March Week 2, 2005
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March Week 2, 2005
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Monday March 7 , 2005
A man does not look behind
the door unless he has stood there himself. Christy was still sick today... I feel sort of crappy too. I made two trips to the school one to deliver a shirt and one to pick up the kids, The girls had a Basketball game, they played the Catholic School across the street and beat them 20 - 8, Calie scored almost all the points... I made a DVD out of a CD, Amazing. I will have to climb a significant learning curve before I become proficient at it but it came out OK... I need to create a page for the girls year book... that will be fun. Tuesday March 8 , 2005 DO RE MI DRINK,
by Homer J. Simpson. The yearbook page is done... I did the pictures and Christy did the text... The furniture arrived today, I think it looks pretty good... when I get the walls plastered and painted I will take a picture of it. I haven't started an article by Seymour Hersh called Overwhelming Force last night. It makes me a what a real reporter can do... It was written back on May 15, 2000 for the The New Yorker. [Source: Hardcopy The New Yorker, May 22, 2000, pp. 49-82.] Wednesday March 9 , 2005 Good words do not last long until they amount to something. Chief Joseph IEP [Individual Education Plan] for "B" today, when we got there "B" was being 'restrained' he was acting out and some big fella had to hold him down... "B" apparently thought it was a game. We kept Autumn home because she has been having seizures and a cold, Monday she had a seizure at school and again on the bus ride home and then again about 1900.. Yesterday she had another one around noon, these lasted quite a while [for her] too, over two minutes... There were no seizures today and her cold seems better, she never ran a fever so I guess we'll try to send her back to school tomorrow. After the IEP we had lunch at 'Claim Jumper', it was excellent but there was far too much of it.
I
picked up the girls at school. picked up some photos at CostCo drove over to Ave
60 to see if the wildflowers are out (They are)
While I was picking up the mail Calie and Monica went over to the Arena to watch Alyssa ride. They were invited to go to her house. Alyssa came over to the Acton Market and picked Calie up with her horse... Monica had to settle for a ride on the back of a bicycle ridden by Alyssa's brother Thursday March 10 , 2005 I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others. Marcus Aurelius, philosopher (121-180) Christy is teaching today...
I made it out to the Poppy Preserve in Lancaster, it is beautiful but it will get more spectacular in April... It's been a long time since I have seen so many... too bad it was a little hazy today, the mountains Another revealing article by By Joan Chittister, OSB (I'm not sure what that stands for but she is a Benedictine Sister) I have enjoyed all of the articles by her that I have read, but I have not read them all. I went to the ROF, Only John and Tony showed up but it was a relaxing evening, John says he is going to Death Valley to see the wild flowers... sounds like fun to me, unfortunately I will be home for the next two weekends... The ride home was very pleasant, I can smell flowers and sage, it was like riding through faint clouds of perfume... I love Springtime. Friday March 11 , 2005 Do not rely completely on any other human being, however dear. We meet all of life's greatest tests alone. Agnes McPhail Looked at a tractor today, 1957 Ford... I may go down and buy it tomorrow... I watched a motocross race, RC got beat by CR, so it's Ricky 6 and Chad 2... those two guys are just that much better than the rest of the field... third place was 30 seconds behind and both Chad and Ricky lapped up to 6th place. Christy went to Newbury Park to get Christian, he went directly to his friend's house and then Christy had to go into Lancaster to take him to another friend's house... Saturday March 12 , 2005 Who is dragging this corpse around? (Zen saying) I will look at the tractor again on Monday... The Speed Channel aired the bike races from Daytona this morning so I spent the first half of the day trying to watch it... I slept through over half of it... *************** I found out last week that a friend of mine has a lump on one of his kidneys that may or may not be cancer. We have never met but we have corresponded on the internet for 5 years and I feel like I know him pretty well. I have come to depend on him being there to bounce ideas and frustrations off. I just looked, 683 messages from him to date. We are about the same age, he lives in England, we have both experienced a heart attack and we share a love of genealogy, he flies airplanes I fly motorcycles. I was originally a little intimidated by the fact he is far better educated than I but he seems to tolerate my ignorance graciously. The chief problem I am having with this is that I am at a loss for a way to express my concern. If either of us was religious there would be hundreds of variations on "I will pray for you" to get the point across. Atheists are definitely not positioned well when it comes to sincere expressions of concern, grief, or other feelings of distress . Atheists have the same feelings and our concerns are equally as heartfelt as any devoutly religious person but we don't have a 2000 year old anthology of convenient phrases to draw on to get us through situations like this. We have to resort to open honesty and use words never spoken before. This is a little scary from a vulnerability standpoint but at the same time there is something emotionally liberating in honestly telling someone exactly how you feel about them and situation they are in. The other aspect of this is that I can not be sure on what terms he is on with the magnitude of his situation. He is a level-headed guy and a realist but even realists need a while to adjust to new situations. When you are blindsided with the news that you may have cancer it can take a while to regain some perspective and think rationally, at least it would take me a while... mortality is a solemn thing to contemplate, I did some heavy duty contemplation while I was preparing for bypass surgery and I have written about it here before too I have read several articles and papers on the subject. Apparently there are three stages, if the cancer is diagnosed in it's early stage the kidney is removed and you get on with your life if it's not in the early stages then the kidney is still removed and you get radiation therapy and your chances for survival are still quite good... stage three isn't so cool but there is still a significant survival rate. For me, cancer is still the second most dreaded disease, Alzheimer's being the first. I don't know what is going to finally put me in the ground and I guess it really doesn't make much difference. If I get a chance to see it coming then I will write about it... if not I hope someone makes a note here... regardless, the temporal life will be over and I will finally be able to answer the big mystery about what, if anything, is next... Too bad I won't be able to let anyone in on it. I sense that this ramble is losing continuity... I'm tired and I keep losing my train of thought... Sunday March 13 , 2005 The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog! Calvin & Hobbes The house has been buried in fog all day, Christy says it's happened before but I don't remember it. I drove into Palmdale and when I looked back at the mountains it looked like the fog rolling into San Francisco... A huge towering wall of fog... it was beautiful and a little ominous. It never got over 50 today...March, March is the most unpredictable month, yesterday it was clear and 80 degrees... it's supposed to cool off for about a week with some rain early next week... we'll see. The Income tax refund came in so I will go down and talk to George about the tractor tomorrow.
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