{"id":46713,"date":"2021-05-18T05:22:54","date_gmt":"2021-05-18T05:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/chronicles\/?p=46713"},"modified":"2021-05-18T05:22:57","modified_gmt":"2021-05-18T05:22:57","slug":"year-in-review-april-2013-superman-parthenon-evil-pediatricians-and-pirate-ships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/chronicles\/year-in-review-april-2013-superman-parthenon-evil-pediatricians-and-pirate-ships\/","title":{"rendered":"Year in Review: April 2013 – Superman, Parthenon, Evil Pediatricians, and Pirate Ships"},"content":{"rendered":"

April 2013:<\/b><\/p>\n

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April was a month of spring cleaning and a new start on life. With the coming of our child we were in deep contemplation of where we wanted to go, where we wanted to live, what we wanted to do, and how to maximize the most amount of time to spend with our new son to avoid daycare, bullying, detachment, and many of the other issues parents have to deal with these days. It was also a major month on the battle front of dealing with a backwoods redneck pediatrician who was trying to divert us from breastfeeding to using formula. It racked our nerves and definitely added un-necessary stress to our lives. On the bright end, Etain’s family from Ireland was here – so we had some support troops in the fight. It was also a month of showing around the family the place we currently were calling ‘home’ – “South Carolina”.<\/p>\n

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Cousins from afar also came to visit which led to more family time, bonding, and networking. Good dinners, good times, and settling in seemed to take root (minus stress caused by the Pediatrician from Hell). It was a rough month on me as trying to juggle work, business, family, baby, wife, caretaking, income, managing the house, and other side projects all together mixed in with this pediatrician trouble. This led to me being unbalanced and not fully aware of my surroundings as my mind was buzzing on overload. So many times I tripped over things, banged up my leg, injured my toe, and while cooking on the grill, slid a knife through my hand requiring a visit to the clinic and numerous stitches. This handicapped me for the next couple of months as well.<\/p>\n

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Family from New York, Ireland, and North Carolina came in for a visit to celebrate Cian’s birth and come meet the newest member of the family. It was intriguing to see even with the Irish American kids they were building fairy houses in the yard during the visit. It was soo cute. Work was a grind, 8-10 hour days monday through friday, though got some shifting around with holidays and able to spend some time with the incoming family.<\/p>\n

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We took a trip with the family down to Savannah and enjoyed the city as it was a place that Etain’s aunt always wanted to visit. They were only with us for another week in April so was making the best of it. Savannah was bright and sunny with great weather and ambiance. It was definitely one of the few southeastern cities we liked … for if we had our choice while living in South Carolina – our choice cities would have been Charleston or Savannah. From our experiences in Columbia – it was certainly not there.<\/p>\n

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We made it down to Charleston again for a rendezvous with our families, soaking in the sun and sea with southern charms and city life. Mom and auntie was having a great time, as was Cian and mom. Cian was blossoming in our eyes, but the battles with the evil pediatrician was building. He let us be while we were saying bye to the folks so we had a small break from the daily weigh-ins. The South Carolina medical professionals found a way to rack in over $49,000 from the insurance to feed their greedy mouths.<\/p>\n

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Off we went before Cian turned a month old to Charlotte, North Carolina to drop Mom and Auntie off at the airport for their flight back to Ireland. Cian was in great spirits and really attentive with his surroundings, especially during the road trips, intrigued with what he saw around him. It was quite inspiring.<\/p>\n

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Etain was gaining ground in her recovery, mastering multi-tasking with life and baby, and we both were getting things done, figuring out what we wanted to be doing, and what our soon-to-be future would be. We began to dream big. We also figured we would be taking a walk-a-bout soon to New England, across America to the Pacific Northwest to figure out where we wanted to root, nest, and settle. It was definitely not going to be South Carolina. This state was a pivotal place of unhappiness for Etain and me, not only the bugs, the humidity, and the backwards culture – but we wanted seasons and an environment where people were more like us. We missed having local friends and community – so off we were to go where we could find that.<\/p>\n

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We beat the Pediatrician as during a road trip to Florida he made us turn around after making us go to the Children’s hospital for a blood test and weight checks. Even though the blood test was fine, platelets a little low though, his scale Cian was way below birth weight. He didn’t know what the WHO chart was. He wanted to put us into the hospital for 72 hours of monitoring to see what kind of nutrition Cian was getting from the breastfeeding watched by the hospital so he could force formula into the diet. Luckily we were smarter than he, found another pediatrician to go to before our appointment with him, she instantly pulled up the WHO chart (World Health Organization), weighed him, and ran some checks stating he was fine, actually above birth weight (as opposed to just the day before with the other pediatrician being under birth weight – no way that changed in 24 hours so the evil pediatrician’s scale was calibrated off just so they could do this money-grubbing scheme) and she said he was in the top 25 percentile on the WHO chart where he should be and come back to visit her in a few months. Oh the delight to call back Dr. Evil and tell him he was fired and could not affect Cian’s life any longer.<\/p>\n

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Once we were able to escape the grasping hands of anti-breastfeeding insurance sucking Doctor Evil, a major lift of stress was lifted and we could get on with raising our child. You could see happiness and joy fill him as well when the troubles left.<\/p>\n

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Back in action we were on track again with healthy diet, daily exercise, walks around the neighbourhood and city parks, and exploring our surroundings. Cian loved the outdoors and nature. Work was draining during the week but the weekends were filled with busy activities of playgrounds, parks, rivers, and thrift shopping.<\/p>\n

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Daily and evening walks became one of our favorite activities next to treasure hunting in thrift stores around town. There wasn’t much to Columbia, but it did have a fair share of art and culture not found elsewhere in the South. Still not enough to keep us there … plans were to move on as soon as Cian went through his immunizations and got a clear pass on health. So far, so good – very healthy, no breathing issues, no allergies, never got sick, and was back to breastfeeding with no interference.<\/p>\n

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Towards the end of the month a potential major blessing was thrown before us with career ideas going forward with Pirate Relief<\/a>. Friends bombarded us with links to a craigslist ad about a pirate ship for sale – a converted house boat to a pirate galleon. After some calls and research, found out the one in the add was sold to the History channel and their new show “Swamp People” – but that a smaller version was currently under construction. So we embarked upon a journey to St. Louis, Missouri to check it out and see if it was the boat meant for us and our project. We had high hopes. This endeavour of course gave some twists to our walk-a-bout plan – as if it happened, we might just run the ship out of Charleston, Columbia, or somewhere in the southeast, though the Pacific Northwest wasn’t out of the question. The 26th of the month we took an extended weekend to cross the Appalachian Mountains to the Midwest to investigate the Gypsy Rose VI Pirate Ship.<\/p>\n

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We made it in good time fast flying across the mountains and midwest to Saint Louis. The Mississippi river was in heavy flooding and the captain had to drive us across the flooded lands to his workshop where the ship was being built. It looked promising even though it was an old ship. We thought we would go with the project if a contract could be negotiated, and everything looked grand. We were a bit concerned on the age of the ship, if it could handle the sea and intercoastal, or if everything would be legit. We moved on as if it was going to happen. Bouncing back and forth the contract for the next few weeks was the course of action to make it a reality.<\/p>\n

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We had some heavy thinking to do on the way home. We visited Metropolis, the home of Superman in Illinois and learned a bit about this superheroe’s history.<\/p>\n

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We also visited the Parthenon in Tennessee which was amazing and gave me a burst of interest in the history of it all. We made it back home to South Carolina with new ideas and thoughts about what life had in store with us and then going forward with our plans. We first had to investigate the Southeast to see if that would be the port for the Pirate ship. Alot of research was ahead of us as we had to investigate this new possibility.<\/p>\n

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Year in Review: [ January<\/a> ] [ February<\/a> ] [ March<\/a> ] [ April<\/a> ] [ May<\/a> ] [ June<\/a> ] [ July<\/a> ] [ August<\/a> ] [ September<\/a> ] [ October<\/a> ] [ November<\/a> ] [ December<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April 2013: April was a month of spring cleaning and a new start on life. With the coming of our child we were in deep contemplation of where we wanted to go, where we wanted to live, what we wanted to do, and how to maximize the most amount of time to spend with our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1670,163,1406],"tags":[2880,2869,2881,304,125,2883,2884,21,132],"class_list":["post-46713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sailing-the-7-seas","category-scouting-for-a-nest-the-american-walkabout","category-the-great-walkabout","tag-career","tag-charlotte","tag-gypsy-rose-vi","tag-illinois","tag-north-carolina","tag-parthenon","tag-pediatricians","tag-road-trips","tag-tennessee"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/technotink.net\/chronicles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/042813-006.jpg?fit=600%2C900&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbTmMn-c9r","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46713"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46748,"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46713\/revisions\/46748"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technotink.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}