reeking havok..

So it's a week before Rach's flight to Aussie and a day before Thanksgiving, and the problem apartment decides to smoke up again. Even with 2 air filters running full blast, I had to leave my wife and unborn baby in a certifiable biohazard. I had a sneezing and runny nose all morning dealing with the stuff.. I can't imagine what it's doing to her and our baby. The only concession I have is that Rach has a key to Shea's place to cat sit this weekend, so I told her if it gets to bad to go to Shea's place and hang out with her cats for a bit. I know Shea's not leaving until tonight, but I hope she does go over there this morning, because even I couldn't hardly stand the air this morning, and I'm usually pretty tolerable of stuff like that. But, well.. the way that neighbor must fill his own house with smoke, I wouldn't be surprised if the next odor we smell seeping through our walls is the smell of a stinky lung cancer victim. Of course.. HE has a filter in his mouth the whole time.

I guess I should confront the rest of the tenants myself, since the management is unwilling to do so. I'm sure if I let them know that my wife is pregnant and I'm only looking after her well being, that they'd tone it down for one week. Yea.. I think I'll do that tonight if I get a moment. I went in today to report the smoke again (not that there's anything they could or would do about it) and they were still closed. Oh, well.. I really didn't want to talk with them anyway.

On a side note.. I got our computer case the other day, and the LCD display is coming today. We got it here and are shipping it over because it's a couple of hundred dollars here than it would be in Aussie. So I got the case and loaded it up, and the only hang up? A couple of temp sensors don't work. No biggie, but it's kind of a bummer. Reminds me of the old days when computer cases showed how many "Megahertz" the computer was running at. Y'know the ones that you could program that were ALWAYS wrong. :P

I had a look yesterday at an LCD similar to the one we're getting today and it looked pretty nice. Only catch I could see was the silly little warm up logo. They splash a nasty looking ACER logo on the screen every time you turn it on. Doesn't make me want to conserve energy very much to turn the display off. Maybe I can find a way to get the logo off. Surely there's some kind of a firmware update or trigger or hack or something. As you can tell, splash screens bother me.

Oh, and we got our shipping info in the mail yesterday. I didn't check my mail until late that night, so I was up until past midnight filling out a silly contract form so they could give the warehouse 48hrs notice. I'm sure glad I decided to check my email last night on a fluke. I'm hoping that goes better than this whole stressful apartment frustration. I didn't put down to get insurance for the shipment.. is that bad? (Crosses fingers and toes in preparation..)

Otherwise, I'm pretty pumped about Thanksmas, shipping stuffs off, getting through this week and getting my visa finished up. Speaking of, I haven't heard from the Visa office yet, but the interview clearly went well, and I would expect them to be processing my visa papers as we speak. Still waiting on them to request my passport though, which is the final confirmation.

I can still smell the apartment stench on myself now and again.. I wonder if it's just a ghost smell now, or if I actually am saturated in it.

Oh.. and my Dad stayed overnight at the hospital after they checked him out for blockage.. all is well and he's most likely home now. They put him on some new meds that my folks are pretty stoked about for his diabetes. Some sort of new insulin derived from lizard saliva. Seems like the new doc is really doin' a lot better job of takin' care of my folks than the previous one.. which is really good, because the last one royally sucked. While Dad was is the hospital though, my mom got the call to find that my Uncle Al had passed. It of course raised his BP a little, and was a shock to all of us. Al always seemed in good health, but just goes to show that any of us could go at any time.

I gotta go.
-len

Dancing on the sun..

I just got back from a meeting with my landlord. It didn't go very well.

Bein a landlord myself, I understand needing some sort of compensation for early termination of a lease.. but since when did $1190 become suitable compensation for 30 days notice. To make it worse, we have a situation at the house that's not getting remedied. We cited it in our termination letter, but they are completely ignoring the situation. So I've been doing some research about the effects of second hand smoke before I make the attempt to tackle the higher ups.

So what is the situation you may be asking?

As you all probably know, my wife is 6 months pregnant and pretty much landlocked at the apartment while I'm at work. Shortly after we moved in, we traded our parents beds (single bed for a double bed) in expectation of Rachael's growing needs. When my mother got the single bed she immediately wrote me an email asking what I'd done to that bed.. it wreaked of smoke. I of course just assured her that it wasn't possible because the few times we've been in a remotely smokey environment, we immediatly peel off our clothes and get them to the wash (no exaggeration, literally in a heap once we hit the door).

A couple of months ago Rach herself started telling me that she smelled smoke in the apartment. My first thought was.. oh, she's pregnant - she's just got an oversensitive nose. But when I got home, I could smell it too. I looked and looked to try and work out where it was coming from, but I couldn't find the source for the life of me. After that, it began happening more and more frequently.. until it finally drove us out of the house. I said to myself, OK.. I can't find the source, and doubt they can do much about something like this without knowing how it was getting in here.. but these people at least need to know what's going on and give us some kind of indication if anyone else is having the same trouble. Two of our favorite places to occupy, the kitchen and the bathroom, reeked of soggy cigarette butts. You've probably smelled this particular odor before if you've ever been to the men's restroom in a smoking establishment and sniffed the urinals.

After the mantenance guy (the best maintenance guy in the world, by the way) came by and tried to find a hole to plug, he told us that he had no idea where it was coming from and that all he could do is set a bucket of sand outside the adjacent apartments and request a note be posted by management.. we called up mom and requested all the air cleaners she could find. We got two, one that she thought was broken and another smaller one. We got the large one fixed up in no time (yay for Mr and Mrs fix-it) and had them running full boar in both rooms (kitchen and bathroom).

This morning Rach woke up (after we'd set the air cleaners back to low, days before, to save energy) and the bathroom reeked again. We kicked it up to high, and it wasn't even thinned out again until after she was done getting ready to leave the house. What I think I should do is get something in writing that the landlord refuses to accomodate our request to reduce the early termination fee regardless of the environmental concerns for my family and myself. Perhaps I should get an email address for the manager's boss instead of the phone number. Once they've replied, I can use that as documentation to hold them liable in case anything happens to the child. Something that says that they understand our concern for the welfare of our family, but refuse according to their policy to allow us the accomodation of leaving the premesis without penalty regardless of the health conditions.

I think that would finally be worth $1k. A constant reminder of the get-rich-quick no matter how we screw the common man mentality. Anyway.. that's my rant for now.
-len

looking in tuit..

I have a card at my desk at work that my wife made ages ago. On one
side, it says..
"The heart has reasons that reason does not understand" ~Jacques Benigue
Bossuel

It really kind of flowed with what I was thinking this morning about
subliminal thought. I was just thinking about how intuition has an
uncommon knack of being right on. It's almost as if someone more knowing
than yourself is passing you information for the big test. I also got to
thinking about the activity of our brains when we're at rest. Even when
we're doing nothing, our brains could be taking in every bit of
information and comparing it to what we already know.. calculating
possibilities. And that's where the heart comes in.. is the heart
something more than an organ.. is it that little bit of risk and reason
that gradually becomes attachment?

I'm sure the ideas that are running through my head are less than
intuitive.. more of a conscious amalgamation of questions of life.
Whether it is full of pixies whispering in your ear, or neurons firing
out of control.. I suppose they're both a little magical in their own
way. Like a drop of rain.. left under a microscope. A whisper of h
-len

Somethin' to celebrate..

Rach's birthday was yesterday..

Last year I promised her I would respect her request to not let anyone make a big fuss on her birthday for once. To not have a special dinner or a little party. It's surprising how difficult a task that's become. Seems to be a success so far tho.. we've gotten through the actual day already. Just as long as we can get thru this weekend without my folks sneakin' in a celebration dinner, we'll be good.

I still need to find her a little something for her birthday, though. Any ideas?

-----------------------------

We're hoping to have a baby shower here in mid Nov..

I'll let you all know when exactly, but pretty much everyone we know is invited. I expect to have my Mom and good friend Shea help out with the plans. Rach and I haven't really ever done a "baby shower" before.. but our one prerequisite is that it be co-ed. We want to be sure the little munchkin knows that dudes exist too.. and they're just as anxious for munchkin to make an appearance. We still don't know if the baby is to be a boy or girl, so we've been going with black, white, tan, and some blues and greens to be safe. I'll plan to post some of the things we've gotten so far so you can see what kind of duds the little unknown munchkin will be sportin'.

I hope you all can make it.. there'll be invites once we settle on a place.
-len

Technorati Tags: Birthday, babyshower, baby, baby clothes

Sleepy..

I'm really tired. :)
-len

Bushwacker

I never used to give much mind to politics..

Today I get to leave work again, in the middle of the afternoon to finally get fingerprinted. It's the final step in my effort to secure permission to live with my wife in her home country. It's really not all that bad. The instructions have been quite clear and systematic from the forms. And I haven't had any trouble at all.. until I had to deal with local law enforcement.

I'm not really blaming local law enforcement directly for my headaches. I'm really just frustrated with the confusion the Federal government inserted into the process by injecting a redundant fingerprinting station in the INS office that is required specifically for American visa processing. Meanwhile the local law enforcement fingerprinting station is somehow under the impression that fingerprints for "Visas" are to go to the INS office only, and the INS office is under instruction that only "American Visas" are done at the INS office. A truly unnecessary frustration. Very redundant and inefficient.

So I planned to go in early.. but it's about 8am now. I just had to get that off my chest.

Rach and I started watching lost last night. I don't think we like it as much as Alias. Fortunately there's only one season to watch (if we make it through the whole thing) and we have another Alias season in D-4 days (D instead of T, because it's days).

I feel like I need to apologize for that previous uttlerly nerdacious post. I don't usually hack about that stuff in here. Good news is I refocused my attention on organizing all my stuffs (pictures, docs, data) that I had stored all over the place. DK also pointed me in the appropriate direction to get my system prepared for camming. I'm still hoping a linux solution comes along, but if it doesn't at least I'm prepared now. Thanks DK.

I've also got some awesome friends who are over in the Denny (Denmark) that I haven't given props to for far too long. Kat and Ammy.. two of the coolest peeps that you may ever get a chance to know (if you're so lucky). Right now they're tacklin' some pretty heady questions, and answerin' the call to leadership in thier global community. I'm really pretty impressed with some of the stuffs that they're turning out, and really look forward to seein' the results of all the work they're doing. Specifically the awareness projects.. lettin' peeps know about the Deaf! community and all the work that still needs to be done in some of the more remote areas of the world. You can check out more about the work they're doin' over there, if you follow the links to their frontrunners blogs.

Then there's Munchkin. Little one seems to be startin' to move a bit and I keep layin' my hand on my luv's belly, hopin' for a little high-5. Rach is doin' a whole lot better herself.. even after I made her make a run for it to get to the INS office yesterday. Bugger, I feel bad about that.. makin' a pregnant woman run in the cold for a dead end appointment (grr.. how rude). I love her so much tho.. she's such a trooper. I just hope to God that I'm not far from her side for any longer than I have to be. I think that's what drives me crazy the most about this visa crap.

That'd have to be all for now.
-len

Technorati Tags: Politics, INS, lost, alias, frontrunners, munchkin, baby

Windows behind closed doors..

This weekend I did some work on our little notebook. Trying to get a webcam working in windows 98. It's a cool little notebook, super tiny and all. It's a PII 266 running win98, though, and it's a bit slow compared to my Athlon 1.8 desktop system.

Needless to say it took me a bit to even get the bloated drivers installed, then it hung up so bad I had to restart and restart and well.. restart. Well, so that's why I'm not the biggest fan of windows. You start out with a perfect install, and then as you use it the thing becomes horribly bloated and self destructs. That's what happened ages ago with my poor mother's HP (that she still uses that way - despite endless frustration) and really any windows machine I've ever encountered. Days of maintenance and it's good for another week.

On a side note, my XP home partition on my main system hasn't booted for over a month. Linux loads the bootloader and it would boot fine, but.. once it's handed over to windows it won't even let me boot into safe mode without restarting the computer. I've seriously had it with Windows. Had it.

Been looking at the Ubuntu distro. Seems to be catching alot of media attention lately. Seems to be an altruistic premise, which is nice. I'm really feeling encouraged with all of these companies popping up with the appearance of selfless motives. It's something we've needed for a long time coming. I hope they all survive.

I believe that Google was the beginning. A company that just seems to help people become more and more productive, time and again. They even seem to be taking on the big companies like Yahoo and Microsoft.. challenging them to follow the leader and start doing the right thing by thier customers. They seem to be bringing us all together to collaborate and make the web more intelligent. I'm all for a more intelligent web, connecting mroe intelligent people and sharing incredibly useful information.

The precept would be scary if it came from a position of corruptible power. You might argue that all power is corruptible. Indeed you would be right, be it not for fair and equal distribution. I guess that's why I see open source as such a powerful force. Not only are the tools set in place by those with a propensity to share with the world (geedless/needless), but they are also freely available for public review and scrutiny.

I think the UK may have a good perspective and message with thier commonlaw. They have the understanding that a society develops it's own law with time, and knowledge or awareness of these laws bind them together. They have no constitution, or universal text.. they just learn from their own history, from their own mistakes.

I will stop there for now.. as I need to rebuild my resume in XML in order to wow the google elite. And if I don't succeed in wowing, at least I'll have a foundation for a far more configurable resume.
-len

Silver again..

Sorry to leave you all hanging...
Here's the surprise.

For the longest time my phone looked like a green tree frog. Now it's back to it's good ole' silver self. It's almost like she bought me a new phone.. all for $2.90 and shipping. What can I say.. I'm easy to please. :P
-len

Surprise!!

Rach is preparing a surprise for me. Something she told me that she got for me and would arrive this week. It arrived tonight. I can't quite guess what it will be. At first I just guessed it was something that she wanted. But all this preparation makes me really curious. It came in a small package. Rach says it's nothing big.. well, here goes.

Let's find out what it is..

Google.com.au

As many of you know.. Rach and I plan to be relocating around the end of the year.
With that relocation comes a renewed need to find gainful employment.

I've been oogling Google since they first arrived on the scene with this simple little box..

I've been in awe of their skill with data and simplified interfaces. Long story short.. I wanna work for Google Australia.

So my question is.. apart from the obvious (sending in a resume), do you have any suggestions for how to secure a future at a place like Google Australia?
-len

Displaced..

I just went for a walk in the cold night air..

It was really nice. I didn't go far because I was supposed to be looking for the cat.. even though I knew he would probably appear at our front door soon enough anyway. It was a good excuse to go for a walk. It was refreshing to amble around unfamiliar corners of familiar places. But as I shuffled my way between the shadows I felt oddly displaced.

I think that since I arrived in Sydney - Wow, that was over a year ago - I've felt so many things that were so familiar here just fade into obscurity. It's as if the memories of growing up were someone elses memories that I've borrowed. I know that these are the memories that made me. It is not enough just to be forged by the drifting shadow of your memories.. but also to know that you are forged. Except for the strength they gather in numbers, I couldn't understand how they discretly make a whole.

While we watched Alias tonight, Rach let me feel her belly. I didn't feel a kick.. but I felt connected. You know what I mean, to feel connected? Rach connects me somehow to the reality I'm living in right now. It doesn't matter how disoriented I am.. those bits that make up my whole still call out for her. Every part. Not just my head or my heart, but every part.

Someday we'll have a child, Rach and I. As hard as that is to believe even now with Rachael's beautifully swollen belly.. I'm still taken aback at the thought. Makes me want to speculate what the little one will be like.. but that's hard to do without knowing if it's a boy or a girl munchkin.

I told Rach today at lunch that I was gonna call our little one Bubbles. She thought I was being cute, but told me that the nickname wouldn't do just the same. Y'see Kat and Ammy have already chosen the nickname munchkin.. from the wizard of oz. But that's just the thing.. in The Wizard of OZ, Dorothy ends up back in KS. In this story, we couldn't bear to be stuck in black and white.. so we make plans to move back into technicolor. Back to the Emerald City so to speak.

Either way, I guess time will tell.. if it's a boy, I'll prolly call it munchkin (or buddy, I have a tendency to do that).. and if it's a girl, I'll prolly call it bubbles. Hmm.. or maybe I'll just call the little one Munchkin Bubbles.. haha.. that'd go over well. :P

*Raises his glass of grape soda*
Here's to finding home soon.. wherever we are.
-len

Alias on my mind

Rach and I have been watching alot of Alias lately. I mean like every spare minute we're ready to flick it on and see what happens next in the dangerously addictive mock-up world of espionage. I'm so into the story, that I start trying to work out who we're most like.

I would like to think I'm most like Will Tippin. I think Rach is definitely a Sydney Bristow. Of course, Rach's folks are far more stable than that.. but my folks might fit the role of Jack and that Russian woman, the way they go at each other sometimes. I love them both tho, and it moves me sometimes when I see them getting along. Yep, I'm gonna miss my folks.

I think Rach is a Sydney for lots of reasons. As for me being a Will, I think that's prolly just wishful thinking. I want to have all the best intentions, and do all the right things.. but sometimes it just comes off as being creepy or wierd. I never have been very good at showing affection appropriately, without it coming off as being a bit clumsy. Definitely not so good at playing it cool. So all I can do is play it Len. Rach tells me that's enough.

Oh, and I think Kat would be the sarcastic reporter with the british accent, and Ammy would be that girl that just started a restaurant and swamps herself with all the business that is entailed. Hmm.. I'm not sure who else I should typecast, but I could see this would take a while if I got too deep. I'd better call it quits while I'm ahead.
-len

Crawling in my skin..

When I was about 16 I worked at K-mart.. my first job. I would stand at those cash registers for hours absently dancing thoughts through my mind like a fizzling alka-seltzer. I learned alot in those solitary moments. One of those things that I realized was that I despised was this thing called ass kissing. Doing something nice for someone just to get ahead. And it was unfortunately what that store seemed to run on at the time. I despised it and it despised me. I had a hard time avoiding it there.. and when I was fired for befriending a kitten in my work area, I couldn't have been more vindicated.

As much as I hate it, I prolly seem like a crawler most of the time I suspect.. I am nice and smiley and cheery an awful lot of the time. Sometimes even when I really don't wanna be. But truth is, most of the time I'm nice and smiley and cheery because I am genuinely happy. I say nice things to people knowing they'll be good to me and do nice things for me. But I'd like to think that maybe I do it more because I want them to be happy too.

Forgetful and perhaps a bit nieve, but happy to be..
-len

Really a bit unreal..

The smell of late is so wonderful. I call it the smell, but it's more like a feeling. A memory that's disconnected from my brain and pervades my entired being. Floating freely from cell to cell syncronously to my elation. I don't understand it, but I get that feeling now and again, regardless of the circumstances and I feel a bit disconnected from myself.

And that's how I've been feeling. Everything at once feeling a little bit unreal, even as I take pleasure in all of it. I have a wife.. a remarkably wonderful wife. A wife who I love more than my own life. She holds our child.. who is a mystery and wonder to me. A child I've yet to meet and even still feel connected with. I have a cat.. something that I never thought I would be able to do. I love cats, but the cat is really my wife's companion when I must be away.

And I'm again leaving the place I grew up. I've done it before, and felt quite alien. I know that you think I'm talking about my last visit to Australia, but I'm not. I actually feel quite at home there. No, I'm talking about when my family chose to leave after 14 years at the same house in Newton, for a bigger place outside of a town called halstead.. only 8 short miles away.

It might as well have been a new continent. One where I was revered.. held in much higher regard. And disconnected. It wasn't long before I made new friends, but they didn't know me. So I became mysterious, even as I held nothing back about myself.. these strangers still knew nothing of me. How I grew up, played in the alley with the neighbor kids. Picked a fight with a boy half my size and lost. They didn't know that I liked climbing trees or why. They didn't care to call me up to see if they could meet me halfway and go exploring. They had thier own lives, and I was only a small part of that. The new kid.

The place was big. Lots of me time. No more bullies. Lots of respect.
I played my horn alot in the fields. I think my best friend was my dog. He was the most brilliant dog anyone could hope for. He would listen to me and know just how to respond. He would welcome me home every day. I didn't appreciate him nearly enough. It always seems that way. Those in our life who are the most reliable, consistent, meaningful ingredients to a well lived life.. those are the ones that are only secretly revered. Those who get no notice or gratitude.. those are the people who bless us all. And oh what a feeling when they finally discover thier role. Tears don't describe the feelings well enough. They are as vague as they are moving.

So now I'm doing it again. I'm going farther away.. and yet I feel I already am. I feel like I left home a long time ago, and I'm just saying a long goodbye to the family I love so much. I hope my new family embraces me. I don't expect my own to be replaced.. by no means can anyone take thier place. They're the only ones left who know the Len and Yen of my youth. A priceless archive of memories from one who cannot remember without member to recant his-story. Though I recognize my good fortune to own the gift of the present, I know it will too[,] soon be past.

English is a beautiful bastard language, isn't it?
-len

Doing better..

By the way.. Rach is doing a lot better since we got some decent meds.

Zofran seems to be doing the trick at this point.. and she only needs to take it about every other day when she starts feeling nauseous. Sometimes she tries not taking it until after she's emptied her tummy, because she'd much rather do without. I hate to know how we'd be dealing without this drug.. even as much as I hate the whole idea of medicating away problems.

Rach still is bothered by headaches, weakness, and incessant hunger most of the time.. but I suspect that's the more normal effects for a pregnant woman to be experiencing. She seems to be eating a lot of Chinese and Italian food, as these types of food are very much the kinds of foods she is familiar with back home. And they're really the only reasonably healthy and quick option for vegetarians when you need food straight away.

I keep trying to explore other options, but I'm afraid I'm not a very good cook to begin with. The biggest struggle for me is seasoning food appropriately. Rach and I both have very little experience with anything short of prepackaged seasonings. It's something I know we will grow into over time, but it's a little shocking that we're bringing a new one into the world without a good base of how to get the little one nourished. I guess that's what the gran-folks are for, to help establish some of those habits while the little one buys us some time with a propensity for liquid foods.

I sure hope the little munchkin likes Aussie.
-len

Restless..

It's about 3am and I'm restless..

I've many thoughts flowing through my head. Mostly work and visa stuffs. Today I told Dv, my boss at the Strat that Rach and I are looking to move back to Aussie. I'm thinking about that and all the stuffs we talked about. I'm thinking about the visa papers and worried they'll be done in time. I'm thinking about moving to the other side of the world and growing my new family in an unfamiliar place. Thinking about all the expectations I may never live up to over there.

I'm thinking about that silly minicase and the silly truckputer equipment that Dk bought instead of paying off debts. Had ideas popping thru my head about how IPS could use a touch screen to provide additional info and resources at the client interface. Thinking how it would degooglify the interface tho (complicate it). Then got to thinking about how I need to update my flickr account with pictures. I'm pretty excited about that. Being able to upload a new batch every month without limit. And the coolest thing is tagging. Grouping our massively unstable archive of images with nice neat little tags. Identifying people, places, feelings.. whatever I want to. Even blogging about each one if I want. Yet another silly thing for me to manage. Yet another pseudo-archive of my life.

So yea, I felt like blogging... But to where? I got to thinking.. I have so many blogs it's not even sensible anymore. I have gkumba.com which is basically dead until I start posting one of my blogger blogs to it. But which one, I have a half dozen just on blogger alone. Then there's tblog which annoys the crap out of me with the lost posts because it doesn't archive indefinitely, but I keep going back to now and again nonetheless. I had all that work just poof, disappearing like that. Just like the memories themselves do in my head.. what good is that? Then there's the one I don't think I've ever posted to that my bro uses (I'm gonna really miss my bro even tho we don't really get to hang much anymore). The one that allows you to say what you're listening to. Well, most of the time I'm not listing to anything anyway.. too distracting. I prefer to be alone with my thoughts while I blog, otherwise I tend to plug lyrics into my posts.. or just plain forget what I want to get off my mind (just to have it all haunt me again later). And well, that's not even counting all the forums and memberships I've signed up for and never use..

My domain has come up for renewal again for this year. I'm debating if I should stick with Gandi.. they seem to do the deed well enough, but it's another $12 or so and I'm cheap. I should tidy up my account on the 'til box. I'm really grateful Jn kept me hosted as long as he has. It's been great to have that up there. I should actually keep it a little more live tho, if I plan to keep renewing the domain. I think maybe I'll post this blog there and just make the old stuffs disappear. I need to make a banner for this page like I did for inkboy.org. That turned out really well, methinks. Too bad I'll never actually create the domain, or do anything I planned to do with the idea.

Yea.. Dv is right, the era of high volume inkjet printing is fading. People are printing more stuff at kiosks and online printing services. Most of today's stuff is more like, I need to print a hard copy of this blog, or this website, or this receipt. And it doesn't really matter how good it looks, so maybe I'll just use the laser printer for this job. I was kind of hoping all the info packed in my head over the past couple of years would be useful to the general population, but their interest is waning. I even hoped to make some kind of really cool clothing line. Design some stuff that I might see someday circulating in the printergeek crowd. Not that the printergeek crowd is very extensive.. I wouldn't be surprised if Dv and I were the only ones within a 100 mile radius. And I don't wonder why.. printers are the bane of most people's existence. It's almost a masochistic thing to be all nerded about printers.

I should probably post and go to bed. I'll prolly regret being up so late tomorrow. We'll see soon enough in the morning. latrz.
-len

Hyper-G

Hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) is a severe form of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. It is generally described as unrelenting, excessive pregnancy-related nausea and/or vomiting that prevents adequate intake of food and fluids. If severe and/or inadequately treated, it is typically associated with:

* loss of greater than 5% of pre-pregnancy body weight (usually over 10%)
* dehydration and production of ketones
* nutritional deficiencies
* metabolic imbalances
* difficulty with daily activities

HG usually extends beyond the first trimester and may resolve by 21 weeks; however, it can last the entire pregnancy in less than half of these women. Complications of vomiting (e.g. gastric ulcers, esophageal bleeding, malnutrition, etc.) may also contribute to and worsen ongoing nausea.

....That's copy and pasted from a website I've spent alot of time at recently.
http://www.helpher.org

Rach is 12 weeks pregnant, and should be feeling like a champ according to anyone who's had a normal pregnancy. Needless to say from my last two posts... she could be feeling better.

I'm sure that most of the peeps that I talk to probably think I'm just trying to elicit some kind of sympathy. Truth is, all I wanna do is vent some of this stuff that's tying my stomach in knots. Both of us hate drugs and hospitals and everything they imply. We are not the kind of people that even like to take headache meds. I'd rather find the cause and encourage the body to heal itself. Rach'd rather sleep through it or ignore it.

And yet we're stuck. Both of us fighting with these damn meds to find a balance of sanity and control. Chasing down drug names and interactions and side effects. All the while worrying about how this drugged up little baby is gonna feel in a suddenly drug free world. Are we ****ing him up by coursing these freakishly disturbing chemicals through Rach's body.

But there's no choice. Rach's health is critical to both her and any chance for this little guy to get out alive. It's almost like an allergic reaction Rach is having to this baby inside her. Only instead of reacting against it, it's overacting to protect it. At the cost of Rach's health and self-sustainability.

My hope is that this is all just a reaction to some bleeding in the placenta, and that once that's all healed up (and hopefully soon), Rach's body will go back to normal pregnancy mode. We have an appointment on Tuesday, and hopefully we can have a good chat and try to clear up some of the questions in our head. I doubt they'll have any solid answers, but at least I can run some of my theories by them and see what they say. I'm hoping that by understanding it a little better, I'll be able to better cope with it all.

And with that, I'll get back to sleep. Pray for us. All three of us.
-len

Scared shitless..

After what we've been through these past few weeks Rach and I have seemed to come around to the conclusion that the only way to keep food down is some sort of anti-nausea meds. Well maybe just I have. Rach decided yesterday that she would try (after 2 or 3 days of moderate success) to drop the pills.

She'll at least take the folic acid if I help remind her, and I'm thankful for that. Because with all this vomiting, it doesn't matter how "good" she eats if she doesn't keep it down. I'm hoping that those vitamins should be helping to at least keep the baby from being malformed while we experiment to try and stabilize Rach's health (if any of them are getting in her system).

Yesterday Rach was upset, understandably about trying to eat enough to keep her weight up. She said she wasn't very good at eating lots. I think I've probably been putting alot of pressure on her to keep trying to eat stuff. I told her that she doesn't need to just eat, but we need to find things she enjoys, so it's not some kind of a chore.

Right now she just needs to keep something down, anything. It all gets broken down into some form of energy, and hopefully the vitamins help with the rest. Once there's something for energy in there we can focus on the right forms, and protein carbohydrate balance. But I'm still very frustrated, because everything she ate yesterday came up in a whirlwind and she seems like she's back to where we were two days ago.

So if I didn't mention already, I'm very frustrated and back to feeling very helpless. I can't very well force Rachael to manage her pregnancy and I'm scared to know what it's all doing to her. I can't even tell you what it's doing to me. I can't go to work like this. I can't leave her not knowing if she's going to give up. I don't want to lose her. At this point I understand those people who would consider giving up the baby for the health of the mother. No matter how much I want this child.. I couldn't live without Rach.

I'll never find anyone like Rach. Never again in all of my life. I don't want to even imagine my life without her... it's only barely started with her. Why did I try to fulfill my selfish desire to be a father without being prepared for this? Could I have been more selfish?

Now that I've had a bit of a tear over my thoughts, I think I may try to sleep some more. Hopefully Rach will be willing try to fight this thing again in the morning. Please God, give her the will to fight this thing in the morning and into it's fruition. I'm scared.
-len

Sleep it off..

It's the start of the 10th week and I'm frightened for Rachael's health. She's lost 5 pounds from nausea (and probably the lack of tasty options for food she can eat without hurling). Yesterday we went to the doctor for help and he just seemed to make it worse. It seemed like the doc was going to more trouble trying to bring his student Rosy out of her shell more than he was really trying to diagnose anything for Rachael. That's a male doctor for you anyway. They're not very good listeners. He didn't even know that Rachael was Vegitarian (look at her folder for goodness sakes).

To make things worse, when we went to the doctor, they reflex jerk gave her a shot in the bum for nausea. Next thing I know, it's just Rach and I on the floor.. Rach vomiting what little fluid she had left in her body. She needed water desperately and the doc said to take little sips. The shot was supposed to help nausea, but she's still not eating. Everytime she nibbles a cracker, she burps and reflexes like it's gonna come right back.

She's sleeping like a baby, but she needs to be fed. I'm really scared. I don't know what happens to a person when they don't eat for so long. I know when I do that, my body starts to attack itself. I've come to believe that this is no place for vegitarians. America is so damn meat focused, it makes me sick. That hospital that Jenny works at would be ideal right now. They wouldn't try to stick her with a needle before they have time to check her out. They wouldn't stick her and nudge her out the door. They wouldn't tell me to feed her chicken broth and then shrug thier shoulders when I tell them she's a vegitarian.

I guess there's no place like OZ for that kind of treatment, and so we may have to head back home sooner than we'd planned. I don't care if we can afford it, or if debts here aren't paid off.. I need Rach to be well. I can't let her suffer under a system that's so incompatible with anyone but a cookie cutter cholesterol guzzler. The medical profession seems to be established to cater only to fat lazy heart attack patients and drug induced hemopheliacs and I'm sick of it.

Or maybe it's just me..
-len