Category Archives: Dr. Jay

So tired of being treated like a female.

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What is so sad about the title of this post is that "treated like a female" seems to be understood.

Wednesday, Dr. Jay and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary. We went out for a nice dinner followed by a wonderful walk through a pre-American graveyard and finally back to our car for a ride. Within 20 seconds of starting the ride, I was going around a rotary, a traffic circle in most parts of the country, when someone failed to yield. I moved too much to the left and hit the curb, blowing my tire. Great. I drove a tad bit further and pulled into the parking lot near the North Bridge in Concord, MA. We got the jack out, placed it in the right spot, someone came over to help, we got 4 out of 5 lugs off. Then we all stared at the 5th. It was a locking lug nut. Fine. We searched the ENTIRE car. No locking lug nut key (It looks like a long nut that has a funny pattern that goes over the locking lug nut). Ended up calling AAA. They sent a flatbed truck that got lost because the AAA call center isn’t local. If you say "I’m in the National Park parking lot, across from the Old North bridge, by the Old Manse", to someone who isn’t local, they get confused. When you tell them 50 Monument street? They tell the dispatcher something else with a 15 in it and certainly not Monument street. My legs got covered with mosquito bites. Dr Jay got 1. Bastard.

Finally, we got the flatbed to where we were, and he asked "Did you check the glove compartment?" Um, no I’ve been sitting out here getting eaten alive, missing the game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals and it never occurred to me to check the glove compartment. OF COURSE we checked. We checked everywhere.  On the way home, the truck stalls, the guy has to pull over because he isn’t sure my car is secured correctly and then tells us about the time he lost a car because he forgot to secure it. OMG.

The next day, I took Dr. Jay’s car to the tire place in town and explained the situation. They asked "Did you check the glove compartment?" UGH! I ended up getting AAA to tow it again to the tire place (it was a back tire and it was BLOWN, not with a low leak). The AAA operator? "Did you look n the glove compartment?" Hello????

The guys did replace the tire and my maintanance plan, which I normally don’t get, did cover half of the tire. All of the locking lug nuts have been removed. However, they called me and suggested that since my battery is 5.5 years old, I should replace it. Um, why? I asked if they checked it out and they did. All was well! Then I was told that BOTH back tires would need to be replaced, but the front ones were newer. I pointed out that THEY had replaced all 4 tires 2 years ago. Amazing that suddenly, only the blown tire was to be replaced.

I do feel that they treat me like this because I am female. That if I were male, they would be a bit more honest. Sigh… 

 

Sunny and…warm?

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What is up with the weather? It’s over 70 and sunny here in Boston in late October. WTF? At least I can enjoy my iced Coffee!

Dr. Jay’s MRI came back. It is clean. No tumors, no cysts, no bleeding in the brain. Just his old fractured orbit (a whole other story). We do wonder if his brain was in there. So, the verdict is Meneire’s Disease. Not great, but could be SO SO SO Much worse.

I’ve been very busy and working on not stressing. Three days into the less stress, and I think parts are working. I am blogging, so that has to be evidence, right? We have a busy weekend coming up. Hopefully, it will not be too crazy. The new room is moving slowly because we are still waiting for the last window. Nothing else, but the concrete floor for the storage area and the deck can be completed until the last window is in. Sigh… Thursday is the current ETA.

Mostly, I’ve been looking at the good side of life. The good things we have. How our girls are mostly healthy. They are happy and intelligent. They have a sense of humor along with the seriousness, and except for streaks of stubborness, they are really great kids. I have an awesome husband. He’s the best you can get! He works with me, we partner on so much… While I am not thrilled with my current supervisory position, I am learning to let it go, because I like the work I do. Life is good.

I have also been busy with my allergy shots, now that we’ve added bees/hornets to the mix, but I am not terribly happy about this, so let’s save it for another day.

Halloween Party tonight. Gotta run!

 

Well, that was fun!

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It’s been a terribly long week.

Luna’s been fevering

Dr. Jay has been feeling ill.

Last night, Jay had a horrible vertigo attack. The current thought is: Meniere’s disease, however, we need to have an MRI done on tuesday to rule out the "scary" things. Not going there. Okay? I am not going there.

I have to get through until Sunday… We have a Girl Scout event on Sunday that I have been helping organize. Worried that it will totally suck.

Okay- focus on the good things. Focus on the good things.

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!

I can’t do this much longer…

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I know, I am not allowed to complain. I need to be upbeat, get everything done and be the person who can do it all.

But I can’t.

Dr. Jay has been ill since Thursday. He’s running a low grade fever. He isn’t supposed to get fevers. tell that to his body. He is sick and tired. I have been doing all of the activities with the girls. I am very tired and worn. I have little patience. I need sleep. But that isn’t happening.

I know I can’t complain. I am supposed to just do. But right now, I need to close my eyes and rest

The night of the living phone calls

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I am not the first person to deal with this, but I want to get this out there.

Allied Interstate Inc. is an evil debt collection service.

Whew! That feels better!

For the past week, we’ve been getting messages on our phone at home saying that we need to call this 877 number to resolve a debt. It’s a recorded message. It’s not clear that we would even get  human if we were home to get the message. Calling the 877 number had left us on hold, for one point up to an hour and 20 minutes (I forgot to hang up!) Finally, today at work, I got through.

First I was told by the very nice person who actually answered that our phone number was NOT in their system. I insisted that I wouldn’t be calling if I weren’t getting these messages. She did check "the other side of the office", whatever that means, and informed me that this was Region 8 out of Ohio that was calling our number. She then gave me the name associated with this number.

The name? I denied knowledge of this person, but it was one of Jay’s undergraduate housemates. They tracked down that Jay and Mr. X had the same number at one point and hunted Jay down to get us to call Mr. X to settle his debt. She asked a few times if I was sure if I didn’t know anyone with Mr. X’s name. I denied that we knew him. Which is sort of true since we haven’t seen him in about 10 years.

I was careful to NOT give my name. Or ANY information other than my telephone number. In fact, I was a little concerned to call from my office because then they have THAT number on file too. She did tell me that she cleared the record and we should not get anymore calls.

We shall see. Based on the track record of this company, I am not so sure. We are starting the process of putting an addition on our house and we will need a loan, and I don’t want this messing with my pretty darn good credit.

A Photo Essay of Hawai’i (warning- lots of photos)

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Warning: This is mostly a post of photos, it may take a while to load.

View from the hotel
 

We learned about the Ancient Hawaiians

 

We walked on the lava coast at the place of Refuge (ignore my thighs..)

 

We got sand in our shoes

 

We saw dolphins in captivity

 

and Humpback whales in the wild

 

We hiked down to a beautiful black sand beach at Waipio Valley

 

 

 

And we swam at the black beach

 

 

 

 

We even hiked back up again

 

We enjoyed a resort luau and made Dr. Jay dance with the hula guys

 

 

We drove across the Island to see a volcano in action

 

 

And to walk where the volcanoes had thrown their lava

 

And where it ran over a town

 

We saw the sea and the lava meet

 

 

All in all, I would say we had fun

 

 

 

Oh, and the meeting was A-okay!(note- Name tag…see it really was a meeting!)

 

Double trouble

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I made a vow around Christmas time, that I would not let work drive me nuts. I would exercise more. I would get out of the office and I wouldn’t let anyone, not even my supervisor tell me that time in the office equals productivity….because it doesn’t.

However, around the same time, I noticed Jay was, well, short tempered a bit. He was tired and grouchy. Our trip to Buffalo didn’t help too much as his diet was off and he was getting his next fill up (Remicade treatment) when we returned home. He is always a little off right before a fill up. Then, the American Astronomical Society’s winter meeting came and he went to that.  Now that he is back in a rhythm, I had hoped things would calm down, but they haven’t. He is overwhelmed with work. He has 5 papers to review and comment. Several meetings to attend, collaborators to respond to, proposals to write, you get the idea. Then at AAS, he was asked to work on a project that may or may not take off. If it does, he is even deeper in work.

All of this pressure is getting him depressed. I don’t mean as deep as mine, but he is restless, tired, needs to be happy. I don’t know what to do for him.

I, on the other hand, have started to do better about work. I moved my office around (LOVE IT!) and I am focusing on quality, scheduling exercise in and relaxing in general. But the seasonal changes are kicking in and I am seeing my own depression moving into place. How to deal with it? I don’t know. I often lean on Jay when I am staring into the abyss. He needs me now and I am trying to stay level.

Yesterday, I lost him at work. It was time to go so we wouldn’t be late getting the girls. He had left his office and his phone was in his office. I checked a few places, but failed to find him. When he finally looked at the time, we were 15 minutes late and didn’t make it to the after school care on time. Since he was so upset and stressed, I bit back my stress and forced myself to stay calm.

I am not really sure how to deal with this. I am going away for the weekend and I don’t want him stressed and yelling every 5 minutes. But how to stop someone else falling when you yourself aren’t able to hold up? I have no clue..

Did you miss me while you were looking for yourself?*

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Last night, I was snuggling up with Jay in bed. The afternoon had been a whirlwind where I had picked him up from the airport, finally arranged our travel for the High Energy Astrophysics Meeting in March, and picked up the girls from Temple school. We even had dinner at a friend’s house and discussed the finer art of politely refusing food. He suddenly asked "What are you thinking? I can’t get a read from you."

We often can read each others moods and thoughts. It is a funny thing that started when we were dating. Now it just is. I’ve gotten so used to it that we will often say the exact same thing with the same timing and tone to the kids. I have to say I didn’t have an answer to his question, so I didn’t say anything. Instead, I thought, "what AM I thinking about?" He then asked if I was just decompressing from the week, or if there was something more upsetting me or what? (Luna was sick Monday night, I kept her home from school Tuesday and then Soleil got sick at the after school program on Tuesday… it was a long week). I decided I must be decompressing, because the week was stressful even though I didn’t feel that bad except for Tuesday.  IT really was a milestone trip. Luna didn’t ask for Dad once, unless you count her daily "Dad? I mean Mom?" No major meltdowns except for the point when Luna was loosing it because she was puking her guts out. And Soleil, being the wonderful sister that she is was yelling "ew, Mom! That’s gross! Make her stop!" Duh, if I could make her stop puking, I would, trust me.

Okay- Let’s get back on track here. After thinking a bit more, I finally stated that I must be decompressing. I really couldn’t think of any big issues for me. I was really tired, I don’t sleep well when Jay is gone. Then it hit me. I don’t really know me right now. Seriously. Right now life is a bunch of Girl Scout things, taking care of kids, getting schedules organized, etc. Not much me time.  Recently, a former blogger invited all of her facebook friends to come to her birthday party in a city that is close enough that I can drive to if I leave early enough. And I said yes. I don’t have clothes for such an event, so I am making a new little black dress. This is the highlight of my life… Sad isn’t it? Even sadder that I haven’t even had a chance to CUT OUT THE DRESS? I did, however, wash and dry the fabric, so kudos to me for that.

I sometimes wonder where Nance went in here. She got lost earlier this year. Somewhere with the work stresses and the depression and the hyperthyroidism back to hypothyroidism, the trip to Rio and everything else… I lost her. I need to find her. So part of that is blogging again. And reading blogs again. I will do my best.

And maybe I can even find myself out there.

 

 

*Drops of Jupiter by Train

Archeological Dig

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I am going through my cabinets, cleaning out into boxes what we need to move. We are keeping some things available like the pans I need to make treats for a party this week, and the pots and pans we use everyday.

But the majority of this is going on a dig. I find things from years ago. Things like the garlic press that Jay and I took from the house he lived in all of graduate school. I only lived there one year. He lived there 6. It was finally being sold, so we moved to a cottage that I lived in 1 year before. We were the last two people there, so we took all of the kitchen stuff that had been left in the house along with any furniture left by former housemates that we could. We still have the coffee table down stairs that took a hit when the 40 gallon fish tank exploded on it 17 years ago. I refinished it 12 years ago. Still good

It is weird running through our history. I forget that Jay and I have been together so long (since 1992!).

Okay, break over, back to cleaning the kitchen!

 

BTW- for those concerned about my telescope- We are in a very stable orbit. We launched AFTER the ruling that all satellites must be launched in a decaying orbit to reenter and burn in the atmosphere, but we got grandfathered. We go 1/3 of the way to the moon and orbit the earth once every 63 hours. We cannot be serviced like Hubble, so our project was designed for many years. We are in year 10 of the mission and recently were (or are in the process) of being approved for 12. We have started work on studying the 20-25 year mission life. In theory, we can go 50 or more years, with proper planning. At some point, we will run out of consumables (the fuel for the thrusters, etc) but for now? We are going strong!