August 2003 Archives

Today is Giselle's first day back to school. But now it's first grade, and all the desks and chairs face the front of the room in contrast to last year's diffuse kindergarten layout. Her new teacher, Mrs. Simms, was nicely organized on day one. The crayons, pencils and desks all had the kids names printed on them. I was mildly surprised that the school splurged for fresh crayons for all the kids...but then it occurred to me that Mrs. Simms probably payed for all the crayolas, and who knows what else, out of her own pocket.

In one corner, there's a blueberry iMac facing the class, and another decade-old Mac on the other side of the table, facing the corner in shame. And then there's a big empty aquarium near the door waiting for the addition of the 2003/2004 class mascot at some point...a turtle or a lizard maybe? Kindergarten was for fuzzy, herbivorous, little chicks and ducks. Now it's time to move on to smallish carnivores with scales and tails.

Its nice to meet these happy, enthusiastic teachers too. It reassures me that they won't be putting the dread of school into the kids during the early years at least. Which is how it's all planned out I'm sure. Rob came in this morning and we talked a bit about dropping the kids off and what the new classes were like. His daughter is in fifth grade. I asked what the teacher was like, and it sounded like she was going to be a stern old sourpuss. Yep. Fifth grade. Bummer days, man. By the time you exit the relative shelter of third grade, odds are you're going to start running into some real crabs here and there. I'm sure it comes from both ends--first the classes are harder to control, but I'm sure they also try to shuffle all the burnouts to the older kids who are better able to handle it. For me, it was fourth grade when I encountered my first choleric, washed-out teacher. Mrs. Potter. Oy. That lady had ZERO sense of humor, and looked like she REALLY wanted to use that yardstick clenched in her meaty fist. Maybe she liked her career when she first started, but after who knows how many years of homeroom administration, troublemaking kids, and teachers' lounge politics, she had become a strong motivation for truancy. I can't imagine anyone starting out that way. Why would you even take the job in the first place if it irritated you that much? Well anyway, hopefully Giselle won't have to endure that for a while yet.

The kids were playing out in the yard yesterday while I was futzing around in the almost-garage. They kept calling me over to look at something, but I couldn't tell what they wanted me to see. A lady bug maybe? All I could tell was that Harrison was plucking blades of grass and stacking them in a pile. A little while later, Amanda told me it was a big caterpillar and that Harrison kept saying "I feed it. I feed it leaves. I feed it grass." while the critter stood up on it's little nubs and waved its upper torso back and forth trying to scare off the large predators circled around it. A little while later, as I was mowing that part of the yard, I finally got to see it popping up from between some bricks to find out what all the commotion was about. So I shut off the mower, picked it up and brought it inside to see if the kids wanted to hold it. Giselle obliged.

I'm pretty sure the little guy was a Western Tiger Swallowtail.

You know how I was saying I sometimes find a toy party in my shoes? Well here's another one of the little surprises I sometimes wake up to:

The time and craftsmanship that gets put into these little pranks is impressive.

...oh man, Amanda was just pondering the curtain ruffles above the windows and wondering what would happen if we washed them. She quickly replied to herself, "Gah! It would be like washing cookies!" Bwahahah. Yesiree Bob :D

Twice today, I've had separate people preface a request by saying "You know the such-n-such images you sent to so-n-so?"

silence

What to say...what to say...

I'm sure my eyes are glazed over--a doll's eyes. Some days, I'll send 3 or 4 separate globs of files to our miscellaneous consumers. These little requests flare up as quickly as they dissipate into nothingness once the goods are delivered. I just don't assign them any mental importance. "Oh, Jack wants a PDF and extracted Word doc of the fourth rev of his Device IFU? Great. That should only take me a half hour to tweez from the archives and massage into some semblance of usability. It's just thirty minutes of my life for which I don't have the will to file away in my rapid-access memory. Not to mention the fact that my memory for boring details is nothing more than an oozing mass of decay anyway.

That's not to say I haven't developed coping mechanisms. And Mechanism Número Uno, is I keep every last email I ever send or receive in chronological archives on my hard drive. So I can go back and ply through the tower of dates, names and subjects until I open the memo that brings it all flooding back into my mind like so much regurgitated mongolian beef. Once I see it, it's so reassuring to know that it was still there in my head somewhere, I just needed that little glimpse of text to dial it in. Problem is, I can't do that when somebody is grilling me away from my desk. I just have to sit there, nod my head, tell them I haven't a clue what they're talking about, but I'll go research it. And I generally get a look of worried concern in return.

thought bubble:
"is he serious? he doesn't remember that? how can he not remember that? he just sent it three days ago. oh the tragedy"

I mean, seriously. It's not like I'm sitting there furbling my lips with my finger and grunting "...hmm hawww hewww urrrrrbbbbb bachomp CHOMP chooey CHOMP!" Just give me five minutes and I'll be up to speed.

I should probably start doing some of those mental exercises I read about in the Lifestyle section of the newspaper. I hate getting caught mentally nekkid like that.

I ran home during lunch today. I needed pick everybody up so Amanda could go to the chiropractor, and I could take the kids with me to order some siding. So there we were trying to corral the little varmits into the car when I hear Carlos behind me. (Our next door neighbor on the West side). Carlos is really cool, but we were in a hurry and I was thinking "why on earth does he want to chit chat now??" After ratcheting Harrison into his seat, I turned to see what was up. "Hey Jerm*, if you need some help hauling that stuff off to the dump, I'm trucking some things of ours this weekend, and I could take that too..." He was gesturing toward the stack of siding laying in the 6 foot wide side yard space between the fence and our house. Oh...uh...yeah...that would be great Carlos. I'd like to rip the rest of the siding off the front of the carport if you're not going right away, and that way it could all go at once...Sunday you say?"

Man, I felt about this small (picture me making 2-inch tall measurement with fingers). I was a total grouch all the way to the chiropractor after that. I just kept imagining Carlos and his wife talking week after week, and her getting more and more frustrated about the eyesore and asking him when he's going to quit procrastinating and come say something to me about it. How humiliating. Gurf. I kept telling myself I was waiting to haul all the siding at once. But there you go. After 3 months, who's going to believe that? Amanda is worried I'm going to grind away what's left of my teeth.

Well anyway, we got the last of the lumber delivered, and the new siding gets here tomorrow. (I found the right stuff, by the way. Ha. One small victory.)

*He pronouncees it Jairm, so it's cool with me.

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter - bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

--Stephen Crane

[edit]
Yikes. Okay. I'm not THAT far gone. Maybe replace 'bitter' with 'anxious'. Yeah. That's the ticket :)

Man. I still like that little poem though.

I got a couple things done this weekend.

Remember that water line that got broke in my front yard about a year ago? Yeah, I forgot about that too. There's been a two-and-a-half foot deep mantrap sitting in my front yard all that time, marked only by a lopsided 6" diameter pvc pipe poking out, as if screaming, 'break legs here'. I had been intending to either get in there myself and replace the patched pipe, or spend money on a plumber guy. It never happened. I can only imagine Paul coming inside every time he finished mowing his lawn and cursing me out about almost having his knees bent backward on that last pass by the rose bushes. I know. It's horrible, me being all white-trashy like that. I'm not sure if it was some subconscious passive-aggressive attempt to get back at him for his cats manuring my flowers. I don't think so. But if it's subconscious, how would I know?

Anyway, the city wouldn't freebie me the two meterboxes I needed to sink down to the subfrost level of the pipe. So I tossed down 50 bucks for those hefty suckers, and spent some time Saturday squaring off a nice deep slot to accommodate them. One inguinal hernia and several flattened vertebrae later, and it was done! I have returned balance to several square feet of the neighborhood. Now I can just leave the pipe alone, in its patched state until we sell the place, or it bursts open again, but at least it'll be easy to get to.

Giselle and Harrison played out in the front yard with Paul's son most of the day Saturday. And I can vouch that things got a bit traumatic for Harrison, because Amanda tells me Paul's boy knocked on the door again Sunday morning while I was out shopping at Home Depot. She said that when Harrison heard the knock, he looked up and grumbled, "oh great. Giselle gon' hit me the face an' Dad put me in my room" eheh. He can be fairly articulate when he wants to be. Although it didn't happen quite like he said, but I feel for the little guy. The older kids run circles around him, confrontations happen, he gets progressively more and more put out until he ends up having a mental breakdown of fit throwing and has to time out in his room.

I also sunk some of the GWB tax cut check into the remaining lumber for the garage entry, and that should get delivered today. All I need to do now is figure out where the heck the contractors got the siding for the rest of our house, since it doesn't match anything in town exactly. They probably ordered the stuff in bulk from some slave labor camp in Guatemala. I guess I'll just have to go for a close match.

Giselle thinks about money these days. Last night, a friend of ours, Jon, took us to us all to dinner. The rest of his family was out of town, and it seemed like he was really itching to experience the whole kids-wrassling-around-in-a-restaurant-booth thing--which he got to see plenty of.

We were getting ready to leave, and he was rearranging the cash in his wallet, and he grabbed two one-dollar bills and gave one each to Giselle and Harrison. The boy was just looking at his and flapping it around. But Giselle had this look of concentration on his face. So Jon asked her, "So Zelle, what do you think that's good for?" She didn't say anything, so he rephrased, "What do you think you could get with that?" She finally got done thinking and said, "Well, you know, if I had two dollars..." She didn't get any farther after all the cackling laughter.

I guess she had been doing a lot of thinking about how much her skimpy collection of coins was worth, after an incident last week when the ice cream man paid a visit. I had come home for lunch and Amanda and I were back in the bedroom talking about my Grandma, and about how her Dad is doing, when we hear the bling-bling bling-bling bling-bling bling of the ice cream truck making its attack run. We didn't want to fiddle with crashing through doors looking for money and then chasing the guy down, so we got really quiet. Sure enough, we heard all this commotion on the other side of the house indicating that Giselle had heard the over-amped chimes of delight barreling down the street. We kept quiet and watched the bedroom door, wondering if the jingling would fade away before she found us. But the sound kept getting louder, and so did Giselle. Except she never appeared in the door. Instead we heard all this crashing and rummaging in her bedroom, followed by the sound of her running down the hallway and the ching-ching-ching of her little box of pennies and the kablam of the front door being thrown open. We both jumped up. Amanda ran for her purse and I ran for my daughter. By the time I lofted out the front door, the ice cream man was stopped directly in front of the house and there was Giselle right at the front of the line gabbing away at the confused ice cream guy. I could see Amanda approaching with her wallet as the guy eyed the coins in his hand. I asked how much she gave him and he said "Looks like nineteen cents". To which Giselle replies "So what can I buy with that?" Amanda took over from there, but man, what a hoot.

And thus we figure it's time for an allowance. It shall be meager to start with, but should provide her with options: you know, the whole buy-something-cheap-now or save-for-something-better-later scenario. And since I personally struggle with the 'Instant Gratification Isn't Quick Enough' gene, I know my work is cut out for me.

Last week, my Grandma Anita, Dad's Mom, died. We drove down to Phoenix for her funeral this weekend. She had suffered three strokes over the past year and had gotten progressively worse.

Amanda and the kids and I drove down to see her at the hospice a week-and-a-half before. We were told she didn't have very long, and she was heavily sedated. I was succumbing to the flu, so I couldn't go up to her, hug her, hold her hand or anything. I stood on the other side of the room with a paper towel over my face and tried to come to grips with what I was feeling. She was only speaking in Spanish, and falling in and out of sleep. Grandma was always feisty and outspoken, and seeing her like that really tore me up. Amanda told me that while I was out of the room, and they were trying to understand her and communicate with her, Giselle and her cousin Atticus started naming off the Spanish words they knew. I guess they eventually ran out of colors and numbers, and so Giselle said 'espera', at which point, Grandma found a moment of lucidity, and reached out and hugged her. It fills my heart to know they were able to connect like that for one last time.

As bad off as she was, one thing hadn't changed, and that was her eyes. When she looked at me, they burned with as much intensity and heart as they always had. I felt that somewhere inside, she still recognized me.

We got there late, all the other other residents were trying to sleep, and I felt like I was too much of a liability, so we didn't stay long. Unfortunately, I didn't get better until the following weekend, by which time Amanda was sick. I kept hoping Grandma would be able to hold on just a little longer. But she couldn't. She died Tuesday, August 5th, with my Aunt Becky, Uncle Dicky and Aunt Rose, and my Dad and Stepmom by her side. I'm so glad they were there with her, it's hard to explain. I only hope that if it ever comes about that I know in advance that my time is up, my family can be there with me like that.

When I was a little kid, I guess about six or seven, and my other Grandma died, I was kept away from the room where her coffin was. I guess everybody felt I was too young to see such things. Somebody let me have a peek in the room, but that was it. I kind of felt like I got cheated out of seeing her that last time. And here I was about to do the same with our kids. I didn't think it through very much, I just figured it would just be easier if they weren't there for the viewing. Fortunately, Amanda snapped me out of it and suggested that we should just bring them. So we did. And I'm glad.

I don't think Harrison really knew what was going on, but he asked to be held up so he could see her. Giselle wrote a little note to put with her flowers, and told Amanda that she looked a lot better than she did at the hospice. I could see her crying, but she wasn't terrified or aghast. She held up a lot better than I did. It was the first opportunity I had to really appreciate that she was gone, and I was on the verge of open-mouth bawling. In the midst of that, I vaguely recall Giselle coming up to comfort me as I sat there with my head in my hands. God I love my kids.

With that I heard a loud voice from the throne say "Look! The tent of God is with mankind and he will reside with them, and they will be his peoples. And God himself will be with them. And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be any more. The former things have passed away." --Rev 21:3,4

From her point of view, I believe it's as though Grandma is already seeing that promise, and that is one of the things that helps brings me a happiness that will eventually bloom from the grief I feel right now.

When you go to put your shoes on in the morning, only to find they are packed full of Finding Nemo toys, does it:
A) Ruin the rest of your day,
B) Hurt
C) Get you laughing all the way to work

Let's see...what else...

I went in for a blood test to check and see if my cholesterol levels are high enough to fossilize insects and small vertebrates yet. The nurse-practitioner who ordered the test was a real hoot: "Isn't it fascinating that just a few years ago you had cancer, and now you're fat? You've just got this fat belly. Isn't that something?" "Yeah. It blows me away every time I try to get up and walk and realize my gut is slapping against my knees again. Now go away and work on your bedside manner. You'll need to be a bigger turkey if you ever want to be a doctor."

So in retaliation, I hit Jack in the Box today for a Monster Taco fix, and when asked if I wanted ketchup or hot sauce, I said "hot sauce". Bam. So I was at my desk, and loaded up the first taco with hot sauce. Yum. Went for the next one, grabbed a packet, which conveniently had its back turned to me, and spooged ketchup all in the taco. Oy. Here's to life's little surprises. I tried to sop it out with a napkin, but that's pretty much fruitless with JitB tacos which are mostly goop anyways. So I lived with it. No new culinary discoveries there. It wasn't like an "ooh your peanut butter is in my chocolate!" epiphany. It was mostly just gross.

C.

My mind was wandering a bit yesterday, and I got to thinking about a particular moment back in my quickprint days. One of the guys I worked with was a real basket case sometimes. He'd come in and his hands would be shaking from the DTs and he would be coming down by way of a coffee overdose. He'd been in the business for ages and had gone from prepress, to press operator to graphic artist. He really knew his stuff. All the same, he just had those days when he couldn't take any lumps in his gravy. One afternoon, I ran across a largish post-it note slapped on his computer screen. In a hasty scrawl, the note read:

No touch.
Or moving.
Fear of loss.
Your life.

I fell in love with that note. Before I went home, I came back and retrieved it from the trash can so I could stick it in my scrapbook. I don't remember what sort of Rube Goldberg Device he was working on, but I have been there. In a variety of ways. Just like this past week.

All of us, Amanda, Giselle, Harrison, and I, have been nailed by one malicious infection or another over the past couple weeks, and I got my just desserts starting last weekend. It smacked me down good. For about five days, I felt exactly like that post-it note...well except for the point where I finally begged Amanda to chop me into a couple dozen pieces and toss all the bits far enough apart so none of the nerve endings could communicate with each other. The last time I can remember feeling that bad for so long was back in the chemo days. The endless migraine style headache finally broke Wednesday and I was able to get back to work Thursday. It's still that walking under water feeling, but I can function. I got an extra bonus of pinkeye. Bleah. Harrison's got the lizard-eye too, but it looks extra scary on him for some reason.

So now I've got these eyedrops for this gaping wound I call an eye. Eyedrops and I do not play well together. I hold that teeny bottle over my eyeball--can't touch ANY part of the eye! Conjunctivitis is a weapons-grade biotoxin and will befoul the medicine if it contacts the dropper--and as smidgenly as that bottle is, it looms menacingly like the Death Star over peaceful Alderaan. And as I slowly squeeze the bottle, my eye just keeps blink-flinching because I know that huge, cold marble of juice is going to nail me when I least expect it. And then it does. Right down my cheek. Fooey. I was off by 4 or 5 millimeters, so I compensate, go through the whole flinchey thing again--and moisten my eyebrow. Okay. The gunnery sergeant has got a range now. So we interpolate, and BLAM right in the eyeball. Augh I hate that. Blink blink blink. Dab dab with the tissue. Supposed to do two drops per eye (gotta run preventive measures on the healthy one too), so I just have to do that three more times. And then do it four times a day. I don't know. Maybe I'll be comfortable with the whole ordeal after I've finished the seven-day prescription. Wouldn't want to go blind after all.

So, two weeks of travel and two weeks of the blight, and my front yard is icking with the scraggles. I'm so embarrassed. Now that I can navigate again, I want to subdue my yard, but if all four of us are untainted, I want to head down to Phoenix to see Grandma without fear of infecting her.

Here's to the mighty virus!