLY CRAP!