Mortality Check

Last night, my DH and I were in bed talking, and he said, "I've been having chest pains." After a brief discussion I determined that it had started 30 minutes before, and had been quite painful but was now only mildly so. It was not hard to persuade him to go to the ER.

They triaged him within about 5 minutes, got him in a bed in the ER 15 minutes later, and let us know very quickly that he would almost surely be admitted. Within another hour or so we were told that he had probably not had a heart attack, but because of the many risk factors present, (age, weight, family history) that he had to stay.

He is still in the hospital. He will have a stress test in the morning, and if all is well he will be released shortly after. If not...well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. He feels fine, except for a headache induced by the nitroglycerine patch.

It has been a very difficult 24 hours and I'm really tired. He is under orders not even to think about dying.

I love that man so much. I have no idea how I would get along without him.

Another change in plans

To quote the great philosopher, Cher, when she filed for divorce 9 days after marrying Gregg Allman:

I think it's best to admit to your mistakes as quickly as possible."

I won't be doing database consulting from home. I lack the self-discipline and the temperament. I need a company with a name, a phone line, and a list of tasks to be accomplished. And at the end of the week (or month) I want a paycheck, with taxes withheld, and health insurance would be really nice, too.

Perhaps I will continue reading all about Java, but I think it's unlikely. I've started the process of looking for temporary work, and hope to do some data entry in the evenings to keep money coming in. My unemployment runs out next week. I'm hoping for a benefits extension, but I doubt it will come in time. Perhaps I lack faith.

I was very nervous about telling the managing partner, but it was all good. I was rather depressed about this yesterday, but today, I am much better. I have faced my demons! Say it loud, I'm a flibbertygibbet and I'm proud!

I have trouble concentrating on one (look! a bird!) thing at a time.

I checked the Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane romance trilogy (on VHS) out of the library last Monday. I watched Volume 1 (Strong Poison) earlier in the week. Today I watched all 350 minutes of the other two episodes. I'm exhausted. My head hurts. But boy, did I enjoy them.

I first saw the series on PBS in the early 90's (I think) and by the time it got to the end of the end of the third episode, I was being rude to people who were calling me on the phone because I was finally going to see him propose and hear her say "Yes" instead of "No." I supposed I should have just ignored the phone.

Have you any dreams you'd like to tell?

I'm not a big fan of "dream interpretation," because I think the dreams we have must be interpreted according to our own personalities, life experiences, and fears. But I do think dreams tell us things about what is going on in our subconscious. Remember the scene from the film Annie Hall , where she had just gone to a shrink for the first time? She's telling Alvie about the dream she related to the therapist: "I was being suffocated by Frank Sinatra." "What did he say about that?" "He said that your last name is Singer."

I usually remember the dreams I have early in the morning, but I don't remember them later in the day unless I tell somebody about them or do something else to cement the memory of the dream. I had two strange dreams last night that made an impression on me, and I told my husband about them first thing because I wanted to remember them.

In the first dream, DH and I stole a bunch of lumber and fabric to make a canopy for our bed. It was a lovely canopy, but I was overcome by guilt and went and confessed to the person I needed to tell, and then paid them for the materials. I did this RIGHT BEFORE he was going to call the police and set them upon us. We had to pay for the canopy, but we didn't go to jail.

In the second dream, DH had an additional wife. We are Mormon, so the second wife thing probably has some relationship to this (insert disclaimer here about plural marriage, blah, blah, blah we haven't done this since 1904, blah, blah, blah.) In my dream, I knew her, but I don't REALLY know her. They were preparing to go spend the day at the temple. In my dream, I wondered about the nature of their relationship. Did he enjoy sex with her? Did he love her as deeply as he loved me? Did he treat her the same way? In my dream, he was very remote and uncomfortable when present with both of us, which probably is what caused me to wonder (in my dream) what were the qualities of his relationship with her.

I have some ideas about what these dreams may mean to me, which I will keep to myself, because I could be completely wrong. If any of you want to comment, tell me how you see your dreams. Do you get insights? Do they ever frighten you? No need to share the dreams unless you REALLY want to.

Serendipity

When I posted on Folk of the Fringe that I needed to learn Java, one of the posters there directed me to a free online book that is supposed to be excellent: Thinking in Java. She also linked what she has been told is an excellent tutorial. I really needed this information. There is so much out there, on the web, and it's so hard to sift through what's helpful and what's not. I need solid information before I write a program that will run "Hello, World!" (again). Explain to me: objects, classes, inheritance, syntax, etc. This books seems to do that, integrated with doing stuff. And it was free!

When I thanked Trillian for the info, she replied, "Right back at you, sistah! The universe answered your need, I was just the vehicle. Just like Judy helped me out when I needed a vacation."

Also on Folk of the Fringe was a strange thread about pig anatomy, that started with a picture of a jar of pickled pig's lips. Somewhere in there was a post to a recipe for pulled pork that sounded like way too much work. So tonight, we're having Mama's Favorite Barbecue Pork Loin. It looked simple to make, and it was. And any recipe that has the word "Mama" in it is something I feel the need to try. I've done some QC and it's quite tasty. I had thought it would need more sauce (and maybe it does), but my sandwich, with the pork, a thin slice of sharp cheddar cheese, and some sweet relish on a kaiser roll, was very good. I had another half with just the cheese (and pork, etc.) and it was also very good.

In other web adventures, I did a search for kids spring crafts and found a frog life cycle craft and a frog paper bag puppet. Little boy and I made both of them today. DH, the lizard wizard, was pleased about the life cycle. Making these projects with little boy only took an hour or so out of my day, and it eliminated so many problems: my guilt for ignoring him, his frustration at having nothing to do, etc. That little investment bought me hours of focussed time to work and peace of mind about same.

A woman from my church has a little boy the same age who doesn't have kids to play with, either. She had suggested play dates, and I think I will try to set those up twice a week. Once here, and once there. That will also be good for the little boy. He gets lots of socialization and free play at school, but staying home with mom can be kind of isolating, even just twice a week.

Boilin' season's on

I will be spending most of my time the next two days looking at the Java Development Environment. Yikes. Nothing like jumping in to a new task with both feet. I just hope the water's not too deep.

My internet connection was out most of the day yesterday and all morning today, and now it's mysteriously all better for no apparent reason. I am not going to call off the repair people. I think the crawfish eat through the cable buried in my backyard. No kidding.

Speaking of crawfish, every year my church holds a crawfish boil for the congregation. Fun stuff for the kids to do, and more crawfish than you can possibly imagine, and it's free. Last year, I left without a doggy bag. Once you learn how to peel the fish, it's possible to get to the meat really efficiently, so I will try to grab enough extras to take home and freeze some tails. Later in the week, then, we will have crawfish fettucine for dinner (though I will use nowhere near two teaspoons of cayenne pepper in the sauce).

When I went for a swamp tour a few years ago, a woman was cleaning whole boiled crabs for gumbo. She was working on a monster of a crustacean, and I was very interested in figuring out the process. Perhaps I should look for step-by-step video instructions on the web, as all the local signs for "fat crabs" are starting to get my attention, too.

And to finish up my meanderings on creatures with exoskeletons, here's a website all about crayfish (crawfish).

"You can call me Mr. Greenspan"

My older son was in a district-wide academic competition today. He was his school's competitor in "Free Enterprise," aka basic economics. He took first place. Yes, I'm a proud momma. My boy, the capitalist!

The headline is what he told his little brother when he found out he had won.

State competition is next month.

Taking an "un-" out of my self definition

There are ways of describing myself that are most accurate in the negative. I'm what my friend Peggy Tatyana calls a Failthful Unbeliever. My political beliefs are unAmerican, if you listen to Ann Coulter. But apparently, I am no longer unemployed.

This may seem odd, but I find this a bit frightening. For a long time, I've had nothing going on but looking for work, home stuff, and school. School was going well, home stuff is...eh, what can you say about housework. I failed and failed and failed at looking for work. I only had one or two interviews that went at all well, and in both cases someone else was hired - for one of those, I didn't even get a second interview. But now, something has happened, out of the blue, just on a whim, because of networking. It's not a job, per se, but a consulting gig. I'm going to give it a go and see how I do. I like to think I am very motivated to succeed at this, because we need the money and the situation is just ideal - work from home, learning new things, in an area I'm very good at.

In any case, today feels much like yesterday, except now when people say "what do you do?" I'll say "I'm a database consultant" instead of "I'm unemployed." And that's frightening. Because I have to produce.

Remember my post on meta? Well, yesterday, in my phone conversation with the managing partner (an old friend) he mentioned metadata. I so wanted to tell him about my meta hat.

Domestic Doings

I finally got my little boy's curtains done...and they're crooked. So, I'll need to take them down and fix one of them. But otherwise, they are just dandy. The first thing I learned in sewing class in the 7th grade was, "As ye sew, so shall you rip." Looks like that applies today.

Last night we had chicken fajitas for dinner. I used a new recipe, and they were SOOOOO good. If you try them, you may want to adjust the amount of cayenne pepper. I used a scant teaspoon, and man, were they spicy.

My son-in-law was not accepted to LSU Law School. My daughter, my SIL, grandson, and new grandchild-to-be will be moving to Ada, Ohio, where he will attend Ohio Northern for practically free. With so many kids and no savings, practically free is good. But now, I'll have no reason to visit them in Sarasota, and they won't be closer, but farther away.

The domestic life is actually quite seductive. I came down with some sort of cold or sinus thing yesterday mid-afternoon, so it was nice to be in bed until 8:00 a.m. today. It's not much fun just keeping the house clean, but I have some ideas for sprucing up the little boys room, and other "nesting" sorts of things. It makes it hard to stay motivated to look for work.

Blogging as Therapy, Dialog, or Disclosure?

I don't know much about the blogging community, but it seems that the members thereof claim a difference between blogging and online journaling. I started keeping this blog as a place to just do some writing, and maybe have some friends comment on it. I am careful about what I disclose, because I am aware that people out there are reading. My husband is a private person; you probably can't figure out who he is from my Blog. I keep my childrens' names out of the blog because they are individuals who have a right to some privacy. I try not to swear in my blog because I don't want to offend people who are offended by swearing.

Other people are far more open about their lives in their blogs. A prostitute keeps a blog, and she describes her tricks in them. A fellow who posts very rarely on The Folk of the Fringe also has a very open blog; at least, so I surmise from some of his posts. If his blog is the one I think it is, one must have a password to read it. At the other end of the disclosure spectrum, after reading Dave's blog for over a month, all I know about him is that he lives in the SF Bay area, and that he is or was LDS. Dave writes about ideas and subjects of interest to him, rather than about himself. (edited to add: He has an "about me" link that is pretty comprehensive. I know much more about Dave now than I did 15 minutes ago.)

Dave has a link to my blog on his blog, which is how a blog's audience grows, I hope. It was such a rush to be linked! It made me yearn for a bigger audience, and the book deals earned by the writers of pound, belle du jour (the prostitute named above), and even Wil Wheaton. Yet when I click on By Common Consent aka Rameupton aka Adam-God Theory, and see 25 comments on a single post, I think maybe I don't want THAT much of a bigger audience.

I've added a counter to my template, that shows who the last 100 visitors are to my site (but only to me). This way, I know how many times Randy accesses my page from work, and from home. Ditto Brenda. Not so sure about Miranda. And I think I know when Dave has accessed, but I can't be sure about him, either. It would also be fun (though probably not doable easily using Blogger) to add radio buttons that allow users to select specific comments, which are then mailed to me. I would have choices like:

Intense clarity

Inspired use of the "F" word

superb grammar and spelling

deep, man, really deep

wuh?

My blogger friend Brenda was having a rough morning. One of her concerns is that people don't comment on her blog. I enjoy comments, too. But it made me wonder why we are doing this. I read on Dave's site: Because we can. But what do we want back? Comments, please.

Augh! Or, parenting a late-teenage boy

Older Son (17, a high school senior) got out at noon today because it's the last day of mid-term exams. Teachers have the afternoon free to submit grades. I had arranged to pick him up at school; he could not have the car today because I had an exam in the city. I got there about 12:07 or so, just within seconds of when classes dismissed. We had arranged to meet by the science building. I waited for 20 minutes. No Older Son. I walked over to the broadcasting room, on the off chance he had stayed after to work. No Older Son. I walked back to the car. No Older Son. By this time, I had been waiting a half hour. I went home.

No messages. I waited at home for about two and a half hours. (Surfing the web, and doing kitchen stuff, but I did not leave the house.) No calls. I went to the bank and stopped by the school. Not there. I saw the broadcasting teacher who gave me pointers to some phone numbers. I went to the grocery store. I came home. Not there. No phone calls.

After consulting with DH, I called the friends. They had not seen him since school let out. OK, now I was scared. Before I had been irked, and vaguely worried, but now the only people I thought he would be with did not know where he was. I called DH again. We agreed that the police would not have been willing to do anything so soon. I cried. DH said he would go fetch Small Son and come home.

Two minutes later, Older Son came home. He had been hanging out at a friend's house just around the corner. I was so relieved. I cried. He apologized. Profusely. I was so relieved. I know, I'm repeating myself, but I was so relieved. After assessing the situation, I explained to him my POV. He should have called. I was annoyed when I thought he was just hanging with his friends, and scared when I thought he wasn't (because I called them) and relieved when he came home safe. He said, "and now you're upset because you've calmed down." I said, "No, but if you do that again you lose the car for two weeks."

Unlike Miranda, I am pleased to mix my good news and bad news. DH got another one-year (nine-month) appointment at the University where he works. And Older Son was accepted at Louisiana State. He seemed pleased about that, which is good news...he had been unhappy about going there, until he saw the place. Now he seems not only resigned to attending there, but happily anticipating it.

We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo

Another perfect day in Southeast Louisiana. Sunny skies, cool breezes, high 60's. Today, because I'm unemployed, I helped chaperone the little people at Younger Son's "school" on a field trip to the Audobon Zoo.

We left the school at 9:30 a.m. and rode on a school bus down Broadway in New Orleans. Even that was a joy - lovely older houses, beautifully kept, with a grassy median, adjoining the campuses of Tulane and Loyola of New Orleans. We arrived at the zoo quickly and efficiently, which is good when traveling with 30 three and four year-olds children The zoo is a gem. Beautiful landscaping, interesting animals, and plenty of places for the kids to just play when they are tired of looking at things. They really liked Monkey Hill, which is just a thing to climb...but it has a net bridge and a net slide at the end. I didn't know that. Ahem. I hope nobody photographed me.

My favorite animals were the pair of juvenile Amur leopards, just 10 months old. A zoo employee was in the gap between the people fence and the animal fence, and they were very lively. Talk about fangs! They stalked this guy, batting at the cage and roaring at him. Most of the zoo animals I've observed are pretty lethargic, and when they actually do anything it's entertaining. These cats weren't just doing something, though...they were asserting themselves. "We are Fierce Creatures, and you are close to our space, though on the other side of the fence. Mistake us not: were it not for these very strong wire bars, you would be Dinner!"

After the zoo, we went down to Riverview Drive, which is a park-like setting on the Mississippi River levee. There were lots of people tanning there. The natives thought it was too cold, but as a Yankee, I understood the impulse. After lunch, the kids played on a playground for a bit, then we went back to school.

Not a MetaBlog

I'm very interested in the concept of "meta." I first got a grip on the meaning of the term when my son was reading Vonnegut, "Slaughterhouse Five." He told me that it was "meta fiction," or fiction about fiction. This was the "light bulb" for me that explained to me (finally) the meaning of the term metadata. In an old program, MS FoxPro, you can copy the structure of a data table using the "extended" keyword, and it will create a table containing the names of the fields and the specifics about them for the table you copied - data about data.

I have since run across a number of other uses of the prefix meta. My personal favorite was a baseball cap I got from a co-worker who was getting rid of stuff. Shell bought a lot of customized "perks" for the crew when they would start a new well project. This hat had prices on it based on quantity and number of lines and colors of custom print. It was a meta hat - a hat about hats.

Another really cool meta object is Rob Walker's Meta Poll. This is a link, so check it out.

I read someone's description of the Nauvoo temple that made me think that Nauvoo could be construed as a meta temple. Probably not.

If you know of any other good metas, let me know. Meta law? A meta blog? A meta journal?

A Pink Surprise

We bought our house in July of 2002. It's a decent house, nothing fancy, middle-class neighborhood. We had some shrubs out front that stayed leafy all winter, which was nice. Then, at the very beginning of March, my shrubs started showing some flowers. Lovely pinky-coral flowers. Within a couple of weeks, the shrubs were COVERED with beautiful pinky coral flowers. By the end of the month, the flowers were gone.

At the same time, I noticed flowers on shrubs like mine all over my little city. In all kinds of colors! White and pink and red and pinkish-red and purple. Everywhere! The whole town burst into color for the month of March. By the end of the month, it was all gone.

What WERE these things? I did some research, and found them on the web. Azaleas. Evergreen azaleas. A botanist friend described them as a "once-a-year glory." This year, when they are done blooming, I will trim back the evergreen stems so as to have more and more concentrated blooms next year.

We did not know that our shrubs would burst into colors for the month of March when we bought the house. It was a beautiful and delightful surprise.

Our household size has been reducing gradually over the last 24 hours. This time yesterday, there were seven of us. By 4:30 p.m., we were down to four people again, as my daughter, son-in-law, and grandson had gone back to sunny South Florida. Older son left for school at 7:45 a.m. today (3). Then DH and younger son left for the day. It's just me, now. So quiet! I like it a lot.

Today I'm going to make a follow-up phone call about a job, and I'm going to work on my demonstration web pages. I'm downloaded a free trial for MacroMedia Flash MX 2004 Professional, so I'm going to read some of the tutorials and then work on a flash opening page for my web site. But not today. Today, just databases, because that's what people will want done, and that's what I know how to do.

Maybe I'll do the dishes and cook dinner, too.

I've had a couple of wonderful days in a row, now. My daughter and her family have been visiting since Thursday. Friday my daughter, SIL and Older Son went to Baton Rouge to visit LSU. My Older Son is probably going to go there, 'cause it's free, and my SIL has applied to law school there and wanted to check it out. They were gone most of the day, and they came home impressed. What a relief! Older Son has been stressed about having to go to school there, but c'mon, dude...it's FREE. And it's a good school! Far enough from home that we won't be popping in on each other, but close enough that he can come visit easily on holidays.

I spent the day with my Younger Son and my grandson. They played happily together all day. Grandson is almost two years old, so I had to change diapers again. Oh, lordy I don't miss that at all.

Today, all my children, my son-in-law, grandson and I went in to New Orleans for the day. SIL has also applied to law school at Loyola, and wanted to see the place. We parked in the French Quarter and had lunch there. We walked up Bourbon Street, across Canal to St. Charles Ave. and caught the streetcar going uptown. We got off at Loyola. The little boys played at Audobon Park across the street, while the student age folks went to see what they could of the school. Son in law was awestruck.

When people think of New Orleans, they usually think of the French Quarter and drunken debauchery. Oh, and crime and racism. There is another side to New Orleans, though, and that's Uptown. Beautiful old Victorian Mansions, ancient oaks, attractive young people jogging on the streetcar tracks (easy on the knees, because it's a flat dirt path), and the streetcar itself, a real-live electric trolley, that goes from the Quarter all the way upriver. It's beautiful. It certainly didn't hurt that the weather was superb today (low-mid 70's, blue skies, puffy clouds, and lots of sunshine).

Louis Armstrong did a song, "Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans," and on days like today, I never want to live anywhere else. Even though I don't live there.

I'm going to be setting up a web site for demo'ing my ASP programming skills. This will be yet another twist in my continuing (futile? pointless?) search for a job. I'm a bit concerned, because ASP.NET is way newer than ASP, but my hosting company doesn't support .NET, and I've never programmed in .NET. I think I will just write the ASP stuff, and then when they add .NET (they are looking into it) I can show that, as well.

I think I will write an automation application, and a shopping application. I will not actually do e-commerce, because so much of that has already been done, that you can just buy or steal the code. But I want to show that I know what I'm doing. I will not be able to actually do any work on it until next week, but better late than never.

I actually should have done something like this several months ago. But I am not going to berate myself for not thinking of it sooner. I'm just going to live in the now - I thought of doing it now, and just because I should have thought of it three months ago doesn't mean I should abandon the idea. It can still help me.