Saturday, June 16, 2007
FLAT OUT - LOOK AT THESE BEAUTIES!
I can't resist it - just had to post a few pictures. Lots of transition going on right now, and there will be more time to write big thoughts once things settle down. But I will say, the kids keep it worth it.
Quinn is just a few weeks away from ONE year old. Sweet little baby boy! Where did our first year go? You are a big ray of sunshine in a small little package. The powers that be must know who needs some supernatural joy in their life because you exude it.
When you were about 3 days old, I was holding you watching you sleep. Out of nowhere your face curled up, mouth opened, and you let out a huge belly laugh. Never woke up, just yukking it up with your subconsious. I think you were born a jolly soul.
How sappy am I, this last few weeks of your first year? You and my best girl Mia are my life and I love you with every last part of me. I've never felt anything like it. It takes my breath away.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Walking Skills, Car Crash, and Epiphany.
Quinn is officially a walking boy. He is so proud and so cute. If I hold his little hand and we go for a walk together through the house you would think I just hung the moon, the look on his face.
Fun!
Saturday morning I crashed my car into someone else. Completely my fault. My mind was a million miles away and I blew through a red light. Both kids in the car. What a wake up call. Everyone is okay, thank GOD.
It was the universe calling. Time to stop sleepwalking through life. Time to seize the moment and make some changes. My babies count on me not to be asleep at the wheel.
Stay tuned!
Monday, May 21, 2007
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Fresh out of moral outrage here. Check back next month
Have been in a funk lately, as evidenced by my previous post. Nothing ground breaking. Just ugh. Lots a medium to little stuff rolled into one big ugh.
So I am ruminating before my databases the other morning when the office conversation (a rare event in itself) turns to the subject of a MSU professor who resigned this week upon his exposure as a registered sex offender. Turns out he was convincted twentysomething years ago of rape of a minor. RAPE OF A MINOR. He does not claim innocence, by the way. Just says he has put his life back together, walked the straight and narrow, paid his debt, etc etc.
Whether or not he keeps his academic job, I am deeply ambivalent about. Could not care less. There is a campus community there that needs to duke this one out amongst themselves. He is a sex offender; there are child care centers, a major private school, not to mention thousands of our state's young adults in the mix there.
One of my coworkers has many close university employee friends. All her comments on this case, which is all over our local news, center on how sad it is for this professor. "Award winning researcher and professor, forced to resign" is about a verbatim of the typical comment. Other coworker in 30's (there are only 3 of us) is all about condeming the reporter who first outed this guy to the public. Oh, he's getting depressed. I hope he can put his life back together. All because this guy who is such a joker outed him in the press. Both of these people just graduated from the MSU business school in the last few years.
Um. I am obnoxiously drawn to play the devil's advocate in matters great and petty. One of the reasons, I'm sure, I was such a JOY for my parents to hang out with when I was a righteously indignant teenager. In this case I found myself getting really irritated, not just inspired to poke at their opinions for sport.
The debate over this red lettering of sex offenders is a legitimate one. To me, the statistical reality of recidivism among these people is scientific proof that we need to be wary. Not paranoid, not stripping them of all civil rights, but wary. Felons forfeit certain rights.
Couple of crotchety thoughts to wrap this uP:
So I am ruminating before my databases the other morning when the office conversation (a rare event in itself) turns to the subject of a MSU professor who resigned this week upon his exposure as a registered sex offender. Turns out he was convincted twentysomething years ago of rape of a minor. RAPE OF A MINOR. He does not claim innocence, by the way. Just says he has put his life back together, walked the straight and narrow, paid his debt, etc etc.
Whether or not he keeps his academic job, I am deeply ambivalent about. Could not care less. There is a campus community there that needs to duke this one out amongst themselves. He is a sex offender; there are child care centers, a major private school, not to mention thousands of our state's young adults in the mix there.
One of my coworkers has many close university employee friends. All her comments on this case, which is all over our local news, center on how sad it is for this professor. "Award winning researcher and professor, forced to resign" is about a verbatim of the typical comment. Other coworker in 30's (there are only 3 of us) is all about condeming the reporter who first outed this guy to the public. Oh, he's getting depressed. I hope he can put his life back together. All because this guy who is such a joker outed him in the press. Both of these people just graduated from the MSU business school in the last few years.
Um. I am obnoxiously drawn to play the devil's advocate in matters great and petty. One of the reasons, I'm sure, I was such a JOY for my parents to hang out with when I was a righteously indignant teenager. In this case I found myself getting really irritated, not just inspired to poke at their opinions for sport.
The debate over this red lettering of sex offenders is a legitimate one. To me, the statistical reality of recidivism among these people is scientific proof that we need to be wary. Not paranoid, not stripping them of all civil rights, but wary. Felons forfeit certain rights.
Couple of crotchety thoughts to wrap this uP:
- if this guy thought there would be no politics involved in his teaching at a public university as a registered rapist of a minor, he is not as smart as he seems.
- would my coworkers be so outraged on behalf of some guy not so peerlike? Say, the black guy who sweeps the floor, never finished high school, raped a minor back in the day but now just wants to keep coming to school to sweep the floor; to have a chance to put his life back together? gimme a break.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
you'll wish I didnt bother to post
Officially we have made it through the horrible winter. We've been somewhat healthier as a group. Quinn is quickly approaching his first birthday and toddlerhood. I've lost my baby weight. We are settling into what is perhaps the first stretch of time since Darin and I have been together -- or at least certainly since I first found out I was pregnant with Mia -- that I can envision the horizon more than a few months away. We have been in survival mode since moving to Missouri: scrambling for a decent job, our next mortgage payment, etc. Now we are in a more or less reliable pattern of life. What a trip the last few years has been. holy crap.
The next two years: Darin will work at Solo on the night shift. I will work at the hospital. Mia will be in preschool; Quinn will be in daycare. In the landmark summer of 2009, Mia will be headed to kindergarten and Quinn to preschool. Big changes that year - stability in the plan until then.
It is going to be a hard sprint. Hard, but I am determined to take the time and appreciate the good. My babies will be growing up a lot in this time. Darin and I won't be seeing a ton of each other. We will be scraping every day to keep ourselves from sinking under the weight of our financial obligations and at the same time take care of our health, and try to remember to be patient and good to each other so that we may still like each other when times aren't so tight. If we work as hard as we can and everthing goes exactly right, our reward will be seemingly small: the family will stay together, in our house, reasonably healthy and not broke. No new cars, no nice clothes, no furniture, no vacations, no landscaping or remodelling, no fat savings account. Just a material breakeven as reward for the hardest work and most sacrifice I've done ever.
Don't get me wrong; I am so grateful. We've been luckier than many who are more deserving. My family is the best thing I've ever done, hands down.
I do have new empathy for people whose marriages fall apart, families are a mess, diets and exercise routines nonexistent. This responsible parenthood thing can be really hard, choices extremely limited, indulgences unheard of if not arriving in an ice cream carton. I talk to my coworkers more than I get to talk to my own husband. These are the type of years when women lose themselves and couples lose each other. I can see it there like the big ditch along highway N, a threat parallel to my path and easy to see.
My resolutions during these next few years of young motherhood:
The next two years: Darin will work at Solo on the night shift. I will work at the hospital. Mia will be in preschool; Quinn will be in daycare. In the landmark summer of 2009, Mia will be headed to kindergarten and Quinn to preschool. Big changes that year - stability in the plan until then.
It is going to be a hard sprint. Hard, but I am determined to take the time and appreciate the good. My babies will be growing up a lot in this time. Darin and I won't be seeing a ton of each other. We will be scraping every day to keep ourselves from sinking under the weight of our financial obligations and at the same time take care of our health, and try to remember to be patient and good to each other so that we may still like each other when times aren't so tight. If we work as hard as we can and everthing goes exactly right, our reward will be seemingly small: the family will stay together, in our house, reasonably healthy and not broke. No new cars, no nice clothes, no furniture, no vacations, no landscaping or remodelling, no fat savings account. Just a material breakeven as reward for the hardest work and most sacrifice I've done ever.
Don't get me wrong; I am so grateful. We've been luckier than many who are more deserving. My family is the best thing I've ever done, hands down.
I do have new empathy for people whose marriages fall apart, families are a mess, diets and exercise routines nonexistent. This responsible parenthood thing can be really hard, choices extremely limited, indulgences unheard of if not arriving in an ice cream carton. I talk to my coworkers more than I get to talk to my own husband. These are the type of years when women lose themselves and couples lose each other. I can see it there like the big ditch along highway N, a threat parallel to my path and easy to see.
My resolutions during these next few years of young motherhood:
- Continue to lose weight, no matter how slow the process
- play a lot with my kiddies, including in a bathing suit no matter what my vanity says
- keep blogging - reminds me I do have my own brain and point of view. I almost forgot.
- continue to set personal goals for myself. for myself and the example I'm setting.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
data analyst, data fatigue
I love many things about my accidental career as a data analyst, especially the part where I wind up working in the medical field.
But there are days.
Since I returned from CA there have not been many pressing projects for me, so I've spent time building templates and cruising the data, learning new ways of querying, etc. I do this with a medical code book in front of me, experimenting with criteria by diagnosis and by procedure.
After being exposed to all those thousands of medical cases, a few things:
1. Diabetes BAD.
2. Uncontrolled diabetes DOUBLY BAD.
3. Many people tempt fate with their lifestyle over many years. These people fill the files, and it really sucks to think how much of it could have been avoided.
4. A few others really do not, and that perhaps sucks even more.
5. There better be a special place in Hell for people who abuse little babies.
6. Some people in their nineties survive some crazy stuff, and roll out of there just dandy, thank you very much.
7. I love Wikipedia.
8. Surgery, like airplane flight, might be a big scary deal to you the consumer, but seen in the aggregate is impressive and reassuring in its routine success and professionalism.
But there are days.
Since I returned from CA there have not been many pressing projects for me, so I've spent time building templates and cruising the data, learning new ways of querying, etc. I do this with a medical code book in front of me, experimenting with criteria by diagnosis and by procedure.
After being exposed to all those thousands of medical cases, a few things:
1. Diabetes BAD.
2. Uncontrolled diabetes DOUBLY BAD.
3. Many people tempt fate with their lifestyle over many years. These people fill the files, and it really sucks to think how much of it could have been avoided.
4. A few others really do not, and that perhaps sucks even more.
5. There better be a special place in Hell for people who abuse little babies.
6. Some people in their nineties survive some crazy stuff, and roll out of there just dandy, thank you very much.
7. I love Wikipedia.
8. Surgery, like airplane flight, might be a big scary deal to you the consumer, but seen in the aggregate is impressive and reassuring in its routine success and professionalism.
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