A healthy lack of obligation

This blog is not an obligation!

Funny how that happens, and funny how I say that now, after months of not obliging it. I'm changing my tactic. I'm not sure what it was before, but whatever it was, it wasn't working and is therefore now out the window.

In my inaugural non-obligatory, and perhaps also my final post (who knows! There's no obligation! Whee!) I am just going to blab about the day. Because blabbing about my mundane day is what I do best, yet I doubt I will ever feel a sudden obligation to do continue doing it.

Today's theme is Health Issues

Say "hi", Health Issues.

"Hi, health issues!"

This morning started with my wandering eyes noticing both a fire engine and ambulance in front of my neighbor's house. This, sadly, is not an unusual occurrence. K has both lupus and fibromyalgia, recenly had spinal surgery, is an veritable encyclopedia of medications and information on how to deal with sundry agencies regarding children with disabilities, and cracks me the fuck up.

Hell, K, is the first person to introduce my son to a low vision aid. Not one of the many eye docs we saw, not the school, not the state. My neighbor.

So, even though an ambulance shows up at her house several times a year, my heart skips a beat each time. You get used to it, but you don't. You wonder how big a punch her body delivered to itself this time.

I don't know yet :( because we had health issue of the day #2 to deal with.

- - -

This is more positive, if "no change" can be called good news.

Son was diagnosed a few years ago at age 11 with cone dystrophy. It is, basically, a loss of central vision that one is born with.

Now, that simple definition should have clued me in right away, but I need details, and get bogged down in web research even though each time I do it in this case, the results are the same: there is very little out there. The little that is out there indicates that it starts around the first decade of life, and can maybe possibly progress to complete blindness, but it's hard to say because it's a rare disease and there's scant data on it.

So, for a person who wants to understand so there are no real surprises down the road, it's frustrating as all get out. I could go on about those frustrations, but that's not the point today.

Today's point was that son was taken over the river and through the woods to a Univ eye clinic 1-1/2 hours away (because apparently that was how far we had to travel from home to finally find a doc who didn't call son a liar) and after the exam and visual field and retina photographing thingy, the result is that his visual acuity has held steady at 20/400 (20/200 being legal blindness).

It's good because it's not getting worse, and what I got a whiff of from the doc was that the longer he goes without getting worse, the better the odds that it won't ever get worse. He did add that it probably won't get better either, but I was never expecting that to happen anyway. Son already knows that he will have to keep being good to his sister if he doesn't want her to abandon her emphatic offer to drive him all over the place when she's old enough to drive. ;)

And there was a real nice aha moment today, too. Doc is great, but he is the fastest damned talker I've ever met. It's almost comical, as he speed-talk-dictates into his recorder and without missing a beat shoots a quick question at son, pauses all of one second to allow for response, then continues on. So having an assistant in the room at the end of the hours-long appointment was a big plus, as she was able to translate for me that which made me go, "aha".

We always thought this was something that progressed with him. His behavior indicated it. He never sat close to the TV, or held a book close at first. Then everything is pulled in a little closer and closer until we finally realize that something's going on. I always thought he could see fine when he didn't have things so close. But doc said (translated by assistant) that he wasn't moving closer because his eyes were changing, but because his need for detail was. In other words, as a toddler the details didn't matter.

Geez, I think about it now and it makes loads of sense. Pictures for kids are simple. Shapes are basic. Print is large. He didn't need to get closer because nothing out there demanded that he be able to distinguish small details. It was the demands, not the eyes, that brought him closer and closer to things. Therefore, the conclusion at this time is that his vision has always been 20/400 or thereabouts. Which is even more reason to think that it won't get worse, it just is. Which to me, is good news.

- - -

Perhaps the best part of the day, though, was the thing that isn't so directly health-related, but something I consider a huge part of what makes one healthy.

The guy at the front desk just made my freaking week. When we were all standing at the desk to check in, from moment one he addressed my son directly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to turn to the actual patient to ask him to verify his address, phone number, etcetera. I say that tongue-in-cheek because it should be natural, but it's so rare that when it happens, you slap your head and wonder why, yeah why, do people direct questions not to the child patient old enough to possess language skills, but to their parent(s)? And even though you know that what this person did, which was to treat a child as a person, is what the norm should be, you still feel like handing him a blue ribbon or something for doing it.

Oh, and then when I went up to get my parking validated, he pulled out a box of chocolates that a resident brought back from vacation, took off the lid and held it out to me in offering. So I took one, looked up at him, and he just continued to hold that box so I could take a couple for the kids.

Gawd, I just love the little details, and the people that make a point of paying attention to them and injecting them into your day. That's what I call good for your health!

Peeking out

Gawd, just ignore this ramble.

I've been in a blog and commenting rut. The blog rut should be no big deal for me personally. I don't consider myself a writer of any sort; I just have a place where I can randomly dump things when I need to get them off my chest. It's not like there's been a shortage of things I'd want to dump about. The rut is bigger than that. Big enough so that I'm not even commenting hardly at all, which is a bigger deal for me personally.

Change makes you more susceptible to things. The changes that have taken place in life recently have not been huge. The start of the school year. Realizing summer projects need to be wrapped up or scrapped. Family visiting and speaking of doing preliminary retirement locale scouting. Spouse taking a few college classes. Realizing that while we'd love to move to city B and it's much lower cost of housing and better public transport etc, employer B in that city just doesn't have spouse's kind of job, even if they are pretty much the "main office" for his specialized area (which, we all know, easily becomes a rut that keeps you working for employer A at location A since oh, the early 80s).

And all this overlaps, as I look at those high school course offerings while talking to son about how his middle school HS credit courses in Latin and Algebra/Geometry will open up more opportunities for him, and see how my area of so-called expertise is now a joke. Not only could I now take in HS now what I went to get a college degree for in the 80s, but I could take other affiliated classes in HS that are so necessary now but didn't even exist then (ah, technology. I had no clue, rode the cool wave, and blew it by not moving up to dreaded supervisor or something.) It overlaps as I think about those house projects, no longer so much for getting things in shape for a possible sale, now some feel like wasted time and money if we're just going to stay here and watch, say, the new carpet get as crappy as the old.

It's a general sense of loss of direction, or main purpose, and I think great you guys, take classes, sign up for parks and rec stuff, and extracurricular school stuff, really it's great and I want you to do that, and I have yet to fathom how there'd be enough room for me to do something too. Like there's little flexibility left, and if we don't move I need to go back to work and I cannot just take any job with any hours because of all the scheduling already in place, and my degree is so flipping worthless now unless I use it to get a second one and well, what would that be? Well, I'd want to figure that out by targeted volunteering first, because while I would eat up those cultural anth and sociology courses, can my low stress threshold handle full time employment in that area? And so I end up just wanting to move again, for that smaller mortgage and getting away from dumb homeowners associations and because I really worked up a hate for this house, but there's nothing cheaper enough in a 60 mile radius of job A to benefit from such a thing.

Then I get hit with the outside stuff. It's always there, of course, it just hits harder when you're more susceptible like this. Things like the story of Natasha Kampusch's escape from 8 years of captivity, or the Kenton, Ohio football players who got preferential treatment in sentencing after seriously injuring two people in a prank and boy would I have lots to say about that if I could put the words together, or following the Jill Carroll story as it's been published over the past few weeks, or receiving the next DVD, The Corporation, from my Netflix queue and getting all worked up watching it, or arriving at the first anniversary of Katrina hitting the gulf coast.

So I sit here and and am just trying to figure out what to latch onto to pull me out of it in a positive way, while at the same time knowing I have to be a bit avoidant about the whole thing from a stress management standpoint, as I cannot and will not take psych meds again and really fuck things up for another 5 years.

And, well, doesn't all that make me feel great and not worthless at all! Heh, I'm a bit on overload and even I think it's pathetic.

Told you not to read.

Edited to add:

Dear Googlers searching for pictures of Natasha Kampusch,

Please do share why you think you are entitled to see what this young woman looks like. She is human being. You only know who she is because she had a lot of bad shit happen to her and she dared to survive it. She deserves the time and space to gain her life back, the life owed to her, without millions of strangers getting in the way of that.

The Antidote

Dubhe delves into the murky misogyny of AC/DC lyrics. How does one purge "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" from one's consciousness, and back into the bowels of bygone days where it belongs?

Channelling Gaye Adegbalola:

I'm in this game of life
I compete every day
I set my own rules and I//
Don't need balls to play

I've got Big Ovaries, Baby (aiff file)

Assertive or aggressive
Name it it you will
Brazen or bodacious I got//
Ovaries of steel

Ahh, that's much better.

[edit: Title corrected for your pedantic pleasure!]

Respite

My RSS reader tells me it's been quite an overwhelming day. Insightful, scary, infuriating, emotional, and touching posts crashed over me in waves. Some have fewer comments than I would expect to see. It's eerie.

I have the bug, too, if it's a bug out there. It's all a bit much and I can't find something to throw myself into, so I don't do it at all. I was going to try a short post to relieve it, then my internet went out, and it was gone. The ice cream truck skipped my street as I waited, money in hand. That's was the last straw, ice cream truck person!

Sly and the Family Stone. War. Santana. Paul Simon. Gladys Knight. Seal. Jeffrey Gaines. The Call. Blondie. Tracy Chapman. Peter Gabriel. Kate Bush. Seal. Supertramp. We've all been hanging out the past few hours. It's been good.

Two unrelated questions

Who knows, maybe someone reading knows something about this stuff.

1. Our Northern Cardinal nest is empty. From what I read online, this was the birth nest, and they were building another while the newborns were being taken care of in this one. Also, they will probably stay within a half mile radius their entire lives, and the parents may have babies again this season. What I haven't been able to find out is if they are done with this nest for good, or if they will reuse it. Daughter has been spellbound by the whole process that took place outside our window, and since it seems no longer used, would like to take it out and examine it, perhaps take it to class, that sort of thing. I do not want to do this if there is any possibility that it will be used again, i.e. do they build a new nest each time? I'm definitely not touching it if I don't know for sure. The question is then, can we remove the nest and know that it truly is not going to be reused?

2. Gastric bypass. A relative had it a few years back. At least two times recently it has been observed that he went to the restroom and vomited after a meal. I'm not sure if this is new or ongoing. This is apparently a big problem after surgery as you adjust your eating. What can it mean a few years later? Complications? Bulimia? What are the stats? Trying to understand some facts first before proceeding with concerned parties and the like. I haven't found a good comprehensive source yet. The question: Anyone know of any good online resources that address later issues like this?

Thanks. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

For the record

The time of this post indicates not how late I stayed up (that would only be a few hours later than normal), but how early I went to sleep (not normal) and woke up before sunrise. I am all out of whack. Fun!

Didn't I tell you that it was an ignorable rant? (or: Why the hell am I up so early in the morning?)

Why yes, I did say that. (And no, I can't say for sure, but it probably has something to do with my life stage irregularity knocking on the door, which begs the question: how did he know 2 days ago when he bought that box at the store, and I didn't?)

In cases like this, the two primary parties absorb and hack it out, but since both are too close to the thing, they don't get far. That whole being too close to the situation thing means we just keep bouncing the same stuff back at each other. It's frustrating, even though the party of the first part took a migraine-level dose of headache meds before diving in to the fed retirement system website for data crunching information.

Then the parties sleep on it, hitting the pillow all exhausted and confuddled, but not before the party of the first part spewed a concensed version of it into the rantosphere freely, and without similar ranty concerns bounding right back at her.

And it was good. Take that, rantosphere!

After a good night's sleep, the parties parted to take care of their respective partily duties. Thus distracted With Other Things, the contents of their concerns were allowed to settle. A visible layer separated and rose to the top, much like that layer of fat on that leftover homemade chicken noodle soup you put in the fridge the night before.

We skimmed the fat before diving in for more. Which is why leftovers taste better the next day.

But that's not the point, silly.

The point is that the fat was thick and nasty. We both found it to be filled with knowledge of the stress the negatives would cause, and after skimming that off the top, there was surprisingly little at the bottom. Not even enough for a satisfying serving for one.

I found the only tasty tidbit left at the bottom was the experience that the job would add, but only if he got the supervisor position. "You want that?" I asked. "Nah," he replied.

He found a big chunk of gristle that reminded him that he could make that amount where he is now if he went back to shift work. Ah, yes, precedent. Switching to days was, after all, declared More Important Than Anything Else in the Life Quality Improvement Act of 1998. Case closed.

Wherein the party of the first part just told him to shut up, gave him a hug, and declared her love for him.

No detours in the life plan! (An ignorable rant)

Nonononono. The plan is to find a job so we can move far away from here. This year. A simpler life. More relaxed. More accessible. More sane. I do not like here! I've been here too long!

Must you call to recruit the spouse for a job that pays 35-45% more than now? Nonono. Why couldn't it pay less? Must the job description make him literally "ooh" and "ahh"? Nonono. Why couldn't it suck? It would make it so much easier to say "not worth even considering" but nooooo. Considering it is the responsible thing. It could get us closer to what we want. Imagine what we could save in a year. Imagine what experience could be gained.

Nonono. Reading job descriptions for federal jobs gives me a migraine as it is. Mr. big contractor happens to come along just days after the govt says no new clearances until this mess is cleared up. Which means his becomes more valuable. And now, in order to decide responsibly, I gotta look at the pension stuff. Lose 2% benefit if he leaves now instead of in two years or more. Calculate the net increase in pay (holy shit). Figure what that could mean (ohmygawd). All the things to take into consideration. Can we benefit tons from this or will we regret it? Will anything even open up where we want to go before I die? Can we be bought or is it okay if it's only for a year? Does it damage my integrity to consider it? Or is it just unfortuante that money is the root of everything: opportunity, choice, independence, access, etc.?

Damndamndamn.

And damn again.

I canoe, can you?

Yes, I know, the title is lame. Well, I'm feeling a bit lame. I can't seem to get my blamer back into gear after a relaxing vacation. I decide to enjoy the positive things while I still have it in me.

I did some canoeing over the weekend. The weather was perfect, there was a gentle, cool breeze on the water, and I left with an incredible feeling: I should have used sunblock.

In the meantime, Lauren shaves her head and positively glows, then jumps out of a plane! Kaktus shows just what support for choice is all about.

And I bet neither of them got a sunburn, either.

I hate playing catch-up

Too many posts! I scan, delete or decide to read later, get to the end. I catch whatever new posts popped up during that time. I go through again: I read, delete or decide to comment later, get to the end. I catch whatever new posts popped up during that time.

See the pattern? Yeah, I'm getting nowhere. Gawd. Well, here's some personal stuff to get out of the way to indicate that I am indeed still alive.

Time to choose 7th grade course selections. Actually, past time, because son did not give me the sheet, and we literally had to figure it out immediately. We spent an hour and a half on that when son got home from school yesterday ('cuz I ramble) so we could tell counselor on the phone the choices the same afternoon. Son was recommended to take a HS-credit world language class and had the choice of French, German, Latin, or Spanish. I wish I had seen this list earlier so I could get more feedback, perhaps from my brilliant visitors, all 5 of you! Oh, well. I recommended Spanish (for practicality) and Latin (for the roots) and he chose Latin. Why did this talk take so long? Because I ramble about how classes about X are not just classes about X. They are about ways of thinking, they cross over and apply to other subjects, they encourage creative problem-solving. Son gets this. He's a rambler-enabler!

Son will also continue on to Algebra I next year. 2 HS credit courses in 7th grade. He teases me because I took Algebra I in 8th grade. Hey, at least I might be able to help out with algebra questions, mister! You're on your own with Latin.

Finally, he should be getting low vision gadgets this week. Different basic magnifiers, a lamp magnifier, and coolest of all, a monocular to magnify distant images.

Daughter should not be left out, here, but what can I say? She's an eclectic strong experimenting creative entertaining outgoing considerate complex human being.

Our trip: good good good. Went neighborhood shopping. Liked what we saw. Call it an overall quality of life change. Now we just need to job. A bit more on that here in comments, but not much.

Also, a reply I made to comments here that I'm pointing to because the people on that post that I'm replying to may never see it if they don't obsessively reload an old page for a week.

Over at the Den (there's always something over at the Den! Seriously, I could spend all my time there and not have any left over for anything else, like replying), one post (er, somewhere) touches on how pornstitution is not sex. Of course, Biting Beaver often drives home that rape is also not sex. I just had to drop an analogy that popped into my head while reading the Post I Can No Longer Find:

Rape is not sex, just as hammering a nail into someone's head is not construction.

One could concievably go on for quite a while coming up with others, of course. It just felt good to let this one out.

I'm still behind. Too many compelling, kickass posts to read/comments to peruse/links to follow. I'd complain more, but it's actually a good thing!

Back

Hello, computer. I missed you the week I was gone! Wow, I have a lot of reading to catch up on.

Apparently the world did not stop being sexist, racist, heterosexist and classist just because I wasn't paying attention to it. I should know this, as covering my eyes when I was one year old did not make me invisible. Damn! That would have been cool.

The Shrill Chronicles

Today KakaMak rants about an experience where crappy "customer service" causes her to lose it in a retail establishment:

All the way home I keep thinking how much I hate that I will probably be the topic of tonight's dinner conversation for them. "This hysterical woman came in today and..."

This is what it boils down to. It feels like one big set-up. You know, you just know, that in the end it will only serve to enforce their stereotype and fuel their bigotry.

It reminded me of a similar exchange a while back. Purely in the interest of not flooding Kaka's comment thread with the meandering tale, I share it here:

I was looking for a cheap but decent digital camera as a present for my son at Target*. I spot a $99 Canon in the display case, and note from the abbreviated description card next to it that it is a 4 megapixel with 3x digital zoom. I ask to look at it, push some buttons and check it out, decide to buy. The guy pulls a box from the supply below the counter and rings me up.

A day later I decide to give the camera a pre-wrapping once-over, checking for battery needs and such. I open the box to find the batteries are already in the camera. They are dead. I put some of my own batteries in and turn it on. 7 pictures of some teenager show up on the screen. So, I got a previously purchased and used camera, where no one bothered to check batteries or delete photos.

No big deal, I figure. I start deleting the photos so my son does not start up his "new" camera with someone else's pic already on it, and something seems different. The cheap toggle button on the back is different than the one on the camera in the display case. I can't find the zoom, because it's set up differently on this camera from the one I tried out in the store. I wonder if I've lost my mind until I come across something that says it's a 2 megapixel, not 4. I'm not crazy, but I will soon make a scene.

I go to the return counter at Target and tell them the story. I tell them that the camera I was given was not the same one I said I wanted to purchase at the camera counter. A supervisor is called in, who tells me to leave the camera at the return counter, go back to the camera department and find the right one, and they'll do an exchange. If I cannot find the right camera, I'd be charged a 15% restocking fee.

20 minutes spent in camera resulted in no cameras in stock, so I headed back up front to the return counter. I told the supervisor that there were no cameras, that I wanted to return this one, and that I should not have to pay a restocking fee because of their mistake. This is where it got ugly. Over and over the supervisor told me I'd have to pay a restocking fee. Or, I could call every morning to "see" if they get the camera in stock. Not that it means it would be the right camera, of course. I told her no, that's ridiculous, it's a gift, I am not paying them $15 for having to come back to this store and return it because I was sold the wrong camera. I questioned what a restocking fee covers, if not checking a return for previous use and dead batteries. Back and forth it went for 15 minutes, me trying to get the facts into her head, her standing firm on the damn "restocking fee".

Then it happened. She told me I didn't have to raise my voice.

Holy shit. It was not going to be, "I know you're upset at our moronic policy that does not take moronic employees who screw up into account, and I am going to find a way to make this work out for you, so you no longer need to raise your voice from "polite" to "stern" because I decided to finally listen!" It was, "You do not need to raise your voice" as she looked over my shoulder, because by this time half the checkout employees and assorted customers are paying attention, and will realize how hard it is to get this store to correct their own mistake without charging the customer for it.

So, after 35 minutes, she decides to actually come out from behind the counter and go back to camera with me, with the camera I bought this time, to see if one is in stock. Another 10 minutes is wasted while SHE searches, and yup, the camera is not in stock. Since we have the one I bought with us, I take the opportunity to point out to her how the picture on the box, the camera inside it, and the display camera all look exactly the same on the front. What's the deal? I walk her through it as I inspect. Ah, here it is: the model number on the display camera is something like 3605, and on the box it is 3605, with a "b" after it. "B" apparently meaning shittier toggle buttons and 2 megapixels less than you thought you were getting.

She nods, says nothing, walks away, scans the bar code on the camera, makes some phone call, comes back, and wordlessly has me follow her to the front of the store. "Ha, take that!" I think.

Then, when we get back to the front of the store, she repeats the fucking restocking fee. (I consider charging her a "you wasted 45 minutes of of my time" fee.) I basically told her she was full of shit, and said to just give me the camera so I can go and find someone who can fire her ass. As I leave, I glance in the bag to see if everything is there. The camera is, the receipt is not. Goddamn asshat. I march back to returns and with contempt dripping from my voice I tell one of the employees there (as the supervisor had promptly slunk into the shadows to possibly reevaluate her purpose in life and update her resume) that it would help if they gave the receipt back to me. A 5 minute search finally produces it.

The supervisor appears. Without acknowledging me, she whispers something to the poor employee who witnessed it all and looks like they're gonna pass out, then disappears. The shell-shocked employee asks for the camera and receipt, and gives me a full the refund, without charging a restocking fee.

I was only allowed to prevail if I became shrill. One wonders if it was worth losing thousands of dollars worth of business over.

*name of store is not changed

Popping in

If I don't post much, it may be because I'm working on my long story. Or it may be that I decided to hibernate for a few days. It's been a draining week, and there are no signs of it letting up.

10 days

That's how long abusive bro-in-law won't be living in his mother's house because he'll be in jail instead. It's not much, but considering the circumstances, I'm thrilled it was more than a fine or suspended sentence only. Overcrowded county jail. Heh.