Mamarati

Took Jacob to the Lab and doc yesterday. Nine vials of blood they took from his little body. And then one pneumococcal vaccine. It was just lovely. He was totally freaking out, but then was mostly calm during the actual process. He just has to watch, though, which I think makes it worse. He says it hurts worse when he’s not looking, though.

At one point, I was standing up while he sat in the chair… I had my arms around him and my head was sort of resting on his head. They were on about vial 3 and all of a sudden, I was wet. Why was I wet? I backed away from him and he had broken out in a sweat suddenly. He had beads of sweat all over his face and his hair was dripping. His shirt was soaked. I’ve never seen anything like it. He doesn’t sweat that much when he’s running around in the yard. His face got so pale and I thought he was going to pass out, but he held on till the end.

He laid down in a room and we talked about Big Brother for a bit until he felt well enough to go upstairs for the shot. We stopped at Starbucks and got some chamomile tea on the way through (this was all in the hospital area) and then headed to GameStop when it was all over. All was forgotten after that. Amazing how video games can wipe away all that trauma. Haha.

We traded in a bunch of old games and ended up getting like $130 bucks. He got some war games and I got Mario Party 8 for the Wii and Yoshi’s Story for the DS. Not that I need anything to distract me from work, but it is one of those things that winds me down after a long day…

So… now is the part of this whole thing where I do not worry about anything and I just calmly wait for his test results to come back. I’m sure that I will have enough to occupy my mind. He’s over at his dad’s now getting ready for school. He’s been over here nonstop, nights and days with no break since like February or March because of the MRSA risk at their house. It seems like that’s all cleared up now, so he can spend the nights over there, take baths, enjoy life… all that normal stuff that he’s been missing.

That I’ve been missing. Much as I love him (isn’t that every mother’s disclaimer when she’s about to say something she feels somewhat weird saying, guilty even?) I need a break sometimes. I know I’m not alone, either. I saw you out there, ladies. Shopping for school supplies and clothes. I saw that certain spring in your step and exchanged those secret, knowing smiles as we shopped together. School is starting again… and not all of us are sad about it.

I remember what it was like when he was starting kindergarten. First grade. So on. I was excited for him and all the things he was going to do, learn. I was also a sad and worried for him. I passed other mothers during drop-off, tears in my eyes.

Now he’s almost 13 years old. I am still excited for him and all the things he’s going to experience and learn. I am still sad and worried for him as well. But instead of dropping him off with a tear in my eye, I’m doing a little happy dance that I can go home and get some work done and have some peace and quiet for a while. Do a single task without interruption. Finish a thought. Take a long bath. Think.

And then there’s this cystic fibrosis thing freaking me out and it makes me feel even guiltier about those feelings. It makes me want to take him out of school completely and spend every minute with him as if it’s his last.

And then I have to snap out of it.

And wait. Because things are probably fine.

I’m so glad that I can have this struggle on the inside, though. It’s necessary, I know it is. But it’s not necessary that anyone else see it…

Well, something has gone wrong in the date keeping area of my brain. And it’s been going wrong since I gave up the use of my DayRunner. Actually, when I was using my Mac exclusively, I had iCal and there’s this thing about a Mac… it’s much like opening a book. When you open it, everything is visible and working in just seconds, so it’s like having a paper calendar. That worked for me.

On Windows, not so much. Back in the 90s, I tried to get used to using the Outlook calendar and others. But when you want a quick reminder of what’s on your To Do list and your computer is asleep, it’s a much bigger fiasco. There’s more chugging and churning and time passes so slowly. Like a watched pot that never boils, so were those systems on Windows trying to awake from sleep and open programs without giving a blue screen of death.

So, I ditched any Windows-based calendars and stuck to the devil I knew, which was my DayRunner, classic edition, one page per day.

When I got my iBook a few years ago, iCal took the place of my DayRunner quite nicely.

Then I fell off the roof and had to get the Windows Vista so I could do accurate speech recognition / handwriting recognition. Since I was functioning at a bare minimum anyway during the months and months of recovery, a calendar really didn’t do much for me. I wasn’t making any appointments, going to any meetings, driving. I had to depend on everyone else around me for my scheduling needs.

Now that things are back to normalish and I’m needing to be more productive (I’m back in school full time and working as full time as possible, doing the normal mom things) I’m finding that I can’t seem to get my ducks in a row. My system has been all jacked up and all my habits broken (both good and bad) by the time I spent on bedrest.

In writing all this out, I’m wondering why I feel the need to justify or rationalize my decision to buy a DayRunner refill. Do I feel guilty because I like paper? Do I feel like it’s an oddity since I’m such a computer nerd and yet I crave hard copies of parts of my life? I’m not sure, but I just know that this is not the year for me to be unproductive. This is the year I get it all done.

On top of that, after some hemming and hawing and much complaining about the way Vista behaves and after counting in my head all the hours that are wasted on extra clicks, clicks, clicks, clicks… After realizing that my system is loaded with more RAM than Vista can even handle and has way fast processors and still it is just so slow and clunky… After thinking about all the ways Vista is not intuitive and after way too many times thinking in my head, “If I were on my Mac, I would just do x, y or z and this whole thing would be overwith, but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO here I am still waiting on Vista,” or, “Why did Vista just do that? I did not tell it to do that. I did not tell it to reorganize my desktop icons or save that file there.” I decided to just break down and buy a MacBook.

So, I look forward to joining the ranks of the productive again. Some time around the 14th, I will be there. Until then, I will continue to curse, throw my hands in the air, bang my head on the keyboard and sigh exasperatedly at this piece of crap machine.

In other news, I did not take many pictures at Camp Baby. I was too busy talking and well, I was just tired the whole time I was there. I did manage to snap this shot, confirming that I am the master of Wii Bowling and that Heather is a looooooser. Actually, I’m not that great at bowling on the Wii. Jacob is way better and beats me all the time. Somehow on this night, however, I managed to get like 5 or 6 strikes in a row. Odd.

Also, the lasagna of last night… I really love the food saver machine. I really am contemplating doing more bulk cooking. This will probably be doubleplusgood when the new computer gets here since nightly cooking tends to break into my most productive work hours. I’m on a roll between 4 and 6 — in that hyperfocused zone, you know?

I keep having this hope that I’m going to be in the mood to sit down and recap everything that’s been going on in my life.

But I have officially given up that hope and am just going to move forward.

I’m such a slacker.

I feel good this morning.

That is something I do want to talk about. I’ve spent a few months waking up and already having a headache, backache, neckache, general feeling of tiredness and whathaveyou… and I think the new pillow and getting some good sleep have helped a lot.

I think I also needed a vacation. Or more like, I really needed boyfriend to have a vacation with me. Like, we used to do a lot of tromping and stuff, and we haven’t done much of that because it’s been hot or we’ve been broke or just whatever… and it really feels good for us to have some time off and just go somewhere where we don’t have to worry about the house or work or anything like that.

Other reasons I’m feeling good:

Jacob is happy, despite some of his trouble at school and at his dad’s… he seems resigned to his current fate and I can see he is struggling to accept responsibility for all of these things. It’s supposed to be a struggle though, no?

Boyfriend and I are doing great… it’s two years now that we’ve been together and it just gets better every day. I worry less and less about all the stupid things about my body and my general personality not being acceptable to him and just all those insecure things that I’ve harbored for so long inside me… I feel like I’ve found my match in life, where I can be myself and not try to be anything else and it really does give me this feeling of completeness.

The election. How awesome was that? I have this little feeling of hope inside now and it’s a good thing.

The Wii is exciting and fun to have around. It’s kind of a good workout. Much more involving and physically engaging than other game systems that just make me feel like a couch potato.

School is about to start and I’m excited about that. I’m excited about it like I haven’t been in a couple of years. For once, I feel like my direction is spot on. I feel like I’m following a dream I’ve had since I was a child and instead of feeling ridiculous about it, I feel great. I just got off the phone with the financial aid office and my tuition is covered as well as books for 17 hours and that’s such a relief to already have that handled. I can’t wait for it to start, and of course, for it to finally be over… I’ve been chasing this piece of paper down for so long.

Work. Work is still work, and I got a raise of sorts, so that’s good. Every little bit counts there.

Speaking of which, that’s what I need to be doing right now.

so, I cannot believe (as usual) that it has been that long since I’ve written… and I didn’t even finish writing about the wii campout???? Nuts.

Needless to say, we did get a perty little pre-order done and Brandon and my boyfriend and I went at Midnight and picked the Wii up this weekend.

Since then, David and Brandon have come over and Jacob came home and it has been non-stop gaming since.

More on all this later, just wanted to update really quick before I throw myself into work.

The surprise: Tennis. The farkin’ Wii Sports Tennis game is the favorite of everyone, except my boyfriend, of course, who just wants to blow stuff up on grand theft auto… but even he was having fun playing some of the Wii games. And he was sitting on his MacBookPro sending email to the Wii while we were playing stuff.

NERD.

it’s time to write, dammit.

cheat sheet in hand, here I go…

Wii Campout

As the day drew near for the pre-sell of the Wii, I have to admit, I cared less and less about it. Was I in denial or something? I mean, I was literally thinking that all would be fine and well and come Nov. 19, I would just stroll into GameStop and pick one up much like I’d pick up tuna at the grocery store.

And then, the eve of the pre-sell was upon me and Brandon was calling me to see if I was going to “do anything” about it. He was on his way to a movie and it was 10 p.m.

I told him I didn’t know, but to call me when he got out of the movie, but wait…

First, drive by GameStop and see if anyone is camped outside…

He called back and reported that two people were there.

Now, I start to panic just a wii bit. ha.

I go check things out around the blogosphere. There’s nothing video game nerds like to do more than brag about securing a new console. Here I am doing it, after all. So what I find is that, yes, there are plenty of nerds that plan on camping out or waking up at the asscrack of dawn to secure a receipt.

More panic as I wait for Brandon’s movie to finish…

He calls and drives by the GameStop again, and this time, the squatters are gone, so I feel a bit more relieved. I tell him I’m just going to get my butt up early and go stand in line, he agrees and we say goodnight.

All’s well and I’m about to head to bed. But then a little voice in my head says, “What if those squatters just went to go pee or get coffee or food?”

So I call Brandon back and tell him my theory and he says he just had the same thought. No questions asked, I tell him to not even go home, to get over to the house and I will start loading up the Subaru.

Which I did. Blankets, pillows, sleeping bags, change for QT coffee and snacks…

He arrives and we head out after my car finally starts. And we head to the various GameStops, all located within about three miles of each other, to see what’s going on. We are relieved to see that there’s no activity at any of them and start to wonder if this camping trip is going to be a waste of time.

We stop at Taco Bell and QT and get some munchies and coffee, water… and then head to the GameStop I like the best. Then, a security guard shows up and asks what we are doing. I tell him and he goes away. I continue eating my gorditas.

He comes back and says that we have to leave and that we can either park across the street or we can come back at 7 a.m., but that “his boss” says that no one can stay in the parking lot overnight.

Oh hell no. I’m finishing my Gorditas and then I’ll go. And that’s what I did.

So we headed to a GameStop that was attached to a Barnes and Noble. But then we noticed that this one opened at 9 a.m. instead of 10 a.m. like most GameStops, so I started to think that maybe this one wasn’t going to do pre-sell, that it wasn’t a “normal” GameStop, but rather more of a fake — kind of like the Starbucks inside a Barnes and Noble is not a real Starbucks and won’t take your Starbucks card.

But we can’t seem to make a decision about leaving, and the prospect of getting all this taken care of an hour earlier in the morning is looking damn good.

So we stay.

ack. More in a bit… I was just interrupted (ha) by work stuff and then a spontaneous bout of animal crossing broke out. Oops.

I need to do something with this kitchen before I leave to go to the library now, so will come back later and finish up.