working/vacation

This is our last day of "just us" here at Mom's; my brother and his family arrive tomorrow. The kids can't wait to see their cousins again, they've been planning their adventures since we said goodbye at the end of last summer.

As for me, I've enjoyed this week beyond reason. I'm not on vacation, yet, but I've taken a few days off from school to work outside. This house has been only minimally maintained over the years since my father died (1997), and surrounded as it is by encroaching woods, such neglect was passing from the benign to worrisome.

I brought a pressure washer a few days ago. I spent a day on the deck, which still has some greenish planks, but I think some deckwash might work just as well on that. I spent a day on the driveway. I think the last time it was swept was when I was here last summer, but I can't be sure of that:



I'm making the kids help, too. They've done some weeding, some raking, and some (very little, really) lawn-mowing with the push mower. Mom doesn't need a real lawn mower, since this is what we're mowing:


I know one of my nephews did some leaf-removal for my mom earlier this spring, but I'm not exactly sure where he put them. I think those leaves were part of the tremendous piles I've pushed back to the brush line.

Speaking of tremendous piles of leaves, there's yet one more to be shoved into woods:

These ones were under the side deck and all along the terraced side of the house, drifts inches deep. Tomorrow we will rake the whole mess behind the brush line and thank God that we don't have to bag it all.

I think the best part of the day was loading up the beach car (the sticker for the beach doubles for use of the town's landfill) with the old pile of wood that had been cluttering up beneath the deck for several years, and then taking it all to the landfill and heaving it into the huge dumpster full of construction and demolition trash. There's something very satisfying about heaving huge chunks of wood into a giant metal box.

Then again, the best part of the day was probably when we went to the little beach when I got home. We caught all sorts of things: brine shrimp, a tiny whelk, really obnoxious hermit crabs. There were these weird jelly-filled tubes, I think they must be some part of a jellyfish life cycle. The water was cool but not freezing, and the beach was deserted except for a group of young teenage girls: I say young because they were not too cool to go swimming and goof around in the water.



Tomorrow's Mom's birthday and I have a cheesecake cooling in the oven for her. It looked a little weird last time I checked it; I warned her that I couldn't be sure how it would turn out since she didn't buy the Philly cream cheese... the batter tasted good, though.

I'm on deck to make pizza for dinner for the crowd (11 of us, I think), but that's fine. No pressure washing, and only that last little bit of raking to do in the morning, and then back to schoolwork. The forecast says it will be too cool to go swimming tomorrow, and DD wants to go beach combing; we'll see what happens.

My to-do list for the yard is still a bit long: weed and mulch the flower beds, clean up the other side of the house, pressure wash the patio and all the outside furniture. But I don't need to get all that done now; my goal was to get the backyard in decent shape so the kids could go out and play back there without dealing with tall grass and dead leaves everywhere. We've already had one tick incident (DS2, on Monday) and I'd rather not have anymore. The other stuff just needs to be done before July 13, when we're having a party for my brother's sixtieth birthday.

Today I thought, there must be something wrong with me: I had so much fun. Mom's concerned that I'm working too hard, she thinks I'm crazy. I'm not, I'm really enjoying myself. In years past I was too tied up with child-minding or not physically capable of doing what I'm doing now. When I lived here (as a snotty teenager), I had little patience for yard work -- the only saving grace, nearly 30 years ago, was that the trees were much smaller and many fewer, and so we had less work to do. I can't recall ever having this much stamina in the past. I would be good for one day of hard physical labor, but not three in a row. (Yay, me!)

At the risk of jinxing what has been a remarkable run, I will come right out and say my rheumatoid arthritis is in remission. The only parts of my hands that hurt are the thick muscle under my thumb, and the few blisters I've developed. This is extraordinary given that, when I first arrived, both my mother and my sister were suffering major weather-related flares.


Whatever else is happening, just knowing that this is within walking distance is enough.

frequent visitors

This pair of mallards lives on my mom's street. Yes, on the street. It's not paved, and there are a couple of little girls who run their hose every day for their paddling pool, so we have near-constant puddles. Apparently, that's good enough for this pair of odd ducks.

frustrations

Blogger won't upload my photos, and I don't want to invest the time to working around it just now. Maybe later.

wading day

Nina wrote today about visiting the beach in Deauville, Normandy, where the season hasn't yet begun, except for certain people...



It was great to see the sun today, but now we're bracing for a heat wave.

bunny!

Never see one of these out of my window at home.

here, again

It was a long day, but really the best trip ever with the kids. They did their thing, I did mine, it was almost relaxing.

Finally got them into bed about an hour or so ago -- we're all too wound up to relax properly. They love this time of year. Me, I would love it more if I had been able to wrap up my classes already. Ah, well.

I brought way too much stuff but the weather is iffy here this time of year, and since we're here for so long, I'd rather have more than less, and I don't want to be doing laundry every three days, either. I brought a bunch of books, mostly for school, but also some of the ever-growing stack of books I want to read -- but those, I'll ship home at the end of the trip when I don't need them anymore. No way am I lugging them back on the plane. The idea is to read real books and not spend so much time attached to the computer. I think it's a good one.

done!

Polished off the Educational Psych midterm this evening. *whew*

I know I can't get 100%, because I forgot to answer part of one essay question. I did exactly this same thing on my Learning & the Brain exam, except that time, I caught it when I was doing my final review. This time, I didn't: having spent many, many words describing Piaget's four developmental stages, I then neglected to say why I should pay attention to the developmental stage of my students in the classroom. At worst, that lapse will be worth 5 points, but maybe it will be worth only 2, there's no way to know right now. Maybe the instructor will be so dazzled by the brilliance of my reply he won't notice that I failed to answer one of the questions. Regardless, I know already that I got full marks on the multiple-choice part, so I'm pretty sure I'll be OK.

Accomplished much, today, actually. It's a good thing, too, since tomorrow is packing day, and we have a bunch of other stuff to do, too.

None of this seems quite real.

semi-annual event

When you have three children, you have to schedule regular purges, times when you go through all the books/dvds/video games/board games/toys/clothes/shoes/papers and get rid of everything.

OK, not everything, just a lot. I appreciate that as the children get older, they stop acquiring things at the same frantic pace, stepping down to a slightly more manageable rate of accumulation. Even so, it took me over an hour to go through all their school work and dispose of about 98% of it. I do love the feeling of lightness, afterwards.

Meanwhile, we have a stack of books, video games, and toys to go to the various entertainment exchange places. We'll do that tomorrow.

In other news, I knocked out my two EdPsych lessons and thus have just the midterm to deal with before Wednesday. I have to complete my study guide but overall I think I will do OK on this one, it all seems like so much common sense to me. I have to watch feeling complacent, because I could easily mix up the names of important theorists or skip something in describing developmental stages or similar multi-part theories.

Une petite crise: I had borrowed the DVD for Learning & the Brain from another teacher, and returned the wrong disc to her! So she has my Classroom Management dvd, and I still have the L&tB disc. There will be some frantic phone calls made around that, starting tomorrow. Oddly, I'm not panicked about it... yet. Things are falling into place fairly well for Wednesday's departure.

swoosh...

The sound that life is making as it zooms by.

Most of last week felt slow, actually. Friday was the last day of school and everyone was a bit crazy because of it. It still hasn't really sunk in.

I have my own schoolwork to finish up, plus packing and all that: leaving on Wednesday.

We'll manage, somehow or other, we always do. It doesn't seem quite real, though.

There will be time for more review and reflection later. For now, discernment continues: do I really want to teach high school, when I love being around the little ones so much? Then I remind myself, I love them all. It's true. Just realized today that the child who inspired me to write this post was in my class for the past two months and totally, completely, not a problem. Not at all a problem to the extent that I just realized that this kid drove me to such distraction last year that I swore I could never be full time teacher. What happened between then and now? Experience, probably. I've learned a lot this year.

I have some ideas about teaching, including the theory that in any particular classroom, someone will rise to the occasion of being the Attention Vortex, no matter what. If the autistic boy is absent or having a really good day, someone else will pick up the slack so that, over the course of the day, there is a Conservation of Classroom Chaos. Sure, it ebbs and flows over the periods, but in any given day, you're going to have approximately the same amount of disruptions and disturbances, no matter who is there and who is missing. Even if all the likely-to-act-up kids are gone for a day, you have things like other kids crying because they can't find their favorite pencil or some other such nonsense -- simply because they know, or they intuitively sense, that there are Resources Available, that is, Teacher Time that would normally be spent "handling" the usual disruptors is being used productively! Can't let that happen! Kids are amazing that way.

I have no more energy to develop that idea further. I noticed many years ago that when I'm writing at work, I have very little creative energy left over to journal with, and that same pattern is repeating now. It's not that nothing's happening, it's that I'm too frazzled to write about it all. I don't particularly like it, but personal writing has been shoved rather far down on the priority list, at least for now. It won't always be this way.

art therapy

I've always loved watercolors.
Today's art lesson, (well) after Winslow Homer. Watching 20 second graders painting boats, seas, and skies, I couldn't resist.

Maybe I feel lighter because I've managed to slog through so much work, but I think the painting helped, a little.

panic averted for the moment

A series of late-night work/study sessions bring me to this moment, where I am happy to cross the following items off my to-do list:

- the practicum report (all 3 parts) for Classroom Management

- lesson 3 of Educational Psychology

- all of the assignments and tests for Learning & the Brain

That means all I have left is 2 assignments in Ed Psych, plus the mid-term, which is totally do-able in the time I have left.

Can't wait to get more than 5 hours of sleep tonight.

going, going...

Time, that is.

I'm studying for my Learning & the Brain mid-term; I'll probably take it tomorrow or Thursday.

I think my own brain is going to explode.

The heat here is oppressive, like mid-July, 105+ degrees, humidity on top of it all... it makes me want to run away. At least we're doing some inside recesses so I don't have to spend all that much time out in it, and outside PE has been likewise cancelled on account of the heat. Every little bit helps.

After this midterm, lesson 3, 4, and 5 in EdPsych, but I've caught up on my study guide through lesson 3, so it won't be as bad as this has been, since I hadn't done my study guide since lesson 1, and now I'm playing catch-up. These classes are eminently fair, in that they tell you exactly what you need to know in those study guides -- well, they give you the questions, you have to find the answers, but if you do, you'll do well on the tests. The only tricky part of this Learning & the Brain course is the brain physiology and trying to keep straight which part of the brain has what function, especially since there is so much overlap. I'll manage somehow.

Oh, and I have to complete my practicum paperwork before school ends, or I'll really be screwed up! Plus the usual packing and obtaining of difficult items before leaving in TWO WEEKS!

It may, in fact, be time to panic.

to do list

Things to get done before we leave for vacation -- and this is just the stuff for school:

Learning and the Brain
Lesson 3, which requires me to read an entire (albeit short) book, and view a DVD which I do not yet have, and the accompanying assignment
Lesson 3 quiz, which goes through the (short) book in exquisite detail; it's longer than the midterm I took last night.
Lesson 4, reading from the text book & accompanying assignment
Midterm, due 5/17 - yes, that's this Saturday.

Educational Psychology
Each lesson requires that I read a chapter of the physically-impossible-to-manage text book. Books that big need to be either spiral bound or hard bound, the soft binding makes them completely unwieldy.
Lesson 3 - integrating various education theorists' ideas into a classroom setting
Lesson 4 - e-literacy module; find an article, summarize, tell how I'd use the info
Lesson 5 - God bless us, multiculturism. How will I incorporate multi-culti into a high school science class? Mainly by not being an idiotic, prejudiced jerk. I continue to be appalled at the people who are profiled in the small case studies who admit things like "I thought all Asians looked alike." I still can't believe a teacher said that, and not a teacher 50 years ago, a teacher in the late 1990s.
Midterm, due 5/24.

If I can get the Learning & the Brain DVD in hand by Thursday, and if my instructor grades the lesson I handed in on Sunday, I could do Lessons 3 and 4 on Thursday and Friday and then take the midterm on time on Saturday, but those are very big "ifs."

Then, having cleared the decks of L&tB, I can focus on the EdPsych, knocking out lessons 3, 4, and 5 over the course of the week, so I can take the exam on Saturday the 24th.

However, neither my L&tB nor my EdPsych instructor are noted for their fast turn-around on grading assignments, and I'm only supposed to turn in 2 at time, then wait for them to be graded. I think the thing to do is get the next assignment in for both courses (if I could just get that video...) so as soon as an assignment comes out of the queue, I can submit the next one. These next couple of weeks are going to be rough.

Anyway, I aced my midterm in Classroom Management, so that's a comfort. Which remends me of more things to do:

-- complete my practicum paperwork
-- find somewhere to take my final exams while I'm away (I'm thinking CCCC should work, just have to contact them.)

didn't tell

Every week in my class, one student is selected as the "superstar." The superstar gets to sit in a special chair. Every day after morning meeting, the superstar gets to share some things about him or herself, or read from a favorite book. On Friday, the kids all write letters to their superstar classmate, and read each one aloud.

Last week, we ran out of students, so this week, as the newest member of the class (or at least, presence in the classroom), I got to be "it." It's a comfort to know that both the teacher and the aide who was in this class previously were also superstars over the course of the year.

So, since I'm old, I had to think about what to tell these kids. I printed out some photos of my extended and immediate families, some of the cool cakes I've decorated, and a really nice aerial photo of Cape Cod. I talked to them about Massachusetts and going to the beach and all kinds of things... but I didn't tell them about the cancer.

I just really did not want to get into it with them. They're second graders. There was no reason for them to know. If I had been doing a similarly-themed presentation to high school kids, I would have made different choices: family, obviously, but more focus on where I went to college, and what my jobs have been. And since one of my jobs is facilitating the support group, that would provide a nice segue, I think. But for these kids, right now, I'm not telling.

better

A productive day always helps.

By way of procrastinating on school work, I got all sorts of house stuff done today. And then after dinner, I buckled down and turned in an assignment in each of my three classes. I was slightly mortified when I got an email from one of my instructors asking me to please not submit a slew of assignments before the midterm. I replied with an apologetic and explanatory note: I've been swamped.

Besides, the rules say you can only submit two assignments at a time, and then you have to wait until they're graded before you can hand in any more. Anyway, I expect to take every single one of my midterms late; I don't think I could possibly hand in all the assignments I need to do before their due dates (5/17 and 5/24, respectively - my first one is already overdue, having been scheduled for 5/3).

If my brain is functioning tomorrow, I'll take my first midterm tomorrow evening. Here's hoping... and I'm off!

messed up

I was supposed to take a mid-term eight days ago. Oops. I didn't realize it because I went a week without logging into my school homepage. Part of that was because I was just fried from work and other stuff going on, and part of that was because my laptop battery was dead and I couldn't juice it up because I left my power cord at my speech therapist's office, and I didn't have a chance to go and get it until Thursday. Oops, again.

This evening I had Guinness with dinner, and fell asleep before 8PM. I slept for at least an hour and a half, if not two hours... and now I'm still up. Oops.

I hate this feeling of having so much work to do, it induces paralysis. My new goal is to get through all my mid-terms before we leave for MA. I'm not sure that's possible. Obviously, it was a mistake to take the job since I was planning on wrapping up the courses entirely before we left. Ha! I haven't even been keeping up with what I'm supposed to be doing, school-wise, never mind accelerating. And now I definitely have to find somewhere to take my exams while we're away this summer, which is something I had hoped to avoid.

Onward.

catching up

I had my talk with the administration, and they said some nice-sounding, even fair-sounding, things, things which may even be true. Still, if you were going to invite someone to a meeting on Thursday, wouldn't you notify them of the meeting some time before Thursday?

My favorite part of the meeting:
Admin: You should talk to me before you get upset.
Me: I am talking to you.

I pushed this a bit, too: has there been any indication, other than the email I sent to you, that I'm upset? Because I would hope that I'm professional in my behavior and would want to know if I haven't been.

"Oh, no, no, nothing like that," they insisted.

Fine.

At one point this week, I got into it with "my" kid, who told me point blank to go away. "I can't," I stated flatly. "It's my job."

"Why do you want this job, anyway?" he asked.

I think I laughed nearly a full minute then, and had to beg off with "It's too complicated to explain," when he wanted to know why I was laughing.

I'm making the best of it.

DH left on Thursday for CT, he's helping his folks around their house. DD got sick Friday night and thereby threw a spanner into the works for the weekend. Today (Saturday) was a wretched day which I refuse to recount in the hope that I might someday soon forget it.

Some days I feel like everything's going well. Today was not one of them. It was a hanging-by-a-thread day, when everything threatened to come apart. It didn't, though, and that's what I have to keep reminding myself.

bait & switch

The new job was supposed to be easy -- second grade teacher's aide. That lasted a couple of weeks, then I got thrown the curveball of the one-one-one work, which was supposed to end today.

Today, of course, I hear my one-on-one kid is going back to his original classroom, and I'm going with him, and that class's aide will be moving into my classroom.

This is wrong on so many levels that I would be fully justified in quitting, but I'm not going to quit (at this point) for a bunch of reasons -- it's only till the end of the year (5 more weeks), and they need someone, and it's good to have steady money.

But, but, but... this isn't what I signed up for, not by a long shot. Being a general aide is easy work and I could leave at the end of the day without having anything too pressing weighing on my mind. One-one-one work is not like that, I find myself replaying various confrontations and thinking about what I could have done differently. It's psychologically draining on a level I haven't experienced in years, and I'm finding it impossible to get back into my schoolwork. (I'm hoping this otherwise-empty weekend will get me back in the groove.)

And another thing? The pay is horrifically bad. Substitute teaching money isn't great, but it's still better than teacher's aide money -- and one-on-one aides get paid at the same rate as regular aides. Now I'm off the table as far as subbing goes, which wasn't part of the original deal, either. I can earn in 3 days subbing what it takes 5 days to earn as an aide, but now I won't have that chance since they can't leave a one-on-one aide-less a couple of days per week.

I'm being taken advantage of, and I know it, and I'm allowing it to happen because they are stuck. What I need to do next week (there was no time at all, today), is meet with the appropriate administrators and tell them these things. I may ask for more money ("hazard pay") but will most likely be told there isn't any, to which I will reply: but what about the funds that were budgeted for the aide for my (original) class, which went unspent for at least 3 or 4 months? I may be able to work something, there.

*whew*

Torchwood has wrapped for the season, and perhaps forever, as there is no word yet on whether there will even be a third season. This is a relief because I really need to get back to my school work.

It feels odd to have actual writing assignments that have nothing to do with 1) science fiction or 2) low carb cooking. I haven't written a low-carb column in about year. I was thinking about it today, wondering, what happened? It feels like one day I just stopped writing, but what really happened is that our computers were stolen, along with all my recipes and my ingredient and recipe databases that I had set up to calculate nutrition information. Apparently, it was too big a loss to overcome, and then other things happened, and it just fell away entirely.

I've been putting off my school work, what with DD's Confirmation and First Communion, and the accompanying houseguests, and my new job, and today, well, the DBacks game (a 9-4 trouncing by the Padres; oh well) and HBO's superlative John Adams. I'm running out of excuses, not to mention time, if I want to finish up these classes before we leave for the summer. I just have to do it.

It's going to take a bit of manning up to actually sit down and write up my "reflections" from my Educational Psychology readings. I'm asked to pinpoint three areas of my teaching ability that I feel need the most improvement, but reading over the expert vs novice teacher matrix, I already feel I'm in the "expert" category on most of them. (Most new teachers haven't lived with my kids; plus, I'm good at this stuff.) I'm sure I'll come up with something.

Torchwood 2.13: Exit Wounds

Given its ratings success, there's every indication that Torchwood will be returning for a third season. But writer-producer Chris Chibnall's superlative "Exit Wounds" is something unexpected: a wholly complete and satisfying episode that could just as easily serve as a series finale as a bridge to the third season.

This episode is one of the finest hours of television you're likely to see. Read the rest over at The House Next Door.

discernment, continued

Have I mentioned I have a new job? Until the end of the school year, I'm working as an aide in second grade, except when they need a substitute. The money for an aide is abysmal, but I do really enjoy being around the kids.

Last week, though, was my first week of two wherein I'm one-on-one with an (as yet undiagnosed) ADHD kid. He could give the Energizer Bunny a run for its money, but in terms of stubbornness and force of will, the kid's a piker compared to DS1 at that age.

In the course of the last week, I've managed to 1) get him to tie his own shoes 2) do all his morning work and 3) quit going to bathroom every single period. I tolerate a lot from him -- he pretty much has to move constantly -- but I don't allow him to disrespect me, and I do make him come back to wherever and try again if he runs in the halls. It all comes down to one thing: I mean what I say. That's the one thing he has to know and really believe about me -- so far, so good. We'll see how next week goes.

In the course of this past week I have received a lot of positive feedback from the rest of the staff. The teacher I'm working with has told me that I have a gift and that I should go into Special Ed instead of secondary. I feel very comfortable working with certain types of kids because I had my trial by fire with DS1, who nowadays is your typical brilliant 11-year-old.

I asked our Special Ed staff (I love them, they're fantastic) how they do it without having to go home and cry every day. It's one thing to work with bright kids with poor impulse control, the way I have been, it's another to work with kids that you know won't be able to progress at all. Even worse? The parents who either cannot or will not engage with their child and his abilities. It hurts to see parents who fundamentally misunderstand their own children, and with learning disabled kids, it's fairly common.

I told my mentor teacher I have no idea what I'm doing right now. I was struck today -- it's Friday, and I had to total my hours for the week -- by what a pittance I'm earning, but at the same time, I was so happy to go to work this morning. I subbed in DS2's first grade class and we had a great time, even though I missed my second graders a bit. I'm not doing this for the money, I'm doing it for the experience.

I'm doing good work. I tell the kids, and I've been telling my Religious Ed class all year, that to really feel good about yourself, you need to do good work. So I'm not surprised by how happy I'm feeling, but I feel a little bit like a freshman invited to the senior prom: I love being in second grade because that's where I am right now. If I were working in middle school, or high school, I'd probably feel the same way, right? Knowing me? Yes.

Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. I need to vary my classroom experiences so I can gage what I can do long-term without burning out. Who knows where I'll end up. I just know I'll be in a school somewhere, hopefully earning a bit more than an aide's hourly wage.

Torchwood 2.12: Fragments

Chris Chibnall puts that old chestnut, your life flashing before your eyes just before you die, to good use in "Fragments," managing to avoid most of the clumsiness inherent in the typical origin story. It doesn't sit well that we're finally learning how Jack (John Barrowman) built his team just as it appears we're about to lose them all. "Fragments" is satisfying in that it answers many questions about our Torchwood Team, but ultimately it suffers from being nothing more than an extended setup for Chibnall's pull-out-the-stops season finale.

Read the rest over at The House Next Door.

Update: The episode's title has been corrected to "Fragments." Ross kindly pointed out that "Fractures" was a Farscape episode, so I didn't make up the other title out of whole cloth! What a week.

discernment

Funny, I didn't think it was something that could sneak up on you.

For a good part of my life, I've been thrashing around, trying to figure out what it is that I'm supposed to be doing. I've had jobs, and I had a career, and I'm having a great stint as a parent just now. I've dabbled with writing with some success, but I've come to realize my heart's not in it. I like it, but it's not something I want to spend all my time doing.

So after years of dithering, it really does come down to the most obvious thing, teaching. I find it fulfilling in ways that software development never approached. I don't think this sense is comparable to youthful enthusiasm, the kind that evaporates when it makes contact with reality. I'm not that young, and I have an understanding of the day-to-day grind that can comprise a lot of teaching.

But it doesn't have to be that way. I come away from my religious ed class on Monday nights with a tired voice but mentally recharged; it's the same way when I get home from the monthly thyroid cancer support meetings. This is good work.

Is it strange to find a vocation in my mid-forties? Better late than never.

Torchwood 2.11: Adrift

There are no aliens in Cardiff this week, but that shouldn't make us complacent. Series co-producer Chris Chibnall brings us back to Torchwood's bread and butter topic: the intersection of the human and the alien, and what it means to be human in the aftermath. Love and loss are common enough partners, but there's no trace of the maudlin here. The themes of hope and loss, two faces of love, are explored with heart-wrenching results.

Nearly brilliant, so close as to make no difference. Read the rest at The House Next Door.

it's not a joke

Yes, I am attending a community college, aka a junior college, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

I'm learning, it's fun, and it's what I need to do to get my certification. People can be strangely snobby about things like this. Yes, I have an undergraduate degree from MIT, but it's not as if I think of it as M! I! T! No one else should, either.

Honestly, most of what I learned at the 'tute (which was MIT's nickname back in the early 1980s; in previous eras, it was called "Tech", and I have no idea what it's called now) was intellectually interesting but had very little practical application to my life. What I'm learning now, I've already put to good use in the classroom. I'm already a better teacher, and I'm already enjoying teaching even more than I did before.

One thing's for sure: no one walks around Rio's (admittedly tiny) campus wearing t-shirts proclaiming IHTFP. That kind of ironic disdain is the sort of luxury that elite school students can afford. The rest of us live in the real world.

contemplating the past

Sometimes I think about things I did "in a previous life" -- before kids, before being married, while in school -- and I can't believe I did them. Some things I reject because I'd like to think I wasn't that naive or stupid. Some things I have trouble believing because it's hard to think that I was able to tough my way through, like biking three miles back and forth to school for two years, in all weather except falling snow -- and carrying my bike up to that third-floor walk-up apartment, once I got home.

It was just something I did, how I lived, but it's approaching almost mythic status, some kind of story I tell myself about my past. But it's not just a story, it's real. I wonder if a day will come when I stop believing it myself.

(Inspired by Nina.)

whew (#37)

Gone, gone, gone: Dysplastic nevus removed on 3/26/2008 via 3mm punch biopsy.
I've had so many skin biopsies that it surprises me that I still get upset when I get a message from the dermatologist's office, asking me to call back for the results.

Approximately 20 minutes elapsed from when I got the message until I could call back, and in that time I felt as if my heart was going to leap out of my chest. There's a jumble of hopes: it's benign; if it's not benign, they got it all; if they have to re-excise, they won't have to cut too much... (I'd like to be able to say there's no reason at all to worry, but I can't, even though the vast majority of my biopsies have come back just fine.)

I called. The shoulder biopsy was benign, and the leg biopsy was, as expected, a dysplastic nevus. Since I was diagnosed with Atypical Mole Syndrome several years ago, that wasn't a surprise. Happily, the margins were clean -- he got it all, so I don't need to go under the knife again.

Now if only I could calm down as quickly as I can spin myself up.

Torchwood 2.10: From Out of the Rain

"From Out of the Rain" was so reminiscent of Season One's "Small Worlds" that it came as no surprise that it, too, was written by Peter Hammond. Like Hammond's inaugural episode, "From Out of the Rain" is atmospheric and creepy, and reaches back into history both personal and cultural. But where "Small Worlds" grappled with a well-known archetype, here we're dealing with something almost unrecognizable: a traveling sideshow that appears out of nowhere to abduct and murder. It was OK that we never got much of an explanation about the fairy elementals, but it's frustrating here that we never learn anything about the creatures that terrorize Cardiff. Well, not quite; even worse than the lack explanation is the curious lack of menace. "Small Worlds" worked, in part, because we knew that the elementals had the power to destroy everything. Both urgency and momentum are lacking, here; without that existential threat, there's little to engage beyond nostalgia.

Click here to read the rest at the House Next Door.

Torchwood 2.9: Something Borrowed

One of the sweetest scenes of the season-opening Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was Gwen (Eve Myles), wide-eyed, explaining to Jack (John Barrowman) that the ring she was wearing was an engagement ring. Rhys (Kai Owen) had asked, and she'd said yes, because "Nobody else will have me." Throughout the season the writing team has done a good job of referring to the wedding without making too big a deal of it, which was a very good thing. Anyone who has ever been married or planned a wedding knows how the process can take over your life; the problem is, the details you're obsessing over are deathly boring to the rest of the world. "Something Borrowed," a wedding episode, Torchwood-style, avoids both the precious and the obnoxious, with shape-shifting aliens, tons of snappy dialog, and terrific action set-pieces; in the end, love and a really, really big gun conquer all.

If you couldn't tell already, I thought this episode was a blast. Read the rest over at The House Next Door.

Torchwood 2.8: A Day in the Death

Nothing has really changed by the end of "A Day in the Death," but at least Owen (Burn Gorman) -- still dead -- has found a reason to hope. "A Day in the Death" is the circuitous story of Owen's journey from despair, and the two strangers he meets along the way. It all feels comfortably familiar, but the performances elevate it above cliché, most of the time.

Better late than never, right? It's been up over at The House Next Door for ages.

left shin, right shoulder

I should know better than to open my mouth at the dermatologist's. I went yesterday for my semi-annual "mole check" and asked him about the spot on the shin and the small non-healing wound on my shoulder. Today, he biopsied both of them -- punched out the shin, shaved the shoulder. Whee!

I'm wondering if I'm undergoing all this medical crap because I'm basically a whiner. In a recent conversation, someone said something like, "Well, I may have had that complication, but I just blew it off." With the implication that the complication then just straightened itself out.

My experience is, my body doesn't straighten itself out, it ties itself up into even bigger knots. I blew off the problems with my voice until my throat was constantly sore and I could barely speak; now I'm in speech therapy and it's much improved. I don't know, maybe everyone else is walking around enduring various dysfunctions and pain, they're just more stoic about it. Being stoic basically 1) gets me through the every day baseline issues I've decided I can live with, like the number that my RA+fibromyalgia combo does on my hands/hips/tailbone and 2) doesn't work for me for the stuff above and beyond the baseline issues.

My shoulder is quite annoying, but so far the shin is quiet. I wonder if it's because the anesthesia hasn't worn off yet, or it's just in a good place where it won't be pulled and disturbed all the time, unlike the shoulder.

as Spring Break draws to a close

I'm looking forward to getting some rest when it's over.

DS1 is having a sleepover; I expect they will be playing on that XBOX 360 well into the wee hours. At least they're in their pjs, and are nominally "in bed."

Got lots done but don't feel nearly ready for Easter, which is three days away.

Started my new class, Classroom Management, with exceptionally poor timing. The kids are around all day, when am I supposed to do my own classwork? Also, the first assignment requires that I interview a teacher... and it's spring break! It'll keep. Tomorrow's going to be an interesting day, what with the sleep deprivation and all.

new toy

Bought a new laptop today, for schoolwork. It was very, very reasonably priced at my local Best Buy. My first classes required hardly any work at all, and still they engendered a lot of jockeying for the home computers. Now that won't happen anymore, right?

It's oddly slow except when it's blindingly fast; setup has been a breeze, and I already have my school software running just as I need it too. Now I also have the opportunity to be one of those people who totes her computer along with her everywhere... somehow I don't see that happening, although I may bring it to our weekly Friday Borders run, to give myself the opportunity to do something productive.

"I'm busy"

I met with an academic advisor today to try and hammer out some kind of overall timeline for my studies, and to get answers to a few specific questions. It seemed every other sentence, some other commitment of mine would come up.

She said, "Next time I see you, I'll have a t-shirt for you that says 'I'm busy.'" We both cracked up. I am busy, though, and I like it. It's good for me.

Lots to do these days. I should make a list, but not here -- I need one I can carry around with me and cross things off of, just so I can get a sense of accomplishment.

Torchwood 2.7: Dead Man Walking

How fondly I recall last week's "Reset," the episode which brought Dr. Martha Jones (Freema Agyema) to Cardiff and unexpectedly killed off Torchwood's resident medical officer, Owen Harper (Burn Gorman). I was worried about whether or not Owen would stay dead, and I was right to be. "Dead Man Walking" oscillates between creepy and campy, and even occasional side jaunts into seriousness can't save it.

At times, I thought this one would topple over into "so bad it's good" territory, but alas, it didn't. Read the rest over at The House Next Door.

way late to this party

Well, whaddyaknow?


Buffy the Vampire Slayer is every bit as fun as everyone has been telling me all these years.

I'm so grateful for TV on DVD.

aced

When was the last time you had to factor a polynomial?

I couldn't remember, but somehow I managed to dredge up the process from the deep, dark recesses of my high school memories.

I don't normally have any use for algebra, but today I took the Accuplacer exam for my EDU class at Rio Salado, and it went very well. It took me an hour and 48 minutes to go through all five tests (my score/cut off), which included reading comprehension (119/78), sentence construction (117/87), writing (10/8), arithmetic (119/86), and elementary algebra (116/88).

I don't think I'll be having any difficulties with my classes.

let's try that again

I'm on round two of Cefzil, this time 500 mg twice a day, and for 15 days. If that doesn't knock this thing out of me, I don't know what will. I'm still hacking a bit but I do feel better. I think it's just a matter of waiting it out.

Torchwood 2.6: Reset

Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) first met then-medical student Martha Jones (Freema Agyema) in Doctor Who's third season pre-finale "Utopia," when Jack clung to the exterior of the TARDIS as it raced to the end of time. Luckily, Jack was uniquely qualified to solve the technical problems that were keeping the remnants of humanity from reaching their final home, and it was Jack's wrist jump-unit that got the Doctor and his two companions away in the nick of time in "The Sound of Drums." But it was in "The Last of the Time Lords" that Martha Jones saved the world, and Jack Harkness is one of very few people alive who remembers it. It's a great pleasure, then, when Dr. Jones arrives at Torchwood, where aliens may shuffle in and out, but the monster of the week is nearly always human.

Click here to read the rest over at the House Next Door.

Torchwood 2.5: Adam

Torchwood enters Bizarro World when an alien reprograms the team's memories – and personalities – in "Adam." We're short on science fiction and long on character again this week, as is usual for writer Catherine Tregenna, but we get a big juicy chunk of Captain Jack's backstory. It's up to you whether or not it's a worthy trade. I was happy to hear Gray's story only four episodes after John Hart dropped that bombshell ("I found Gray") on Jack.

Click here to read the rest at the House Next Door.

still here, still sick

I've still got this cold, or possibly I just coincidentally caught another cold before the first one really cleared out. Regardless, I'm still sick.

I've tried everything -- Mucinex, Mucinex with cough suppressant, Sudafed, Tylenol Sinus (on the recommendation of my ENT), Robitussin cough gels, Claritin... and nothing really works. Nothing. No matter what I take, I have congestion and a cough, sometimes productive, sometimes not. The cough has been the worst. I have never had a cold like this before. At least the cough is better now -- I haven't taken any cough-type medicine since yesterday morning, and for the most part I can ignore the urge to cough.

I did have a 10-day course of Cefzil that seemed to help for a while. My ENT confirmed that the original sinus and ear infections had cleared, but judging from what's happening now, I think it has come back or another has developed. I spend a lot of time blowing my nose, with disgusting results. (One thing I've discovered, post-turbinate reduction surgery: If I tip my head down while I'm blowing my nose, my sinuses clear out a lot better. Maybe that would've worked before the surgery, too, but I don't think so. I never could clear my sinuses well before the surgery, which is of course the reason I had it.)

Last week was uniquely busy. I subbed in the pre-school 4-year-old class all week, and it was a blast, although it would've been a lot more fun if I weren't having to medicate myself every day so as not to be hacking all over the classroom. I also started my classes at Rio Salado, such as they are. Nothing much to do just yet, but things will pick up once I take my placement exam next week. On top of all that, there was a Thyca meeting Tuesday night, the kids started fencing lessons last weekend, and we discovered the most recent leak in the dining room ceiling is from the roof, which we had fixed to the tune of about $1800.

Finally, I just watched the most recent episode of Torchwood, "Reset," and I can't believe (highlight to see spoiler):
They killed Owen! Those bastards!
Now I just have to find some time to write it all up.

unexpected side effects

For over two weeks now, I've been dealing with this stupid head congestion/ post-nasal drip/ brutal cough illness. I've completed eight days of anti-biotics to clear up the sinus and ear infection parts of it, but still, the rest of it persists. I even broke down and started taking Sudafed yesterday, which helps a lot but still, drip-drip-drip leads to coughing fits.

I've had post-nasal drip before, in fact I've had one for a good part of my adult life. What I can never remember happening before is having so much drip that it produces a nasty cough. I realized that's because everything used to get stuck up inside my sinus cavities, before my turbinate reduction surgery. Now, everything drains, but I still got sinus and ear infections... here's hoping they're my last.

The worst part is that all that dripping and coughing is seriously interfering with my voice therapy. At least I have a reasonable excuse for why I'm not doing everything I'm supposed to, but it's frustrating.

Torchwood 2.4: Meat

From the beginning, we all knew that former police constable Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) would someday be forced to choose between her sweetheart Rhys (Kai Owen) and her dashing Torchwood boss Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman). In Catherine Tregenna's "Meat," Gwen makes her choice.

While pretty weak on its sci-fi aspects, this episode rocked for its character development. If you've ever wondered what would happen if Rhys went toe-to-toe with Jack, you're about to find out. Read the rest over at The House Next Door.

well, that wasn't supposed to happen

So I've been working with the 4-year-olds since the middle of last week, and we've settled into a good routine. Today another woman came in to observe the class, to see if she'd like to take the aide position permanently.

I'm surprised by my reaction, which was mostly negative, but not negative enough for me to step up and say, "OK, give me the job for the rest of the year." I still don't know if I want that! Oy.

I love the little ones. They are so very tiny and just figuring out the world, they are infinitely curious, and I love that about them. I can see why there are so many pre-school teachers out there (at the teacher certification orientation I attended this week, that's one of the things I learned).

Well, we'll see how it goes. I'll be back in there subbing for the teacher the last week of the month, and that should be a blast. Whether or not I'm in there on other days, just depends on how things go with the other aide.

Torchwood 2.3: To the Last Man

Helen Raynor, writer of the solid first season episode Ghost Machine, teams up with Torchwood series creator Russell T. Davies to bring us another kind of ghost story in "To the Last Man." Here, we're haunted by the omnipresent shadow of war, and the vagaries that forge unwitting young men into heroes, and sometimes martyrs to the greater good.

Click here to read the whole thing at the House Next Door.

infinite capacity for self-delusion

It's not just me, it's a human tendency. At times, I'm sure it's the only thing that makes survival -- maybe just sanity? -- possible.

I can talk myself into (out of) anything. It's looking like I might be aiding in the 4-year-old preschool class regularly for the indefinite future. It's not what I want to do but they need someone, and it's hard to find someone and it's hard on the kids to have different people bouncing in and out of the classroom. You see how this goes?

Well. We'll know more tomorrow.

*snap*

It's amazing how easy it is to break something ephemeral like the connection I felt you feel to, say, a particular blog.

More.

This is, as I described elsewhere, a tempest in a teapot.

One of the more off-the-wall regular commenters at Althouse started posting non sequitor replies about how Ann doesn't care about her commenters, look at what happened with Sippican Cottage (aka Sippican). I won't link to his blog because I'm sure he wouldn't want to be involved in this silliness, but suffice it to say, he was a valued contributor to the comment threads on Althouse, until one day someone started posting stuff about his kids, stuff that crossed the line. Sippican decided he didn't want to expose his family to anything like that, and so he pulled up his stakes and he left: he deleted all of his comments, in every thread. (I admire his thoroughness and dedication to the task.)

Back in the present, the number and ferocity of the Sippican-related postings was increasing, so I stepped in to say I found those posts objectionable. I was surprised when Ann chimed in, not to tell the obnoxious commenter to knock it off, but to criticize Sippican for being "destructive to the community."

There was some back-and-forth; Ann's last long reply is still standing, and she asked me to explain why I think she thinks "it's all about her", so I tried -- and you can see where it got me.

I didn't save a copy of the comment I wrote which Ann deleted, but I did spend a long time writing and re-writing it. Here's a reasonable recreation of the high (or low, depending) points; italics represent quotes from Ann's reply:

And if you want to keep saying that I think it's "all about me," why don't you explain it, because I don't think that makes sense. I'm talking about threads where a lot of people wrote and interacted.
Yes, lots of people wrote and interacted, and then moved on. The relevance of blog comments drops precipitously once the posts scroll off the main page. They're so much water over the dam, or under the bridge, or wherever that water goes when it keeps on flowing. They're just not that important.

But I do have an interest in the integrity of my website, which I have worked very hard on for over 4 years. Why are you insulting me for caring about it?
Ahem. This is not a website, it's a blog. You're not even invested enough to get your own hosting service and proper blogging software so you can ban the nuisance commenters. You post a lot of content, but that's because it's what you like to do. You also generate a lot of attention and income. I'd say you get a pretty good ROI from this blog. Do you think you'd be writing NYT editorials without it?

As for "integrity," people realize that old links are going to be broken or full of holes if the page still exists. That's the nature of the medium, and you've been around long enough to know that.

You're coming off as pissy here because a commenter deleted his own comments, and you called him "destructive to the community." "Destructive" is overkill because there was never any question of the "integrity" of Althouse blog, or even its traffic, somehow being damaged. "Community" is an overstatement of what actually happens in here, which is that a random collection of people drifts in and out.

I don't see how deleting all the old comments achieved anything positive. [References and links to Sippican are] all still there. It is just a lot less coherent.
Sippican made a decision to control where his words would appear. He can't control what you quote or what you link to, that's the nature of blogging, but he could control his own content.

f I had a way to bar comment deletion by anyone other than the administrator (me), I would do it...
I find it disturbing that you would take away my ability to delete my own comments if you could. What if I made an egregious typo? What if the cat walked across the keyboard and hit publish accidentally? They're my words, I should be able to decide what happens to them.

You've done a lot of great work here, but from time to time have shown an alarming level of narcissism. Now is one of those times.

-----
I've spent hundreds, possibly thousands of hours in comments -- both reading and writing -- at Althouse. Still, I'm starting school next week (or thereabouts), so now seems like a good time to cut back. Brooklyn doesn't suit Professor Althouse. Perhaps she'll gain new perspective on this issue when she returns to Madison.

varia

Time is going by too quickly, but stuff happens that I want to make a note of, so:

-- I worked two days last week. On Thursday night I got a call from the sub coordinator, asking if I could work Friday, because the teacher had specifically requested me as her sub. That was really nice.

-- Also in the "ego boost" category, I'm scheduled for a story time later this month; the regular story teller is taking a long weekend with her husband, God bless them both, and the manager told her to get me to cover. She told me this, I blushed, and she went on, "You know, we've had some other people cover for me, but we always want you."

-- I had my voice therapy evaluation on Thursday morning, after I drove up there for nothing on Wednesday morning because I cannot, apparently, read a calendar, even given several attempts. I wrote the appointment on the correct day, I just consistently misread it. Anyway, the appointment went well and the therapist is starting me on something called Lessac-based Resonant Voice Therapy for the next 6 or 8 Thursdays.

-- The new mortgage stuff is in the works; we've signed all the papers, now we're just waiting to get all the accounts set up. Hopefully it will all work out as planned.

-- I got a rather nasty shock in the mail, a Blue Cross explanation of benefits showing I owed the surgery center, where I had my septoplasty and turbinate reduction done last December, roughly $10,000. Considering that the only reason I had the surgery done last year was because I had already met my deductible by that point, this registered at the heart-attack level of shock. It turns out that yes, the center was out-of-network, but they blew some smoke at me about "honoring your insurance's allowed amounts," and telling me to sign over the check when I got it from BCBS. But they -- and I, and it's really my fault -- forgot to take into account that there is a separate deductible for out-of-network providers, and I had paid exactly $0 of it. Then the "allowed amount" worked out to be less than that deductible, which means I'm responsible for the whole amount. Needless to say: panic, and many phone calls. As of Friday, we were down to only owing them $972, but even that is horrible, considering we've already given them $450, and if they were in network, we would've only ended up paying $300. I'm supposed to call tomorrow and find out what the final figure is, apparently they're going to apply some magic co-insurance formula. They've actually been really nice about it, but it still has been horribly upsetting.

-- DS1 turned 11! We got him a Wii Zapper and a bunch of video games and the new Ken Jennings Trivia book, and he was very psyched. Mom made him a brownie cake and an ice cream cake; alas, both are gone now.

-- The Patriots lost the SuperBowl to the Giants, who out-played them and had the momentum going in. The Pats have been struggling their last 5 or so games, whereas the Giants seemed to be getting stronger and stronger. It looked as if Brady might pull out that perfect season, but the D gave up a huge play in the final minute of the game, which gave Eli Manning all that he needed to score the winning TD. (sigh) Congrats to the Giants, they played hard and earned their win.

-- DH's father has developed another infection after being in rehab for several weeks. The poor man hasn't been home since before Thanksgiving, but had been making excellent progress at the rehab hospital. This new infection has kind of thrown the doctors; he's on anti-biotics and we're praying they clear it up, because otherwise they'll have to open him up again to clean it out.

-- Ash Wednesday is this week! Practically the earliest possible Easter, this year.

-- Torchwood's second season is shaping up very nicely so far. I'm getting comfortable with a long form hybrid recap/review, but man, those things take a lot of writing. It's good for me, though, forcing me to describe what's happening as concisely as possible so I can spend time talking about what it all means or why it's important.

-- I've been on 7.5 mcg of Cytomel, up from 5, along with my 125 Levoxyl for about two weeks now, and overall I feel much better. Less brain fog, and I'm not freezing to death quite as often. But I still do get quite cold at times, no matter how wrapped up I am. I think there's something going on there, but I'm not sure what.

-- One possibility is that the Prilosec I'm taking (now up to 3 a day: before breakfast, before dinner, before bed, with no side effects [yay!]); I saw a few references here and there that Prilosec can interfere with absorption of thyroid hormones. I've been taking Prilosec with my morning thyroid meds for ages now, and no one ever said boo about it. I really have to research that more thoroughly. Regardless, my reflux is still poorly controlled; I'm finding myself running out of breath when I speak, and also that stupid reflux cough is back. I'm hoping the 3x/day dosing will help calm things down a bit. I go back to see Dr. G at the end of this month, and I really don't want to hear the word "surgery" come out of his mouth (Even if fundoplication could help, I'm just not psychologically prepared to go under the knife again, any time soon. Enough is enough.)

-- I've told everyone so I can't back out now (I can talk myself out of anything): I'm starting the post-bac teacher certification program at Rio Salado College. I've been out of school almost 24 years now. I'll probably be in classes with people who weren't even born when I was graduating from college. I pray: Lord, I'm old; please help me.

-- Related to that last, my RA/fibromyalgia are running me down. Hands, feet, hips, with the fibro going after my left piriformis and surrounding muscles as usual. I thought that regular exercise was keeping these beasts at bay, but no, the weather had a lot to do with it, too. Oh, I'm sure the exercise helped, but as soon as it snapped cold and got a bit damp: ouch. Well, I'm sure I'd be even more miserable if I weren't exercising, and I'm sure I'd be less miserable if I'd get more sleep.

Speaking of -- I'm in a bad groove here, multiple consecutive late nights, it's not good, even if I can sleep till 10AM on Sundays. I certainly can't tomorrow, the alarm will be going off in approximately 4 hours. I wish I could figure out a more productive way to deal when something's bothering me.

Torchwood 2.2: Sleeper

After the entertaining fluff of Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Season 2's follow-up effort hits hard. A mash-up of the recurrent themes from Battlestar Galactica and 24, "Sleeper" walks down a checklist of hot-button items, but with grace and feeling, avoids bludgeoning viewers with any particular viewpoint. There's a lot to be said for a show that lets you make up your own mind about how you feel about what's going on.

Click here to read the rest at the House Next Door.

Torchwood 2.1: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

When Torchwood's second season debut opens with a cliché-ridden car chase, you can't help but wonder if the show runners are trying too hard. Between-seasons PR promised more team spirit and more fun; what I'm hoping for is a settled sense of, and respect for, the target audience and a lot more consistency with the characterization. "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" easily transcends its ridiculous lead-off, and sets the tone for a new season of less bickering, more questions, some answers, and a good mix of otherworldly technology, aliens, sex, and action. It works.

Click here to read the rest at The House Next Door.

tailoring

I'm suffering from bad fit right now, only not clothes: me. Round peg, square hole, that sort of thing.

There are a bunch of things I want to do, but am not doing. Time constraints do not figure in here. The only constraints are self-imposed. I don't like doing some things, like writing, unless I'm by myself and have psychological room to work. Psychological room, aka "alone time" is in short supply these days.

Since I can't (and don't want to) change the circumstances, I have to change myself. I have to figure out a way to trim some resistance here and some inertia there and just get over it and do the work.

fog has lifted

The PA at my endocrinologist's office listened patiently to my long spiel about the gastroparesis and other hypo symptoms, remarked that I'm technically hyperthyroid, and then said it would be OK for me to increase my Cytomel by 2.5mcg/day.

I don't care if it's just placebo effect, but I'm feeling much better.

My sleeping is a little screwed up, but I don't really care, I'm feeling that much better. I woke up without feeling as if I had been hit by a truck for the first time in long memory. That was great. Also, when I wake up, I'm awake, not wandering around in a daze for an hour.

My limbs still feel leaden from time to time, but overall, it's just so much better I can't even believe it. So far no palpitations or other weirdness, although I did have a few seconds of eye-twitch Friday evening, something I'd not had in a long time, but haven't noticed since.

Inspired by this improvement, or perhaps just insane, I've gone back on the Prilosec because it really does the best job at acid control. So far I'm not having side effects from it, but we'll see if they occur over time. It may just be that I have to take a break for a few days every so often. I can handle that.

I'm hoping that this meds increase straightens me out, or at least gets me back to where I was at this time last year. Cautious optimism it is. Now I have enough energy to invest in hope.

what I'm wondering

People who don't have chronic diseases, who don't have to take medications or they'll die, who don't have to deal with one bodily system after another going wonky on them -- what's that like?

What's it like not having to be careful how you move or lift or bend, so that shooting pains don't run up and down various limbs? What's it like being able to eat without wondering how sick it's going to make you feel later? What's it like being able to get up in the morning -- or let your stomach get empty at other times during the day -- without feeling like you're going to puke?

What's it like not having to take two dozens pills everyday, just to keep the cacophony down below 4 on the pain scale? What's it like being able to talk and swallow without feeling like there's something stuck in your throat? What's it like getting up in the morning without feeling as if you've been hit by a truck? What's it like to not be freezing all the time, and to not have skin so dry that your digits crack?

I don't remember what it's like. The hit-by-a-truck thing started in my early 20s, along with a whole alphabet of stuff that doesn't really bother me now (PCOS, IBS, TMD) but that made my college years miserable. (Well, the TMD reappeared but now I wear a splint to keep it under control.) That stuff is nothing compared to recurrent thyroid cancer and the current gastroparesis/reflux combination nightmare.

I'm thinking it must be awesome. Like, if you're feeling tired, you could sleep and when you wake up, you'd feel better, not just less sleepy.

I'm jealous, I admit it. On a daily basis, I literally ignore any RA- or fibromyalgia-related twinges, because they rarely register as anything more than twinges. The things that are bothering me the most right now are the poorly-controlled reflux and the resultant sore and lumpy-feeling throat. (I am perversely thrilled that the "rapid transit" problem I've been dealing with for the past few years has resolved, even though the resolution -- discontinuing Prilosec -- is contributing to the uncontrolled acid situation.)

I'm not consciously aware of it, but I realize that I expend a lot of energy on ignoring or managing these symptoms. Some days I just get tired of it, even though it's not stopping me from doing anything I want to do. OK, that's not really true, I've got a slight near-depression thing going on that's making everything a struggle, even though I am accomplishing things at a decent pace. I should be happier about those accomplishments, but it's like there's a gray pall cast over everything that's taking the glow off.

I really, really hope I can get my meds adjusted tomorrow. I think it could help a lot. I'm dreading the appointment because the last one did not go well and I don't think tomorrow's will, either. But I need help and I'm not sure where else to go for it, if my endo boots me to the curb for having the temerity to suggest, again, that she might consider mailing lab results to her patients instead of forcing them to schedule follow-up appointments.

No matter what happens it will be a relief to get the appointment over with, and to know where I stand with the endo. And no matter that this post makes it sound as if I'm barely functioning, nothing could be farther from the truth: I'm doing well enough that I can do a very good imitation of a healthy person, or a generally healthy person with a really sore throat. My gastroparesis isn't nearly as bad as I know it could be, and for that I'm thankful. I won't say "never been better" because that's clearly not true, but I'm OK. Really, I am.

busy week

... so far.

Worked Monday, then taught my RE class as usual; killer sore throat by the end of the day.

Tuesday (was that just yesterday?) errands in the morning, then the new curtains for the family room arrived, so I put them up. That entailed all sorts of climbing up and down the stepladder, but the room looks nicely finished now, especially since I finally put up all the family pictures over the weekend.

Tuesday night, I decided to tackle the dead monitor situation on the kids' computer. It had just stopped working a few days ago. I thought the monitor had died so I went out after supper and bought a new one. I fully expected to come home, plug it in, and be hailed as a hero in the morning, but it was not to be. After much switching around of monitors (and at least 2 hours' worth of looking for work-arounds and chatting with an HP technician), we determined that the monitor is in fact fine, it's the video card in the computer. That was disappointing, and time-consuming; I stayed up even later trying to find my transcript and failing.

I needed my transcript because this morning I met with the education advisor at Chandler-Gilbert Community College to see if I could do any coursework towards a teaching certificate there. Alas, I can't; they're just a community college and I'm a "post-bac" student. It's too bad, because they're only about 5 minutes away from here. It would've been very convenient. I spent a lot of time today looking into different programs at different schools around here, and believe I've found one, but I'll get to that eventually.

My research was interrupted by the appraiser; we're refinancing again to an equity accelerator mortgage. Even if the world goes nuts, we'll pay off our mortgage in about 11 years, which is pretty awesome.

Today I slugged through all my medical records and put them in order, and then went through them all and recorded my TSH and other thyroid levels on a worksheet that we've been recommending to our thyca patients for years now. As I suspected, my TSH has generally been between 0.05 and 0.07. But since I started tinkering with my meds, it hasn't been lower than 0.09, where it is now. I think I spent 2 hours on paperwork today.

It doesn't seem like much written out like this but most of it has been a struggle. My throat hurts all the time and I spend about 40% of my time feeling nauseated or bloated. I'm hoping I can get an increase in my thyroid meds to see whether or not it affects the gastroparesis. I'll find out tomorrow.

records check

Yesterday I saw my ENT, today I saw my endo. Between those two appointments and a recorded message, I have a whole bunch of tests results, because my ENT had all my test results from my g/e doc, and kindly gave me copies.

So, here's the rundown, chronologically.

November 20: Gastric Emptying Study. This is where I had to eat a radioactive hard-boiled egg and then lie on a scanner bed for 90 minutes while they watched the radioactive tracer leave my stomach. Only it didn't: "FINDINGS: Over the course of the examination, for the entirety of 90 minutes, there was relatively no emptying of radiotracer from the stomach." Impressions indicate gastroparesis or a gastric outlet obstruction, which explains why the EGD was ordered.

November 28: EGD, as previously discussed here. The EGD itself was unremarkable except for some redness, but now I have the biopsy results. The stomach samples showed "mild changes suggestive of a chemical gastropathy;" a "careful search" was made for H. pylori, and none was found. "Taken in aggregrate, the changes that are present are likely due to chemical or drug injury. There is no evidence of intestinal metaplasia or neoplasia." The esophageal biopsies were completely normal as well; no signs of Barrett's esophagus or any other pre-cancerous conditions. No signs of ulcers, either. This is all very good -- no obstructions or ulcers or pre-cancerous changes.

December 11: Video Stroboscopy
My right vocal fold and right arytenoid/TVF are slightly paralyzed (hypofunctioning), and this has caused other structures in my throat to hyperfunction to compensate. I've also got lumpy cricoid and arytenoid cartilage because of the gastric reflux. "Speech pathology services are recommended in conjunction with medical management to address the following: 1) vocal hygiene and hydration 2) laryngeal reposturing and relaxation 3) vocal function tasks 4) resonant treatment." Therapy recommended for 6-8 weeks, once a week; I'm scheduled to start Jan 30.

(This week in between tests I got DS1's horrid stomach virus, recovered, and went to Boston for the weekend.)

December 17: Air-contrast Upper GI - Small Bowel Series (fluoroscopy)
My reflux extends all the way up to the level of the carina (???), otherwise, I'm normal. Apparently, "to the level of the carina" is bad; the first thing my ENT said to me is "you have really extensive reflux," emphasis his. I thought we knew that already?

Jan 3: In to see the g/e doc, as discussed. So far, I am unimpressed by both Nexium and Aciphex, but Nexium works marginally better than Aciphex. Then again, I didn't drink about a quart of regular (that is, non-decaf) coffee accidentally when I was on the Nexium, so I don't know how it would've handled at. I got into a conversation about the new sugar free ("skinny") mocha at Starbucks and completely forgot to order it decaf. I didn't even realize my mistake until about an hour later when the jitters set in.

Jan 7: Labs drawn for complete blood count (CBC), liver function, and thyroid tests. I don't have the numbers for the CBC and liver functions yet, but I did get a call telling me everything was in normal range. I should get my copy of those tests early next week. I got my thyroid numbers today at the endo's. My TSH is 0.09, and it was the same back in November (11/19).

I had an ultrasound of my neck today, and will go back to my endo's office next Friday for my results, at which time I will beg for an increase in my meds. Historically, I've kept my TSH more suppressed than 0.09; I'm usually somewhere around 0.07, it seems to me. (I really have to get my records organized.) I don't know whether that slight difference in TSH can be causing or effecting the gastroparesis, but it's my first preference for treatment. I'd also like to not have freezing hands and feet all the time.

I know it's a teeny, tiny difference, but my TSH hasn't been down in the basement where it belongs for quite a while, and I'm hoping that bumping up the meds can resolve the gastroparesis and that the reflux will calm down.

that didn't take long

On Thursday, I got a prescription for Reglan to help with my gastroparesis. I started it Thursday evening and took the prescribed 4 doses on Friday... and could barely keep my head up.

Thursday I was tired anyway, having been up stupid-late the night before. So Thursday night I went to bed at a decent hour and got plenty of sleep, and still Friday I was like a zombie. A zombie with bizarre emotional reactions, like laughing too long at something that would ordinarily merit a smile or at the most a chuckle.

Needless to say, I quit taking the stuff.

Yesterday's research brought me to a support forum where there was plenty of discussion of gastroparesis, Reglan, and all that jazz. I'd say the majority of people who talked about trying Reglan couldn't deal with the side effects, but some were helped by Domperidone, with fewer side effects.

Gastroparesis is caused either by damage to the vagus nerve*, or by a problem with the muscles that control the stomach's normal churning motions. Many cases are idiopathic, but hypothyroidism is linked to the condition. I even found an abstract that demonstrated that thyca patients who go hypo (become extremely hypothyroid) for their whole body scans develop gastroparesis during their hypo phase. I don't know why it took me so long to put these facts together, but I realized the following that may have something to do with my current condition:

1) I spent a good deal of time last year hypothyroid, because of the great med experiment in which I discontinued my Cytomel, and during which my endocrinologist was strangely loathe to increase my Levoxyl.
2) I had a Thyrogen-stimulated whole body scan in August. It's true that I did not become systemically hypothyroid, but my TSH was outrageous (159!), and I felt off for a while after that. So off, as a matter of fact, that I finally went back on my old Cytomel+Levoxyl regimen in early September.
3) I have no idea what my levels are, since I have yet to see my November thyroid panel results which were run to see how the return to the old regimen was suiting me. For all I know, I've been hypo this whole time. There have certainly been times when I've felt hypo -- cold all the time, skin drier than paper, funky hypo half-brows -- but I'm generally not fatigued, nor am I depressed or brain-fogged... that I've noticed, even though there has been a lot of stress lately.

I'm going tomorrow for bloodwork -- a thyroid panel from my endo, and complete blood work from my g/e doc -- so we'll get a look at what's really going on there. I'm actually seeing my endocrinologist on Friday, and I'm curious as to what my numbers look like, I haven't seen them since August. (She's an idiot about releasing them to her patients through the mail.)

I'm hopeful that the gastropareris is a result of being slightly hypo for many months, and that perhaps it can resolve on its own if I can tweak my levels appropriately.

---
* I could also have sustained damage to my vagus nerve during my surgeries; I know that I sustained some damage to my recurrent laryngeal nerve, which is a branch of the vagus. I really don't want to think about that, but it's something I'll discuss with my ENT when I see him on Thursday.

on the last day of Christmas

Low carb & sugar free, except for the white chocolate "ornaments"

I made a Christmas Tree cake to celebrate Epiphany, and to close out the kids' school vacation in style.

The cake itself is the ever-popular chocolate banana cake, with the same frosting mentioned in the column -- 8 ounces of cream cheese, softened, whipped with about 2T of sugar free vanilla syrup, folded into about a cup and a half of heavy cream, whipped separately with another couple of tablespoons of sf syrup. I added a tablespoon of dried egg whites to the frosting this time to see if it would stabilize it; it tends to evaporate overnight in the refrigerator. I used a ton of green food coloring but still the color came out that pale mint green, but the flavor and texture were excellent, and nicely set off the dense chocolate banana cake.

Trimmings were about 1/4 cup unsweetened coconut in a ziploc bag with a drizzle of sf syrup and 8 drops of liquid food coloring, followed by shaking like mad to distribute the color and sweetener evenly.

I used a teaspoon to trim the tree, and then dotted the white chocolate chips around for the ornaments.

We ate about a third of it after dinner. DD, who was over at a friend's house for most of the day, was completely enchanted with the cake when she came home. She finished her salad in record time so she wouldn't "have to wait forever to have some Christmas tree cake!" For the first time in recorded history, she finished dinner first.

It worked out perfectly having this now. We've eaten our way through all the Christmas treats and sweets. If I had made the cake for Christmas day, it would have been lost in the shuffle. Having it now made today special. The kids have already asked if we can do this again next year; I think it would make a lovely family tradition. I'm already looking forward to making a lamb cake at Easter.

I'll try it, but I have my doubts

I saw the doctor today, and now have a diagnosis: my stomach doesn't empty properly. The doctor thinks I had an infection at some point and that led to this problem, technically called gastroparesis. It usually hits diabetics and some cancer patients, but there is a tiny percentage of people who get it following an infection, including, apparently, me.

I'm on a new drug to treat it, Reglan. The list of side effects (including dizziness, drowsiness, depression, suicidal ideation) is scary -- obviously I will have to pay attention to these things. If the dizzy/drowsy thing happens, I simply can't take it, because, you know, I have a life and it's not as if I can just give up driving.

Reglan, or metoclopramide, crosses the blood-brain barrier which is why it can cause these screwy side-effects. There's a drug available in Canada, Domperidone, that has much the same effect, but doesn't cross the barrier, and so has far fewer side effects. The only problem is, the FDA hasn't approved it -- and my g/e doc has no idea why they haven't. Apparently it's not difficult to get, though.

DH is highly skeptical that this is going to work: Oh, so you'll just go on this medication for 3 months and then you'll be fine? Right. I can see his point. I'm also concerned about the side effects, always thinking about that cost-v-benefit equation. How much is this really going to help to stop my acid reflux? The doctor suspects some muscle weakness in the ring muscle at the top of my stomach, but it's a chicken/egg situation: the slow emptying is stressing the ring muscle, so if the emptying improves, maybe the muscle can get better and that will help, too.

Possibly the worst thing about this new drug is that I'm supposed to take it 30 minutes before I eat, 3 times a day. I do not eat on anything even remotely like a schedule, and now I'm supposed to figure out when I'm eating, subtract 30 minutes from that, and remember to take this stuff? Breakfast and supper shouldn't be too difficult, but lunch is always going to be a problem. At least it doesn't interfere with any other medications or supplements (at least not the ones I'm taking.)

In the meantime, I've got two different acid-blockers to try out as well. This is going to take a little while to figure out. I took one at dinner and felt a little spacy, but I had been feeling exhausted all day. Am I just tired, or is it the new meds? We'll see what happens tomorrow.

wrapping up

I managed to get quite a bit of stuff done around the house before DH came home on the first. The kids have been terrific, with today being the first day we've had any kind of a spat -- I think DS2 has had too much vacation, and too little sleep. Just a few more days, and then it's back to the grind. This has been a lovely interlude, even including the occasional child's freakout.

Tomorrow I'm seeing Dr. G, my gastroenterologist, about all those tests he ordered. I haven't taken the Questran in a few weeks now, and haven't needed it; we'll see how I do once I'm not taking the post-op Cipro that I completed today. I'm holding out hope that whatever the problems were, they were caused by the medications, even though I know I had a real problem (acid reflux) which is what started the whole thing going anyway. I will admit to being quite nervous about this appointment, because something is going on with my weight, I'm eating ridiculously and holding steady at about 136 pounds. I like this weight, but I wonder what would happen if I stopped eating all the junk I've been indulging in. Usually after a stomach virus, your weight bounces right back up, but mine hasn't, and that is making me somewhat agitated even though it is a small weight loss (about 7 pounds).

Next week I see both Dr. O, my ENT, and Dr. R, my endocrinologist. The ENT appointment is my last follow-up on the septoplasty and turbinate reduction, which has gone very well, I'd say. My front teeth are still killing me from time to time (not enough for me to want to medicate even with ibuprofen), but at least I can breathe through my nose, all the time. It's a miracle! But we will also discuss what is to be done about the results of the video stroboscopy, which showed deformities of my cricoid and arytenoid cartilage in my esophagus. I have no idea what caused that (reflux? compensating for the nerve damage from my surgery?) and no idea what can be done to correct it. I will probably end up in voice therapy for a few weeks because apparently I have a horrible posture (!) and am doing bad things, voice-wise; who knew? Well, physical therapy has always helped me and this should, too, since my throat gets very sore by the end of the day. It will be nice to know what's going on in there.

The endo appointment, I have no idea what's going to happen. She's rather intractable about an important issue, namely, releasing copies of lab and other test results by mail or over the phone. She insists that everyone come in to get them, which is ridiculous for routine follow-ups requiring no further treatment or intervention. I have the feeling I may be booted from her practice because I keep bringing this up. It would really be too bad, but I frankly don't want to have to deal with driving 45-60 minutes and spending $50 just to sit there for a half an hour until I can get a photocopy of my perfectly fine lab results. It's stupid. I'm curious to see what my thyroid panel looks like, though, since my skin is ridiculously dry but I'm not having any other hypo symptoms. It's weird, and possibly related to my recent experiment with discontinuing my supplements and then adding them back in over time to see how they affect me. So far, the effects on my digestion have been excellent -- no Prilosec, no need for Questran! -- but my RA is flaring slightly, everything feels a bit stiff, and as I said, my skin is incredibly dry in spite of a real effort to stay more hydrated and ridiculous quantities of lotions, balms, etc applied in effort to keep me from cracking and peeling into oblivion.

The dry skin is annoying, but I'm dealing with it, just as I'll deal with whatever the g/e doc says tomorrow. I dread him saying that the tests are inconclusive, just as I dread him saying it's something serious -- how serious could it be, after all? I'm not sick!

There's no point in this kind of anxiety-building speculation, but I always do it anyway. I don't even have any guesses this time. I was hoping for H. pylori, which has a relatively easy treatment, but I think if it was that, I would've been treated for it already. (If it turns out to be H. pylori, I will definitely scold him for waiting so long to tell me.) I have to remind myself, it's not always bad news. Really, it's not.