Blogging
Monday, June 23, 2008
Jay: Collected Aspie Posts
Once upon a time, I learned that a thing called Asperger’s Syndrome exists. Even though it and most such labels do nothing more than put names on shades of normal - no different from being labeled geeky or athletic or musical - it still provides fascinating insight. It even makes autism seem less odd, since it adds fuzzy shading to the borderlands between “us” and “them.”
Over time, I have posted on that and related topics, and this is an attempt to collect and revisit that, most notably by reposting the hard to find first post, less than two months into my blogging career, on my rapidly abandoned first blog. Some of the links are dead, notably those to Dandelion Wine, but are included for the sake of exactness.
This is that first post, which actually post-dates the beginning of my interest, but brought it online:
Saturday, April 19, 2003
Asperger’s SyndromeA while back, Wired, to which I subscribe, had an issue with an article on ”The Geek Syndrome.” It was a fascinating look at Asperger’s syndrome, which is a form of autism, on the autism spectrum of disorders; sometimes also called high functioning autism. People with it tend to lead a reasonably normal life, and tend to be disproportionately computer/programming/engineering oriented. Thus the article was looking at the idea that a high rate of autism in Silicon Valley and the Route 128 region might be a genetic result of the large number of geek, and therefore possibly Asperger, parents in those areas.
I was reminded of all this by a post on the topic at Dandelion Wine
The Wired article had a sidebar of an “Autism Quotient” test, which purports to measure where you fall on the spectrum. From what I have seen, many people don’t think it’s a particularly viable test. Nonetheless, I found it interesting and so I link to it here:
AQ TestMy score was 30. They say at the top of the test page that “Eighty percent of those diagnosed with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or higher.” Looks like I push the envelope a little.
Related to this, Dandelion Wine also points us to a brain quiz, ostensibly ”how male or female is your brain.”
I took the interactive EQ test and then, clicking from those results, the interactive SQ test. Both require Flash. There’s an option for manual tests as well. From the test pages you can then go to this final page to work out what type of brain you have, using a grid to plot the results of EQ and SQ and see which shaded area you fall into.
For what it’s worth, my scores were:
EQ of 41
SQ of 53
Overall brain type “Extreme Type S”Fascinating.
The original Wired article and AQ test led me to actually buy books on Asperger’s and to read all about it online, because I seem to approach but not quite cross over to it myself, and I suspected my nephew was so afflicted. That and it was inherently intriguing, as I find anything to do with brain function to be, given my own history. That has always applied to IQ testing as well.
- Jay Solo, 2:25 AM
The next relevant posts I located offhand were at Accidental Verbosity, in the form of:
Autism As Extreme Male Brain
Asperger’s Schizophrenic Hyperactivity Deficit Disorder
That second one points to a related discussion, starting from adult ADHD and going into more in the comments. It predates Caltechgirl having a blog, rather than being an avid commenter. Her comments on the set of topics are especially cool.
Again with over- and mis-diagnosis, the attention deficit stuff is as much as anything an excuse for drugging kids into being uniformly submissive, passive bots who can bear not to have recess and won’t have normal traits some people find inconvenient or hard to understand.
These Quizzy Things are only marginally relevant, but I remarked about the Aspie relationship to the perfectionist quiz especially, but even the other two are about being a certain way or collecting certain facts.
In You May Just Be An Aspie... I linked to and quoted extensively the best of this You Might Be An Aspie If page of collected behavioral anecdotes.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Aspieness had me linking a slicker AQ test, on which I scored 32. These always seem to vary depending on mood and change in thinking over time. Having written that, I took it again, going on a year later, and scored 36. Oops.
Most recently, last October 29, in How Aspie Are You? I linked another quiz, which interestingly I just retook and scored 138 and 58, versus 161 and 54 last time, an improvement. I must have gone less wishy-washy last time. Basically it’s no/never, or kinda yes/sometimes, or really yes, all the time, with a 4th option for not sure/don’t know. I saved the PDF, but didn’t bother with a screenshot.
I probably wrote about this elsewhere and didn’t find them all, but basically that’s what I had out there. Besides any instances where I mentioned autism and slammed the idiots who won’t let go of the vaccine preservative autism nonsense people grasp at like so many straws. But that’s an entirely different topic, though obviously these posts touch on it because of the clear genetic connection. Geeks beget geeks. Sometimes the curve goes too far and we call it autism.
It’s hardly shocking for two high IQ people with geek tendencies (remember, Deb went part of the way toward an engineering degree before resorting to expedience to graduate sooner) to have had Sadie, Valerie - who increasingly seems to make Sadie look normal and ordinary - and even, it appears, Henry. You never know, after all. I started out as charismatically sunny, amused and communicative and physically quick as he is. He doesn’t merely look like I did. He’s already getting into the “taking things apart” or “seeing how things work” kind of trouble I’d have thought would take longer. None of which means aspieness, but it’ll be interesting to watch. And again, nothing wrong with that. Someone has to fall on that part of the range of human, and it’s not like you can’t function. Well, kind of. Mostly. Sometimes.
Jay: No Birthdays
Another day with no birthdays to mention, and so it gets a placeholder post. Don’t you feel special?
This is a full working day for me, whatever that may entail, as it’s an off day for Deb. In effect, we both “work” seven days a week, and let it never be said that taking care of the kids - or house, to the degree the kids allow it - is either “not work” or “woman’s work.” I’d like to think we’re a bit more enlightened than that in 2008. It is 2008, right? Yeah.
Some of these posts, and the birthdays, have been pre-posted in a batch, dated for the appropriate time, so I don’t have to get up every single morning and post any birthdays there may be, or feel obligated to post something to keep the blog looking lively. Presumably there’s been some stuff between the batch posts, but if not, well, it’s something anyway.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Jay: This is not the only blogging venue, go look
I’ve been blogging a lot at the other sites, which are easier because WordPress works well with w.bloggar and Expression Engine doesn’t. In particular, I’ve accumulated a ton of links dating back months, which I’d intended to post, even in “here’s a link” fashion, so I’ve started catching those up at Tersosity, which is exactly the place I’d intended for quickie stuff like that.
However, there have also been and likely will be more posts soon at Reality Bucket, which fair warning is our political and cultural fuckyouwesaywhatwethink blog, and at Geek Practitioners, Married Guy Cook (where I need to post about Hell’s Kitchen before we get to the final 3 episode and Corey gets eliminated), and Bizosphere.
There will be stuff here, too, as I get a chance, between things I need to say, and reposts I have more or less queued, besides the fact that at least one post per day will appear for the rest of the month even if I drop dead of ifhewerentafatpighedbealivenowcuzweknowskinnymeansimmortal syndrome or something in the meantime.
So if you’re bored and haven’t been paying attention, check those, especially solojay.com, because the volume of links will give you lots to go read.
Jay: No Birthdays
Another day of no birthdays so soon? Well, it’s only the 4th of 6 during June. Seven, if you count as none the one where there was a birthday of an obscure relative, of unknown mortality, I barely saw fit to mention.
Presumably this is the longest day of the year, all 24 and a fraction hours of it. It’s all downhill from here, but I guess we can take solstice in it taking six months.
Actually, looks like the solstice was technically the 20th, but at a minute before midnight, so yeah.
This is a work day for Deb, so for me it’s a day being nibbled to death by ducks, in the form of a slew of kids, while trying to get something, anything done. As I get into a groove of more work that pays or generates money indirectly, I will definitely need cheap babysitting part of the time I am here alone with the gang of three. The great thing is even that will have flexibility. Even a day of it, in the absence of scheduled out of house work, would be helpful, and it shouldn’t matter which day, so if I have my mother come down, it needn’t interfere with the bit of sitting she still does for my brother.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Jay: Geeky Hosting Post
I was looking closely at our hosting, as one of the accounts was up for renewal the 10th and I have no idea how I’m going to pay the $112.20 for the year yet. Failure isn’t an option, as there are people advertising there who we’re obligated to keep the site up for in some form, and it’s the content that would be hardest to move.
I was thinking maybe we could get a hosting account with greater capacity and merge two of the three together (having more than one, even more than two, does have valid reasoning, so I had no plans to consolidate all three). Credit the balance of what’s been paid already on one of the plans, bringing the outlay down. Sadly, we’re 8 months into the year for the one in question, so the net would be more. Oh well.
Partly for any who might be interested, and partly as an additional place where I can refer to the info, here are fun details about our hosting accounts (well, there’s a 4th, with GoDaddy, but that’s just used for a static site for now, and an e-mail address, and the hosting isn’t good).
Elhide hosting (the one that needs to be paid)
Using 362 of 700 MB disk space, 18 of 80 e-mails, 6 of 25 Addon domains (total 7 domains, in other words), 7 of 25 FTP accounts, 5 of 8 MySQL databases (that is, there are 5 blogs there), 1 of 4 mailing lists. So far this month we have used 1895 MB of 40,000 MB bandwidth.
AV hosting (this one)
Using 282 of 700 MB disk space, 7 of 80 e-mails, 1 of 25 Addon domains (total 2 domains, in other words), 3 of 25 FTP accounts, 2 of 8 MySQL databases (that is, there are 2 blogs here). So far this month we have used 5716 MB of 40,000 MB bandwidth. The reason more domains aren’t here is because we were low on disk space and bandwidth before the hosting specs were upgraded and our traffic fell dramatically.
GP hosting (still mainly for business or stuff that was expressing intended to be commercial, like CotC/Bizosphere)
Using 154 of 550 MB disk space, 15 of 60 e-mails, 6 of 15 Addon domains (total 7 domains, in other words), 4 of 5 FTP accounts, 5 of 6 MySQL databases (that is, there are 5 blogs here, one of which I expect to purge), 1 of 2 mailing lists. So far this month we have used 570 MB of 30,000 MB bandwidth. The disk space and bandwidth suggest room for more activity here, but this hosting has yet to be upgraded, which seems to be a matter of rolling upgrades as servers are updated, so there’s mainly a database limitation.
Anyway, back to work sprucing one of the blogs to allow it to host ads more easily, so I can list it, and then other work and errands. If I’m lucky, a small check from a client will be here on time to go to the bank while I am out anyway.
Jay: No Birthdays
This is one of those blank days for birthdays, a rarity in June.
Deb is home today, so it’ll be another day of my trying to do work, plus some errands and organizing what money there is. If I didn’t already, I may start some reposts/updates of particularly good, relevant or classic posts from my old blogs. We’ll see, but I sometimes have trouble creating content these days, and the content is important to making the blogs worthy of ads, and the ads help finance our continued existence.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Jay: No Birthdays
No birthdays I know of today, a rarity in June, so this’ll be my obligatory post for the day.
The car remains stranded in Sharon. I called my brother and left a message last night, as it was rumored he could help me with it today, which is possible because Deb is on all early shifts now. Meanwhile, I suppose I really ought to work on getting stuff for the yard sale ready, even if I have to drop it off and have it sold by others, or get a ride, or whatever. That all hinged on having the car, but I also needed to spend pretty serious time working toward preparing. If we can’t do much with this one, we may ask the landlord if he’d object to our having one here. Probably not, as he seems to object to little besides having a pool for kids. But then we’d feel like we had to ask the neighbors, too, see if they wanted to participate. Damn politeness!
I’m trying to organize the whole “do what I can to make money from home” thing better, with some explicit unfettered time allotted me evenings and Deb’s days off. Some things can be done in those minute or two or five interludes I get between kid demands, but I need to have them listed and planned out enough so the whole effort isn’t wasted on “so what did I need to do next?” There’s a lot more ad revenue available, and while we won’t live on that, not without serious content and traffic buildup at least, managing that is one of those little things, and boom, there’s the money for, say, utilities each month.
Posting more actively, even if it’s quick links to interesting stuff, makes the blogs more viable for ads, so you’ll see more of that. At least on the WordPress ones, since I can post so quickly via w.bloggar, which doesn’t work with Expression Engine. That’s about the only thing it doesn’t work with, and there’s even a version now that doesn’t use Internet Explorer in the background. It was always annoying, that links in preview in the editor would open in IE, and of course IE was used programatically for the HTML rendering in the editor. There’s now a version that uses Firefox instead.
One of the reasons Carnival of the Capitalists went on hiatus was the time it took me that was annoyingly uncompensated. I miss the structure it gave each week, with a publishing schedule, but TANSTAAFL needs to rule. I’m planning to revive it, starting with a fundraising edition, the success of which will help determine to what degree it continues, and the amount of advertising I deploy at that site. Another project, which isn’t impossible to do in small chunks so much as it’s annoying.
Anyway, off to it. Need more coffee, and a glass of water. Have to keep drinking to combat the gout, which seems to go hand in hand with some swelling and water retention, duh, from getting underhydrated.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Jay: Jen Still Speaks, But You Gotta Find Her
Jen reports that her blog formerly known as Jen Speaks, called Lintefiniel Musing, is down rather convincingly, awaiting action by the host. Armchair diagnosis says that it’s likely a server outage, as opposed to, say, a DNS problem, which appeared to be the case with the old home of Weekend Pundit when Blogmosis went down.
Here is the Lintefiniel Musing backup site where Jen can be found in the meantime. Since she lost her blogroll (though the wayback machine might have a copy), she’s asking people she reads to leave their blog (well, a link to it) in her comments.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Jay: Busy for Someone Lazy and Broke
Wanted to toss out a quick post before I hang out and vegetate for another day. Heh.
Cross your fingers that the car from my aunt works okay, since it’s registered and having a shakedown today when we go to Sharon to see friends, including one who is doing her lucky if it’s annual visit from Oregon. Can’t afford the gas, but we didn’t have to fly across the country. As such, we have to get the car seats in and so forth.
This morning at 10:30 there’s some kind of mortgage inspection the landlord has to have done, and they might need to come in here in the process. There’s the tail end of making the place look more respectable in anticipation of that. We’re curious what in the world it’s about, as that could mean a sale, which would suck. And be a silly time for it, in a down market. Then again, if you bought in the late seventies, down relative to peak, even by 30%, is still going to be a nice cashing out. More likely it’s a refinance or leveraging this property to buy another because, hey, it’s a down market so good time to buy. Or it’s a stealth excuse to inspect our apartment and find a reason to throw us out, but that’s just the paranoid outlook.
The baby isn’t going to let me type much more and I rilly rilly need to get to work on stuff, but…
In 1998 I went on a vacation to Canada, my first and last in forever. Well, 5 1/2 years, if you could California to meet Deb, while still monitoring work and directing someone designated to be my hands back at the office. But anyway, on the way back, I stopped at LL Bean in Maine and bought a T-shirt, among less memorable clothes. It was never my loosest shirt, smaller for its size than they should run.
That shirt is, I am pretty sure, looser on me than it has ever been, which is an interesting anecdote about where my weight was when, given the stretches of time when I didn’t monitor it. I peaked at 308 and had a stable high of 298. Yesterday I hit a not yet stable low of 253, and am solidly 255 wanting to be 254 this morning. Counting to the low yesterday, that’s 55 lost, 45 of it this year so far.
All apparently a metabolism thing by going off drugs that make you gain weight so you can get sneered at that you wouldn’t need the drugs if you’d just lose weight, because only fat slobs have high blood pressure. With a bit of atavistic eating thrown in for emphasis, since apparently eating like someone pre-industrial food, if not pre-agriculture, agrees with me.
Okay, time is flying by so I have to get another coffee (sugar, no artificial sweetener to confuse the body about calories consumed) and see about cleaning and organizing more.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Jay: Then There’s…
The advertising-related stuff, and the plans to do a CotC and try to restart that. If people will contribute above a threshold when I do a fundraising edition back from hiatus, I’ll not only believe they are interested, but also delay advertising on that site for a duration depending on donations. If not, that’ll be added to the stable, and it’s the most potentially lucrative one. Plus I’ve started posting there again, even aside from restarting CotC or not. The other thing is a hardcore “hire us, dammit” post and associated features across blogs, along with updating of the business and resume sites.
All of which will be relevant, even if I get the support job I’m up for that can be done from anywhere, including if we were to move anywhere in the country with decent broadband. Obviously, I’d prefer to stay somewhere with FiOS, so it’s good that’s an increasingly widespread option.
Anyway, off to working on something, even if it’s dishes and a shower to start. And maybe something for lunch, since I feel hollow. As well I should, given that I fit OK in a T-shirt I’ve seldom worn because it’s too tight. Oh, about to post more pictures, too, which I started working on at an adjacent computer, after forgetting this post was in progress.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Jay: Hey, Didn’t This Used to Be a Blog?
We’re kind of busy and distracted, so even with the modest availability things that I can still blog about without an oppressive sense of self-censorship, I just haven’t gotten to it lately. Lack of birthdays has thus meant lack of posts, and the birthday posts are meant to be spice, not meat. There are a couple others I may get to, one imperative and one landmark, despite over a week having passed since it came to mind.
That said, it’s relatively easy and of some interest to post about the baby and where he stands on the food front. It seems these days the biggest problems are unidentified airborne or other environmental, with maybe a low grade effect from even some foods that are “safe.” To the degree we’re dealing with a salicylate sensitivity, almost everything is a source, and it’s difficult not to include a certain amount of high and moderate sources, even if you avoid the very high completely and the next ones down as much as possible. There are also ambiguities, whereby a given item can be higher or lower depending on growing conditions. At any rate, the chart we’ve found most useful notes that each level is ten times the prior. Thus very high is 10x high is 10x moderate is 10x low.
There are two things that have been clear. Three, if you count the big $2600 we can never afford to pay incident and the most probable cause. Two, if you count dairy as singular.
He can’t have milk. Period. He breaks out in a rash almost instantly. Not sure, but he may have gotten his hands on some during the Lactaid experiment, and reacted less badly, whatever that means - maybe ultrapasteurization breaking down proteins more being helpful.
The emergency room incident was almost certainly cheese. It was also topical, never a breathing issue, but more a matter of looking so bad because of where it swelled. The thing is, I seemed to react to that cheese, and as noted, cheddar particularly can apparently generate its own histamines.
Of the other candidates that night, well, he has put egg in his mouth and not reacted, and Deb’s test of eating eggs has shown she is free to have eggs and, by extension, mayonnaise again. He can eat corn. We’re skeptical of wheat being a problem, certainly not at that level. The only thing that leaves from that night might be ham, which would have been a bit player and would mean an awfully extreme reaction to my having handled it. Cheese is likely, especially given the milk thing and the histamine thing.
Of course, his own drool makes him rashy, and I believe he has a bit of a reflux problem, which may be recursion. That is, stuff affects sinuses, sinuses encourage reflux, reflux makes sinuses worse and makes drool acidic. Maybe stuff affects skin worse on contact due to the damage, for that matter.
Anyway, it’s not an item of concern for salicylates, but he had an extreme reaction to banana. Now, that may have been interaction with other stuff, and may not have been as bad as it seemed, but he can wait to try again.
What I was planning to cover mainly is what he can eat. With Valerie confirmed to be unable to have milk, even Lactaid, without losing bladder control, it’s made him less likely to have accidental drinks of it. It makes him so happy, but the result isn’t fun. We’ve been able to speed up trying new things. It’s challenging to be operating on the cheap, but hey.
Beef
Chicken
Pork
The only meat of concern might be cured, spiced kinds of things, so I haven’t given him hot dogs when we’ve had them. I thought he might be reacting mildly to pork at times, and when I did a series of “rub things on his skin” tests one day, grease that had primarily rendered from pork during frying was the only thing there might have been a reaction to, but it was ambiguous. My antiperspirant, Irish Spring, some stuff like that all passed. He gets plenty of meat.
Oats (oatmeal)
Rice (including puffs, cakes)
Some tastes of things that technically contained wheat.
Corn, as a vegetable.
Corn, in tortilla chips soaked in water or chicken broth to soften them.
Butternut
Carrots
Sweet potato
White potato in any form, though I’d avoid giving him skin even if he could chew it.
White sugar, avoid brown sugar as it charts and he may have reacted to it.
Green beans
Parsnip, probably - some ambiguity and small sample
Pinto beans
Chemicals that qualify to be called lemonade when mixed with water (seemed to react a little to the fruit punch mix).
Canned pears in heavy syrup. Light syrup is pear juice, which is processed in a way that involves the skin.
I swear I’m forgetting something.
Soy seems not to bother him. Usually that’s in the form of oil for cooking. He’s also had stuff fried in Crisco, which would mean exposure to cottonseed oil.
He’ll get to try peas soon. He had a too small to harm him taste of strawberry jello and seemed to be unaffected.
As far as seasonings or veggies used mainly for that purpose, he seems fine with onion and garlic. Black pepper I avoid especially for him. Red pepper and the like, and some of the other things I use routinely, all high, but the quantities in food can be minute. We use caution, but he has or might have eaten food with red pepper, cumin, oregano, garlic, onion, ginger, celery, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, sage, savory, rosemary, or whatever having participated in the making. Not sure exactly which. If it’s, say, chicken, it’s in the oil and on the outside of the meat, but I’ll emphasize giving him bits from the inside with minimal outer layer.
Cauliflower. He tried cauliflower and that went fine. We love that when it’s on sale.
Fruit is the biggest problem. Especially in juice or uncooked. Pear is the lowest of the fruits and he clearly reacted to pear juice. Essentially he needs a caveman diet.
Overall he’s doing well. A lot of the itching he does is emotional, a reaction of habit. Getting sleepy equals uncomfortable. Discomfort equals itchy. Ithchy equals scratch yourself bloody. He is helped a lot by pre-emptive doses of gas drops and Tylenol, assuming he doesn’t decide he does not need one or both, as he did today. Absolutely refused gas drops, period. Refused Tylenol one time, accepted it later. As I always say, he’s little, not stupid. In fact, he’s scary.
Now if he wants to eat he starts dragging his high chair across the kitchen. He also seems to have learned that if food is left in the seat, he can shake the chair to get it where he can reach it. He was mad at me for cleaning up right after he pigged out for supper, because after his bath he was foraging for more. For supper he had chicken, a tiny bit of beef, potato, about 2/3 of a good sized sweet potato, corn, and plain pinto beans. When I found him foraging, I gave him part of a rice cake, but that just wasn’t the same.
Looking at this decent food list, which I need to review in detail again to figure where we are going with trying other things, I was reminded that he seemed to react heavily to sucking on raisins the girls left on the floor for his benefit. Ditto for a couple of the cranberry whatever juice combos. We’ve gone almost exclusively into powdered drink mixes, mainly lemonade, but also fruit punch and - though the girls haven’t warmed to it - iced tea. Lack of juice may also be helping Valerie, though if that was a factor, it was still at least 90% the milk.
I’m barely staying awake, so this is probably rambling and incoherent, and likely incomplete. Oh well. I had some pictures to post, and will have some stunning ones after the camera is next downloaded. He really put on a show today.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Jay: News About Weekend Pundit
Chan has asked me to spread the word that Weekend Pundit is temporarily up at a backup site, to which weekendpundit.org redirects. The traditional site, hosted on Blogmosis, is inexplicably, thoroughly down. Using the weekendpundit.org URL will get you to wherever the new hosting ends up, as well as to the backup site for now.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Jay: Postpourri
Gloria Constance Irving would have been 75 today. She was the second child of seven and first daughter of three of my mother’s parents. She died February 12, 1934.
Nine months isn’t as young as I grew up thinking it was. There’s a lot of distinctive person there, and a lot of intensive time spent. With that sharpened appreciation of just how traumatic it had to be, I’ve always sort of kept my fingers mentally crossed and noted the passing of the nine month point as significant.
Which in our observation it is regardless. We have a theory of nine months inside and nine months outside before baby is done cooking, after observing how dramatically they leap into clearer personhood at nine months.
Henry will be nine months old tomorrow.
Henry is on the verge of taking steps, having become talented at standing and even doing stuff like drinking while he stands.
Henry appears to have survived trying green beans last night, and enjoyed them, so that’s good. The other day, Deb rubbed his belly with wool yarn to test his reaction, of which one had been apparent. Nothing. Later, I tested Suave shampoo, Irish Spring, soy oil, pork grease (which would also have contained traces of soy oil used in the pan originally), my antiperspirant, our current bar of hand soap, and Equate liquid hand soap, all rubbed on his skin. That might not say anything about reaction to ingesting the edible ones. Nothing. Well, except maybe a tiny little reaction, small enough not to be certain, to the pork grease of all things, and which I only tried because he’d eaten pork as part of a meal he seemed to and shouldn’t possibly have been able to get itchy from. But he may also have eaten found food and reacted to that.
In general, he’s been good and we’ve been managing it pretty well, but against food boredom for him we vainly struggle.
I survived the Easter egg hunt gathering yesterday. Which was made interesting by an inexplicable flareup of knee pain, which had been kind of in check until I went down the stairs, and by Valerie gluing herself to me almost the entire time. Sadie seemed like she’d be standoffish forever, but she’s totally confident, self-directed, and interactive with other people. She had a blast, flying a kite, and is excited that the wind she so loathes is actually good for something.
The kids got in last straw trouble last night, though, after Sadie was caught puring water out of the tub, onto the floor, which required two additional bath mats to get mostly dry. No more bath toys, and that’s one of the reasons I’m in a clean and organize the place mood today, trying to get them reordered.
Also on the agenda, I have to pick up a couple groceries, and Deb needs to get material for a custom order.
And on that note, and seeing other people start to get up, off I go.
Well, except to note that I appear to be down another pound this morning, which makes 46 from my peak and 36 this year. Yay!
Well, and except to note that I was able to solve an RSS problem for Ith that had been longstanding. Go me! (It was actually easy to diagnose.)
Monday, May 05, 2008
Jay: Much to Say
But if I start typing, I risk the kids coming unglued. In a way it’s gone fine, Deb being at work while I’m with the kids. At least, if doing anything useful - at least in chunks longer than 3 minutes - is not desired. Also, working on the house seems to go over better than working on work, even if that runs the risk of “help” or at least being a human moth magnet.
Henry fell asleep repeatedly over lunch, then refused to nap and revived completely by the time I had him cleaned up. I cleverly put lunch on the table for the girls, so they’d be at the opposite end of the house while I put him to sleep, so instead they followed us into the bedroom. Which didn’t matter, because he was openly amused with my antics, thought I was a funny guy, thinking he’d nap.
In a way this isn’t much different from normal, in that there are stretches of peace, but I never know when I will be interrupted or how long I have at once to write, think, code, design, plan, whatever.
I managed to keep them from letting him get any milk, and so far any juice, so that’s a plus.
The idea is for me to do this and that and piece together a living here, while Deb spends a lot of scheduled shifts out of the house, which also constitutes a mental health break. Any running around or seeing clients in person would work around her schedule or get covered by brief, as-needed babysitting.
However, we also talked about the idea of having someone like my mother come here for extended times even while I am not scheduled to leave, so allow me to get things done, while not having the kids alone for long periods without backup. That’s looking better and better.
Okay, gotta check on them…
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Jay: Blargh
I feel lousy this morning. Got enough sleep, even if much of it was in Sadie’s bed because she apparently decided our bed would be better and warmer. Well, “even if” makes her bed sound bad, and actually it’s awesome. I may have gotten deeper sleep there. I noticed Valerie eventually abandoned her bed too, presumably joining the crowd in ours.
I woke up from one of those crazy mashed up dreams. It involved starting a job, and the place or aspects brought in elements of multiple past employers and situations. The place was named Halliday, which is one job. The lobby was right out of Corporate Software, which later became Stream. I was supposed to start at $8.00 an hour, which happens to be minimum wage in Massachusetts currently. I speculated they might start at slightly higher, which Flatley Company did when I worked at Waterford Village. Minimum wage then was $2.90 and they paid $3.00. Then minimum wage went to $3.10 and they paid… $3.10, which completely destroyed some notions I had.
I was talking with someone, speculating that the company might pay me a little above the minimum. Sure enough, it was going to be $8.02, which somehow morphed into the exact same thing as the $12.02 I started at with Corporate Software. Anyway, even the reference to pay rate is a reference back to prior jobs.
The exterior of the building was some kind of generic cross between places, hard to say one more than another, but there might have been elements of a Christy’s Market, adding another old job.
Later, when I was on the job, there was a scene in an apartment. Apparently apartments were part of what the place did, which goes back to Waterford Village. It was vacant, had been mine, still had some of my stuff in it, and was not going to be rented any time soon. This was like the office I had in Easton, which took me a month extra to move out of after the last official month, with them in no hurry for it. A guy named Matthew showed up in the dream. We once shared an apartment in Greenfield, and I was telling him he might soon want to get his stuff out of this one that he’d left it in with me. He hadn’t even realized I’d moved. Shades of former partners having left stuff in the office in Easton, which had to go to them, be disposed of, be adopted, or be stored.
Confusingly, in a related sequence, I was showing someone how many bookcases I was going to be able to fit, in a ridiculous arrangement, in just the entryway/kitchen area alone. The someone was an amalgamation of a former partner and someone I didn’t work closely with at Stream, but who was similarly brilliant.
Very strange. I also remember thinking that I could crash in the apartment if needed, like if I needed to stay over at work since the place was vacant, I had access to it, and they’d made me welcome to use it, short of actually moving in.
Lots of stuff to do today. Hope I can remember what it is! I have some e-mailing and calling and going and researching and writing and food storing and cleaning and organizing and so forth to be done.
We received a book yesterday that we’d order super cheap from Half.com, a used copy of Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons. I need to do more than skim the intro, but it should be interesting. Sadie is beyond ready. She fell asleep last night with a book named “Ted” open, pages down on her chest. She studies and recites books from memory. She knows the letters. She has an idea of some words, like the Q thing she identifies with closing a program (Quit), that made he so excited to learn about how q and u go together.
This morning she spent some time on my lap while I didn’t write and I did an impromptu tiny lesson on m and s, which are the first ones covered in the book. She can point them out on the keyboard (and sound like I’m stupid to ask her) and I had her say the sounds. The actual lessons take about 15 minutes. Not a bad amount of time to devote, once or twice a day. I doubt she’ll need the whole thing or want to be held back to that speed once we’re rolling.
Anyway, I need to go take care of stuff in the kitchen. And post the birthday I didn’t know about before I started this. Sooner or later I’ll have no birthday-free days.
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