Update

I can't believe it's August. I had another surgery. Went well.

Here are some recent pics of the girls.



The sad news is about our oldest dog, Wilson. He has malignant tumors throughout his skull and brain. He is slowly declining in abilities. He has lost all of his eyesight and some of his hearing. Our vet has been very good about keeping him comfortable with lots of narcotics. He still wags his tail and is happy to interact with us. When he stops wagging his tail I will know it is "time." That will be very hard.

U.P.P.P.

Well, I had the surgery, it was horrible.

The time in the hospital wasn't so bad. But the pain control after going home was non-existent. And when calling the office, no help was provided, only judgemental cracks.

I would never recommend this mess to anyone. I am just now, 2 weeks later, getting to the point where pain is reasonable. Ugh. Where my uvula and soft palate used to be, now there is just scar tissue. When I drink anything, some of it goes down, some of it goes up the back of my nose. Joyful experience.

On the up side, Caro says she thinks I am sleeping better.

Sleep apnea

I just saw a surgeon today. I've been on CPAP at night for sleep apnea but not only is it a pain in the butt, I also frequently wake up and find that I've removed it and turned it off in my sleep. Turns out the awake me and the sleeping me have the same feelings about it.

So I saw a surgeon and I'm going to let him roto-rooter my throat, in an attempt to alleviate the problem. Carolyn is pretty sure I'm going to die in my sleep if I don't do something. She's been doing the math on my death benefits and trying to figure out how much she'll have to earn to make up for any deficit. It's all very touching.

So I'll let ya know how it goes. He says two weeks off work and it really hurts. Great.

Signs, signs, everywhere signs

Ah, memories....

I was out driving to get gas, when a song from the '70's came on the radio. It instantly took me back to my school days, and... a cold chill ran down my spine. I quickly inserted a CD and enjoyed memories of seeing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. My painful memories brought a question to mind. When people who favor public education scoff at home-schooling, one of their pet complaints is "How will they ever learn to survive in society?" So my question is, "What is the inherent value in purposefully exposing your young children to emotional trauma?"

Seriously. I guess the idea is that I should have been learning something from all that bullying in public school that would somehow help me survive today at my job. Or something. Maybe in the neighborhood. Mostly what I learned when the bullies were on the hunt was how to avoid them. Not very useful or productive. The fact that the teachers left us smaller kids to fend for ourselves-- not so much helpful. When the teachers WERE the ones doing the bullying (rare, but true), the lessons learned were confusing at best. So I still wonder, "What is the inherent value in purposefully exposing your young children to emotional trauma?"

We all know nasty stuff happens at school. That's the whole premise behind the complaint about home-schooling. The idea is that since home-schooled kids have been sheltered from the playground politics, they can't possibly function in society! It doesn't matter that home-schooled kids actually get to participate in lots of social activities that their parents choose. If they don't get the prescribed number of emotional scars from a good dose of unsupervised public education, then they will be socially inept for the rest of their lives.

I'm not convinced.

I'm hard pressed to come up with anything valuable I learned from the social aspects of my education, that couldn't have been learned in a more supervised atmosphere. Let me know if I'm missing something. There's a chance I might push for Laney to go the home-schooling route.

Family Portrait

We had our family pic taken recently, turned out OK. I haven't blogged for a while due to our employer blocking this from the computers. Promise to keep up better.

life

I was laying on the bed, petting Daisy and feeling a great sense of oneness with all that is living, and I had this thought...

What do you call the little 1-millimeter terminal balls on the very top of a head of broccoli? There are about a zillion of them per head. Anyway, whatever they're called, they are each an expression, or piece, of just one life-- one broccoli plant.

What if all of us, all living things, are just different expressions of one life? One life. Not all different lives who need to fight and compete and work against each other for individual gain. Not different races and religions who need to discriminate, and slaughter each other in holy wars. One life, all of us. Trees too, says I. All living things.

Think about it... not so crazy. We don't really know much about life. Roots go down, shoots go up. Air goes in and out, blood goes round and round. That's about all we really understand. Oneness is a foreign concept to some humans, but definitely worth considering.

I know, I know.

Probably just me and Daisy.