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Damn it! September 16, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Current Affairs, Depression, I dream of sleep , add a comment

I just had a huge post written and then there was a great sucking noise as the computer decided to suck it out of existance.

Frick.

I am not in the mood to retype it all so I’ll leave things here:

Pop Quiz…part 2 September 9, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Current Affairs , 1 comment so far

SO when your children out grown sitting in the Cozy Coupe and you try to explain to them about balance and hanging off the side of the cozy coupe as it rolls down the driveway is a BAD idea, do you still get to say "I told you so" when the CC tips over and throws them onto the retaining wall? There was only a little blood and no broken bones….

 

Pop Quiz! September 7, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Current Affairs , add a comment

When your child decides to ride her scooter (3 wheel at that!) down a retaining wall, do you

a) Have a heart attack because she is 5 feet from falling onto the driveway?

b) scream "NO!" in slowmotion?

c) calming go out and explain why that is not a wise idea?

d) all of the above

 

Or How about this scenario?

You daughter hits the edge of the bike path and falls down. Her bike is pinning her to the ground. You noticed a large group of race bikers are coming Do you:

a) Throw your bike to the side

b) Heave her bike off her and listen to everyone asking if she is okay while you still can’t tell

c) Be calm and notice the patch of poising ivy on the side of the trail. Then gently place the bikes down away from the ivy.

d) A&B and want to tell the people asking questions "WHAT THE FUCK? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW?"

(the answers in both cases are d, one child was hurt in the making of this post and she only has a badly cut knee and a crushed ankle. She rode home and was okay after some icing and elevation. G-d, I hope I don’t react to the poison ivy I tossed my bike in)

Hmmm, bad choice September 6, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Current Affairs , add a comment

Perhaps picking out "Thunder Storm" music to play my solitaire to when there’s a fricken Tropical Storm outside (yes, earlier today we had rain at a rate of 3 inches for hour! Lucky us, it only did that for 10 minutes!). I keep having to turn off the music to see if it is raining for real (answer, Yes, idiot…(me, not you readers))

A political issue September 3, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Current Affairs , 4 comments

Both the democrats and republicans are trying to say that we need to keep Gov. Palin’s daughter out of the media.

I disagree. We need to address teen pregnancy. This is REAL. Teens have sex and the girls get pregnant.

Real life. Not just to "sluts" and "whores", but to "good" girls and kids who have parents that love them.

The young Ms. Palin had a choice of what to do when she found out. A CHOICE. A LEGAL CHOICE. I keep reading how Gov Palin is "walking the talk." Bullshit. Her DAUGHTER is doing that. Not the governor. Ms. Palin found out she was pregnant and made the decision to raise the child and marry the father. 

The question I have for all of the anti-choice people who hide out under the words "pro-life" and "pro-family" is: Wouldn’t you want your child to make this choice too? To have the ability to do what you feel is the right thing? Ms. Palin HAD A CHOICE. Let’s keep it that way.

You want to keep this a "private family matter"? Not when Gov. Palin wants to take these private choices away from girls and women across the country.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either teen pregnancy is a private personal choice OR it’s a public policy matter. Teens will get pregnant. We can’t stop that. We are biological creatures and we are programmed for sexual intercourse. How to deal with the outfall of teen sex, weather it is disease or pregnancy? That’s the issue. We CAN treat women and girls with respect. We CAN allow them to make the choices that are right for them.

————-

For the silly disclaimers:

1) I like life. pro-choice is not anti-life.

2) I think reproductive choices from having children, to having a vasectomy is a private thing that doesn’t need to be part of a policy.

3) If you believe abortion is murder, don’t choose to have an abortion.

Good morning, Internets! August 27, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Current Affairs, Depression , add a comment

After an hour and a half, I have wrangled a MS Word template to work. Hoo! Feel my power! I can now work on the Flight Operations Team side of a procedure that I have needed to work on for a while. I feel so good to fight the "Evil Empire" and win! Man, I wish that we could do everything in freeware instead of MS. 

Anyhow, today is an exciting day! I am picking up Soleil in a half-hour to go meet her first grade teacher! Woo hoo! I grabbed a very nice poster from our education department for her. She is so excited to go back to school! Our school has half days for the K&1 grades for the first week. This will be nice to have her back in her element, school. She loves learning.

The other excitement is that we start Mom and Luna Mondays on the 8th! Luna loves the idea of having Mom to herself and I am actually quite excited to spend time with her. One on one is so much better. I love having the time to focus completely on one of my girls so I can really touch and get to know her soul. I was alone with Soleil when she was a baby and toddler. Now I get Luna as a Pre-K & K kid. This is really quite cool!

Anyway, today feels like a very good day. I have been slacking on my novel. Basically, it gets mentally hard (not like a writer’s block, more that one character hits too close to home.) I think I am almost ready to attack this again.

Morning light August 26, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Current Affairs , add a comment

I spent most of Saturday stripping wall paper (It’s all down!) and cleaning the largest wall in Soleil’s room. I need to finish cleaning the rest before I can prime and paint. Then we lit a fire and had fun with friends on Saturday night.

Sunday was party party party day

Yesterday was mayhem of the best kind. We went to a local amusement park. The kids are now old enough that we had fun with minimal whining. I loved it. We were at the park from 11 until 7:30pm. We did all sorts of rides and the kids went home with their goal of making mom go down the flume and getting wet accomplished. Sigh 

Yes, I am becoming Mom. The word Mommy is getting harder to find in my house, and I don’t mind it one bit. I have been fairly honest, the baby stage is hard and the tantrums and other whiny bits are very difficult on me.

To actually have a person I can reason with, even if the reasoning is a little odd (Mom! I am crying because I want to go on the water slide, but I hate the water being sprayed in my face so I’m angry that I can’t go UP to go down the water slide) is really nice.

I see the light of the baby tunnel and the train that is the kid tunnel. Bring it on, girls. I will probably complain just as much with the kids as opposed to toddler/baby, but bring it on!

A call for help August 21, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Current Affairs , add a comment

Okay- I rarely do this, but hear me out of this.

A few weeks ago, a 9 year old girl had visitation with her father for her birthday. Her parents are divorcing. She lives with her mom, who is unemployed and doesn’t have a car to get a job. The 9 year old returned home and told her mom, and a family friend that she had been molested by her father. A call to the police resulted in a filed report. Child Protective Services have been called and a physical exam of the girl supported her claims.

The family has been trying to get a lawyer, an emergency protection order and just to get the father arrested. So far, the mom and grandfather have been given the run around. They are at wits end trying to support this girl, but the grandfather is barely scraping by himself, so he has no money for the legal fees.

The aunt of this girl is a friend of mine. She set up a paypal account under the email justice4zoe at gmail dot com. If you are so inclined, please consider donating something for the family’s legal fund. They want to make sure the father is arrested, tried and convicted. They want to help the girl start healing and the family to move on. And they want to protect any other girl from this man.

Thanks for reading this. It may be just a small amount for you and yes, we can’t give to everybody who asks, but I appreciate it if you can just consider donating to the legal fund.

Thanks

Nance 

Twilight August 21, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Current Affairs , 1 comment so far

Yes, I finished it last night. I loved it. I brought the next book of the series to work so I can take it to the gym today when I exercise.

I would suggest this series to anyone! I loved it.

BTW- timing document is done, coding is in good shape, GS in good shape, knocking down my list!

 

Deadlines! August 20, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Current Affairs, She Blinded me with Science , 1 comment so far

Officially, my book should be done in first draft form in 30 days. I have given myself until September 30. Why the extra time? Well, let’s be honest. I work, I have two younger kids, I travel and I am still working out my whole "what the hell am I doing when I grow up ?" thing. Therefore, the extra time comes in. I am actually excited about where I am in the story, and I am having trouble finding the time to sit and write. It’s the time. Where is the time?

I spent some extra time at the control center yesterday understanding the timing from a meeting that we had. Last week, our telescope went into something called "Normal Sun Mode". This means the solar arrays (the things that power the telescope) were aligned to be 90 degrees to the sun and we stopped pointing where we should and the whole thing just sat there and waited for us to tell it to go back to work. It turned out there was an SEU* that caused a computer to reboot, which caused a timing issue, which caused a slew to take too long, which caused a shut down of the telescope, which caused our instrument to reboot, which caused many headaches. So, when I didn’t write much last week? Yeah, this is why. We were busy.

Now I have a series of deadlines:

Just a lot of deadlines. I wish I could make these flow better, but I can’t right now! Any ideas how to make time work for you? 

SEU=Single Event Upset…ie WTF? the thing reset and we aren’t sure why, and until we have a cause, it’s a Single Event Upset