Zach Dotsey

I had a dream last night that Amanda, Milly and I walked out to our usual spot at Wrightsville Beach, and when we got out there I saw nice large, rolling waves that looked easy to get out to and catch, but there were very few people out in the water.  It was warm out, but the water was still chilly.  Overjoyed, I ran back to the Frazelle house to get my wetsuit on and grab my board.  I told Barry and we headed on out for a session.

I’ve really been missing surfing lately.  There hasn’t been much out there and the water’s so cold right now anyway.  I’ve been thinking of Nosara, Costa Rica a lot too.

As we usually do when Karen comes to visit, we had breakfast this morning at Cracker Barrel.  On the way there Karen sat in the back and played with Milly.  She was laughing, which is always so great to hear.  It’s the best.

Michael and Jenn joined us, and afterwards they came over to our place.  Michael had burned his hand pretty badly at work on Tuesday (though work did nothing about it) and he, Jenn and Karen stopped by a drug store on the way over to pick up some salve and bandages for it.

We played some MarioKart and I did pretty well, though I haven’t unlocked some of their usual cars and characters yet and they’re used to playing with a regular controller, not the Wii-mote.  I’ve been assured that the two of them are much better playing as they’re accustomed, which I’m sure is true.

Amanda and Karen took off to go shopping or some such and the rest of us stayed to watch Carolina defend the Dean Dome against Georgia Tech.  Jenn didn’t care at all about it and Michael has hardly watched any games this season, but he was still pulling for his Heels.  I, of course, was not. My prediction though, given my luck and the fact that the game was at Carolina, was that the Yellow Jackets, after beating Duke and losing to Virginia (who is supposed to be towards the bottom of the ACC but actually has the best conference record so far), would lose.

Georgia Tech got out to a 20 point lead and they were up 16 at the half.  I never felt comfortable though, and Carolina took the lead with just a few minutes to go.  They swapped lead changed a few times, but Carolina did end up losing.  Amanda got back home just before the end and we were pretty happy about it, though we tried not to flaunt our joy until Michael left.

My mom called to see how things were going and how Milly is doing.  She was stuck in Rochester this weekend.

A little while later Amanda, Milly and I went to have dinner and a game with the Warkentiens.  Milly was off and on fussy but didn’t want to take a nap.  But then, she hadn’t napped much today, so I can understand her being cranky.  We put the kids down around 8:00 then played a game of Puerto Rico.  I changed my strategy but still came in third place, though I was surprised by even that.  (Thanks for losing to me, Nick.)  Amanda absolutely crushed it for the win.  The game was fun, of course, but we imposed a rule where the Governor (which is a position that switches every goes) had to speak in some kind of accent.  We all had a lot of fun with that, too.

When we got Milly up to leave through the time we put her back down in her own crib, she was in a very happy mood.  I almost don’t want to put her back to sleep when she’s like that.

Zach Dotsey

Since I couldn’t get the car started last night, well, since I couldn’t get it to turn on without jumping it every time, I called Nick to see if he could pick me up for church, since I was running a camera this morning.  It turned out that he and Amy were hanging out with the Paschals last night and Nick had left his phone.  I had tried calling Amy, too, but since they were in the middle of a movie they didn’t answer, which is understandable.

Anyway, Nick ended up getting my messages and tried getting in touch, but I go to bed between 10 and 11 on the nights before I serve at church, so I didn’t see any of that.  When I picked up my phone and headed out the door this morning I discovered that Nick had come by the house just in case and had left just a minute or two before I walked out the door.

I felt bad for wasting his time, but it was really nice of him to try so persistently to get back in touch with me and to help out.

Since I had the only working car I left after I finished running the camera at the 9:00 service to pick up my girls for the 11:00 service.  Amanda was just about done getting ready when I got home and Milly was playing on the floor in the nursery.  She gave me a huge grin when she saw me.

After running the camera at the 11:00 service I sat with Amanda for the message, and after the service I went to pick up Milly from Grow Zone while Amanda made straight for the ladies’ room.  Amanda’s aunt and uncle, Anna and Barry Frazelle, saw me on the way to Grow Zone so I talked to them for a minute and we made plans to get together later.

I met Amanda with Milly back in the main auditorium where I also saw Seth Holloman’s parents.  I asked his mom if he was back in from visiting his wife, Dana’s parents in Kansas and she said she’d just gotten a text during the service that his plane had landed at RDU.

Back home I talked to Seth about coming over to watch Duke host Clemson to start the ACC basketball season.  He ended up just staying home and relaxing, which is understandable coming from a different time zone then still having to drive a couple hours.

After a little time at home Amanda, Milly and I headed over to the Frazelle house.  Hannah was home and Anna and Kirsten showed up a few minutes later.  Barry arrived a little after them.  He asked if I could help him with something and when I went outside I saw that he had a new 40-something inch plasma TV.  I walked through the house to open the side door for the room it was going in and mentioned something to Anna, who was in the kitchen, something about getting a new TV.  Anna’s response was, “Whaaa?”  Apparently it was a surprise.

After I helped carry the box into the house I smelled something funny and realized it was my hand.  I said something to Barry about the TV’s box smelling funny then he said he had dragged it through part of the yard and it was probably some of their dog Scout’s dookie.  I asked if he thought so and put my hand in his face.

That was funny, but it turned out that the box and/or the TV itself did smell odd.

We set up the TV, which gave them a lot more space in that room, and played some Wii.  Amanda and I introduced the Frazelles to MarioKart and Rayman’s Raving Rabbids before we all played a little Fit.

Anna fed us dinner, but we had to go very soon after eating because we didn’t have Milly’s dinner with us and it was just about her bedtime.  I was worried about getting back home in time for tipoff for Duke’s game, but it turned out not to matter, thanks to Wake Forest and Xavier.  They went into two overtimes and most people only got to see about two and a half minutes of the first half.  I was seething inside at this, but I controlled it well.  Amanda even commended me.  Wake eventually won, but I didn’t really care- I was just ready for my game, the conference game between two ranked opponents, to be on.

The good news is that Duke held Clemson, who is, by all accounts, a pretty good team this year, to just 12 points compared to their own 30.  Clemson came out with a run to start the second half, but then Duke woke up and beat the Tigers 74-53.  It was nice revenge for the embarrassment Clemson put on the Blue Devils last year.

Zach Dotsey

That video, I believe, contributed to some disturbing dreams I had last night.  You have to watch it until the end to get the full effect, so make sure you do.  I don’t much remember the dreams, but I know they were overwhelmingly negative.  I think two things that also contributed to them were the fact that I initially fell asleep on the couch while watching something on the History Channel about all these terrible world-ending natural disasters that we can’t do anything about and the Chinese food we ate.  Of those three things, the Chinese food is the only one Amanda experienced as well, and she mentioned also having some vivid dreams.

Oh, to add a little info on the Goddess Bunny up there, that’s a dude.  It’s a tranny with polio.  When I went upstairs last night and turned out the light I imagined that thing creeping around in the room.  Then, as I was climbing into bed I thought about the horrible possibility that the Goddess Bunny had taken Amanda’s place in bed and was lying there, waiting for me.  Gives me goosebumps even now.  (And exactly how old am I now?)

I was pretty busy today again.  Seems like the phone kept ringing and I spent half my day calling people back.  I went out for lunch and met with Richard Perry at PT’s, who not only goes to Port City Community Church but is also a rival web designer.  (Dun-dun-dun!)  Had a good time getting to know him and talking shop.  And who knows, maybe we’ll be able to refer some work to each other.

The Kay’s had a birthing class, so only Mike and Sarah came over for small group.  We got off topic a lot, which I think I say every week, but I enjoyed our discussion.

Milly was pretty good for most of the day, but she was really fussy when we put her down.  Usually we can just put her down, wrap her up, turn the lights off and the mobile on and she’s good to go, but she was screaming a few times tonight.  Amanda plunged the baby’s nose (she was pretty snotty today) then had to go back up to soothe her some before she finally went down.  Tooth?

Zach Dotsey

Amanda asked me this morning as she was leaving for work if I remembered trying to change her diaper last night.  Apparently, in my sleep, I checked to see if she had wet her diaper and Amanda asked what I was doing.  I told her something like I was taking care of Milly or changing Milly’s diaper, something like that.  She said that Milly was in the other room.  Apparently I was patting her back too, or something.

I’m not as upset as one would think I’d be, given that I just witnessed Duke’s first loss of the season, the first time they lost in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge and the first time the Big Ten has won the ACC-Big Ten Challenge.  I blame Jason Revill for it.  He told me earlier today that he thought Duke would lose because Carolina won when they were not expected to.

I’m really not too down though, and it’s probably got a lot to do with me feeling like Duke wasn’t going to win it with most of the second half left to play.  Duke trailed the entire game but came really close at the end, which caused Amanda to stay up late and watch it.  I think the main problems were that Duke actually looked terrible on defense and there wasn’t a lot of sharing with the ball.  Smith and Scheyer didn’t look that great tonight, but Singler was a beast (in the first half, but made some boneheaded plays at the end) and Andre Dawkins I think hit 4-4 three pointers.  Just wish they’d started going to him before the last five minutes of the game.  Mason Plumlee played his first real game as a Blue Devil tonight after a very fast recovery from a broken wrist.

Ah well.  It’s not like I was expecting an undefeated season or anything, and Bo Ryan is 123 wins to 10 losses in the last nine years at home.  So congrats, Wisconsin Badgers.  Hopefully Duke will learn from this loss and get better.

Have I mentioned lately how fun it is to get Milly up in the morning?  A big grin spreads across her face and she gets all excited, banging her feet against the crib mattress.  And of course now she’ll raise her arms up for you to pick her up.  So cute.  She also likes dancing.  I was dancing with her a little today and she seemed to have fun with it.

What wasn’t so cute was the poop she had this morning.  It went all up her back and messed her jammies pretty good.

We’ve got some wind and rain going on outside right now.  No tornadoes that I’ve heard of yet.

Zach Dotsey

I had two unrelated but odd dreams last night.  In the first one there was a really large, thick banana spider in a forest, and there was an equally large tarantula in its web.  They fought, and the tarantula wound up eating the banana spider.  It was kind of horrific, seeing two spiders that large going at each other.

That somehow morphed into an episode of Robin Hood where Robin hid the Crown Jewels of England (though it was really only a few pieces of jewelry) in the woods in a little thicket where the tarantula was.  He didn’t hide them very well, so apparently he figured the tarantula would take care of whoever went after them.

In the other dream I was at my parents house in the living room and Bruce was really sick.  He was shriveled up and hairless and looked like a stillborn puppy.  We were trying to decide what to do with him to put him out of his misery, and someone suggested burying him in a box, which was awful because then he’s just starve to death.  A few minutes later he looked normal again.  He was pretty old, but he was moving around, not shriveled up and had all his hair.

As soon as we got to church this morning I turned around and went right back home.  We’d forgotten the diaper bag and along with it, Milly’s bottle of breakfast.  She did fine though.  I got back right before they let the volunteers drop their kids off at Grow Zone.  Amanda and I had always waited in line with everyone else since we don’t serve at the 9:00 service, but we were told today that that was okay, that we could still get in the volunteer line to drop Milly off a few minutes before non-volunteers.  That will buy us a few minutes of extra sleep in the future.

Grow Zone went fine, though overall it was short-staffed.  Amanda ended up helping out with the two-year-olds again.

We got back home and I checked the surf report a few times.  It never looked very good though, so we ended up with another lazy Sunday.  Milly was very ticklish, which was fun.  At one point Amanda wanted some Cinnamon Toast Crunch (because it was mentioned in Brian Few’s sermon this morning) so we walked to the store for that.

Bonnie came by with a couple pieces of a really awesome dessert she’d made.  Not quite sure what it was, other than really, really good.

Zach Dotsey
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I had a dream last night that my dad, Jerry Dotsey, became ruler of the world.  I think he started off good, but then he became cruel and, for some reason, told me that I had to kill my dog, Harvey, by chopping his head in half and if I didn’t do it I would be put to death myself.  Maybe this somehow came from seeing two dogs run out into the road yesterday and almost get hit by a minivan.

I woke up or turned the dream off before I made a choice.

I dreamed last night or this morning that  Iwas roommates with someone who was a cross between Chris Banks, a friend and roommate in college, and Kramer from Seinfeld.  We were having an argument and I was gathering up my Legos (huh?) to move out.  I was going to move to Wilmington, but, in a reconciliatory tone, he asked why I would want to move there.  We lived in a very small, kind of older house on the beach in Fort Lauderdale.  Right outside of our place was a thoroughfare pretty heavily trafficked by beach goers, and across this small street was a white sandy beach.  I think I ended up staying.