…it’s time to publish the first installment of what should be the Big Book of Basic Technology Knowledge — the prerequisite for using electronics in today’s society. Some may seem basic, but you’ll probably find at least a couple of “I didn’t know thats!” among them.
via Basic Technology Made Easier, Volume One – _ State of the Art – NYTimes.com.
Setting: the couch. The Flyers are playing game 3 of the 2nd round of the playoffs against the Bruins. The Phillies are playing game 2 of a 3 game series against Washington. The Flyers are down 2 goals.
TV: Bruins score again.
Kirabug: Baseball now?
Nighthawk: Yes, baseball now.
Nighthawk changes the channel.
Phillies immediately score.
Kirabug: See? We’re not meant to watch the Flyers.
Nighthawk: It’s heading into first intermission anyway.
…
Nighthawk flips back to the Flyers game during a Phillies commercial break. The Bruins immediately score.
Kirabug: Would you knock that off?
Nighthawk: It was a commercial!
Nighthawk switches back to the Phillies.
Kirabug’s iPhone chirps.
Kirabug: Aaaand, as soon as you change it, Meszaros scores. We really can’t watch the game if we want the Flyers to have a chance.
…
Phillies announcers mention that Raul Ibanez was hitless for 13 games, and since yesterday is 4-for-5.
Nighthawk: For two weeks, he couldn’t buy a hit.
Kirabug: Apparently, the check cleared.
…
Nighthawk flips back to the Flyers game during a Phillies commercial break.
Kirabug: Are you trying to make the score worse?
Nighthawk: They’re not going to score just because I change the channel, despite what you and half the planet believe about sports.
Kirabug: I don’t believe that.
Nighthawk: Relax, they’re in intermission.
Kirabug: You watch, the Bruins will find a way to score during intermission because of you. And I am not going to be the one to explain that to Tim Panaccio when it happens.
…
Nighthawk returns from walking the dogs.
Nighthawk: How did we load the bases.
Kirabug (half-asleep): Umm…the guy. In the uniform? With the bat? He hit the ball.
Nighthawk: Schneider?
Kirabug: Yeah. His second hit of the game.
Nighthawk: You don’t know who hit, but you know how well they batted this game?
Kirabug: What? Don’t judge me.
My body’s exhausted, but my brain’s wide awake, so you get a blog post.
Nighthawk is done the IVs, which is good. He’s still exhausted (mostly from the IVs) so is off the next two weeks to try to recharge. I can relate.
Today we watched the Phils play the Astros. I ate two hot dogs. I got a new heavier Phillies jacket to keep me warm. I watched the game unfold with Nighthawk at my side. We sat in the sun and lived like humans, with all the requisite doctor’s permission, of course. The boys of summer held up their end of the bargain and swept the ‘Stros.
Baseball fills me with joy like few other things, and even hours later, I am content.
Tomorrow is my last half-day, and is a big giant presentation I’ve had less than 25 hours to prepare for. And by “prepare” I mean “finish the prototypes” for. Going to be a rough one.
The rest of the week will wear me out but I finally think I can handle it (no really this time).
Of course, sleeping might help…
Two steps forward, one step back.
Nighthawk is home from the hospital. He came home last Friday, along with all the supplies necessary to do antibiotic IVs from home. It’s not an unusual step for the treatment of Cystic Fibrosis and it sure beats being cooped up in a hospital where you have no control of your schedule, or who handles your care, or any of the fun details like that. And we have vastly superior mattresses, pillows, blankets, televisions, computers, and food than the hospital could provide.
On the other hand, there’s a regimen and routine to hospital life that is easy to adjust to when you are too sick to function, which you lose when you get out. Now instead of someone waking you to start your IVs, you up have to wake yourself. Instead of someone bringing your inhaled medication to you pre-assembled, you have to get up and put things together yourself. Instead of the medical staff coming to you (albeit on a schedule you can’t control, and for maybe 5 minutes), you have to drive to their office yourself. You finally get to sleep as solid six hours without the patient in the next room coughing or screaming or machines beeping, but you use all the extra energy taking care of yourself when you are awake.
Two steps forward, one step back.
For me, last week was three trips to Philly, four (somewhat abbreviated) days of work, and a lot of just trying to get my head back in the game. An eight-hour day interacting with a couple dozen people at work, followed by a half dozen more after hours in the act of caring for my household is more talking than I did in three days at home. Even just the work of driving was new for me, since a month of drugs that prohibit the use of two-ton boxes of metal is enough time to forget how many of your senses have to stay in “full alert” mode when you’re in charge of the big metal box.
To paraphrase my uncle, my mouth was writing checks that my body couldn’t cash.
By the weekend, having picked Nighthawk up and gotten him settled in at home, straightened the house and generally improved everything, I was running low-grade fevers and getting winded just walking the dogs around the house. So my second week back at work started with a half day, and then a half day of doctor’s appointments, x-rays, and blood tests. And orders to take Tuesday off.
Two steps forward, one step back.
The diagnosis, when all was said and done, under the opinion of two different doctors, is exhaustion. Tonsillectomy, pneumonia, sick dogs, hospitalized huband, gee, I don’t know where that might be coming from. The treatment is “Eat more protein, take your mulit vitamin, and rest. If you have to go back to work, take it slow and start with half-days.”.
And this is where I struggle, because on one hand, the doctors want me to “rest” until I have energy enough to function. But the insurance company that ensures I get paid during this timeframe works in absolutes: rest for how many days? All day or half days? With what restrictions for returning to work? The doctors, trying to protect themselves and knowing they can’t predict how long it will take me to rest and heal, say it’s up to me.
And I don’t know. I confuse responsibility with health on a regular basis. The responsible thing to do is take care of my husband, and take care of the dogs, and take care of the bills and the house and all of those things. The responsible thing to do is go back to work and earn a paycheck and contribute to society. I’ve generally been a healthy person — or at least a person who, when I got sick, would bounce back in 24 hours. Napping and reading books and playing the occasional video game in the name of “rest” is so far down my list of responsibilities that medieval monks would need to go to the second scroll to find it.
I thought I was responsible enough to go back to work after the first two weeks, when I could barely talk, was still in significant pain, and running constant fevers instead of this off-and-on nonsense. (“Am I healthy enough?” never really entered my mind.) After the third week I thought I was responsible enough to go back, but my healing wasn’t where it was supposed to be and it was more responsible of me to follow the doctor’s orders. Last week responsibility to my husband and my paycheck won out over responsibility to my immune system and despite the fact that my throat and body are healing very well, I used up what few reserves I have left.
Two steps forward, one step back.
Having visited doctors and rested most of Tuesday, I went in yesterday feeling much better than I did over the weekend, and decided I didn’t need extra time off. I could persevere so long as I got to bed early every evening. I attended two meetings, ate lunch with and cheered up a good friend, cleaned out my email (again) got a two-weeks-overdue report out the door, and despite drinking copious amounts of caffeine, almost fell asleep at my desk.
(I really need to take away my mouth’s checkbook.)
I finally started to believe the doctors about this whole “rest” thing. (One of my docs had said “Now you understand why people die from pneumonia.”) I arranged for the paperwork necessary to go back for half-days for a week and a half (look, absolutes!), and planned to start them today.
Except that today, Nighthawk woke up as sick and exhausted as I’ve seen him since he went into the hospital. Even just trying to do his own medications was going to be a serious drain on him. And a visiting nurse is coming over today, which only adds to the chaos and disorder. So rather than work a half day, I’m at home taking care of him, and trying to grab some rest when he’s napping.
Tomorrow I’ll be healthy enough and responsible enough to go back to work for at least a half day.
Tomorrow, tomorrow.
Two steps forward, one step back.
Two steps forward, one step back.
Dear lady I don’t know walking a big dog around my building while talking on the phone at 5:30am in a heavy rain:
My very small dog woke me up because he had to go, and he tends to be nasty to both strange dogs and strange humans alike when his tummy’s rumbling ominously. Also, he’s got a bark that would pierce a bunker, and we have sleeping neighbors.
Its your job to set the direction we’re going to walk around the building, because you were out first. So if in trying to walk my dog in the loop around my building, and I see you and I stop, it’s to avoid you. If I leave almost half a building between us, when walking resumes, it’s TO AVOID YOU.
For f’s sake, DON’T change directions twice in order to try to meet me in the middle while aforementioned dog is talking a dump. I don’t have any interest in being social to strangers in the dark and the rain when I should be asleep but instead I’m picking up crap. And just because the beast you’re walking is “friendly” doesn’t mean my dog is!
Back off!
sincerely,
Pissed off and grouchy
Psst – Dad! I’m adding links so you can watch them on Youtube directly
An artist creates a video to explain the Japanese Fukushima nuclear crisis to children. (Warning: contains poo.)
During my freshman and sophomore years at college, I had a lot of time to myself, mostly because I was too paralyzingly shy to integrate myself into other groups.
I was a quick study and had a lot of time to kill those first two years. I was also dirt-poor. What little cash I had went to fantasy paperbacks, and then in a fit of curiosity, to a pack of Bristol board and a pile of colored pencils from the school store’s art section.
They weren’t cheap, but they resonated with me in a way I can’t explain. When the loneliness or the nightmares plagued me too many nights in a row, I would huddle in a candle-lit dorm room and fill pages with richly colored figures blending into vague backgrounds from my dreams.
Most of my pencils are gone now, used up long ago, and I have yet to find quality replacements. (Most boxed sets of colored pencils are missing a smooth texture, depth of color, and a soul.)
But when I launch Brushes on my iPhone or iPad, I find my pencils again, in the form of digital ink.
My art will never hang in a museum. I make it neither for the tourist nor the consumer. I didn’t make it for you or anyone like you. I don’t even make it for the end result. I make it as a record of how I felt when I huddled over the canvas and stared into the empty page.
Thank you for looking at it anyway. I hope it inspires you to find a way to capture your feelings, if only for a moment, if only to make them real.