Monthly Archives: June 2010

The weather is here, I wish you were beautiful

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Life lessons from Jimmy Buffett as remembered Saturday when I was at his concert:

  • A Margarita a day is never a bad thing
  • If we weren’t all crazy, we would go insane.
  • The worst occupational hazard is when you’re occupation’s just not around.
  • I’m glad I don’t live in a trailer.
  • I need to go to my favorite places more often
  • landsharks are far more dangerous than the aquatic ones
  • Why yes, I AM a pirate
  • It’s a great song that combines mythology, storytelling and astronomy with the words "Jolly Mon"
  • Some of it’s magic, some of it’s tragic, but life’s pretty good
  • Come Monday, it will be alright
  • I know, it’s my own damn fault
  • Lava is a difficult word to use in a pun.
  • Going vegetarian causes one to dream about cheeseburgers.
  • We live on a big, round ball
  • There’s a thin line between Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
  • One should not ponder questions too long when one is hungry.
  • Changing your latitude may do you a world of good.
  • One should not argue or try to reason with the weather.
  • Maybe getting your college degree was good, or maybe just being a singer in a band and soaking up rays in the Islands is the way to live

 

Points to anyone who can name all of the songs.

The first break up

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I didn’t date until I was in college. I was the nerdy kid (what a surprise), who had a few close friends, but knew everybody. Nobody in high school would ever date me. College was different. I remember my first breakup. He decided I was too depressive and needed some professional help. He was right, but it hurt like hell at the time and I ended up going to the physics department and reviewing quantum mechanics to easy the pain.

Last night, I was doing a fractions game with Soleil. Out of nowhere, she started screaming that it was too hard. huh? What? Fractions? No honey, they are great fun! I love fractions!

No, it turns out it wasn’t fractions. She’s had a rough year in 2nd grade. We put her in a class with someone else that is similar to her. The two girls have clashed all year as her friend is not developing emotionally as quickly as Soleil and suddenly Soleil is getting in trouble. She cried that she had no friends. She knows she hasn’t really been invited to birthday parties, she knows how she is on the fringes of classmates. Everyone likes her, but…her closer friends aren’t in her class.

Then the trigger for this event came out. Her friend, Fred (not his real name), told her that they can’t be friends anymore. Apparently his friends are teasing that he loves Soleil (they are good friends) and have told him that he can’t be with her and be friends with them. Clearly, Soleil was hurt and confused. I just let her scream and scream and cry. It was very adult in her expression. She couldn’t hold it together anymore. She wanted a close friend. She wanted life to be more fair. She hates how her "friend" in class tattles and gets Soleil in trouble.

It was a long, hard hour. I was flooded with my memories of childhood friendships and how people I liked suddenly turned on me and were mean. I was sad, but just decided that she needed to get all of this out. This morning, she was better, but I am still recovering.

The new world…

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Things are getting almost back to order in Casa de Space. Dr. Jay has stopped fevering, although he did go to his GI doctor’s office to get a liter of saline pumped in directly. He normally gets 1/2 liter with his medicine (it’s an IV infusion) and he said he normally has to pee like a racehorse after his infusion. Yesterday, he went several hours without, so he had been pretty dehydrated. Since his Crohn’s medication suppresses his immune system, fevers can be very dangerous to him. Basically, his body has less of a chance to fight off any viral infection. When he has a bacterial infection, he needs to take antibiotics, something he hates to do. A viral is completely different.

We were in constant contact with his GI doctor. He is one of the leading researchers in Crohn’s disease and he is very careful about the side effects of the medications. He had a list of items that we were to call him immediately for, including rash. Fortunately, Dr. Jay never got any worse than 100.7 and we think he is on the mend. He did lose 6 lbs.! Man, if only it were as easy as getting sick for a week! ;)

Bad segue:

I am very proud of myself lately. This is one of those "personal advancement" moments, actually, 2 of them. The first was a few weeks ago. My Girl Scout co-leader and I were planning our parent meeting. We came upon the issue of car seats. I admit, I don’t find car seats and boosters useful after a certain point. I find it a case of too much law, not enough statistics. Most of the studies are done on kids in car seats versus kids not in car seats. That latter category includes kids without seat belts too. Also, a seat belt works properly when it falls properly. In my car, it falls on both kids properly in the back, but I still have them both in car seats. I do let my kids ride in the front, with the car seat, because our airbags turn off and the seat belt falls over their hip bones and on the shoulder properly. I base my decision on physics.

The Massachusetts Law is pretty simple. In a booster until 8 years old OR 57 inches tall. Soleil and one other girl are the young ones in our troop. They turn 8 over the summer. I was planning to ask who wants their child still in a booster. My co-leader wanted to ask who doesn’t need to be in a booster.

 After going back and forth on it, she did point out that she didn’t understand why I was so passionate about this. That made me stop. The truth is, I am passionate about it because I worry about keeping our kids too protected. I worry about the world saying a 19 year old drinking is a kid and a 17 year old who commits a violent crime is an adult. We place our kids in tiny boxes and then expect them to be able to handle the world.

BUT, that’s my grief. I don’t need to place that on other people.  My co-leader is protective of her kids, and she has good reasons. Her daughter survived a very nasty accident involving a tree branch hitting her head. You never want to hear the words "neurosurgeon" and "child" together. She and the other parents in the troop have every right to choose how they want their kids to use the safety seats. Even if her daughter never had that accident, she still has every right to keep her kids in car seats past the legal age. I agreed with her to place it in the situation that we will place a child in a booster unless the parent says otherwise.

I am very proud of myself for stopping and saying "It’s my issue. If I feel other parents are over protective, that is not for me to change. I can do the things I feel are right for my kids and they can do the things that are right for their kids." It sounds simple, but when you think of how we all criticize other parents, I am pretty proud of myself for letting this go.

 The second thing happened yesterday. Over the weekend, we had a spacecraft emergency. The spacecraft put itself in a safe position (at 11 at night because it never does this in the middle of a work day). While reviewing the telemetry from the spacecraft, it turns out that we happened to start communicating with the spacecraft AS it was going through its safing actions. I was confused on one item and emailed my team. When I got the answer back, I felt like an ass for asking. I got an email yesterday from my supervisor that I have trouble communicating with. He wanted me to review the safing actions.

I was furious. Okay, I made a mistake. So what? I then took a deep breath. I reread the email. This time? I was calm. We haven’t had a safing action in almost 2 years. I had forgotten something. It’s good to go back over the information. It’s not that he was chiding me, I was doing that to myself and channeling my anger at myself as coming from him. I was able to stop, recognize this and move on.

Yea me!

So that’s the update from the Spacefamily. We got haircuts for the girls this weekend, donations actually. I hope to have 5 minutes to download the photos later. They look so cool with short hair. Soleil donated 10-12 inches and Luna about 6 (We donate to Wigs for Kids). I am not sure they can use Luna’s but, dang, she needed to lose some hair!