Discolor Online

Though I've been active on Twitter and doing a little linking at Facebook, I realized I haven't yet blogged about what's been going on in the last few weeks. Time to rectify this.

At the beginning of February my grandmother was scheduled for a biopsy for a suspicious breast lump. This surgery had been put off last fall because of an infection in her leg and considering all of her other health problems we were a little anxious for her. It turns out that they've postponed the surgery yet again for reasons I'm not exactly clear on because by the time word came in I was already off and focused on my mom, who was scheduled for surgery herself.

Mom's surgery had the potential to be fairly serious and was anticipated to need six weeks or more of recovery, which itself made me nervous just because of her home environment and support network (or lack thereof). Thankfully, everything went even better than we could have hoped and they had to do far less surgery than they'd thought. Mom was out of the hospital several days early and a week later was doing great. Very happy and greatly relieved by that!

Because of the timing of DunDraCon and Kate's mid-winter break I was able to schedule the drive so I could be in Portland on my way down (in time for mom's surgery) and on the way back was able to stop in and check on her again. I'm so grateful that everything worked out so well in that regard.

In fact, the entire trip was unbelievably excellent. I got to see my brother and spend time with my family, the convention was a great time to reconnect with fans, associates, and friends, and I got to spend time with my daughter in my off hours to boot. A couple of mom friends of mine met up with me and we toured the Berkeley campus with Kate and enjoyed decadent desserts and a gorgeous view from my friend Susanne's house that just stunned me. I wish we lived closer so these meet-ups didn't have to be every couple of years. Even the weather cooperated and gave us several beautiful, sunny days.

The one downer of the whole trip is there in the subject of this post: I was stopped by the California Highway Patrol and earned a speeding ticket of unknown cost. I'll admit right off the bat that I was speeding along I-5, because EVERYONE was speeding. I'm not kidding, every single car on the freeway was clipping along 10 to 15 miles over the posted speed limit and I was driving along doing the same. We were 10 hours into our trip and we were laughing together and generally feeling pretty good, anticipating being close to our destination. Next thing I know the red lights are blinking behind me. I'll admit, I was confused at first because the lights were not the kind I'm used to seeing on police vehicles. I thought it might be an ambulance behind me. Despite my bad girl reputation I'm really kind of a goody two-shoes and I haven't had a traffic ticket since Kate was an infant. My first thought was "get out of the way! but since I was in the far left lane, it was dark, and there was traffic for three lanes to my right, I pulled off into the left median. It was quite wide and there was plenty of space. The red lights followed, so clearly it was no ambulance and yes, they were after me. I put the car in park, turned off the engine, and started to pull out my license like a good girl.

Next thing I know a woman's voice is barking over a loud speaker: "MOVE TO THE RIGHT, NOW! NOW, GO, GO, MOVE!" Flustered, I fumbled to restart our rental car and get it back in gear. The officer is getting more agitated, "I SAID MOVE TO THE RIGHT. DO IT. MOVE!" I coax the car back into the freeway trying to get to the right, while the voice yells, "DON'T CUT ANYONE OFF! GET TO THE RIGHT!" Finally on the right hand side of the freeway, I'm beside myself, thinking what the hell did I do? The officer comes to the passenger window (substantially more dour and aggressive than those portrayals of Ponch and Jon from my youth) and orders me to get out of the car. By this point I'm seriously thinking I'm going to be told to get down on the ground. It was like an episode of COPS or something. "What did I do?" I asked. "You were speeding..."

Holy crap, I've never been treated that way by the police in my life. The closest thing to this experience I can think of is the infamous incident I had with that out of control airline attendant on our way to GenCon SoCal many years ago. For a speeding ticket? On a freeway where literally every single car was speeding? After the cop let me go I did a little experiment and set my cruise control to exactly the speed limit for the remainder of the drive (40 minutes or so, I guess). Every single car on the freeway blew past us. Kate and I counted them: 112 cars, some overtaking me from very far behind.

In my conspicuous red rental van, with its conspicuous out of state plates, I guess I was an easy target. My local friends believe that the budget in CA is so bad at the moment that hitting out of state speeders has been an easy way to get some cash in the coffers. The worst part is I don't even know how much the ticket will be but one friend sadly informed me that it could be up over $500 because they've jacked up the fines lately (see aforementioned budget crisis). This is very, very bad news. I even looked up to see if I could plead not guilty or extenuating circumstances or hardship or anything because a $500 would be dire and all I saw at the county traffic fine website was something about having to post BAIL if you plead not guilty or appeal your ticket, even by mail. I've never seen anything like this. Definitely the downer on an otherwise successful and pleasant trip.

Back in Seattle, it seems we've brought the nice weather we had in Cali home with us. It's been 60s and sunshine. The mountain has been out every day and flowers are blooming. I know this is Seattle's tricky "fake spring" that happens every February but on the heels of an historically mild January any further wintery weather seems distant and my mood (but for the worry about the ticket) is remarkably cheery.

Labels: cops, family, mom, travel

Tomorrow may just be the day when I finally get the plumber into the house to install the heat exchanger and pressure gauge for our defective heating system. We got our settlement in October and have been talking with this plumber for weeks trying to schedule him to come in. I can't imagine how frustrated I'd be if we'd actually had to go with the full-on "rip out all the walls and pipes" plan at this point, with the cold weather upon us and scheduling conflicts abounding. Fingers crossed for good news and an effective solution this week!

Kate celebrated her 14th birthday this weekend, with a girly sleepover on Friday that dragged well into Saturday afternoon. Red velvet cake was made. I used Pinch My Salt's recipe and dirtied about every bowl in the house in the process but managed not to ruin anything in the kitchen with red food coloring. The girls were gleefully using the Domino's online pizza creation tool to create concoctions but Chris talked them into getting their actual pizzas from Stellar Pizza so they'd be, you know, edible. One Beanie and one Fidalgo Four Cheese later and the girls settled down to watch Star Trek together. One of the girls couldn't stay the night so I drove her home a little after midnight and, aside from having to put a stop to some rough-housing at 1am, the whole thing went off well and Kate was happy.

It was poignant for me because I'm all too aware of the changes looming in the future for these girls. Not bad changes at all, just that they're on the road to becoming lovely young adults. The girl who left early had to do so because she needed to spend the weekend working on her high school applications! Some of these girls have known each other since kindergarten but with Seattle's new school boundaries they're all most likely going to different schools by next year. Some are applying to private schools or magnet schools or out-of-district schools because the choices we're presented are difficult or dubious.

Kate's got three options under the new school plan. One is a small alternative school that had historically been good but last year was merged into a building with another orphaned program and an existing middle school. Parents complained that the new building didn't have proper science labs for high school science requirements, the building has several million in needed building upgrades that haven't been addressed because of the Seattle budget crisis, etc. There's not even a Nova school webpage anymore, so I don't know what to expect from that program, though it is a natural transition for kids from a school like Orca (250 or so kids, alternative education curriculum).

The second option is a new math and science magnet school. This is currently a regular high school in a recently upgraded building. It's the closest HS to our house and currently one of the worst programs in the city (lowest WASL scores... frex, less than 7% of students passing
the state's science requirement, highest dropout rate, highest suspension rate, lowest SATs). The new superintendent has decided to remake this school into a School of Science, Technology, Engineering & Math (STEM). The school will have accelerated math and science "academies" and an extra-long school day to add an additional full period. High focus on math and science with few to no options for electives and extra-curriculars and a school population of 1600 students. Kate is good at math and science and is currently on track to be able to enter HS having completed freshman math but that's all a huge switch from her educational experience up to this point. No idea if it would be a welcome change or a complete disaster for her.

The last option is the default high school: a failing high school with about 1500 students where 1/4 of freshman fail to earn the 5 credits necessary to advance, where only 28% meet standard in math and 18% meet standard in science. And, of course, there's also the issue of gang problems in the big Seattle high schools. Not exactly high on my list of places to send my child.

Of course all of this is what I see through my mom glasses. The kids are only vaguely aware of what lies ahead for them, nervous but excited about high school's opportunities. Four years of high school seems like a long way off and long time to get through when you're 14. When you're 40 and looking back at how fast those 14 years have flown by, being one high school career away from adulthood is more akin to a race car hurtling into the final lap, checkered flag in sight.

Speaking of mothers, my mom called Kate for her birthday and then talked to me for a while. She shared the results of some of her recent medical tests and will be needing more surgery in 2010, this time it'll be removing a section of her colon and will be a much bigger deal than the relatively minor sinus surgery. She hasn't talked to the surgeon yet so I don't know what the timeline is. She seems to think that she can put it off until the summer but I told her to let me know what the surgeon actually says. I suppose there's a chance that this will spoil the cruise we're supposed to take with Kate's class in May and, of course, if our experience with her sinus surgery is any indication she's going to need a lot of outside help with her recovery whenever this surgery takes place. I'm steeling myself, as I will inevitably be called up for duty.

Nothing to be done about it now, so I'm setting my sights on Christmas and chugging ahead towards the new year. Must decide on a holiday menu since it will be just the three of us for the first time in years.

Labels: CHristmas, family, Kate, mom, school, seattle

The last couple of months have been pretty active for me and I haven't really written about anything overly personal in months. Figure it's about time to mend that.

June was Pramas's 40th birthday. I threw him a party, saw a bunch of old friends and had a really nice time. The following week I went to Portland and camped out at an RV park in my mother's RV so Kate could attend Rock Band Camp for Girls. I videoed Kate's performance from the side of the stage but when I pulled it off the FLIP there was no sound (though there is sound if viewed on the camera) so I've got to figure out what's up with that so I can post the video of her band rockin' out. But I haven't yet.

In July I hosted a friend's 13-year-old son for a week. He's a total gamer and within minutes of his arrival he and Kate were talking Star Trek (or was it Star Wars?) and Xbox. We visited the EMP and the Sci-Fi Museum (which had a bonus Jim Henson exhibit going on), visited Starbucks (the kid likes mochas), stopped at Golden Age Collectibles, introduced him to sushi, and culminated with a visit to the Microsoft Game Studio. I tried to organize a visit to Wizards of the Coast but despite a bunch of advanced notice and call-outs to multiple people there we just weren't able to make that happen, but my friends at Microsoft more than made up for it with the tour they gave the kids of the Game Studio. Kate then went on a week-long trip to Hawaii with her dad and Pramas and I hunkered down to get some work done before GenCon.

My brother returned from his stint doing medical work in Haiti and suggested that we try to go up to Minnesota together to visit my grandpa (who turned 92 this year) with our dad. I was able to book my GenCon flight through Minneapolis to make this happen and it was a really lovely time. The weather was good, the rest of the family golfed (or followed along in a cart) and I got lots of walking in on the golf courses and great face time with the family. It also took my mind off the fact that Ropecon 2009 was going on. Instead I rolled into GenCon feeling as relaxed and happy as I've been in years. Where my brother and I really did not get along as children and I moved in with my dad in 10th grade while he continued to live with my mom, we've grown up and grown into a much happier relationship and I'm really enjoying knowing him as an adult after being either at odds or separated from each other for so many years. Valuable stuff.

August gave way to September and PAX here in Seattle. I attended again this year and reconnected with many good friends from the game industry that I don't get to see nearly enough of. I saw good friends who have moved away for computer jobs and pen-and-paper designers who otherwise don't have reason to visit Seattle. My most popular friends were hard or impossible to track down or only able to speak to us in passing and I left wishing the event had been a couple of days longer so I could have seen more but for me this year was totally about the people and largely not about the content of the event. Sadly, I was also one of the hundreds of people who caught the "PAXflu" and lost more than a week to laying around the house coughing, sniffling, and napping feverishly. I got over the worst of it just in time to head down to Portland to help my mom out as she underwent and recovered from nasal surgery. Even now I still have a very slight cough that pops up and it's been three weeks since the onset of my symptoms. Tomorrow I'll write up that trip in more detail.

That brings us to the beginning of Fall. Kate started back to school for her eighth grade year while I was down with the flu, her last year at Orca. Pramas and I will be celebrating our 8th wedding anniversary in a couple of days, the bronze anniversary Google tells me. This weekend is the annual Green Ronin summit and the bulk of the boys will be arriving over the course of the day Thursday. The following weekend is the Diamond/Alliance open house in Baltimore which I'll be traveling to this year and by the time I finish that we'll be well into October and less than a month out from my 40th birthday. This is the year that FIVE of the Green Ronins turned 40 with me closing out the pack as the last of the year. It's also a year that has me feeling like a stone skipping across a pond, spinning along with an external momentum and only briefly coming into contact with the real "surface" of my life.

More later, for now I must sleep.

Labels: family, game industry, life, PAX

Wow, I've definitely been AWOL on the blog front for the last several months but April has to be the worst blog month in my history of blogging!

I suppose it all started back in 2008. Many things popped up to cause me stress and anxiety last year. There were multiple family health problems and crises. There were challenges, irritations, and difficulties with the business that went beyond the sorts of things I've come to expect in my two decades of hobby game industry experience. Friends changed jobs, split up, and/or moved away which shook up every aspect of our lives from work to play. Even our game group was decimated and barely continues to lurch forward, zombie-like, with the two members who remain and like to at least come over fro dinner and drinks even if we can't agree on a game to play. Someone I thought I'd heard the last of over twenty years ago made a very unwelcome return to my life and stirred up a lot of horrific memories that I'd been perfectly content to leave deeply buried, untouched and unexamined. Even my food blogging all but stopped after my camera was stolen from Kate and we found our increased life expenses contracted our dining budget. 2008 was my year of withdrawal.

I thought I was starting to come out of it a little but then I looked at the calendar today and realized April has gone. The first week of April was Kate's spring break and I tried to spend a little extra time with her because I'm aware the days where she thinks it's fun to hang out with her old mom are probably numbered. The following week I took Kate to Sakura*Con here in Seattle while Chris flew the flag out at Norwescon, then as soon as that was over I flew out to Las Vegas for the GAMA Trade Show. Back to Seattle where I had to handle everything I didn't get to before I left, those things that came up while I was gone, and generally just catch up. In the midst of all this I finally got my painful arm problem diagnosed (combo of rotator cuff impingement and tendinitis, yay hooray) but the "try this for six weeks before we escalate to MRIs and surgery" therapy hasn't yielded any results at all for me so far and I am still in pain. Carrying a basket of laundry, twisting a tight lid off a jar, or even just vigorously chopping something for a recipe sets it off and that's meant that I've had to pull way back in both yoga and weight training, two things I was really enjoying and seeing good results from. Sadness. In much happier news, Kate was accepted to Rock Band Camp for Girls and I just need to figure out how exactly we're going to get there and where we're going to stay (as it's a day camp only) but she's one happy girl and we're all very proud of her.

Last weekend Kate and I visited the Portland area. I had plenty to do down there but wasn't sure we'd pull of the visit until the night before we left. I was able to get a deal on a hotel through Hotwire and a cheap last-minute rental car. We packed a lot in: visited with my doctor brother before he leaves for Haiti to do doctor things for the summer, stopped in on an old friend from my junior high/high school years, connected with one of The Moms and her daughter (a nationally ranked fencer who was competing in Portland over the weekend), and paid a short visit to my mother and her husband, the first time I've been down since he had a stroke a month ago.

Now April is nearly gone and here comes May. Tomorrow is the first Columbia City Farmer's Market. The days are longer again and it's about time to shake off this introspection and withdrawal, I think.

Labels: family, Kate, life

My mother's called me several times in the last couple of weeks, usually to talk about things like what Kate wanted for her birthday or to check to make sure the package she sent arrived (she was permanently scarred after the UPS store sent my package with my grandmother's ring in it across town). After my grandma's health crisis I convinced her to go in for routine testing and to get her sleep apnea looked at. To my surprise, she actually did it and was happily sharing her excellent test results with me (a first). This afternoon I noticed the little icon that lets me know that I've missed a call on my cell phone. She didn't leave a message but I called back anyway. She'd been calling about something insignificant, like how Kate liked her birthday present, and chatted about that first before breaking the news to me that she wouldn't be coming up for Christmas with my brother after all because they've just confirmed that her husand has prostate cancer. He's told my mom that his doctor said it hasn't spread but told his daughter (and some random yahoos down at the bar while he was drunk) that it had spread "to his abdomen." He's going in for further tests after Christmas.

Of course this is the alcoholic, verbally abusive, chain-smoking good-for-nothing who has been taking money out of her bank account to gamble and leaving a permanent divot in her couch while the house has been literally falling down around them. He's the reason I don't visit more, the reason I've stopped sending Kate to spend time there. I can't count the number of Christmases that have been ruined because he (and all of his similarly drunken, abusive, chain-smoking children) were spending the holidays extra drunk. I asked my mom frankly once if he had to get sober to keep her would he? She scoffed. He wouldn't. The whole thing makes me very sad.

In a detached kind of way I'm sorry for him. I'm sorry he's having to face cancer the way I'd be sorry for a stranger I'd heard about on the news or something. I'm sorry for my mom, sorry that she'll have to carry his burden. But I can't bring myself to feel broken-hearted or anything. In fact, I'll admit that I see this as an opportunity for my mom to get out from under this thing she got herself into... and I feel a little ashamed at myself for thinking things like "Well, maybe everyone would be better off...". If faced with attending a funeral I don't think I could even appear sad... just be there for my mom (like I was for their wedding in the first place) and support the family who do love and miss him. And, of course, we're getting way ahead of ourselves here in thinking of death and funerals anyway. Prostate cancer is quite treatable, if the stubborn old fool actually goes through with it (apparently "after he has a few toddies" he starts talking about how he's not going to let them cut him open, not going to go through treatment).

He's such a pitiable person, so unable to cope, so hopelessly addicted (and unwilling to change) that in my best moments I can only feel sorry for him, pity him. In my worst moments, I feel hope that he will die so his poisonous influence will just go away and I feel truly ashamed about that. I would love to believe that I'm a better person than that but I have to face up to the fact that the weakest and worst parts of me are, indeed, that bad. Tough stuff.

Labels: family, personal

My mother's called me several times in the last couple of weeks, usually to talk about things like what Kate wanted for her birthday or to check to make sure the package she sent arrived (she was permanently scarred after the UPS store sent my package with my grandmother's ring in it across town). After my grandma's health crisis I convinced her to go in for routine testing and to get her sleep apnea looked at. To my surprise, she actually did it and was happily sharing her excellent test results with me (a first). This afternoon I noticed the little icon that lets me know that I've missed a call on my cell phone. She didn't leave a message but I called back anyway. She'd been calling about something insignificant, like how Kate liked her birthday present, and chatted about that first before breaking the news to me that she wouldn't be coming up for Christmas with my brother after all because they've just confirmed that her husand has prostate cancer. He's told my mom that his doctor said it hasn't spread but told his daughter (and some random yahoos down at the bar while he was drunk) that it had spread "to his abdomen." He's going in for further tests after Christmas.

Of course this is the alcoholic, verbally abusive, chain-smoking good-for-nothing who has been taking money out of her bank account to gamble and leaving a permanent divot in her couch while the house has been literally falling down around them. He's the reason I don't visit more, the reason I've stopped sending Kate to spend time there. I can't count the number of Christmases that have been ruined because he (and all of his similarly drunken, abusive, chain-smoking children) were spending the holidays extra drunk. I asked my mom frankly once if he had to get sober to keep her would he? She scoffed. He wouldn't. The whole thing makes me very sad.

In a detached kind of way I'm sorry for him. I'm sorry he's having to face cancer the way I'd be sorry for a stranger I'd heard about on the news or something. I'm sorry for my mom, sorry that she'll have to carry his burden. But I can't bring myself to feel broken-hearted or anything. In fact, I'll admit that I see this as an opportunity for my mom to get out from under this thing she got herself into... and I feel a little ashamed at myself for thinking things like "Well, maybe everyone would be better off...". If faced with attending a funeral I don't think I could even appear sad... just be there for my mom (like I was for their wedding in the first place) and support the family who do love and miss him. And, of course, we're getting way ahead of ourselves here in thinking of death and funerals anyway. Prostate cancer is quite treatable, if the stubborn old fool actually goes through with it (apparently "after he has a few toddies" he starts talking about how he's not going to let them cut him open, not going to go through treatment).

He's such a pitiable person, so unable to cope, so hopelessly addicted (and unwilling to change) that in my best moments I can only feel sorry for him, pity him. In my worst moments, I feel hope that he will die so his poisonous influence will just go away and I feel truly ashamed about that. I would love to believe that I'm a better person than that but I have to face up to the fact that the weakest and worst parts of me are, indeed, that bad. Tough stuff.

Labels: family, personal

Saturday I awoke feeling much more human, especially after getting myself up to normal Seattle-style caffeine levels for the first time in a week. Mmm, delicious coffee. I'm still not exactly a coffee snob but if I had to drink Applebees' coffee on a regular basis I would just quit and switch to tea.

Chris spent the day investigating some game stores and miniatures rules with Rick so I alternately worked oncatching up on Green Ronin stuff and doing fun or interesting things with Kate. One of the things we did was head down to the Sound Transit Safety Fair, where Martin Luther King Jr. Way was closed off for a few hours and there were safety and information booths, bands and student performers, and speakers as well as a light rail car parked in Othello Station and open to the public to roam through. I took many photos with my phone but haven't begun to mess with them to see if they turned out, let alone if I can get them off my camera. I spent much of my time at the street fair talking talking to State Rep. Zack Hudgins who was on hand because transportation is one of his key concerns in the legislature. I took the opportunity to ask Rep. Hudgins if it was likely that we were going to see relief from the "rental" tax on car-sharing programs like Flexcar and Zipcar and he admitted that no, especially with the projected budget deficits the legislature was not going to be in a position to offer any tax exemptions, and went on to explain that before the state budget situation he wasn't in favor of lifting the tax. While I was disappointed that the situation isn't going to be resolved in the way that I'd like, I'm all too aware of the forces that pull our representatives in government one way and another and I accept that they often have to jockey for position and influence, anticipate the ways in which well intended legislation can be abused, and keep an eye on several competing interests at once. Goodness knows, I'm certainly not cut out for politics. Hudgins was quite open and spent an age talking to me about all sorts of things: light rail and car-sharing, Proposition One (the new transit vote) this fall, lead testing (he was aware of the "lead in the pipes" issue that broke here at New Holly), the increase in crime, violence, gang activity, and drugs here in the south end combined with the lack of services and how that's impacting the community spirit in New Holly and the neighbors who are going to be surrounding Othello Station when the light rail finally starts running. I found him open and honest and willing to go into as much detail as I cared to hear (he apologized a couple of times, saying he didn't want to be a "wonk" when he felt he was getting too deeply into detail but I assured him that I was really enjoying it). Didn't always have the answers I wanted to hear but it was always stuff in the realm of disappointing but not outrageous.

Chris came home from his gaming sojourn just in time for me to run off to the store to pick up a few things and then Kate and I were out for the rest of the night on a babysitting favor. We got to spend time with a sweet little girl of nearly seven months old who reminds me SO much of Kate as a baby. I could go on and on about the ways in which I see these children as being similar but mostly I was pleased that my baby-minding skills aren't too rusty. She went to bed like a dream (which I was pleased to reassure my friends when they called in for a "Nervous Parents" check-in) and made one tiny squeak over the monitor when she turned over or hiccuped or something. Kate really wants to start babysitting herself and I thought it would be fun and interesting for her to see a little bit of what it takes while there's an adult at hand and, indeed, she was interested and happy to be along. Extra bonus, my friends repaid my favor with ice cream! Not just any ice cream, but Molly Moon's Salted Caramel which my whole family just loooooves.

Today was a casual day of catching up on computer work combined with cleaning and purging around the house. I currently have three big garbage bags of clothes and shoes to go out to donation, boxes of books to go out, and we noticed that one of the shelves in the office is sagging precariously under its load of books and games so those are getting a good culling as well. I feel like I got a good deal accomplished without knocking myself out completely and heading back into the land of the permanently exhausted. Also got some homemade dinner (baked "manicotti" made with no-boil lasagna sheets, from a recipe I saw on America's Test Kitchen) which was awfully nice and got thumbs up from the whole family to boot.

Tomorrow it's a date with our nutritionist and then I go in for a battery of allergy tests. I'm tired of the low-level allergy symptoms I suffer with constantly and my sinuses have definitely become a huge problem this year that has dragged on. Time to take more action.

Finally, I also heard from my mom again about my grandma. Grandma waqs moved out of ICU, which is absolutely cause for celebration. She had her first round of dialysis and that has also seemed to improve her recovery as the pain killers and anesthesia that were lingering in her system are now (finally) being processed out. She's still very weak but got up for a short walk (to the door of her room and back) which she was utterly unable to even consider on my last day in Arizona. Thanks again to everyone who has been keeping her in their thoughts, prayers, and well wishes. I'm cautiously optimistic that she'll see a better recovery from here.

Labels: family, food, grandma, politics

Got home this afternoon and promptly fell into bed for a few hours. I just had to shut down and get some solid sleep. I'm sure my physical exhaustion is partly from the stress, the unpredictability, in addition to the driving, sleeping in the Yuma heat on an old pull-out sofa with my mom... just all of it packed together.

My mom changed her ticket so she's not leaving Arizona until Sunday but then she also has to get back to her home and her job. She let me know today that they've moved my grandma out of ICU but that she's still completely out of it, very weak, barely able to eat or drink. Her blood sugars are unstable (as low as 50 yesterday before I had to leave) and her kidneys (which were barely hanging on) have shut down so she's scheduled for dialysis now too. I'll be anxious for updates as long as I can get them.

It is really good to be home with my family even if the rest of the drama isn't settled. I have a lot of catching up to do.

Labels: family, grandma, travel

After a busy but very fun PAX schedule, I spent Labor Day laying low and doing little more than combing through recipe books and magazines so I could make out a menu plan and go grocery shopping once I get paid. Since Kate came back to Seattle two weeks early, needing school clothes and supplies on the heels of our Finland/Gencon two-week whirlwind (and I didn't get any child support all summer) we were feeling significantly less flush than usual but not so much so that we couldn't at least enjoy some fun at PAX. Kate and I attended with three-day badges while Pramas worked the Flying Lab booth and then we all got to enjoy connecting in the evenings with friends and seeing Jonathan Coulton and The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets doing their late night musical performances. We even ducked out of PAX for a little while on Saturday to enjoy the nice weather and a final summer bbq with the usual suspects at R&C's. J&J were there with the fabulous Miss V so it really felt like the gang was all together again.

Labor Day evening I got an unexpected call from my brother who wanted to know if we were free for a visit if he came up to Seattle. He's been very busy since starting med school and until this summer it had been 18 months since I'd seen him so we were happy to make time, especially since Tuesday was Kate's last day of summer vacation. In honor of the day she got to take Uncle Chad to the Family Fun Center in Renton and we belted him with water cannons on the bumper boats, drove go-karts, played laser tag, and spent good money on games that gave tickets for plastic junk.

We met Chris after work and had dinner at Marco's Supperclub in Belltown after an unfortunate delay in the form of a flat tire on the Alaska Way Viaduct. There's a dime-sized circular hole in the tire where we ran over something (a bolt perhaps) that I heard crack against the wheel well and then started losing pressure fast. Luckily I was able to limp the 1/4 mile to the Seneca St. exit and get onto 1st Avenue without the tire completely shredding and Chad was all brotherly and changed the tire for us. That means today I'm headed out to get new tires on the car (they needed to be replaced soon anyway).

Kate is off to her first day of 7th Grade. I took our annual first day of school photo and will put it up soon.

Labels: family, Kate, PAX

Kate and Pramas and I were in Portland over the weekend. I crashed the Canby High School Class of '88 reunion, even though I moved to Minnesota in my Freshman year, and reconnected with several of my junior high school friends, visited with my brother for the first time in a year and a half, squeezed in breakfast with my friend JD Roth and his wife at their place, and attended a barbecue with my mom, grandma, brother, and a bunch of people from mom's husband's side. Grandma is going to have to start dialysis soon and this is probably the last visit to Oregon she'll make so it was a bittersweet visit. Drove home last night and promptly collapsed into bed.

Woke up this morning to find that JD had posted something of an interview with us, from our talk about entrepreneurship over breakfast, over on his highly successful personal finance blog, Get Rich Slowly. Kinda cool, that.

Chris and I leave for Finland in one week and I'm freaking out just a tad about getting everything done that needs to be done. Speaking of, I shouldn't waste any more time noodling around on my blog right now. Eek.

Labels: family, grandma, personal, travel

I'm slowly making it through the To Dos on my list. I did a reasonable job of preparing for the summit, though I didn't have as many charts and graphs as I would have liked and I failed to flog my employees into complying with my requests for a new podcast or a new staff photo. Still, we made it through the summit pretty well and the food, at least, was solid.

Then it was my in-laws' visit. After brief confusion about their arrival dates, it turned out they were indeed arriving the day after the guys departed from the summit. Between the summit andthe visit, it's been two solid weeks of eating out or eating in-but-fancy, including a weekend barbecue at Ray and Christine's house (since they're our "Seattle family" it was nice for the Family family to meet them). A couple of false starts (Panos Kleftiko unexpectedly closed the first day we tried them, and Serafina not open for breakfast on Saturdays, which we didn't know until we showed up there) but all in all it's been a good run of food and activities. I've even managed to squeeze in a little cooking, including some Chewy Peanut Butter-Chocolate Chip cookies. Bill and Elaine will only be in town for a couple more days and I hope it's not another two years until we see them again. It's been quite a while between visits recently.

Kate left for her class trip to OPI this morning. She's having a fantastic year, really coming into her own and bonding with a small group of very nice girls. Many of the kids who tormented her in previous years have left the school to attend middle school elsewhere, plus the kids are all just growing up and getting more mature. Kate was telling us about a kid who is new to the school this year who is annoying a lot of people with his behavior and how the kids got together to pick two "representatives" to take the kid aside and try to talk through their issues with him. So far it hasn't resulted in much for them but I'm quite pleased that the kids selected Kate to be one of their reps and that her ability to be fair, compassionate, and level-headed has been recognized (and is being honed). She was beside herself with excitement about this trip and I wish I could have squeezed in going to camp with her again this year, but it was not in the cards. I'm certain she's going to have a really good time. We'll hear all about it on Friday, I'm sure.

Now that the big milestones are passing I can get back to the regular level To Do lists. That in itself seemed miles away a few weeks ago.

Labels: family, food, Kate

I didn't blog much about my plans for Minnesota on the off chance that my grandpa might hear about them somehow. Unlikely as that was, I knew that if I didn't say anything I couldn't screw things up. You see, several months ago my aunt and uncle began planning a surprise party for my grandpa's 90th birthday and I dropped everything and arranged to be there as soon as I learned about it.

Immediately after GenCon I grabbed up Kate from her dad's and headed back to the midwest for a week. My family really pulled together for this one and we had an excellent showing. We were only missing one grandchild (my brother, who is deep in the middle of his surgical rotation and just couldn't get away at all) and two great-grandkids (teenagers who are already in school or who just started college and also couldn't get away). My aunt JoAnn's daughters (Kim and Connie) came, along with Kim's husband Larry and Connie's five-year-old daughter. My Uncle Jack's kids (Johnny, Josh, and Jen) came, along with Jen's husband Chris and their young daughter. Kate and I represented for my dad's branch of the family and all three of my stepbrothers (Jon, Mick and Erik) along with Mick's wife Jenny, whose wedding I attended last spring. There were also any number of close friends of my grandpa and extended relatives that I didn't remember at all who came out for the event.

Grandpa was completely surprised. My uncle had told him they were going golfing ("I'm the caddy," my grandpa chuckles. He accompanies Jack around in the golf cart but doesn't golf himself) and pretended that he'd grabbed "the wrong clubs" and had to go back to the house. Up they drove on the golf cart into an applauding crowd, to my grandpa's astonishment. He's not the sort of guy to cry but he did seem pretty choked up for a bit and he looked me in the eye and thanked me for "making the trip" more than once over the weekend. I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

We had a lovely time. Kate got to spend time with her uncles canoing, swimming, paddle boating, playing games and just generally goofing around. She got to meet second cousins, first cousins once removed, and even more distant relatives (some of whom are honorary aunts and uncles who are lifelong family friends). I got to spend time with my grandpa and also with my cousins (and their cousins), walk around town and see just how much things have changed since I lived there as a kid, and generally enjoy the place.

Kate and I came home toting souvenirs of the trip. I stocked up on wild rice, made a couple of trips to Zup's for potica, pasties, and all manner of brats and sausages (which they kindly packed up for me and I checked as baggage because the box was so big!), and pigged out on walleye, Nut Goodies and "hot air" candy. I took many photos and even got a couple of voice recordings of my grandpa talking about how he learned to drive at age 10 because his dad had gotten the family a car but no one could drive it (nor could they speak English!) so it fell to Grandpa to learn, and my dad talking about the time he and his friends (all of 13 or 14 years old) drove their snowmobile through the ice on a lake and the "hilarity" that ensued. I didn't get as many stories recorded as I'd hoped but apparently my Uncle Jack has a couple hours of tapes that he made a few years ago so I'm hoping I can get my hands on some of that eventually.

Doubly exhausted and twice as far behind as I was before GenCon but it was worth it. So worth it.

Labels: Ely, family, Lindroos

For us, Christmas is over already. Tomorrow there will be stockings even though Kate knows the whole secret to Santa this year and we'll go over to Ray and Christine's tomorrow afternoon for a while. Low key and laid back, nothing too different from how we'd spend a typical Sunday with the crew. The big stuff is over. My mom, brother, and sis-in-law left to go back to Portland this morning. We had our big dinner (I did skip making the squash/rice side dish after all) last night and opened presents after that. We also went to see Eragon at the Cinerama and so, because of its proximity to Top Pot donuts, we had donuts for breakfast. Typical for my family, we munched donuts while Pramas explained to my SIL about Pol Pot and the campaign to exterminate Cambodia's intellectuals. Nothing says Christmas with the family like the Khmer Rouge, eh?

We actually had a very nice family visit, though our lack of a spare room was sorely felt as all our guests (including Rosie) hunkered down with the Christmas tree in the living room. I sent the family packing with a trunk full of leftovers, including half a pumpkin cheesecake. My brother called when he got home just to tell me once again how good the food was.



I spent my day playing with this. I've finally joined the world of the real MP3 player, woohoo! Pramas even got pink to match my birthday shoes and my new phone. (I've been on a pink kick this year.) Kate also got a Scrabble set so we played that tonight, too.

Not that Christmas is all about gifts, but I have to say that the gifts I received this year were fabulous. I got clothes items that fit and that I love, I got food and cooking items that I'd been coveting or that were perfect together (one gift included coffee beans, another was a spiffy new coffee making device (thanks Hal!) for example), I got books and music that I've been positively reveling in. All hits and no misses. Pramas also got me a Truthiness kit from Subversive Cross Stitch that I can't wait to tear into. I stayed up way too late reading Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation (thanks Will!) and we finished off a big chunk of the various sweets and goodies that were delivered to the house (thanks Rob, thanks Ev!).

Feeling very good about my holiday this year. No grinchy feelings at all. How nice!

Labels: CHristmas, family, friends

The good Mr. John Tynes familiarized me with Shut Up Little Man! some years ago. Click the link, read his review, then read on if you're not familiar with the subject.

Done?

That's my mother's husband. No, he's not actually Peter or Ray (he's got the much more evocative moniker of Virgil) but last night, as struggled to get my mother's out-dated pile of hand-me-down computer bits to coalesce into a functional machine, I could hear him going on from the other side of the house. The smell of cigarette smoke wafting down the hallway, shouting in his half-deaf way, I picked up snippets of his side of the conversation: "Some goddamn garlic in it... or sumthin'. Or tobacco! Throw some tobacco in there.... I'm serious! Find some butts or sumthin' and just crush 'em up in there... What're ya heatin' it up for? He don't need that!" It was in the same slurry tone and inflection as any of the Shut Up Little Man snippets. I completely expected to hear him follow up with "...because you crucified it. You ruined it. Goddamn you!"

Before I left for home, he also treated me to his views on training dogs. Apparently, "you gotta beat 'em; that's the only way to learn 'em, they don't understand nothin' else." Unless, of course, they're dogs that bite children or eat chickens: "Don't matter how much you love 'em, you can't ever change a bitin' dog--or a chicken eatin' dog, so you gotta just shoot 'em," BANG (he slams his fist into his hand for effect).

Needless to say, I always feel like I've walked into the Twilight Zone whenever he's around. My mother is not that way, I have no fucking idea how they ended up married to each other.

Labels: family, rant

Entirely too hot again today.

Puttered around the house, hanging curtains, installing more shelves in the bedroom. Piece by piece the house comes together. I love looking around the house and seeing my own handiwork. Even though I've mostly limited myself to installing ceiling fans, shelves, or hanging the occasional picture, I still feel like I'm pulling off my own little home improvement show.

Making a little day trip down to see my mother and grandmother with Kate tomorrow. Mom's computer blew up and we have a surplus of old machines around here that will easily meet her needs (which amount to "has a modem" and "has a word processor"-maybe "has solitare installed").

Today was the day to see how my attempt at Nigella Lawson's recipe for "asian gravlax" (which I've had curing in the fridge for about 3 days) turned out. I felt too uncomfortably hot to eat, but Chris made a couple of bagels with cream cheese and the salmon (which he declared was "between sashimi and lox") and said it was good. I've still got about a pound and a half of cured salmon to polish off! Sometimes I get a little carried away with cooking stuff.

Labels: family, food, house

My mom called last night to remind me that she wanted to take Kate camping this weekend. Doh! I'd totally forgotten!

So, I'm packing Kate up and hauling her off to Grandma's house. Another missed day of school, but I figure if Kate can't have fun experiences with her family now, when will she be able to? I suppose the fact that I'm not at all thrilled with her current school makes me a little passive-aggressive, too. Not sending my kid there to be bullied and told she's a crybaby when I could be sending her off for some TLC with grandma.

Nothing like 8 hours of driving to start the weekend off right.

Labels: family, Kate, travel

So when we last left off, Kate and I were headed for Tucson. More specifically, we were headed to Green Valley, a little retirement community a bit south of Tucson, and a bit north of Nogales on the Mexican border.

My grandparents have had a summer home in Green Valley for many years now. I first visited them there when I was about 16. After my grandmother became ill, they moved to Green Valley year round and sold their Minnesota lake home to my uncle, Jack.

It was wonderful to see my grandpa again. It had been six years since I last saw him, despite my best attempts to visit with him the last few years. He's looking good, still healthy and active and very mentally aware. He's a little skinnier, has a slight tremor and a little more trouble getting out of a chair than he used to, but for an 86-year-old guy he's extremely mobile. He's a shark at competitive shuffleboard within the retirement community. He seemed delighted by Kate's antics and spent a lot of time just watching her or listening to her gab with a big grin on his face.

On the other hand, I wouldn't have recognized my grandmother. She's been confined to full-time care for the last six years. Her face is drawn, she's lost her ability to move and speak. She recognizes my Grandpa, who devotedly visits her every day, twice a day, and greets him with a laugh. The last thing Grandpa heard her say was a some weeks ago while a chipper young nursing aide was fussing with Grandma's hair trying to style it and chatting away to her about how she couldn't get it quite right, Grandma suddenly responded, "Who cares?" I had to laugh, that's my grandma. Grandpa speaks fondly of her being a "tough ol' gal" and it's touching and heartbreaking to see them together, him holding her hand or giving her a kiss and saying "See you later, honey." He brings her a Hershey bar as a treat every afternoon, and has a boxful of Hershey bars in his refrigerator just waiting to be doled out.

My grandpa knows everyone at the nursing facility. We couldn't walk 10 feet without someone greeting him or him greeting someone: other residents, other family members or friends of residents, staff, volunteers, you name it. He volunteers with the assisted living residents once a week, and he talks with some of the other lonely residents who have no one else to visit them. My esteem for him, which was high before, is now nearly indescribable. If you click this link you will even see an image of him from a few years ago on the official website in the photo montage (that's him in the right-most photo). I am embarrassed to say that I can't recognize whether the woman in the picture is my grandmother, she has changed so much from how I remember her and has gone through so many stages of change between the woman I grew up with and the woman she is now. The woman with the balloons, however, is either a relatively recent picture of my grandma, or someone who looks exactly like her.

La Posada is a large facility, with assisted living suites, a secure unit for dementia cases, and then a full-service nursing care facility for people like my grandma who are in the last stages of their diseases. Grandma has been in hospice care for 6 months now, hanging on much longer than anyone thought she would. When Grandpa first gave in and arranged for her to live at La Posada instead of at home, he thought she'd be able to move to an assisted living apartment. He left her that evening, unpacking and putting things away, but within a few hours of his leaving, Grandma took off and they found her wandering on the road a couple miles from home. It was a staff person who had met her that day who noticed her walking on the road and offered her a ride. When Grandma wouldn't get in the car, this woman stayed with her while her daughter called the sheriff. Poor Grandpa got a call to come get her that very night. It was the first time she'd ever wandered (at their home she would stay home while Grandpa went to shuffleboard and so on, no problem) but it meant she had to go into the secure unit instead of assisted living. They moved her out of the assisted living apartment the next day. Before she lost her ability to walk, she would wander in and out of the rooms in the secure unit, cleaning and reorganizing everyone's things. Luckily, the staff attitude was "It's her house, let her clean and we'll put things back in order later."

Grandma was keenly interested in Kate. She perked up and spent a lot of time watching Kate playing or walking around (as we took Grandma on a stroll around the grounds in her wheelchair). She was always a very active woman, always cleaning and straightening her house, working in her garden, crocheting, tatting, painting, you name it. It was so hard to see her hands, crippled and clenched.

My aunt Joanne says she thinks Grandma's time is about up. Even though she's healthy, she's starting to lose weight. Her body seems to be just slowly giving out. My family isn't terribly communicative, so until last month I had no idea that my aunt Dolly and Uncle Jack had come down for a month-long visit in March, or that my dad and step-mom had taken a golf trip to Phoenix and come down to visit Grandma a few weeks ago. My cousin Connie visited with her new baby in October, and I, independently of all of this, scheduled a trip as well. Joanne sees this as an omen, as if the family has been called back one by one to say our goodbyes. I'm so glad I made this trip, as heartbreaking as it was at times. I'm grateful that Kate was able to meet her great-grandma, and see a little of grandpa's devotion to her in her final days.

Labels: family, travel

Kate and I are nearly ready to go on our Spring Break trip to Arizona. She is so excited about going she was barely able to sleep last night and woke up at 2:30am wondering if it was morning yet. This is a grand experiment on my part: Kate and I haven't had a solo holiday together since I grabbed her up and took her by train from Vancouver BC out to a get-together (the first!) with my e-mail mom group, then made a brief stop at GenCon on my way to my parents' place in Minnesota. She was, oh, just about 8 months old for that trip. She's a bit bigger now but every bit as fun.

We'll be staying with a friend of mine who has daughters 7 and 5 years old, and visiting other mom-list friends, including the only mom on our list to have lost a child since we've all been together. Her daughter, Melissa, would also have been 5; she has two living daughters as well, ages 5 and 3-ish. Her Kate-aged daughter is a child of a much different temperament than her mother, and I've been pleased to be able to give my impressions of what's likely going on in Lauren's head (since I was very much like Lauren when I was her age). I'll also have a couple of days to spend with my friend Karyl, who is just an amazing woman: working full time, mom to two boys, going to night school to get her degree, and she's lost 40 pounds since last October.

That's the fun part of the trip. Visiting with The Moms, exploring the wilds of Arizona with Kate and their kids, swimming and sunning ourselves. Not much not to like about that!

The second half of the trip is more sad for me. I'm taking this trip primarily because I fear it's going to be one of the last times I will get to see some of my relatives, who are ailing in various ways. I have not seen my grandmother since 1993. It was shortly before we found out that she had Alzheimer's, though we'd had our suspicions that something just wasn't right before that. My grandmother is one tough cookie, though, and fiercely private. She and grandpa had long since decided to winter in Arizona, and she groused about coming back to Minnesota in her later years. "It's just a work farm," she'd say, as she cleaned the beach or hung clothes out on the line. It was no surprise when they eventually decided to live in Arizona fulltime, though I have no doubt that being able to hide grandma's illness through distance had a little something to do with it. My grandma has long since forgotten that she ever remembered who I was. I don't exist in her world anymore. I'm not sure anyone does. She went through a serious bout of pneumonia last spring that they feared would be the death of her, but even in her diminished state she'd have none of that. She'll be going out when she's good and ready, thank you very much. I feared her for much of my childhood, afraid of crossing her and making her stern with me, but it's clear to me now that the same scrappy will to make things "just so" that intimidated he hell out of me as a kid is fundamental to her being. Even when everything else that made her her has eroded, that iron core of her determination remains.

My Grandpa Lindroos, meanwhile, was diagnosed with prostate cancer a couple of years ago. My dad broke the news to me that Grandpa had decided not to bother with treatment. I guess he figured at over 80 years old, it was a slow disease that wasn't going to take him before Grandma passed on, so why go through treatment? I've seen my grandpa a few times since he made the decision to put Grandma into fulltime care. I know that had to have killed him, they'd been married for over 50 years at that point. I used to work in a nursing home that specialized in care for residents with dementia conditions (mostly Alzheimer's, but some other conditions as well), and we saw over and over again that families would try to keep their loved ones in the home as long as they could, often far longer than they should have. My fondest childhood memories revolve around the time I spend with my grandpa, at the lake house he built himself, where he indulged my requests to go fishing or drive the motor boat or "build stuff" with his power tools. He loved me unconditionally, was patient and understated, and proud of me. When I "helped" him post some No Hunting signs on his property, he proudly displayed an entire row of my childishly-scrawled "Don't Shoot the Baby Rabbits!!!" signs (complete with animal drawings made with black permanent marker on wood planks) all the way down their winding rural driveway.

I made special plans to bring Kate and Chris up to Ely last summer, to coincide with my grandpa's scheduled visit to his old house (which now belongs to Uncle Jack and Aunt Dolly), but then Grandma had her scary bout with pneumonia, and everyone thought she could go at any moment. Grandpa certainly didn't want to take two weeks to go to Minnesota if Grandma was at risk of dying while he was gone! Under the current circumstances, I don't know when he might make another trip "home" and goodness knows if I would be able to arrange to be there at the same time. So, I've scheduled a trip to see him in Arizona instead.

I'm quite a bit frightened by what I might see when I get there. I deeply love my grandparents and they were undeniably influential in shaping who I've grown up to be. The feeling I have about them now, in their current circumstances, is tenderness and timidity. I feel like I'm watching the beautiful bubble of their lives, full, shimmering, increasingly transparent and in danger of popping out of existence at any moment. I've never known anything like it before in my life.

Labels: family, friends, Kate, travel