I am trying hard to get back to the posting on a regular basis thing. It’s hard.

After being all out of sorts last week, I am feeling better. I did 2 runs this weekend. One was a 2 mile run! Woot! I have these two wild and crazy friends who are running a half marathon at Disney in Feb. I am debating joining them. There’s a 5 K in town on Thanksgiving, so I am going to try that.

As for the health issue? WHO THE FUCK KNOWS? Even before the anaphylaxis, I was starting to breath better. Since being pumped full of steroids? Yeah, I’m fine. Go figure. I see a pulmonary specialist in December.

Unfortunately, my attempt to lose 10lbs in 10 weeks will fail since the first 3 weeks I was immediately covered under health issues. Crap. I will keep working on it!

Sigh…. Yeah, this isn’t the best post, but let me work back up to posting.

If you haven’t heard about the Penn State sexual abuse case yet, you either live in rural Connecticut where they are still trying to get power back or you are in a media free zone. Go Google it if you haven’t heard.

Now that we are all on the same page, I need to share my disgust. 

1. Dear Penn State: Why? Why did you not fire this guy back when the first allegation was made? Or at least stopped him from being with kids? You knew in 1998 that he was, at best, showering with boys on campus and at worst, having anal sex with boys on campus. What parts of this did you think would end by telling him to not shower with kids?
2. Dear Mike McQueary: Really? at 28 you didn’t have the balls to do the right thing? Instead of calling the police, you chose to cover your own ass and tell Joe Pa. You should have stepped into the showers and stopped him. Taken the kid to the hospital. Gotten him help. Yet you waited. Many other kids suffered because of this. I am sorry you have to live with this decision the rest of your life.
3. Jerry Sandusky: Go rot in jail. I don’t care if you are hetero or homo sexual. YOU DON’T BRING YOUR SEX TO KIDS! PERIOD! I hope you believe in a god so you can suffer the rest of your life for what you did to kids.
4. Dear Penn State Student who rioted: How can you really act this way over football? FOOTBALL? Kids have been destroyed. And you turn it into a riot over football? Get over yourselves. I feel like an old bitchy lady, but seriously, BUCK UP and understand what your lovely university has done.
5. NCCA: Wow. You will take away championships for teams where players sell their stuff, but when a true crime is committed you say "Not Football". Shame on you. Shame.

To be honest, the worst part of this entire scandal is that the culture of sports took over the moral and civil obligation to take care of those in our society who can’t take care of themselves. As long as there are people who think there was nothing done wrong on Joe Paterno’s part, we have failed. He should have done more. He has a son. What if it was his kid.?
Why is there a defense of "He only knew about one"? Isn’t one child rape enough?

This is the article every single Penn State student who rioted should read. And then they might understand why we are disgusted.

I am neither out the door, nor completely at work right now. I haven’t got a new place to go. I am not ready to give up my salary, nor my contact with adults, but I am barely holding it together at work. I don’t feel right here anymore.

I can’t give too many details in a public post, but let’s just say burn-out can apply across the board. I need to get out of this position. I am planning to hawk the new RBT in January and that both feels really far away and really close.

We had a dinner party, surprise birthday party for Crazy H on Saturday. Wow. I didn’t know anyone at the party. It was as if she traded all of her friends in for new ones. That was very odd to me and kind of sad. A few years ago, she set a few bridges on fire. I was never clear if she actually burnt them, or saved them, but judging from the people at the dinner, I would say she burnt several. The bridge with me is damaged, but I am just careful not to go out too far. We decided to offer a Thanksgiving dinner as neither of us have family in the area and we don’t get the time off for travel. I hope that will be a nice day.

I started running this weekend. I hope to get out tonight and do more. My shins hurt like mad and my trainer explained what I was doing wrong. Now I need to fix it. I am getting together with my friends in Florida in Feb. Two are running the Disney half marathon and I have said I might do it to. So I am going to go from not running, to a 5K on Thanksgiving to a 13.1 miles in Feb. Um, sure?

I am still a medical enigma. After the anaphylaxis, I have no more breathing troubles. This is odd and crazy. I have pulmonary appointments in December and clotting appointments this week.

So, I wait in my funny place. Life is…what it is

Please forgive my radio silence. October was a crazy month and it has just flown right into November. My bullet style will be more like paragraph style, so again, please forgive me, oh FUCK IT, it’s my blog, I can update when I can.

• Health: Has been poor. I noticed 3-4 weeks ago that I was having some trouble breathing when I was exercising. I made a note of that and that my right leg had been sore. A week later, I was on the phone while walking the dog and sucking wind. That is not right. So I told Dr. Jay and he suggested that I go get a check up. My mom has a clotting disorder and she has had two pulmonary embolisms(PE). Yeah, let’s not do that. I went and saw a PA who ended up sending me to the ER to get checked for PE. At the time, it was frustrating and funny. The medical shorthand for shortness of breath is SOB and I found it hysterical that I was an SOB. The hospital’s blood test for clotting came back negative, so they sent me home despite my clear lack of air.  The next day, I set up a new primary care doctor and had a new appointment. Turns out the clotting test at the doctor’s office was positive, negative at the hospital and then positive again. Sigh At this point, I have had chest pains (more pulmonary rather than cardiac), an appointment with a hematologist (and a future appointment for a platelet study), a CT chest scan with contrast dye to rule out PE (yes! I was clear, so I am not going to die today), and I have 2 more appointments set up. Of course, I am allergic to contrast dye, so we did pre-emptive steroids. Doesn’t matter, I still went into anaphylatic shock. They called Dr. Jay and refused to tell him what was wrong except that they had to call code blue (thanks…), so he was terrified that I was dying from clotting. No, just a massive poison we put directly in my bloodstream. Sigh. To recap: no PE, still having trouble breathing and now totally wiped out from systemic anaphylatic shock.
• Job: Yeah, October sucked because I had a bad job review. Quote from my supervisor "Mistakes can’t happen". At this point? Yeah, mistakes must happen. I am still looking for a new position and continuing on the RBT. I need to confirm that I can go to the January meeting in Austin. I haven’t registered yet.
• Kids: Good and bad. We’ve had homework hell with Soleil and Luna tells us nothing about her school. Very frustrating. The sleep test came back that Luna has no sleep issues, so we are back to square one. This totally sucks because we don’t know what makes her brain tick. Why can’t she hear us sometimes? Does she have attention issues? Why is reading so hard for a kid who can do math like mad? I don’t know. Soleil was just at the doctor yesterday. We are starting testing for irritable bowel syndrome. Yes, my 9 year old may have IBS. Frick. Poor kiddo. We are looking into Celiac disease and a few other autoimmune issues as well.
• Life: I am worn down. We just spent from Saturday night until this morning without power. We have to clean out the entire freezer and fridge. We’ve already called insurance so we can get a cheque to cover the food loss. Luna started skating lessons 2X a week, so we hired an after school sitter. It was a rather quick and half-assed method of hiring, but I think we have the right person. She gets to be with the girls with POWER today! That should be fun.
• Writing: I will write more this month. I promise. But I need to figure out what is wrong with me. Why I am sick and how to get some sleep. Sigh.

A few people brought up the possibility that I had been hacked by a certain stalker I have. Possibly because I am totally naive, I am assuming this wasn’t her. But I am now going to go back through my sitemeter and start checking her activity. Really, I don’t need a stalker.

So, my website got hacked. It took about a week to figure this out and sort it all out. Now I am in the process of cleaning it all up. Wish me luck and please be patient with the changes.

N 

So I’ve been having a crazy life as of late. What else is new? I am as human as the next person in the room. Of course, as I look around, I realize the only other living creature in the room is the dog. 

So, the Really Big Thing(s)? Yeah, I decided to leave the Smithsonian. I have put in applications to a few positions and I am aware they have called at least one of my referrances. My supervisors and a few friends are aware. The official spin is that Dr. Jay and I need diversification. Our telescope is starting the 13th year of its 5 year mission. The hope is that this will last for 20-25 years. The reality is that I am burnt out.

We are lower on funds since NASA and science in general is losing money. The team that had 6 people on rotation when I started is down to 3-4. In a 7 week rotation we have 4 people covering 7 weeks. Our supervisor can’t take once every 4 weeks since he travels so much. That means I am on call at least once a month for a week and sometimes, twice. That’s a lot of overhead. I am tethered to my phone and computer those weeks. I have 9 am calls during the weekdays, at least 1 command load review, any instrument configuration assignments and checking the real time spacecraft information 3X a day for 7 days. In addition to this, any other projects must be covered. To be perfectly honest, I am fried. I can’t handle this anymore.

Add to this that my children are getting older. Luna is going to start skating more and more. Soleil wants to have someone home after school to assist her with the homework and just to give her time to relax alone with her thoughts instead of with the noise of other kids. I want to be there for them. Currently, we drive 20-60 minutes to work (depending on traffic) and the same back home. We have activities, sports, etc. What is the point if you can’t be there with your kids. Soleil is 9! That gives me 9 more years before she leaves the nest. That’s not a ton of time.

So,I’ve applied to jobs at a place near my house. I can’t go into what it is, but I can tell you it is an 8 minute drive from my house. I can take the bike path there. I could probably bike there in 15 minutes, maybe 20.

While following this path, I also thought, Damn, I wish I could just be a freelance astronomer. That got me thinking why I couldn’t. It actually has to do with the rules of Federally funded grants, but I found a way to do it. And suddenly, I realized that I wasn’t the only person who was in this situation. I was not the only person who wanted to do more astronomy, but couldn’t. I started a conversation with a West Coast institution (who will be knows as WCI until I can say more) and we are starting to work out a plan where I would match astronomers with small projects with freelance workers to do the projects. I would be running a mini-astro-temp agency. Of course, I would not be taking as large of a salary, but I could possibly be working at home on my own projects. Maybe I could even get some grants for myself. 

So these are the two really big things in my life right now. The new temp-astro thing has/will take a lot of leg work that I still need to do. I have a ton of social networking to do, BUT I have a few big names out there who are interested! The other, well, if I can get a position from 7am-3pm, I can be mostly home in time for my girls.  I can hope!

This is why I have been so quiet lately. I’ve been overwelmed, burnt out and trying to move forward on three fronts.

But I am 40 and now is the time to start living. 

Well, hi there! Did you miss me? I have!

I haven’t written in a while because I have been outrageously busy. With teeth, ligaments and lice.

Teeth: The girls were getting ready for sleep away Girl Scout camp. This was Luna’s first time, Soleil’s second. On the Thursday before the camp, Luna was in a particularly difficult mood. She was refusing to listen and being, 7. She was nervous about going to sleep away camp and her general reaction when nervous is to be a totally pissy person! Yea us!

I was out taking the dog for a walk and she wanted to join me on her scooter. Being in a pissy mood, she refused to either put on shoes or put on a helmet. To be honest, I wasn’t worried about it and I didn’t see why I should force it when she was already grumpy. Fine. Come along. She was in a cheerful mood, on her scooter, running one naked foot along the road and the other foot on the scooter. When I asked her if it hurt, she said no. She was in a positively Great Mood. And I started to think "See! Sometimes, giving in a little is okay!"

Then we got to the top of the hill. We happen to live on a street that has a big Mother of a hill. It’s one of those hills you have to get off the seat of your bike to climb and REALLY fun going down fast. In fact, I often put my car in neutral and we let gravity take the car down the hill. This day, however, the fates were not so much fun and gravity decided to school Luna. Actually, I think it was physics that decided to school her. She was 1/3 of the way down when she realized she was going too fast. No problem, she started pressing on the brake. And this is where it all went wrong. The friction of the brake on the wheel warmed the brake to the point it was hurting her naked foot. She decided to jump off the scooter. She almost did it, but she forgot one of Newton’s Laws. "A body in motion stays in motion until acted upon by an outside force". She jumped and her momentum propelled her forward. She continued this way until her face was acted upon by the road. I saw all of this in slow motion. I knew she would cry, but when she got up and turned toward me, I RAN. Her face was covered in fresh blood. Her entire face. And blood was dripping from her lips. One of her front top teeth was missing and the other was hanging on by a thread. Fortunately, they were both baby teeth, but still. I picked her up, ran towards home while calling. Soleil answered the phone and I told her to tell Dad to meet me at the door with TOWELS.

Turns out she mostly did a road rash and most of the blunt force trauma was on her teeth. Within a day, the second tooth fell out. She is a little difficult to understand and we are trying to keep scar cream on at night and sunscreen on during the day. One of the most frustrating parts of this little adventure was that the day camp refused to take her the next day for fear of infection. We were seeing the doctor that day anyway, so I just kept her with me at work. The doctors were amazed she didn’t break her nose or orbit. She had bruising around her left orbit and the bridge of her nose suffered lacerations, as did her front gums.

2 weeks later, it was only her teeth that look funny. She knows DAMN WELL that she should have worn shoes and a helmet and even told me that she should have and she was sorry that she didn’t listen to me!

Here is a photo of the day she injured herself. We got most of the blood cleaned up:

 (sorry- just turn you head sideways)

After the kids returned from camp, we enjoyed swimming at the pool. It was very nice and Luna could put her head under water now that the injuries had healed. We decided to head home for lunch with Soleil and I going first. Luna was finishing her slushy so we rode our bikes home. Two houses away from our house, Soleil’s wet swimsuit caused her to slip off her bike seat. She slammed her feet down to stop her bike. Unfortunately, she also learned about momentum as the bike kept moving forward and hyper-extended her right foot backwards after it got caught under a pedal. She crumpled to the ground and I was able to calm her, get her home and get ice on her. 

Within 10 minutes, it was clear I needed to get her x-rays. Her ankle was very swollen and she was getting nauseated. We got her a small lunch, I ate, and we drove off to the second closest hospital. After my bee sting experience where they left me in a hallway and let me pass out in the waiting area, I was NOT going to the closest. She allowed me to wheel her in and we waited. There was another girl in the waiting room and after a few minutes they were talking. Turns out this girl was also from Spaceford. And this girl was also in Soleil’s upper elementary in Spaceford. Then we discovered they were in the same grade AND the same class for the fall! She was there with an earache.

It was a quick 2 hours to get Soleil x-rayed, splinted and up on crutches. We had to follow up with our doctor, but she didn’t think there was a break.

The pediatrician checked her out Monday and declared it a torn deltoid ligament based on the motions that caused the most pain. Sigh. It would take 2-3 weeks to fully heal and she will be more likely to injure this again in the future.

yeah yeah, just tilt 90 degrees. Too tired to fix it.

Now that it was Tuesday and Soleil had been injured for 4 days, and Luna’s face was mostly cleared, I noticed something in Luna’s hair. It looked like a nit. Shit. Sure enough, it was. I spent 2 hours combing her hair and removing about 100 lice and nits. Soleil had nothing. Whew!

I was a good kid and called day camp to say that I combed her out. They called me back the next morning saying she still had them and come pick her up. Turns out that most of the kids in her group had them. Why is it that this is the ONLY place my kids have gotten lice? I did a frantic web search and found a professional nit-picker. $300 and 3 hours later, Luna was mostly lice free. I watched her techniques in case I need to do it again (please no!).( okay, just by writing this, my head is itchy)

We used our traditional Listerine treatment afterwords and I found 5-6 bodies. Then we did the olive oil overnight treatment. I did head checks every day for a while. She is fine.

So this is the major reason I haven’t been writing. I have been swamped. Totally swamped. I cannot keep up with my life anymore.

But I will try!

Really, I am posting when I can… But the posts I am writing are WAY too long and the computer ate my last one, so I am still working on it.

Let’s just say I am fighting anxiety attacks between the budget/debt ceiling bullshit and the visits to the ER.

I will write more later when I can. Right now? Off to fight another fire at work because I am not being aggressive enough with a bug in a code (or at least I keep getting told to be aggressive and if I get any more aggressive with this work I will have to throw my monitor through the window and I really like this monitor)…