The second half of this spring's school semester has been kicking my ass.
It's not like I haven't had difficult semesters before...my transcripts and GPA will prove that!
It's something about this semester that is making it my own personal kryptonite. Perhaps it's that both classes are requring final papers among regular case write ups. Normally I ADORE writing-intensive classes because I can write like crazy and I'd much rather do that then work on statistical/accounting/math problems.
Maybe it's that I'm working full time and having to do a lot of writing at work to update procedures for my department.
Possibly it may have something to do with the fact that the average sleep I've been getting each night for the past few weeks is around 5 hours.
Perhaps I've finally met the symptoms of the crazy gene in my family. I'm normally a very resilient person who can stay evenly keeled for the most part, barring a few days due to hormones or lack of sleep. But my mom, sister and I know we have to keep an eye out for that crazy gene. My Nana had it, my uncle has it in spades, and chances are it will crop up for me at some point. My ability to deal with problematic things has lessened considerably from what I'm used to. I'm moodier and prone to snapping or breaking down at things that in the past I would have breezed right past.
Possibly it has something to do with the fact that I still have to wash the Big B's legs when he showers. He's doing really well now and has so much more mobility than before, but some things he still can't do. He's been helping with dishes, to the point now where he can do them entirely on his own, if it does cause him a bit of pain to stretch himself. He did his own laundry the other day, another big step forward. There are still things he can't do however, and that's part of the stress adding to the stress of schoolwork.
But.
Never let it be said that I'm all doom & gloom! Eternal optimist here, seeing the sunny side of life (or trying to) at all times, despite the looming threat of the family crazy gene.
Because, you see, there IS light at the end of the tunnel.
A few days more of frantic studying, paper writing, and reading and I will be done until fall. Four blessed months of no homework, no dry textbook reading, no weirdly demanding instructors who force you to turn in a rough draft of a paper only to knock you 11 points for grammar and spelling errors (isn't a rough draft by definition "rough"?).
It's so close I can already taste the freedom. So much so, in fact, that I couldn't help but compose this post while daydreaming of what I'll do with all my new found free time:
Finally join the legions of frenetic fans of Firefly and become a true Browncoat in my own right.
Ditto on Doctor Who, except not the Browncoat thing.
Build that Elder Dragon Highlander (aka Commander) deck for the Magic the Gathering nights at my friend's house
Finish the background story on my new character for the Zero to Hero game that is replacing the Kortoe adventure as my new favorite D&D game.
Get working on my Rainbow Brite steampunk outfit for the swiftly approaching CONvergence in July, along with my accessories and other goodies.
Enjoy the outdoors, get started on exercising regularly to get in shape. Its sad when you are winded after running a couple of blocks to catch the bus.
Oh yeah, and and RELAX and do ABSOLUTELY nothing for a day or two while my brain coagulates from the mush it was pounded into by my finals.
It's sad when your required life gets in the way of your real fun life. I keep telling myself it'll pay for itself in the long run...
I think I'm on the right track, as the fortune I received with today's chinese food lunch states:
Ever since I discovered the world of Pern, created by the author Anne McCaffrey, I have loved dragons.
Do you see the little one?
This one could almost be Daenerys from A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones)
This was my desktop background for ages and ages.
Cover to another one of my favorite series dealing with dragons.
Aren't the colors on this one just gorgeous?
Ruth, the white dragon of Pern.
The last three pictures are covers from fantasy book series involving dragons. The last is from All the Weyrs of Pern which is one of the first books to ever make me cry. All three covers were created by the same artist, Michael Whelan. I love that he makes each dragon-type unique to the series and gets all the details right.
Growing up I did the typical teenager thing and plastered the walls of my bedroom with images from magazines. Most of the walls were devoted to pictures of bands I liked, but one wall was forever reserved for my collection of dragon pictures.
I used to beg my mom to let me print pictures in color I found off the internet. If I'd had my way I would have printed them all, but ink was expensive and my mom was trying to run her own business so I had to content myself with picking only my most favorite ones.
I would count how many dragon-related items I had in my collection and sigh with pleasure at the many examples of draconic beauty.
How I wished I had a dragon of Pern! To be bonded to such a noble creature for life, someone who was constantly with you, a part of your thoughts, someone who would always love you utterly and completely, no matter what happened. To be able to leap on your dragon's back and soar into the sky, the wind in your face and the earth rushing below...!
Pernese dragons have the ability to teleport themselves not only anywhere on the planet by going between but also can go between times for traveling in the past. As long as your dragon had a clear picture of where and when you wanted to go, it could take you there!
Can you imagine going anywhere you like in 8 seconds? The gold dragons on Pern are the queens and the largest of the dragons, growing as big as an airplane at times. That would mean plenty of room to bring your friends along wherever you wanted to go. As long as you could picture it in your mind clearly, you could be there.
While a teleporter from Star Trek would be excellent, I'll take a Pernese dragon any day. The ability to teleport anywhere on the planet, be able to time travel, breathe fire, and provide constant companionship to their rider trumps a mechanical contraption any day.
Sorry Scotty. But I know Dr. McCoy would agree with me.
Last month's run in with the furry bandits was not the first time these suckers have messed with me.
First it was while camping up at the Barrens, a site in rural Wisconsin that my parents have camped at since well before I was born, with me happily carrying on the tradition and introducing a whole new crop of people to the wonder that is the Barrens.
The view upstream along with our rope for our floaty devices.
How I wish I was there!
My buddy Jack was our hero, climbing up the tree to retrieve
the parachute man from the firework we had set off
Efforts to dislodge Jack are futile
Behold the shining that is the Big B in all his glorious pastiness.
One of the first trips up there sans parental supervision and I lost my mashed potatoes to the little thieves.
I'll admit this first time was my fault. I left them out on the table covered in tin foil and when I woke up in the morning, the foil was all torn and there were these teensy tiny claw marks clearly delinating where they had stuck their grubby little paws into my leftovers.
Okay, so maybe I wasn't going to eat the potatoes since I forgot to put them in the cooler. Still! The principle.
On a more recent camping trip just this past summer in Iowa for a family reunion, they declared war.
It was in late August and the weather was miserable all weekend. Deathly hot and humid with no breeze at all, even out on the lake. Add insult to injury, and raccoons raided my Aunt's campsite, breaking into coolers and stealing string cheese and other delectables. One of my coolers was broken into as well, but they could only open the beer cooler and thankfully for my sister and I, raccoons haven't figured out how to open bottles that require an opener. I'm sure if they were twist off we would have been in trouble.
That was just the first night. The second night my sister made me sleep on the outer side of the tent next to the coolers because she was scared that they would be back. I was scared too but I played it off like I was cool.
She had good reason to fear; they came back and I woke up in the middle of the night to someone digging in our cooler again. I think I said "Hey!" and batted at the wall of the tent and scared them away. Then shortly after I heard my dad yelling at another one by his tent.
The next morning his girlfriend admitted she had purposefully put breadcrumbs around their tent in order to lure them in. Apparently she had raccoons as pets once. Not sure how she was planning on getting one home, exactly, as my dad would so not be cool with that.
The third night, we put our coolers on the other side of the tent and placed heavy objects on them to foil the crafty little buggers. Good thing too, because our food cooler had a latch and it was undone when we woke up, although the weight on top seemed to keep them out.
Hah! Their tiny pathetic raccoon muscles were no match for human intellect. I think.
But maybe there's a secret raccoon communications network. Hell, for all I know they traverse the internet all the time and use email.
Somehow the war movement has made its way from Iowa and Wisconsin back to the home front. The roly poly masked mammal that did its best to kill my car in a suicidal dash was the first sign.
Tonight, they took advantage of our forgetfulness here at the Doll House. We left the garage open, and when the Big B went downstairs to grab his laundry he noticed the garage light was on (yay, he can do his own laundry! Big steps people).
When he opened the door to the garage to see why the light was on, he realized the garage door was open just before we heard a scabbling noise and saw one of the little shits skittering away from our garbage bin.
They are definitely out to get me. I bet they're even using our own wireless to email each other.
Stumbled upon this while doing research for a school project on the Japanese crisis.
It was just too weird to resist!
And no, I don't know what House or Hugh Laurie has to do
with the Japanese earthquake, tsunami or nuclear disaster.
If you are what you eat, Hugh Laurie must get all his daily serving of vegetables. Which is a direct contrast to my Bonus Dad, who eats nothing green that isn't a Skittle. I still can't puzzle out how he avoids scurvy!
As another example of pure random-ness, I got my very first anonymous/spammer commentor today. It must be spam as I don't see it on the original post, but my email received notice.
Should I be tickled or annoyed by this? I'm not sure but the sheer novelty of it is making me lean towards tickling.
If I'm sniffling a bit today, you must forgive me. It was an excitement filled weekend, full of nerdly delights.
Sunday we watched the premier of A Game of Thrones on HBO and we were happily transported to the mythic land of Westeros and the lands across the Narrow Sea.
But Saturday! We were saying goodbye to our own mythical land, the land of Kortoe. The D&D game that I and various friends have been participating in since 2005 is done, over, finished, complete.
This was the first RPG game I ever played in where we stuck with our characters from lowly first level (where your character can be killed by an over-eager kitten) to epic 20th level where your group can literally challenge the gods themselves, if they so choose.
The group playing the game has changed a bit since we first started. The Core Four (myself, the Big B, Mikey, and Travis) are the only ones who were with it from beginning to end. Over the years, we had over 15 different people playing in the game at one point or another.
Kortoe was something dreamed up at Travis' house after I had introduced the Big B to the joys of role playing (and he actually liked it!) and we all decided we wanted to play a truly epic game. The Big B's main complaint with RPG'g before this was that we always did short game sessions, one-nighters, and were constantly creating new characters for each game.
"I want to have a character stay constant from the beginning to end," he says to me. "I want to keep my character."
And so Kortoe was born.
Perhaps my favorite part of being a DM is drawing maps. In my 3-ring binders of D&D love at home, you can find maps to all kinds of places that never existed anywhere outside of my mind and the tabletop where the dice roll. My buddy Travis (my very first DM, sniff sniff!) also likes maps and had one drawn in topographical-style but nothing was named yet. I had a map with names already and was sort of attached to my naming scheme, so we stole my names and put them on his map.
Then the fun of world-building got started.
Because I'm obsessed with the Disney TV show Gargoyles, I insisted we create a new race that would be closely in line with the Disney mythos. I think we did a pretty good job--the race is fairly balanced and has its very own mountain to live in. Although no one really ended up actually playing one as a PC for any length of time, they were used as plot devices and NPC's by a couple DM's.
We wrote brief descriptions of each major city on the map, described the different regions, political powers, peoples, and religions. It was a dynamic thing, constantly subject to change as each player got a chance at DM'ing an adventure with the same PC's.
We decided on a rotating DM scheme since before that, Travis had always been our de facto Dungeon Master and the poor man was tired of running and arguing with us. I don't blame him! We're a difficult bunch at best to DM for.
We all pledged to respect what the other DM's had built, and stay away from the areas on the map "claimed" by a certain DM. Travis wanted to describe a city in the north that had been pounded by successive meteors due to the wrath of the gods against another of their member, I wanted to have a political-intrigue inspired game in the south where a nation had two cities on a river and was full of backstabbing and palace intrigues. Mikey wanted to be in charge of the undead city of Riazi, where a mysterious undead Emperor may or may not be running the show behind the scenes.
As the group morphed, new DM's were added. Cory joined during my game and helped teach us how to play RAW versus how we had done things before (sort of loosey-goosey). It's ironic that I credit Cory with this as he's very much a mind's eye kind of DM and plays fast & loose with the rules himself, but as we were all learning & eager to play "correctly" he indulged our questions & rules-lawyering with his unshakeably good-natured self.
By the end, our group had grown to the insanely large number of 7 PC's. My one complaint about D&D would be that it's so much harder to play with more than 4-5 people, even though you may want to include all of your gaming circle. But once we worked the kinks out and got a group together that really wanted to play, you hardly noticed the large number of PC's. Well, except when combat took hours and hours, that is! Or if you were the DM, tasked with keeping everyone involved and on track *whew*
We met monthly, often taking breaks over the summer months (it's hard for us Minnesotans to be inside when it's nice out, even for serious gamers like ourselves) and sometimes taking breaks due to schedule conflicts. Slowly and steadily, the world was fleshed out as our group of adventuring PC's, naturally named the Champions of Kortoe, journeyed around the world solving riddles, saving kingdoms, and picking up all kinds of goodies along the way.
We got to meet the gods (and mouth off to them), journey across planes besides our material one (the Astral is my favorite!), become undead and battle the loss of our inner selves, and finally face off with an elder evil that we made short work of.
It was a journey in many ways and we've all come so far since the beginning days. The characters morphed and changed as we morphed and changed, and overall the experience was a blast.
My buddy Corry is a fledgling photographer and he brought his camera & tripod to document our last night. We just had to take a shot of all of us in front of our awesome map (made extra large thanks to Kinkos!).
Back Row: The Big B (Keldon), Mikey (Daedralich), Tim (Stellan), Travis (Kevel)
Front Row: Cory (Stone), Me (Raena), Corry (Agbe)
What a good-looking group!
We're all sad to say goodbye to this fun game. But this isn't a true ending.
After all, our Champions learned that there were more continents than just the small one of Kortoe, which opens up whole new avenues for us to explore.
Kortoe ain't going anywhere just yet, even if the Champions will be retired. The hardcore group of gamers will continue the legacy started by Agbe, Daedralich, Keldon, Kevel, Raena, Stellan, and Stone.
Sunday was, you guess it! the premier of HBO's adaptation of George R. R. Martin's epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire.
I invited my nerd herd to join us in watching the premier, since here at the Doll-House we have HBO and a fairly large flatscreen (I think it's plenty big; but according to many of my nerd herd, it could be bigger). The Big B and I got hooked on HBO when we were fortunate enough to live with the cable guy. When all that cable stuff is free it's hard to stay away from it. Of course when I heard that GRR's series was being made into an HBO show, I patted myself on the back for having the good foresight to become addicted to HBO.
We had several couples come over and while the living room got fairly crowded, we all could sit and watch with enjoyment the opening episode of what has now become my new favorite obsession.
I don't want to spoil anything if you haven't seen it...but they did a tremendous job!
While we debated whether the actress playing Cersei was pretty enough, whether the Lannisters were flaxen-haired enough, and whether the child actors chosen to play the Stark children were too old or not, overall the mood was that it was an awesome start.
The fear with translating any book to film is that inevitably, things will be left out. With a series my hope is always that there is more "time" for all the really important and fun elements to remain faithful to the written word. I have been especially leery since watching the travesty that is The Legend of the Seeker, a TV show based upon one of my favorite series of books, The Sword of Truth.
The actor playing Richard isn't big enough to be Richard, but the woman who
plays Kahlan is fairly spot-on except for her blue eyes (they should be green like mine!)
Don't get me wrong, the show is decent. I like the choreography of the fight scenes, and it's killer that Kahlan kicks equal ass in them. If you've never read The Sword of Truth books it would be just fine. From the first episode, the series demolishes what the written series was actually about. It may say it has Richard, Kahlan, Zedd, Cara and other favorite characters, but they're not the characters I grew to love while reading the books. Do yourself a favor--watch the show, THEN read the books. If you read the books first, stay the hell away or you might find yourself having to buy a new TV after you smashed the one where Legend of the Seeker was just playing.
My hopes were much, much higher for HBO. I am an avid fan of True Blood, the HBO series based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris. While not everything on the TV show was exactly like in the books and lately they've done some things with Sookie's fairy heritage that's irked me, I have to say they've done better at remaining true to the characters and world Charlaine Harris built than any book-to-screen translation I've seen since Peter Jackson's LOTR (and I'm still a little PO'd that Tom Bombadil didn't make the cut).
So I was really hoping that HBO wouldn't disappoint me with Game of Thrones, because while I love Sookie Stackhouse, epic fantasy is my bread-and-butter and to see this epic fantasy series trashed would make me sadder than someone stealing someone else's half-eaten Subway sandwich.
It didn't disappoint (much).
Maybe I'm too much of a stickler...is it possible for fans to be more passionate than the creator? I have to think that GRRM is okay with changes and things left out from his original books. I've never been involved with translating a novel to the screen and I'm sure there's all kinds of tricky things to figure out that causes stuff to be changed or left out from the original.
I'm probably being too harsh. My anxiety that viewers who haven't read the Song of Ice and Fire series may not "get" some of the scenes is most likely overkill. Who cares if the Night's Watch deserter wasn't up in a tree when his companions were killed? So Daenerys doesn't show the Dothraki people her horsemanship skills when Drogo presents the white filly to her. Will that change the way her character is perceived throughout the show?
Probably not. It remains to be seen how the rest of the episodes will showcase Daenerys and the rest of the characters in Westeros and beyond.
Lest you think I only have negative things to say about the premier, I want to assure that the percentage of what I drooled over versus what my bookworm inner self twitched over was strongly in favor of drooling.
The way the Wall was depicted? Exactly how I imagined it, only better!
The Iron Throne (even though we really didn't see it in the premier) was perfection. I had never been able to picture this in my mind's eye (entirely my fault, not George's!) and seeing it on the screen was a treat.
The dialogue and plot points weren't twisted beyond recognition, and in some cases were exactly word for word.
The opening credits was really neat--I liked the clockwork-like way the different cities on the map of Westeros were showcased.
I think everyone in the house was tempted to say the lines along with the show when Jaime Lannister stands in front of the tower window at the very end of the premier.
"The things I do for love"
*SIGH*
Now we have to wait a WEEK for the next episode? That's my remaining anxiety. I've decided not to worry about what little things have been altered, since the majority is better than I could have hoped for.
Not everyone loved the show however, as evidenced by this review in the New York Times.
I saw this after visiting Geek With Curves and reading her reaction to the article. Amy and her 70+ commentors put it well. I won't add much to what they've already eloquently said.
There are plenty of women out there who love so-called "boy fiction" and will watch this new show, not because of any "illictiness" or gratuitous sex, but rather because we're rabid fans and are excited to see Westeros come alive on the screen where before it lived only in our imaginations.
And that, my dear Ms. Bellafonte, is perhaps where you miss out the most. It is clear that what imagination you have is limited, as you are unable to conceive that there are women out there who do love swords and socerery fiction just because you haven't met one personally.
Gee, I wonder why. With a mind as open as that, if it was a parachute, you most certainly would be ker-splatted on the ground with how well it works.
The gender ratio of those at my house, excited to view this premier, was evenly split. Three out of the four women had read the entire series, and three out of four men had too.
I am excited for you and I to meet. I can't wait to see how you turn out, how the genetic melting pot between me and the Big B combines to create entirely new people.
I know that no matter who you are, you will be lovely human beings, who I will love fiercely and completely.
But if I can make one small request...one small prayer...one small hopeful, wistful wish...
...can you inherit some geek?
Just a portion, the size and direction being, of course, entirely up to you.
I'm a big Incubus fan. Been a fan since well before Make Yourself (with it's famous singles "Drive" and "Pardon Me" ) debuted.
When I was still a music snob, it was very important that the distinction was made.
"Oh, I knew them before anybody liked them."
As if that confers some sort of majesty to the fan, as if recognizing talent before it's time is something special to get snobby about.
I've since learned that good music is good music, and if your current favorite group/singer hasn't hit it big yet, if you're a good fan, you'll try to be a part of helping them make it big and sharing their awesomness with the world. Now you won't get me to stop sharing my music with you.
"Just listen! I know you'll like her/him/them! Listen to this part! Isn't it SO incredible?" and variations thereof.
Back to my point, however, as I seem to have strayed.
One of my favorite parts about Incubus was the lyrics. The actual music is excellent too, but the lyrics were perfect for my disenfranchised youthful self.
"Too bad the things that make you mad are my favorite things"
If that isn't an anthem for growing teenagers everywhere, I don't know what is.
Another point in their favor? Their lead man, Brandon Boyd, is an incredibly gifted signer and is gorgeous to boot. Even before he cut off his dreadlocks in favor of a less-smelly hairstyle, I was in love with him.
Their love songs just made me fall for him more deeply than I thought possible for someone I've never actually met in real life. A man who is that beautiful, who can sing like that, who is SENSITIVE on top?
Pure icing on the cake, honey!
Coincidentally or not, I realized the other day that almost every single one of my more serious relationships had an Incubus song as "our song". If this isn't proof that women do all the choosing of "our songs" (because men don't care as much) it's at least proof in my past relationships.
First there was Jared. My first relationship to last more than a few days/weeks/months. He was shy, quiet, played the trumpet and could dance like no other white boy I'd seen. He made me look great on the dance floor at junior prom, and that's a feat (as my BFF will most empathetically back me up on). Our song was from Make Yourself which debuted during my high school years. He was a year older and during my senior year, he was doing his freshman college year up north in Duluth. Although where I grew up was north of the Twin Cities, it still wasn't quite as far as Duluth, which is a beautiful city on the shore of Lake Superior. We did the long-distance thing for awhile. Subsequently, our song was naturally I Miss You.
A truly beautiful and endearing love song. Still one of my favorites to this day, especially the acoustic versions.
Cory was a short-lived romance but he was IN A BAND, and the lead singer, no less. So he gets a brief look.
Our song was Stellar off of Make Yourself. He once sang it to me in his bedroom in his mother's basement. I didn't swoon or anything, but it was a sweet gesture from a mostly sweet boy.
I'm counting Kieran in here, even though we dated just about three months or so. We had met at a rave, getting into one of those all-night philosophical discussions and didn't realize the entire night had passed us by. Kieran had the most gorgeous pair of man-boobs underneath the hairiest pelt of chest hair. His furriness on the chest was only rivaled by Austin Powers. We split after a few months when it became obvious that we were heading different directions.
Kieran: I just don't think we want the same things. Me: What do you mean? Kieran: I mean, if you saw me in 15 years and I was pumping gas, would you be happy for me or would you pity me? Me: If that's what you wanted to do with your life, I'd be happy for you.
My older, wiser, more cynical self responds "YES I'd pity you, you dumbass! You're paying $15k a year to go to a 4-year accredited university for an education. You'd damn well BETTER not be pumping gas for a living in 15 years!!!"
Ah youth. But Morning View had just been released and we were in the throws of dating and heavy petting. While Aqueous Transmission didn't necessarily fit us exactly, I made it fit anyways. Ironic considering that I couldn't fit my square-peg self into his round-hole life.
Then there was Sean. We worked together downtown and he was my first serious "adult" relationship. I don't like to dwell too much on this period of my life (suffice it to say, Sean was a jerk. Any man who gets upset with you because you read too much & don't pay enough attention to them while you're both just sitting in front of the TV has serious issues). We actually worked on the same floor and so we often were riding in the elevator together. Naturally, Crowded Elevator off of Incubus' EP When Incubus Attacks Vol.1 was the song for us.
Years later I'm kind of pissed that I wasted such a good song on him.
Finally there's the Big B. We met through a mutual friend before I dated Sean. He dated another girl, I dated the Asshole, and we were both single at the right time three years later.
We fight, argue, and discuss as way of saying "I love you". It's our relaxation, our dynamic, and it works great for us. Doesn't leave everyone around us comfortable 100% of the time, but frankly, we don't care.
This is why Dig off of the Light Grenades album was OUR song. It matched us so perfectly--how we fight, we make up, and we understand that when one of us is being a jerk, all we need do is remember the person they were the day before (pre-jerkiness) and help them bring that aspect to the fore once more.
This was also the song we danced to at our wedding.
These aren't all of the love songs they've sung, by any means. But at this point, I'll have to "make" any new ones match the Big B and I, since I don't plan on giving him up for anything.
I'd even give up chocolate and ice cream for him.
Okay, so maybe this one isn't Incubus, but Sarah has been one of my fav's since before the first Lillith Fair.
And this is a gratuitous addition because I was digging around YouTube and saw that there was a video for this song, and it's one of my all-time favorite Incubus songs. Enjoy A Certain Shade of Green, my personal favorite to blare loudly in the car during rush-hour traffic.
And the anthem of angsty youth everywhere....Favorite Things.
Favorite Things--Incubus I'm thinking of my soul's sovereignty
Yet I know, everything you hate in me
Fill me up with over-pious badgerings
Throw them up one of my favorite things
Too bad the things that make you mad
Are my favorite things, my favorite things
Remember all the lessons fed to me
Me the young sponge, so ready to agree
Years have gone, recognize the walking dead
Now aware that I'm alive and way ahead
Too bad the things that make you mad
Are my favorite things, hey yeah
Oh yeah I'm so happy
I see you looking, I know that you're thinking
That I'll never go anywhere
Things that I've promised and the things that I've seen
I don't really expect you to care, no
Too bad the things that make you mad
Are my favorite things, hey yeah
Oh yeah and I'm so happy
Too bad the things that make you mad
Are my favorite
Too bad the things that make you mad
Are my favorite things
Things are starting to get back to mostly normal here at home. It will be six weeks to the day this coming Monday since the Big B had his back sliced open and metal screws and plates grafted onto his spine.
He's fairly self-sufficient now, unless whatever he needs is below his knees. Doc's orders--no bending, twisting, or lifting more than five pounds, but I've caught him lifting one of our cats, and I'm pretty sure our humongous laptop weighs well over his restriction.
My man is extremely stubborn (only way he'd survive me!) and I've been both fascinated and horrified with the way I've turned into a mother hen since he was released back home from the hospital.
That first week after he returned home was insane. I had taken that entire week off and the following Monday & Tuesday with the caution that I may either be back sooner or need more time, depending on how things went.
It went both as I expected and not as I expected.
The surgery was Monday 2/28. The Big B got the all-clear to go home on Wednesday. While I was out of work for the time being, I still had classes to attend so I zipped over to the hospital after my lunchtime class and prepared to get him home.
The car ride just about killed him. If you don't have the pleasure of living in a climate that has a fairly drastic change in seasons, you may not understand imtimately how your driving experience is affected by potholes. Here in lovely Minnesota, springtime driving is hazardous to you, your car, and your pocketbook, if you are unfortunate enough to hit a nasty pothole that bites back.
The hospital where he had been staying for the past 3 days is in South Minneapolis, not the greatest of neighborhoods, and I swear, the roads over there are just one big crater. I tried to drive ever-so-carefully, knowing that every bump, twist, and turn was skewering him with pain.
Thankfully, the entrance to the (relatively) smoother freeway wasn't that far away, and we don't live too far outside Minneaplis proper so we were home in 15 short minutes. I did my best--I'm sure I've never shifted gears so smoothly in my entire life before. Nevertheless, by the time we got home he was pale and definitely hurting. It took us 20 minutes just to get him out of the car and into the house. I felt helpless--I couldn't really do much besides watch him struggle to move the tiniest bit.
The hospital staff told him the more he could move on his own, the less painful it would be. My role over the next few days became that of a mobile, walking, talking handrail support. Instead of me trying to lift him, I simply provided an arm or two that he could grab and use as leverage to move himself the smallest fractions left or right.
Great workout though. I could really feel it in my thighs and forearms, everytime I helped lower him to a sitting position or to stand up. We had some trial and error until we got a really good system worked out on how to get him around with minimum of pain on his part.
I was determined to be the best wife nursemaid in the history of wifey nursemaids. That first day home, after he was settled in the spare bedroom downstairs (no way was he making it up the stairs to our 2nd floor bedroom), cradled on every conceivable side with pillows, it was about 4:30pm. We had people coming over to play D&D (our bi-weekly group who plays pre-built modules). B had said D&D could go on despite his return, so I didn't cancel. He had fallen asleep and I started cooking, running in to check on him every 10 min or so in case he needed me since I can't hear anything from the rest of the house if I'm in the kitchen.
About 6:30 I realized I had already gotten off to a bad start as Most-Excellent-Nursemaid-Ever. The hospital had warned us to stay ahead of the pain with his medication. He was supposed to have gotten two pills at 5:00, but in my misguided helpfulness I thought he would need the sleep after his ordeal.
Wrong!
That was a bad night for the Big B. Eventually we got on a schedule (helped along by keeping a record of when each type of pill was taken and when). We didn't let the pain get ahead of the meds so severely again.
The next few days were a whirlwind. Every 2-3 hours we were awake, making sure he took his pills, did his breather exercise to ensure pneumonia hadn't set in, took his temp to check for signs of infection, and took a look at his incisions to make sure they weren't swelling or looking nastier than they should. A girlfriend of mine came over Friday after she got off work and I was still feeling very disheveled and whacked out. My friend K who came over that Friday laughed after visiting our bathroom and says, "Do you know that you have a box of Glad Press N Seal next to your bathroom sink?"
She laughed for several seconds straight when I told her it was for showering the Big B.
"When you said you had to put press and seal on him before he showered, I didn't realize you actually meant it!" she cries between tears of mirth.
Don't knock it--the doctor said cling wrap but I know that stuff doesn't work one bit. I love my Press N Seal and now you all know that if you need to keep a wound dry, that's the first place you should turn to.
This is pretty gross but it was a lot worse earlier.
Unfortunately (fortunately?) I didn't think to get a picture of what it looked like right after he got home. Take my word for it, they were gross. You can't tell from here, but his back has a huge bump right where the incisions are.
They seem so little for so much pain, and so much potential healing. Big things in small packages!
I tried very hard to remember what he could & couldn't do, so that I could make things as easy as possible for us both. One night however, I forgot to leave the toilet seat up for him. I had finally gone to bed upstairs and he told me later he felt so bad and knew how tired I was from not getting any solid sleep, that rather than call me to come down and lift the seat for him, he hunted around downstairs for the proper "seat-lifting implements". Finally he spotted a roll of Christmas wrapping paper and got very creative with it and was able to get the lids up so he could pee.
We left the roll in the bathroom, just in case.
One thing I worried about was how this would affect us, as a couple.
Would we break under the stress? or would we pull together and come out strong on the other side?
Turns out, we're pretty solid. Perhaps it was because we were both hyper-aware of what the other was going through. Me, knowing how painful this was for him and ready to make allowances for any crabbiness he showed. He, knowing how m uch I would have to do while he was laid up, making tremendous efforts not to snap and take the pain out on me.
Whatever the reason, I ended up having some of the best times of our marriage so far during that 2-week period I stayed home to care for my healing hubby.
I know have at least some idea of what to expect once we have littles, but at least in that case there will be the two of us working together.
This is about 4 weeks after the surgery. Looking good!
Things are almost completely normalized now. His follow up appointment is just before tax day, and the pax Doll-house has ended and we're back to our usual bickering and heated discussions about whether he said it first or I did. I can leave the lid on the toilet down now, and he can shower himself except for his lower legs, at which point he calls me in and I go to work soaping his barely-there calves (his chicken legs are something I tease him often about, since my own calves are muscular and round-ish).
I'm going to miss playing Florence Nightingale to his wounded soldier. We tested our mettle and did not find our relationship wanting.
My confidence that we can survive anything, even kidlets, is now boundless.
I hadn't seen the implications of the Big B's sports obsession in a positive light before the NCAA Championships.
Before that it was by turns annoying, frustrating, wince-inducing and in many ways, impossible to understand.
I can understand obsession over something you really love. Reading is my drug of choice and the flavor has been sci-fi and fantasy for a very long time now. I read other genres occasionally but always veer back into swords & sorcery geekdom.
The Big B's love for sports? It goes beyond. Simply beyond.
I tried comparing it with my own obsession.
Football would be his fantasy genre, the place where his deepest love and passion resides.
Baseball would take on the mantle of sci-fi as next to the heart, that different but also wonderful thing.
Golf would be like a good mystery...if done well it can be very fun.
Hockey falls into the classic genre space--not read often but the good ones never leave your heart.
Basketball would be his equivalent of regular fiction, something Jodi Picoult-esque. Very "meh" and can take it or leave it, but if nothing better's around it will do.
College basketball would be like...reading a non-racy romance novel (what's the point? I only read romances for the naughty parts and without those, most leave a lot to be desired in the way of plot).
Wait a minute. I'm pretty sure he doesn't even like basketball that much, let alone college basketball. I can't even think of a time when he was watching college basketball, let alone enthused about it.
But it's still enough to get him cursing, pleading, crying, shouting and gesturing violently at the TV while one of his teams play. From whence does this passion come?
Perhaps it's because football season has been over for awhile, and baseball season is just starting. Or maybe because this championship only comes once a year.
Or maybe, just maybe, it's because he gets to bet on the outcome and fill out these puzzling things referred to as "boards" or maybe it was "brackets"?
Whatever the reason, the past few weeks I've had to endure his shouted imprecations at the TV while he alternately moans and groans in despair, or shouts and gasps with glee.
I know he can't care about the teams that much as evidenced from last night's conversation between the three of us (me, him, and the flatscreen):
The Big B: Come on! You're killin' me here! Me: Who's killing you? Him: The refs! They're trying to ruin my life! Me: Surely they're just doing their job honey. Him: NO! They're trying to screw me, they're doing this to keep the score close to make it a close game. TV: *sounds of sneakers squeaking, crowd cheering, whistles blowing* Me: Wouldn't they actually be trying to screw over the team, not you? Him: *glares* No! This is Vegas messin' with the refs to shave points for their betting spreads. Argh!
At which point I exited because it was clear that the TV was getting more of his ire than me, and that's fine by me!
This man has never heard of an indoor voice, let alone possessed one. That's okay, because I'm loud too and can keep up decibel for decibel, most of the time. That and I've learned to tune him out (shhhh, don't give away my secrets. He reads my blog very infrequently).
Then something he was saying last night finally penetrated through my anti-sports-rant wall.
There's money riding on the outcome? This is the last game to decide it? There's almost $400 on the line if this game is won by the team in white?
Back up...money that could buy me new boots, or a nice dinner at Benihanas, or BOOKS?
Who knew? Certainly I never thought sports would be useful to me in this way, ever.
So that's why last night, as I was in the office contemplating my homework for my Quality Management class (statistics! Statistics are the basis of quality, the more woe is me!) I found myself keeping an ear open for B's shouting, and actually found myself shouting right along with him, "Go U-Conn!"
Well okay, maybe when I said "Go U-Conn" I was half expecting to be cheering the wrong team. That happens often, which is why I usually resort to cheering the team whose colors go better together.
Who knows? Maybe it was my half-hearted cheer that roused the Connecticut team. Maybe it was karma finally paying the Big B back for all the rotten poker hands he's been dealt in the past two years. Whatever the reason, U-Conn won that all-important game.
I'm sure they're very happy.
But more importantly, the Big B WON. Apparently if you do this right, you can make MONEY off of sports.
Well push me over with a phoenix feather, I have no idea how he did it (seeing as how he doesn't actually follow college b-ball) but he did.
Perhaps this is the answer to the puzzle.
It's the money. That's why this sudden love of college b-ball, when college sports anything was never that big a deal.
See what I mean? Diversity is good!
Even if that means you married a half-geek, half-jock. After all, jocks are people too. And sometimes they can come in handy.
