(Yes, amphipodgirl just posted more or less the same message...)

We use Hebrew as our "secret language" when we don't want the girls to know what we're talking about. I'd always hoped that it would inspire curiosity in the girls. Well... this evening, I asked Chris if she'd like some gelato. Michelle looked at me and asked "What means גלידה? What means גלידה Daddy?"

I think it's only fair for me to explain to her that גלידה means "ice cream"...

In the last two weeks, some of my old IBS has returned. It's nothing serious; it's just annoying. It's a way that my body has to tell me that I'm too stressed about something, and need to take a break... or something.

About two weeks ago, I adjusted my mental model of my relationship with a couple of my coworkers. I'm entirely responsible for assignments to one of them, and I'm partially responsible for assignments to the other. I also take part in discussions they have with the CEO about the details of their work. My mental model now claims that I'm, more or less, their boss.

I am deeply suspicious that the timing of these two things is not coincidence. I'm just not sure what to do about it.

Michelle: "I got yogurt in my eye!"

I'm not really sure what else to say...

Yesterday afternoon, I saw a young boy come up to the house with a handful of those paper flyers that attach to doorknobs. His parents were watching at the curb. I thought I saw "BSA" on the flyers. So, I opened my door before he got there, and said "Hi". Then I asked, "Are those from the Boy Scouts?"
"Yes", he said.
I said, sadly, "I'm sorry, but I won't do anything with your organization, because it discriminates against gay people."
He looked a little confused, and then his mom pleasantly told him that they'd just go on to the next house.

So, was I mean to a cub scout who was probably too young to understand what was going on? Or did I take a reasonable, tiny step towards Truth and Justice? Since everything was polite, I think it was okay. Ideally, the kid would have asked his mom what was going on...

Hmm...

I feel like I should post, as it's been a while since I've done so. Many things have happened, but nothing of great import.

I'm still getting used to the idea of not having another child. Sometimes I'll be reminded of it, and I'll just stop and be sad for a little while. Early last week, it became a bit too much for me, and I had to take a rather sudden and lengthy walk away from the house for a while. I calmed down eventually, and talked about it with my wonderful Chris. It can be hard, sometimes, having strong feelings about things. I'm lucky to have someone in my life who is supportive and patient through such times.

My parents came and visited for an extended weekend. It was good to see them. When they come out to visit these days, I feel like I really don't get to see them much, being busy with work and the kids and all. But it's still good to see them.

While they were here, Chris and I spent an evening away without the girls. For me, I'm not sure that it's that different from just going out to dinner or something. But Chris got to sleep in--until 10:30--while I sat in the hotel room and read.

I got a new hat that weekend, too... a black fedora to go with my brown one.

I seem to have a bit of a cough. I've been coughing for a few days, and yesterday I felt slightly queasy and tired. Hopefully the cough will resolve itself without any further drama.

There's a new guy at work who seems like he'll be a fine person to work with. The help is greatly appreciated, although it means I'm going to have to actually let go of parts of the project if someone else is going to work on it with me. Things do look generally hopeful at work. Even if things don't work out, it's fun watching the CEO dance.

I'm working on arranging Billy Joel's Two Thousand Years for Smorgaschord. It's a pretty song, and I'd like to make it into something that can move an audience.

Perhaps I should go get some sleep...

Rebecca was munching on a cookie snack. Out of nowhere, she looked at her cookie and said, "Sugar Bomb!"

Nope.

That's actually an easy question. Sometime in the next 48 hours or so, I expect to find out that we're not going to have any more children. There's maybe a 20% chance that this final surrogacy round will work, but I seem to be focusing on the more likely negative possibility.

Today, the girls woke up reasonably cheery. For the first time in a few days, I didn't have to hold Michelle on my lap for a half hour to calm her down. But when I read a slightly annoying coworker e-mail this morning, it seemed that everything in the world just sucked. I yelled a few inarticulate comments to no one in particular. The girls started becoming very demanding. I didn't yell *at* them, but I was mostly focused on ignoring them while I tried to bike.

I talked to another co-worker on the phone, and we figured out how to clear up the confusion with the first co-worker. The rest of the day went fairly well: work had interesting new problems to solve, friendly and effective conversations, and I got some work done, if not as much as I wanted to. I even shared a couple bits of banter with the CEO and yet another co-worker. I spent an hour and a half talking on the phone, describing one particular class that the first co-worker will have to reimplement under a different GUI toolkit (stupid lawyers...). It was all positive and fun.

I came home, and got to play with three little dogs that were visiting, along with their owner (my previous vet) and her just-about-to-crawl son. One of the dogs reminded me of Einstein a bit, which was sad, but scratching them was very relaxing. Dinner was nice. The girls' shower went fairly well. Chris had even noticed my mood and baked an apple pie on my behalf.

But I am sad, and edgy, and not terribly happy with the universe, even though I know today has been a reasonably nice day.

Soon, we will know... Here's hoping that the little Zablet is busily sticking to our surrogate's uterus, although I doubt it.

I just had my first intelligible conversation with Rebecca on the phone.

Me: Hi, Rebecca! What did you do today?
Rebecca: I went to music class.
Me: Was it fun?
Rebecca: Yeah.
Me: Give the phone back to Mommy.

:-)

Last night, while I was being a bit grumpy about some stuff at work, Chris asked the innocent question, "So, who's in charge of your project?". This led me to go "buh" for a while, as I realized that I'd been operating under the assumption that it was me, but I actually had no proof of this fact. So, I ended up stressing about this for a while. Then Rebecca screamed at me during bath time--taking a shower was fun, but turning off the water sounded about as bad as falling from three feet onto your head. (Michelle's been showing some skill at this, recently.) By the time the girls were in bed, I wasn't really fit to do much of anything aside from stare at the computer and make grumpy noises.

This morning, I woke up at 5:30--which is probably okay, since I went to bed at 10, although I usually prefer to sleep until 7--so I started out grumpy and feeling a little off. Michelle screamed at me during the entire changing process, and didn't calm down until we were all on the sofa and reading a chapter of Winnie the Pooh. This did not improve my mood.

So, as I wandered about on this rainy morning, being grumpy and doing my chores. I stopped to stretch. And then, Michelle made it all worthwhile. As I had my leg up on the black armchair to do my hamstring stretch, she reached over, touched my toes one at a time, and recited, "This little piggy went to market..."

Life is complicated. But sometimes very cute.

I'm not sure why, but I know how it started. The night before last, I had a rather lengthy dream that involved, for some reason, mizkit winning some sort of contest to get a writer's hideaway for a while... on Ganymede. It was in some sort of dome-shaped, sealed habitat that was appointed reasonably nicely. A conversation snippet:

Kit: Yeah, I suppose the place is okay.
Me: (jumps to test gravity) Kit! You're *on* *bleeping* *Ganymede*!

Yes, I say "bleeping" in my dreams. In real life, too.

This morning, after checking the wikipedia page, I had this exchange with Chris:

Me: So, it looks like the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the Galilean moons is coming up soon.
Chris: How should we celebrate?
Me: Roadtrip!

In other news, this week at work has been very stressful at work. We're having a week of meetings with everyone from all over the world involved with my project gathered in one place. I've been really able to see the enormous amount of work that needs to be done for releases in early and mid-2010. There's about two calendar years of work on my plate on the list right now, with an expectation that we'll continue to learn about more requirements as we talk with more customers and experiment. Something's going to have to give. Hopefully, it won't be me.

I just got back from the PHC/Curious Blend/Smorgaschord gig. It was fun!

I got to be silly, and sing, and make people laugh, and make the audience groan at a bad pun.... and I think it sounded good, although I couldn't really tell from where I was standing. I tried to record it, but apparently the recorder shut off when I dropped it into my pocket.

We finished, and now I'm home and wired. I'd love to go out and party and share this good cheer, but everyone from the gig went home, and I, like most everyone else, have responsibilities in the morning. Ah, well.

Yay! Fun! (bounce bounce)

Come hear Smorgaschord at the Peninsula Harmony Chorus (PHC) outreach and benefit concert "Fall for A Cappella", with additional guest artists Curious Blend. If you've ever thought about joining a group that sings SATB arrangements of pop/jazz/oldie/CASA songs, check out PHC. The show will feature a set from each group. The suggested donation is $10 for chair seating (all ages), $5 for floor seating, up front (children 10 & under), all proceeds going to support PHC's harmonizing.

Saturday, September 26, 2009, 7:30 p.m.
Parish Hall, Christ Episcopal Church
1040 Border Road, Los Altos, CA
http://maps.yahoo.com/#mvt=m&lat=37.363847&lon=-122.102651&zoom=17&q1=1040%20Border%20Road,%20Los%20Altos,%20CA

More group info at:
http://smorgaschord.com
http://www.curiousblend.com
http://www.peninsulaharmony.org

Or, in fact, the new decade. Welcome to the 70's... The 5770's, to be precise.

I've been off-line since Friday evening. I thought it would be something to try, as a way to make Rosh Hashana a little more--special, perhaps? It was an interesting experiment. I spent a bit more of my free time playing with the kids. Also a bit more time reading. I'm about a third of the way through Martin's A Game of Thrones. I'm not particularly impressed, so far... it seems like a fairly straightforward high fantasy. I haven't seen much new, yet... and ever since Buffy, I've had a bit of a distaste for stories where the main conflict comes from a lack of communication among the principals.

Yesterday I went to shul and Chris watched the kids. Today, we switched. I spent a couple of hours pushing them around the SF Zoo, which was kind of fun. I sang my penguin song to the penguins.

I got a little stressed out by some back pain in the middle of the night last night, but I managed to avoid having a full-blown panic episode from it. That was a good thing. Looking back at Saturday's activities, I bunched together a number of things which seem to push my panic buttons. I'll need to be a little more careful about hitting them all at once. I suppose it'll give me something to talk about with my therapist tomorrow, who I'm visiting for a random checkup visit.

Work is busy, but I'm getting lots of stuff done. We've hired someone else who's running a lot of our test cases, so I can actually focus on improving the code behind them. Wednesday and Thursday I got to do a code re-org that I'd wanted to do for a while. I threw together about a thousand lines of code by the time it was done, and it all appears to be working properly. A co-worker of mine who was involved in doing the research for a court case involving code theft commented on how that phrase had bad associations for him, as the thieves in question were claiming to write a thousand lines of code a day for the life of the company. This is *not* a reasonable amount of stuff to write. It did lead me to check on the amount of code I've put together so far for D2S. It's about 70K lines, or about a thousand lines per week. That seems much more reasonable. :-)

I suppose I should go see how my Mafia Wars character is doing without me...

Interesting, how the music going through my head right now is "Going Through the Motions". That usually means I'm in more of a depressed mood. I'll have to examine that some more.

Really, one of these days I'll post with something positive. There's positive stuff going on in my life. I'm sure of it.

I got a call this morning from my Mom. My 94 year old Great Aunt Mildred is continuing her progressive decline. She's got some form of dementia. It's not clear if it's Alzhiemer's, or something else; the 90-something year old onset at least suggests it's a long way off. I haven't spoken to her in a while, because talking with her is really hard, even though it cheers her up immensely.

Anyways, my mom (in Florida) has been informed by the workers at the home (in Philadelphia) that it's time for Mildred to get another level of care--hospice care. Basically, she's not really even eating properly. She sits in her chair and watches TV all day. Sometimes she goes downstairs for activities. My mom went to visit her a few weeks ago. I haven't seen her in a year or so, since shortly after she moved into the home.

The addition of hospice care is another sign that she doesn't have long for the world. I care for my Aunt Mildred deeply, though distantly. But to her, I am the shining bright spot in her life. Seriously. She can only think of good things to say about me, and is immensely grateful for all the things--mostly imagined--that I've done to help her out throughout her life. My presence, physical or on the phone, is one of the last (only) great joys of her life.

So, this morning I was in a dither, trying to decide if I should fly out to see her. I will be one of the half-dozen or so people at her funeral--shouldn't I go see her while she's still alive? But flying out there is a huge hassle, and I'm really not sure how much she'll even remember it. A far better use of my time would be to just call her more often.

I called her this afternoon and chatted for a whole two minutes before she hung up the phone. She was happy to hear from me, had been waiting for my call, missed me, and was wondering when I was going to visit. She asked when I was taking her to California (see, she knows who and where I am). And she let me know that "life is short". She didn't have much else to say. Why should she? Her life is limited to a bed, a chair, a bathroom, a TV, and occasional trips down the hall.

-sigh-

When my parents become feeble, I want them *out* *here*, so I don't have to lose two days in travel just to see them.

Let's just run down the list, shall we:

• Fate-of-the-company project due at end of month. Data for said project hasn't arrived yet.
• CEO is having me work on a different project that worries him more. I'm rearranging some fundamental data structures which will help, but I'm fairly far off the main path right now.
• We've just given word to the surrogacy people to start the final cycle, which will most likely result in having spent a lot of money and no new kid. Or, for more stress, it might actually produce a kid. Or two.
• Gale has helped with the back pain (yay!), but it's not all gone yet (boo!).
• Therapist called back after two days; she had back surgery last week and won't really be available for another week or so.
• Chris' mom is having random medical problems of unknown severity.
• Chris just was in a minor accident, scraping someone else's car.
• Smorgaschord is tweaking its rehearsal schedule around, rearranging things to try and balance between extra rehearsals with a member who left the group to enable a gig at the end of the month, and another member who is going through chemotherapy for cancer.

I wonder what my blood pressure is right now...

I must be overstressed about something. Work, most likely. At any event, I woke up just after midnight with a moderately sore back, and went into full panic attack mode. After a couple of minutes, I got Chris up, and she sat with me and talked me through it until I was ready to go back to sleep an hour later.

I'm busily figuring out which combination of health care professionals I'm calling today.

Not helping is Michelle, who has been screaming her head off about wanting to get back into her pajamas since I put her outfit on, a half hour ago.

Bleah.

amphipodgirl  and I watched the last (sort of) episode of Dollhouse last night. So, apparently, did mizkit . I need somewhere to talk about it without spoiling everyone... which will be in the comments to this posting. Proceed at your own risk.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care

This article, recommended via that font of wisdom, Darbnet, suggests that the problem with the health care system is that there isn't enough capitalism in it. He proposes replacing the entire health care payment system with mandatory HSA's and catastrophic care insurance (with backup funding from the government for those who can't afford it), and letting us all pay for the rest from the HSA's and credit against future HSA contributions.

To me, it's another one of those ideas that's a fascinating thought experiment, but for which there's no political way to get there from here.

And then, of course, there's Roger Ebert, taking the liberal perspective that socialism isn't actually bad and that universal health care is a moral imperative.

If only there were a single, obvious solution to the whole complex problem... Then Eric and I could agree on it, and not snipe at each other over dinner.

Last night, I was rereading The Warrior's Apprentice, because... well... because it's a great book and I felt like it. I've even read it enough times that I can put it down and go to sleep. In the middle of reading it, too.

Anyways, I was thinking about Miles, how he's always telling stories, adjusting what he's doing, picking good people... And it hit me. Aki, my boss/CEO, has a lot of those qualities. Take, for example, yesterday afternoon. We'd been exchanging a lot of e-mail, but he decided it was better to switch to a phone call to do some real planning. So we chatted across the ocean. He was in Taiwan, tired, and showing a cold, but hopped up on adrenaline and loving every minute of it. That's part of why it's fun working for him; you never quite know what's going to happen next, but working with him and watching him work is fascinating.

There you have it. I like my job, because I'm working for Miles.

Wish me luck. :-)

...

I need to see if Aki's read it. :-)