Monthly Archives: September 2010

Had to break.

Posted on by
2

Yeah, my happy go luck stalker* is back. HI JULIE!

At least, her actions in the past have indicated that this is probably her. There was a comment sent on my last post. I removed it. The comment was that Luna has a severe mental disorder. Um, no, she is a headstrong, manipulative kid who is learning to define the line between control and self-discpline. She is a wonderfully insightful person who can be a royal pain in the ass at times.

I had to take a break. When I got the comment, I was pissed. I went to my stat meter and found that the person came in from "covermyass.com". Yes, and this from a "grandmother" who was concerned that Luna was the same as her grandchild.

Listen, Julie. Seriously? Honey, we stopped talking in 2004. Remember? Let it go. If you can’t, then go see a shrink. I’ve been there as you constantly send little reminders about how mentally ill I am. You are too.

Let it go. I was more upset that you still bother to come here, but you can’t make me doubt myself. Your words piss me off and then I feel sorry for you. Get over it. Life is too short and my children are too unique to let you bother me with your petty shit. I am happy. I love my kids even though they can be difficult. Love is not praising every rainbow that comes out. Love is helping your children become a happy, kind person.

Go away, you’re not welcome here.

 

* if you want the password, please email me thespacemom@gmail.com

Oh my Luna Tides

Posted on by
2

Luna- Some days I just don’t understand her. She is very much like her father, but still so different.

She screams when she doesn’t get what she wants. SCREAMS. It makes Soleil feel sick to her stomach and she usually gives in to Luna when she screams. Then Soleil is worried we will yell at her. We’ve tried and tried to get both of them to understand that screaming is not the way to get what you want and giving in to screaming just encourages it.

Last night, Luna lost TV privileges. For…screaming…

What a surprise. Today, Dr. Jay went the bribe way. She will get a check on the calendar for each day she can control the tone and screaming. She can also get a check for doing something good in addition to the not screaming. If she gets 25 checks by October 25th, we will have a party. Sigh.. Let’s see if this works. Consequences don’t really matter. Getting what she wants matters.

I am just tired of this. Soleil would scream too, but she is so verbal and in touch with her feelings that we could always talk about it. Luna refuses. I can’t tell if she is understanding her emotions, but ashamed, or if she doesn’t get it.

It is so hard. Sometimes, the whole household feels trapped by her. I hate this. She’s such a great kid, except when she screams.

Random thoughts about the universe

Posted on by

Our newspaper includes the Parade magazine. I saw this week had Tony Blair writing about "Why Faith Matters". I disagreed with almost all of his arguments.

It made me think why? Why does faith not matter to me? I think it is simple to me. Chaos. I understand chaos and entropy. I understand that the natural state of the universe is to move from ordered to unordered. From clean to messy, from organized to haphazard. What does this have to do with faith?

Well, let’s take a simple example: let’s say I have a family member who is sick. okay, what if this person is really sick? I mean, maybe fatal sick? Many people will turn to religion for comfort. While I may be very very angry at the universe and life in general, the best I can do is help the family member by fighting chaos. I would try to find out what treatments are available. Talk with the doctors, learn pain management and possible end of life care. Having faith in a deity to do the right thing (whatever it might be) isn’t going to change the outcome (not in my mind), so the best I can do is fight the chaos with organization. Does this mean people who have faith are doing it wrong? Hell, no! But this is why I don’t feel faith matters. I could pray, but I don’t think that a fair deity would jump up and say "Good Golly! I should have helped that person! Let me reach down there and fix the situation."  If you are faithful, it probably does help you to have a person(?) to talk to and ask for help and strength.

But I am not faithful. I have to find the strength within. Sometimes I can’t. Sometimes I can.

This weekend is Yom Kippur: the holiest High Holiday in Judiasm (although I agree with Soleil that Shabbot is the holiest of days in Judiasm). The day where you atone for the misbehaviors of the past year and pledge to do better. The day G-d writes down in the book of life who shall live and who shall die in the next year. I am going to Temple on Saturday with my family. Not to pray or fast. To handle childcare. Because it just doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t believe that a G-d decided one day "Okay Jose* and Gene*, Today you are going to DIE!" and somehow created the series of events that caused my best friend to become a widow because Jose never saw the train as he turned a corner and crossed the tracks. At the time, I was angry with G-d, but now I realize that there is nobody to be angry with. It happened. Nobody could have stopped it. Nothing controlled the series of events.

I have trouble believing that any deity that has the power to create life is willing to make such a fragile life. DNA mishaps, hidden diseases, stillborn children, these are not the work of a deity. This is the work of nature and physics. Chaos reigns in the creation of life. How many women have miscarriages and never realize that the egg fertilized, but the implant was rejected? Or the egg implanted and stopped growing, and stopped producing the progesterone that would prevent their period? I just haven’t got the ability to accept that a deity would do this.

What deity would create broken bodies and minds? Why create challenges when simply trying to get through life is difficult enough? Why would any woman be born with the inability to have children if the deity requires people to reproduce? Why would any deity create depression, manic-depressive episodes, migraines, schizophrenia? Why allow for the possibility of cancer, cystic fibrosis, or spinobifidea?

I just can’t accept these major flaws in humans. Perhaps I think too much. Perhaps I truly am a lost soul. Perhaps I am not willing to accept that any deity would kick out a soul that failed to truly worship Him in that sense. I don’t really believe in heaven or hell. It’s just too draconian for me.

I do believe in the cosmic soup. I do believe that amino acids from comets may be one of the reasons we are alive today.

I believe the age of clusters, of galaxies and I believe in the Cosmic Ray Background.

I believe the age of the universe is 15 billion years. I reject the biblical age of 6000 years.

I refuse to accept AD any more. I can only see CE and BCE. I cannot divide historical times based on a singular religion.

My faith in science and evidence is stronger than my faith in any religion.

I do believe that we ignore the insects on our planet, those small lives that we squish without thought because they are ugly and annoying, yet have been around for millions of years. We are but a blip in our universe. How can I reject the evidence before me to have faith in a deity?

 

*Not the real names. They died in 2000, just before Gene’s 30th birthday. His son was 2 and a half and his daughter was 7 months old.

The result of 14 years…

Posted on by
Reply

This week, I have my annual performance review. Because I work for the government For some idiotic reason, several years ago, someone came up with the brilliant asinine idea of having everyone do their performance reviews before October 1 to be in sync with the fiscal year. So instead of a nice staggered pace, our overworked admins get slammed in September while everyone is struggling to get their reviews in.

I am at a loss here. The last few months (about 18) have been not as much fun. I have been working here for 14 years as of June (shut UP. One old person joke and I will find you!) and I am really not thrilled. So why is this?

I have been pondering this question for the past few days and I have found some answers:

  • My direct supervisor and I have some serious communication issues
  • We also have some major disagreements over how time is managed. If I am overwhelmed, I sometimes surf. He feels I should just do another problem. The thing is, I often run parallel processes in my mind. When surfing, I am often reviewing a problem. Like now, I am thinking about the issue that we have three different mail processes running on a machine. I don’t know how to check if they are all using the same SMTP server. I need to figure out how to find this.  See! I can do two things at once. It’s how I work.
  • My supervisor is doing a lot of micromanagement.
  • I am sensing a trend here
  • I am starting to feel like I do want to be home more now. It is amazing that when I had babies, I wanted to be back at work. Now I want to explore more of me and to be with the girls more for them. I am working Mondays and Fridays with them in the afternoons, so that has to help somehow!
  • I hit 40 in April. Perhaps this is something that is playing into all of this.
  • I am tired of being on call every 3-4 weeks. When I started, it was once every 6 weeks. It is wearing.

Anyway, I am pondering what to do. Obviously I will continue with my position until June. Then I hit 15 years and I get 8 hours of vacation for each 80 hours worked! Woot! (yes we have bumps at 3 years and 15, that’s it)

We will see…I just don’t know where I am heading.

T-tapp, late update and life

Posted on by
Reply

I have not entered the numbers for the last two weeks of T-Tapp. I will try tonight, but I have a meeting from 7:30-9. Maybe I can photocopy my page and bring it in to work to do this. The upshot is that I have been losing inches. My waist is down 1.5 inches, which feels really small. I haven’t lost a clothing size, but then again, I just discovered that I was doing one part of all of the exercises wrong. I was not engaging all of the thigh muscles and when I made the change, WOW did I feel it! I have decided to continue for 4 more weeks. A friend has decided it is not for her and she is sending me her "total Workout". This is the 45 minute version. I would love to be able to do that version once a week. I am feeling slightly more energetic, except for yesterday when I crashed in the afternoon.

As for life? Well, this is a tough week. Rosh Hashana falls this week and I always offer to do the childcare. This way, the Jews who WANT to go to the services can. A little way I can help. Of course, we are pulling the kids from school on Thursday. That is fun. First week and there goes the perfect attendance! Then again, neither Dr. Jay nor I really care about perfect attendance.

Luna has been, well, damn annoying as of late. She is screaming and crying whenever she doesn’t get her way. I posted this on my facebook yesterday and got mostly the normal stuff. We’ve tried all of the normal stuff. She is stubborn and difficult. And we don’t give in. This causes her screaming because she knows she can get her way with almost any other adult on the planet….except us. Sigh… We are working on it. Personally, I am hoping that it is mostly the nerves of first grade… FIRST GRADE! My baby is in First Grade! Woot! 5 days a week kiddo!

Okay- there are many problems to solve, so I better get to it!

Bullets…because life moves at the speed of…

Posted on by
1
  • I just finished an 8 day stint without Dr. Jay. Single parenting is hard.Very very hard.
  • I am so annoyed with Glenn Beck and his "followers"…have a whole post on religion in my head
  • On call 2 out of the next 3 weeks, then Dr. Jay leaves town for 9 days! Woot! (not)
  • I am officially changing my work schedule to ha;f days Monday/Friday and full days t-Th. Of course, temple school is on wednesday for Soleil.
  • My blood work came back from the bee allergies. I am highly allergic to honey bees, allergic to others and the one we think stung me showed nothing. So, we are in a position that I have to have a skin test. 2 hours of constantly increasing levels of venom. yea!!!!
  • Soleil enters our upper Elementary school this year. Another milestone.
  • I wish I had more time to write. Too much going on
  • Recently read a book which featured infertility. Hurt. Damn it, should I be over that with an eight and six year old?