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Sunday, October 21, 2007
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Upcoming Publication
Hey all,
I just heard that Wordriot.org will be publishing my story "Abject Objectivity Goes for a Walk" in their November 15 issue. Rock and roll!
I just heard that Wordriot.org will be publishing my story "Abject Objectivity Goes for a Walk" in their November 15 issue. Rock and roll!
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Home Sweet Home
Today, Sue, Molly and I just got home from another 4ish day hospital stay. This time, Jaundice was the culprit. I never really thought that We'd have to have Molly hospitalized for Jaundice (since it's such a common infant thing, but we did, and here's the story). Before I get started, though, don't worry. Everything's fine.When we were originally released from the hospital, Molly's billirubin level was at 9. Billirubin is the stuff the causes Jaundice...and that stuff is actually broken down red blood cells and other junk that need to be shat forth with great force to be removed from the body.
A day after release, they sent a nurse to our house, who checked Molly's Billi scale, and found that it had gone up some more...to like 13 or so. From there, they prescribed Molly to be in a Wallaby. Wallabies, contrary to popular belief, are not miniature kangaroos. They are clunky heat spitting fiber optic light things for babies. The light stimulates the liver to process things and clean the billirubin out of the blood. Normally, a Wallaby is all you need.
And for 2 days, that's what we did. We put up with the loud, bright, wonky thing. It sucked for changing and feeding time because the Wallaby had to be wrapped around her chest, and it's cord wasn't all that long. The only cool thing about it was that it made Molly look like a glow worm.Unfortunately, her Billi level kept going up, and on Saturday, we were sent to the hospital. To your left is Molly packed into her carseat. Isn't it darling?
Once we got to the hospital (St. V's instead of Hamot (our pediatrician is a St. V's doctor)), they admitted us to the pediatric ward where they put two big billi lights on Molly and drew a metric fuckton of blood before the doctor came in and started screaming at them for drawing far more blood than necessary. When we got to the hospital, Molly's billi level had already dropped a bit--down to 20 from 21 from the morning's check. The doctor had Molly admitted to the NICU, and Since Sue is breastfeeding, we got to keep the room in Pediatrics until things blew over. Sue also got to eat foods on the insurance company's bill because of the breastfeeding. I got to scrounge.
By Sunday, Molly's Billi level had dropped to 12.x and things were looking a lot better. The doctors and nurses also explained to us why things got so bad. Basically, all babies will have jaundice to some minor degree as their bodies expel the billirubin, but Molly's was a little worse than normal because of an AB blood type incompatibility between Sue's and Molly's blood. So when Molly was born, her body killed off all of Sue's blood in her system in addition to the other blood cells of her own, and a giant surplus built up in her system. Furthermore, babies don't start making new red blood cells until all the extra ones created in the womb are recycled. So once this stuff started building up in Molly's system, it made her very tired. The tiredness made it hard for Sue to get Molly to eat, which meant that Molly got dehydrated and then stopped peeing and pooping, and thus that's how we ended up in the hospital.
So they put Molly on an IV and had Sue continue feeding her as normal (though we did have to bottle feed the breastmilk at first), and slowly but surely the Billirubin level came down. On Sunday and Monday, Molly had a really ugly rash from the Billi, but that's pretty much gone now, as is most of that classic yellow skin coloring.
During our stint in the hospital, Sue and I were a nervous wreck, but we were very thankful that Molly only had Jaundice and not something more serious. Sue's mom ferried back and forth between the hospital and the house, taking care of us (making sure I was eating), and the cats, and helping with the phone calls and keeping everyone informed. She did a super job at keeping Sue and I sane during this rough time, and Molly's so lucky to have so many concerned and loving grandparents.
Notice the little sleepy eyes drawn onto Molly's "VR" goggles there in that last picture. One of the nurses did that. We thought it was awesome. In fact, all the nurses in the NICU were fantastic. Another one made a little Raggedy Anne namecard for Molly once things started getting a little more crowded on Monday. Everyone at the hospital did a wonderful job at taking care of our daughter, and because of that, we're home and happy again.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Project Dad
You heard it. On 10/1/2007 at 20:50 after 30 hours of labor involving way too many hours of relentless usage of Pitocin, my wife and I were rewarded with the most beautiful little creature love and marriage can buy: Our very own Molly Marie. Look at her, isn't she darling? I surely think so. Vitals: 7lbs 13oz, 20 1/4 inches. She's been happy, healthy, and an all around great baby in the house.
I'll be posting more soon, but good lord, she's darling.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Countdown Baby, and other things.
T-minus 10 days and counting to Molly's due date. Lots of folks have been saying that babies like to come out on the full moon. Here's to hoping that our little baby will be a werewolf then. Sue's been having on again off again contractions for about two weeks now, and we're both ready for Molly to just come out already. But, fortunately, the end is in sight.
Another fortunate end in sight is semester three of grad school. All around, this has been a really rough semester for me. My Extended Critical Essay drove me to the brink of insanity for several weeks, and with all the chaos of work, and baby, and sick cat, It's been awful hard to keep focused. But the end is near.
While the ECE did take up most of my semester, I have managed to finish one story, "Deconstructing Happily Ever After," as well as start two more. The latter two have been fizzling at the moment, but I think once all the dust settles from the baby and everything else going on, the both should pick up pretty fairly. The good news is that I'm rapidly closing in on completing all of the stories for the projected setlist of Not an Autobiography. I'm planning for 13 stories and I'm sitting at about 10 right now. With a good concerted effort, I may be able to push out the final three in conjunction to my Creative Thesis and use the whole book instead of just excerpts. We'll see, though.
Recently I finished reading Opium4. Great lit mag. If you haven't been to their site, check them out, http://www.opiummagazine.com I'm also nearly 2/3 through Maxx Barry's first novel, Syrup, which is a riot. Sue and the baby are enjoying it thoroughly as well.
Another fortunate end in sight is semester three of grad school. All around, this has been a really rough semester for me. My Extended Critical Essay drove me to the brink of insanity for several weeks, and with all the chaos of work, and baby, and sick cat, It's been awful hard to keep focused. But the end is near.
While the ECE did take up most of my semester, I have managed to finish one story, "Deconstructing Happily Ever After," as well as start two more. The latter two have been fizzling at the moment, but I think once all the dust settles from the baby and everything else going on, the both should pick up pretty fairly. The good news is that I'm rapidly closing in on completing all of the stories for the projected setlist of Not an Autobiography. I'm planning for 13 stories and I'm sitting at about 10 right now. With a good concerted effort, I may be able to push out the final three in conjunction to my Creative Thesis and use the whole book instead of just excerpts. We'll see, though.
Recently I finished reading Opium4. Great lit mag. If you haven't been to their site, check them out, http://www.opiummagazine.com I'm also nearly 2/3 through Maxx Barry's first novel, Syrup, which is a riot. Sue and the baby are enjoying it thoroughly as well.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Finding something
Note: This is a pretty long post, and it really doesn't go anywhere. I posted it more for myself than for you.
My Good Friend, Rod, posted this blog the other day, and I attempted his suggested exercise this morning. Clearly, something is wrong with me. Let me explain, I'm enchanted the idea that someday, somehow, I will achieve a zen-like state. And, truthfully, It's happened, and it's happened plenty of times. But it's the Zen-on-demand that I want (Hey, I'm American--I was brought up to expect to get what I want, when I want, If I want it). Kidding aside, though, I'd really like to get better at the grand scheme of calming the self. I get worked up (for good reasons and bad) far too easily, and then end up wasting a lot of time running the events over and over in my head, augmenting, changing things, until I end up either winning or losing whatever situation I'm currently obsessing over. When I used to walk to work, I'd spend my whole way there running shit by--medititating on mundinaeity, if you will.
Over the years, I've noticed that repetition breeds itself, and I'm really good at repetition. At work, I've spent days, brute force manually populating thousands of table records because no one else had the patience to do it. If repetition is involved, I'm infinitely patient, but at the same time, I'm stuck on it. And more unfortunately, I'm drawn to focus upon the bad repetitive moments of my life.
I've heard that horrible events imprint on your mind more easily than happy events because your mind becomes more active to try to deal with the horrible occurrence. And by the same action, it becomes less active during happy moments because there's no stress on the system; we feel safe when we're happy, and thus don't pay much attention then.
Sue's always telling me that I need to let go of my shit and pay more attention to the present. And she's very right. We're incredibly fortunate to be soon-t0-be parents, and furthermore blessed to have more than 2 friends thanks to all the great people I met at Spalding. But the nature of repetition comes with a definite drawback--repetition must always have an end point. You're always working towards some end or means. And such an assumed end point, causes the present, or the Journey, to steal from Rod's blog, to be obliterated under the weight of "the greater plan." And that end point, is always something a little ludicrous, a little idealistic, yet plausible. I want to write books and teach the writing of books; that is my end-point at this point in time. But the problem is that the end-point becomes the universal-problem-solver in the eyes of the man overtaken by repetition. It becomes too easy to say, "life will stop sucking once I reach my end point." And to say that, is to miss out on everything going on around you during the perceived time of suckyness.
I've spent the last several years fighting to break out of this cycle of grinding the millstone till I achieve x. First it was "I need a laptop so I can write more." Then it became "I need to go to grad school so I can write better." But in truth, I'm limiting myself. And Sue's been trying to tell me all along how much I limit myself by this sort of thinking. I just haven't been listening. And I'm sorry that I haven't. She's always right, you know, and I know it frustrates the hell out of her when I don't listen.
So I tried Rod's exercise today, both on the way to work and on the way home. I turned off the AC, rolled down the window, killed my radio (despite the fact it was playing some awesome music by Scarling), and I tried my damnedest to stay focused. I wasn't really successful. Work creeped in steadily. I also thought about Sue, and wondered when the baby would come, and tried to talk myself out of worrying about whether or not work would be ok while I took my Vacation time to be with the baby (of course work will be fine, but I have that horrible dedication gene that won't allow me to stop worrying that things won't be fine. (If I had a back up, I suppose I wouldn't worry so much, but out of my hands)). I also worried about some other stupid stuff--like stupid things I did five years ago or more. Point is, while trying to focus on driving, I thought about a lot of bad things, and not enough of the good things, and even less about my supposed focus on driving. All because I was driving towards a day that I perceived to be becoming "a bad day."
But nothing bad happened to me today. It was actually a fairly good day at work--I impressed the Executive Director with my automation, assisted a friend with some testing, and scored some free lunch (because Deb Rocks!). Then I got to come home to my wife, who is beautiful and loving, and so pregnant that it hurts (her). We both independently thought up "fish and chips" for dinner and enjoyed sharing brains for that moment. We snuggled whilst watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and shared mutual relief that our sick Chu is still peeing and hopefully on the mend. Now, I'm up here writing. This is a good day all around. In fact, it's pretty great, approaching grand, even. But yet, why would I assume otherwise from the get-go?
So what was the point of all of this? Why have I rambled on so long? Well, I guess I'm starting to understand what Sue's been saying all along. There is something more to life than the day-to-dailies. Something more than crossing things off an index card to-do list. Something more than going through the motions. I need to learn to embrace this "something more." To experience things in the moment, allow myself the emotional space to feel my actions and not just my fuckups.
My mind isn't quiet. And I'll never say that I lived a life without regrets, but I'm learning.
Rod, thanks for writing that blog, and suggesting the exercise.
Sue, thank you for being patient, and by my side. I love you very much.
My Good Friend, Rod, posted this blog the other day, and I attempted his suggested exercise this morning. Clearly, something is wrong with me. Let me explain, I'm enchanted the idea that someday, somehow, I will achieve a zen-like state. And, truthfully, It's happened, and it's happened plenty of times. But it's the Zen-on-demand that I want (Hey, I'm American--I was brought up to expect to get what I want, when I want, If I want it). Kidding aside, though, I'd really like to get better at the grand scheme of calming the self. I get worked up (for good reasons and bad) far too easily, and then end up wasting a lot of time running the events over and over in my head, augmenting, changing things, until I end up either winning or losing whatever situation I'm currently obsessing over. When I used to walk to work, I'd spend my whole way there running shit by--medititating on mundinaeity, if you will.
Over the years, I've noticed that repetition breeds itself, and I'm really good at repetition. At work, I've spent days, brute force manually populating thousands of table records because no one else had the patience to do it. If repetition is involved, I'm infinitely patient, but at the same time, I'm stuck on it. And more unfortunately, I'm drawn to focus upon the bad repetitive moments of my life.
I've heard that horrible events imprint on your mind more easily than happy events because your mind becomes more active to try to deal with the horrible occurrence. And by the same action, it becomes less active during happy moments because there's no stress on the system; we feel safe when we're happy, and thus don't pay much attention then.
Sue's always telling me that I need to let go of my shit and pay more attention to the present. And she's very right. We're incredibly fortunate to be soon-t0-be parents, and furthermore blessed to have more than 2 friends thanks to all the great people I met at Spalding. But the nature of repetition comes with a definite drawback--repetition must always have an end point. You're always working towards some end or means. And such an assumed end point, causes the present, or the Journey, to steal from Rod's blog, to be obliterated under the weight of "the greater plan." And that end point, is always something a little ludicrous, a little idealistic, yet plausible. I want to write books and teach the writing of books; that is my end-point at this point in time. But the problem is that the end-point becomes the universal-problem-solver in the eyes of the man overtaken by repetition. It becomes too easy to say, "life will stop sucking once I reach my end point." And to say that, is to miss out on everything going on around you during the perceived time of suckyness.
I've spent the last several years fighting to break out of this cycle of grinding the millstone till I achieve x. First it was "I need a laptop so I can write more." Then it became "I need to go to grad school so I can write better." But in truth, I'm limiting myself. And Sue's been trying to tell me all along how much I limit myself by this sort of thinking. I just haven't been listening. And I'm sorry that I haven't. She's always right, you know, and I know it frustrates the hell out of her when I don't listen.
So I tried Rod's exercise today, both on the way to work and on the way home. I turned off the AC, rolled down the window, killed my radio (despite the fact it was playing some awesome music by Scarling), and I tried my damnedest to stay focused. I wasn't really successful. Work creeped in steadily. I also thought about Sue, and wondered when the baby would come, and tried to talk myself out of worrying about whether or not work would be ok while I took my Vacation time to be with the baby (of course work will be fine, but I have that horrible dedication gene that won't allow me to stop worrying that things won't be fine. (If I had a back up, I suppose I wouldn't worry so much, but out of my hands)). I also worried about some other stupid stuff--like stupid things I did five years ago or more. Point is, while trying to focus on driving, I thought about a lot of bad things, and not enough of the good things, and even less about my supposed focus on driving. All because I was driving towards a day that I perceived to be becoming "a bad day."
But nothing bad happened to me today. It was actually a fairly good day at work--I impressed the Executive Director with my automation, assisted a friend with some testing, and scored some free lunch (because Deb Rocks!). Then I got to come home to my wife, who is beautiful and loving, and so pregnant that it hurts (her). We both independently thought up "fish and chips" for dinner and enjoyed sharing brains for that moment. We snuggled whilst watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and shared mutual relief that our sick Chu is still peeing and hopefully on the mend. Now, I'm up here writing. This is a good day all around. In fact, it's pretty great, approaching grand, even. But yet, why would I assume otherwise from the get-go?
So what was the point of all of this? Why have I rambled on so long? Well, I guess I'm starting to understand what Sue's been saying all along. There is something more to life than the day-to-dailies. Something more than crossing things off an index card to-do list. Something more than going through the motions. I need to learn to embrace this "something more." To experience things in the moment, allow myself the emotional space to feel my actions and not just my fuckups.
My mind isn't quiet. And I'll never say that I lived a life without regrets, but I'm learning.
Rod, thanks for writing that blog, and suggesting the exercise.
Sue, thank you for being patient, and by my side. I love you very much.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Can you get high off of psychodelic rock?
Probably not, but I've been listening to one of Pink Floyd's earlier albums, Ummagumma, lately, and man, for as atypical as it is, I love it. Last week, while I was working 2nd shift, I popped the Studio disk in and went for a couple of midnight walks, and it was a great experience. The album is just such a break from everything that I normally listen to that I'm really connecting to it in different ways than I normally would. It's also cool to notice the groundwork for a lot of Pink Floyd's later works within this album. It's some crazy shit. Crazy good shit.
Over the last few weeks we had our two baby showers, and they were both very wonderful. Our parents (especially Sue's dad) went way out of their way to help us bring the families' first grandbaby into the world in style. Molly "Marzipan" Lackovic has more clothes and blankets and toys than I do. All thanks to the loving, doting grandparents. Having the families come together like this really ramps up the whole excitement factor. And speaking of excitement, I present 2 anecdotes: 1. My mom shakes and shivers like a little kid getting candy whenever she see's Sue. Then she immediately dives for the belly and starts talking to Molly. My teeth rot out every time. 2. We went to Baby's R Us the other day to pick up a couple of things that we didn't get at the shower, and the lady said to Sue, "I thought you had the baby already. I haven't seen Chuck in a few days." Yes, the lady at Baby's R Us, knows Sue's dad's name on a first name basis. And as a 3rd (unannounced) anecdote, Sue's mom has been making constant excuses to come up and visit. I believe she's coming up this weekend to help Sue "clean house." Yeah right, she wants to spend time with the baby. Point is, everyone has baby fever, and it's great. Molly's setting up for coming into the world spoiled to hell, and while I'd rather her not to be so, I don't think I have much choice right now. All I gotta say is our parents are awesome.
Also I want to thank all of you who went out and bought a copy of Alligator Juniper. I really appreciate you for taking the time to do so, and I totally didn't expect it to happen. If you still want to read the story, and don't have the money, let me know and I can send it to you.
Thankfully, work's been a lot less demanding of me lately (they actually hired someone to take care of all the tech support I was doing on the side for nothing), so I've been able to spend more time working on automation and a potential lead to have said automation rolled out to other call centers (which has been talked about for about 3 years now). So we'll see where that goes.
Otherwise, we're finishing up our baby classes tomorrow, and entering week 34 of the pregnancy. September 30 is the due date, but we'll take her as soon as she's ready to come out as a healthy baby. She's been moving a lot lately...and it's like world shifting moves; the kind that you can see from five feet away; the kind that make you think of the chest-bursting aliens in Alien...or the one from Spaceballs that pops out and starts singing (I like the singing better).
I'm currently working on last minute edits of my ECE, and, more importantly, the 3rdquel to "(Un/Re/I )Do" -- all about how Johnny loses his job (poor guy).
Dave has encouraged me to start reading and writing more poetry, and I've been doing a bit of both as time permits. I'm going to end today with a poem. It's still pretty early in its lifecycle, and I'm still early in my learning cycle, so suggestions would be great:
First Words
I don't yet have a voice
for these words spun in darkness.
Fluid filled, I speak
bubbles enriched with life.
I am complete. Unborn
within you.
Right now, you
are my world, and
I leave my mark
on your ribs.
Over the last few weeks we had our two baby showers, and they were both very wonderful. Our parents (especially Sue's dad) went way out of their way to help us bring the families' first grandbaby into the world in style. Molly "Marzipan" Lackovic has more clothes and blankets and toys than I do. All thanks to the loving, doting grandparents. Having the families come together like this really ramps up the whole excitement factor. And speaking of excitement, I present 2 anecdotes: 1. My mom shakes and shivers like a little kid getting candy whenever she see's Sue. Then she immediately dives for the belly and starts talking to Molly. My teeth rot out every time. 2. We went to Baby's R Us the other day to pick up a couple of things that we didn't get at the shower, and the lady said to Sue, "I thought you had the baby already. I haven't seen Chuck in a few days." Yes, the lady at Baby's R Us, knows Sue's dad's name on a first name basis. And as a 3rd (unannounced) anecdote, Sue's mom has been making constant excuses to come up and visit. I believe she's coming up this weekend to help Sue "clean house." Yeah right, she wants to spend time with the baby. Point is, everyone has baby fever, and it's great. Molly's setting up for coming into the world spoiled to hell, and while I'd rather her not to be so, I don't think I have much choice right now. All I gotta say is our parents are awesome.
Also I want to thank all of you who went out and bought a copy of Alligator Juniper. I really appreciate you for taking the time to do so, and I totally didn't expect it to happen. If you still want to read the story, and don't have the money, let me know and I can send it to you.
Thankfully, work's been a lot less demanding of me lately (they actually hired someone to take care of all the tech support I was doing on the side for nothing), so I've been able to spend more time working on automation and a potential lead to have said automation rolled out to other call centers (which has been talked about for about 3 years now). So we'll see where that goes.
Otherwise, we're finishing up our baby classes tomorrow, and entering week 34 of the pregnancy. September 30 is the due date, but we'll take her as soon as she's ready to come out as a healthy baby. She's been moving a lot lately...and it's like world shifting moves; the kind that you can see from five feet away; the kind that make you think of the chest-bursting aliens in Alien...or the one from Spaceballs that pops out and starts singing (I like the singing better).
I'm currently working on last minute edits of my ECE, and, more importantly, the 3rdquel to "(Un/Re/I )Do" -- all about how Johnny loses his job (poor guy).
Dave has encouraged me to start reading and writing more poetry, and I've been doing a bit of both as time permits. I'm going to end today with a poem. It's still pretty early in its lifecycle, and I'm still early in my learning cycle, so suggestions would be great:
First Words
I don't yet have a voice
for these words spun in darkness.
Fluid filled, I speak
bubbles enriched with life.
I am complete. Unborn
within you.
Right now, you
are my world, and
I leave my mark
on your ribs.
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