Discolor Online

I think this is the most snow I've seen since leaving Minnesota in 1993. Kate is positively gleeful at the thought of another snow day off from school (delaying her return from Winter Break, which started three days early because of snow).

Labels: snow

"We're trying to create a hard-packed surface," said Alex Wiggins, chief of staff for the Seattle Department of Transportation. "It doesn't look like anything you'd find in Chicago or New York."


Uh, yeah, Chicago and New York actually keep functioning when snow falls.

I've been willing to cut Seattle a lot of slack on the snow and ice issue over the years. We see such small, infrequent snowfalls around here it's understandable that they don't have the stores of snow removal equipment and supplies that real cold-weather cities have. I'm sympathetic the the difficulties presented by Seattle's numerous, dramatically steep hills. But when your "plan" for snow is to "create a [slippery-as-hell, totally unsafe for man or machine] hard-packed surface" on purpose on those occasions when we do have significant cold and snow... I have to call that plan one of the stupidest things I've ever heard! STUPID.

How many businesses, already struggling due to the economy, are seeing their desperate Christmas retail hopes dashed because people and goods can't move where they need to go? How many workers have had to literally risk their lives trying to get to work because they can't afford to go without pay or work for companies that don't offer anything in the way of paid compensation for "sick" days/snow days/acts of nature? How many people have been injured as a result of these icy roads? What's been the toll in property damage? Of course, the brunt of this policy is borne by the individual citizens of Seattle and not the City itself.

Sorry Seattle, you know I love you but this is screwed up.

Labels: snow, snowpocalypse, stupidity

Seattle's the kind of place where we get snow once a year or so. If it sticks, it stays around for a day or two and then it's gone and that's that. Or so I used to say (just like I used to say that we only got about one week of hot weather so you don't really need any air conditioning). The last few years we've seen a different pattern, that's for sure.

Seattle's snow started last weekend during Kate's birthday party. Gigantic, wet, clumpy flakes fell from the sky and I allowed seven squealing girls to run outside to a mostly-empty parking lot to play in it at 11:30 at night, to their great delight. Flakes were caught on tongues, snowballs made and thrown, until cold and wet I herded them all back to bed.

Getting home the next day was tricky. The big hill leading to our house was closed, snow was compacted on our street, making it very slippery and icy. It stayed like that until rains came and cleared almost all the snow away by Tuesday. Schools were opening 2 hours late, but it seemed like it was merely precautionary.

Wednesday the weather forecast was for Seattle to get dumped on, and school was canceled altogether but we saw nothing. Not a flake. In fact, the streets were clearer than they'd been in several days. I actually spent most of the day out running errands because things were so unremarkable, though everywhere around Seattle got snow. It was like we were in a little bubble.

Before going to bed I watched the weather report where the meteorologist announced that we were going to see a "dusting" of snow sometime on Thursday afternoon and left Kate a note telling her that school would be on so she should get her long-sleeved shirts out of the dryer when she got up. HA, the joke was on me as Seattle's meteorologists are apparently about as good as Bill Murray's character in Groundhog Day. We awoke to several inches of snow and school canceled!

Chris cleared the snow from the front and back walks, using the makeshift tools we had on hand. See, we never get enough snow to worry about shoveling... so he used a garden spade and a leaf rake to get the job done, and did quite a good job at that.

Friday Chris braved the elements to go to work but with buses running on snow routes or not at all it was a fiasco and took hours to make it there and back each way. Sidewalks downtown were completely iced over and dangerous to walk on... thankfully he fell only once and didn't get hurt, but it was clear last week that trying to make it downtown in this weather is pretty crazy. Friday I also drove Kate to her dad's, where she's spending Christmas for the first time in many years. It took me an hour to dig my car out, drive the icy roads to the Zipcar, dig the Zipcar out, and get back to the house, then I had to make my way around detours and road closures to get onto the freeway. Freeways were pretty clear until I got pretty far north (where they'd seen up to 20 inches) but streets and on-ramps in Seattle (and in Burlington once I got off the freeway) were crazy. Friday was the day that two charter buses slid down and icy hill, through a barrier, and almost crashed down onto the I-5 freeway. We figured that was the worst of it.

Saturday we made it out. The day was clear and bright but we were heeding the warnings that more snow was on the way. We ran errands, tried in vain to find a snow shovel or salt, bought a little space heater so our unheated upstairs bathroom wouldn't freeze, stocked up on food, toilet paper, the necessities... stood in crazy lines at the stores and tried in vain to get gas for the car but the station was out of gas!

We cautiously made it home as the snow started to come down again Saturday afternoon, this time in sharp, icy little crystals... no longer the fluffy, clumpy stuff but a zillion tiny flakes the size of grains of sand, blowing at angles and eventually coming in sideways, pelting the windows and the side of the house all night. It continued to snow with the occasional break through all of Sunday. Chris and I stayed under covers, ate soup and watched movies and barely cleared 500 steps according to our pedometers.

This morning things are completely covered. Bus routes across Seattle are canceled outright our running on reduced runs. We live on top of a hill and getting anywhere means going down pretty steep hills in any direction (and then trying to get back up again) but our hills are nothing compared to the hill Ray and Christine live on (which I've discovered thanks to this Google Map is a 19% grade the third steepest hill in all of Seattle).


Poor Chris's handiwork has been completely obliterated, though.

Luckily, we're stocked. I'm always prepared for things like food, drinks (including booze and coffee). We've got batteries, we've got heat, we've got hot water (and hopefully no cracked pipes to uncover when we thaw!), the Internet is up, and we've got games and books and movies and music galore. If we're stuck inside for several more days, it'll all be ok. And if nothing else, I've got Twitter to keep me company.

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

I've been on a blogging hiatus. Too much going on, most of it I can't blog about because it's grindingly mundane or just too damn personal to be spreading all over the internet, especially in light of the sorts of people who have been looking me up in recent weeks.

I may take the time to blog some recipes again, but they'll be without photo support because Kate brought my camera to school with her (with my permission) and someone stole it. The little assholes also stole her iPod, and we have no recourse because the school just says she's not supposed to have those things at school anyway. I guess that's true but since they rearranged the school bus routes she now spends up to half an hour more on the bus than she used to and it now takes her almost an hour to get home (whereas it takes about 10 minutes for me to drive to the school, in traffic even) and it seems unfair to tell her she's not allowed to listen to music to block out the little hoodlums-in-training while they scream and yell out the windows that passersby are "whores" or "gay" and other behaviors that are technically not allowed on the bus (and are grounds for having your bus privileges suspended) but no one does anything about.

In my last post I said I wouldn't mention Orca school fundraising again but I'm going back on that, just briefly. Since I am also of a mind to do less consumeristic giving and more charitable and uplifting giving this season, I'm passing this along for any like-minded readers.

Orca K-8 is partnering with the nonprofit organization Global Goods Partners (GGP) to offer beautiful handmade products- handspun silk scarves, home accessories and gifts for special occasions, - that are produced by women artisans in Africa, Asia, and Latin America according to fair trade principles.

From now through December 15th, 30% of each sale we make goes directly to support our school (20% thereafter). The remaining proceeds are invested in the community based organizations that partner with GGP to support advances in health care, education, and other social and economic programs within these communities. To make a purchase count for our school, please select "ORCA" from the drop down list on the home page under "Shop for a School or Nonprofit". You can then click on "Shop for Change" to continue browsing and shopping, knowing that you are benefiting Orca K-8.

I've already been doing some of my planning for Christmas gifts, shopping through The Hunger Site and Heifer International. The items available from Global Goods Partners may not be to everyone's taste (I'm pretty sure the redneck cowboy side of the family would not be interested in Nelson Mandela dolls) but I know some tweens who would definitely dig some zebra keychains, or orange peel treasure boxes in their Christmas stockings.

Labels: fair trade, fundraising, Kate, Orca

The Seattle School District is the largest public school system in Washington. It contains 97 schools and serves about 45,000 students. Unfortunately, every year the Parent-Teacher-Student Associations have to raise money on their own to keep programs, retain teachers and support staff, and safe-guard things once believed to be inextricably linked to proper public education, such as a school library, or textbooks! From the Orca Annual Fund website:



Kate's school is setting out to raise $40,000. This is the first year Kate and her classmates have not done some sort of outdoor education program. Because of the move to a new building, this is the second year the students will not have their award-winning student garden available to them. I know many of you know Kate and think she's as swell as I do. If you're part of Kate's gainfully employed, childless Internet friends and family, this one goes out to you. If you're in a position to make a tax-deductible donation to her school Kate and her fellow Orca students would be extremely grateful. No donation is too small. I know many of you have your own families facing similar challenges so this will be the only time I mention it.

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.
It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.


So. Obama has challenged us. The American people cannot just vote and call it good. We need to "summon a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice...a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility."

What is your service? What is your sacrifice? What are you going to let your sense of patriotism serve? What are you going to be responsible for?

Labels: politics

So I haven't had a lot of time to blog but I figure if I'm putting in 18 hour days I can allow myself a little blog time without feeling too guilty.

After work today I finally got started on my attic ladder project. I made the family eat leftovers (even poor Chris, who is feeling sick)and worked on the installation of the attic ladder (including lengthening the attic entrance, installing the actual ladder, hand sawing the plywood "door" (which I had to build myself as it wasn't included in the ladder package), and cleaning up my mess. I wasn't able to get the "door" installed because it got to be midnight and Kate needed to go to sleep (fair enough!) do the rest will have to wait until tomorrow but after that I should have both a functional ladder and a functional and weather-proofed "door" to my attic. There's a lot of unfinished space up there but luckily for us the builder left an 8 x 10 space with proper flooring at least so we can get started.

Anyway....

While I was working I could hear the TV on and kept hearing political news. I find the state of politics either baffling or enraging at the moment. How the hell did we get from Obama's comments to" Joe the Plumber" (that icon of virtue) to "Obama is a Socialist" who wants to steal your money and "redistribute" it to "the poor" (which means those undeserving brown-skinned welfare queens)? I mean, seriously, can you spare 5 minutes and LISTEN to Obama's actual response before jumping on the "OMG, he's a COMMIE" bandwagon?

Meanwhile Washington State ballots have been delivered to all of us "absentee" (aka Vote By Mail) voters and I've filled in everything but a couple of initiatives and King County Amendments which I haven't researched properly yet. For me, for all intents and purposes, the election is over. I've blackened the circles for my choice for President on down. My mind is made up, my alliances are determined. Even so, I'm still thinking politics for the next week. There are campaigns I've been following that I don't have a vote in but would like to see turn just the same. A few of those have to do with Washington state or Minnesota (land that I love).

In Washington, I've been following the Darcy Burner (with her Computer Science degree from Harvard, with an Economic minor... how perfect for our region?!) since the last election cycle where she lost a close race to douchebag Dave Reichert who played up his Green River Killer capture credentials (and, apparently, he played up his "degree" from Concordia) to win a tight race last time around. I'm all about getting Darcy Burner into Congress even though I can't vote for her directly. I've contributed to her campaign a few times now and I sincerely hope she wins this time. All of Washington will be better off under her representation.

I also have to admit that I have a strange attraction to the Minnesota races. My Scandinavian heart belongs to Minnesota even if I don't live there anymore. I was SO PROUD of Paul Wellstone(from my high school home town of Northfield whose denizens are featured in many of Paul's early ads), whose first speech on the floor of the Senate was against the First Iraq War. Minnesota is often painted as this provincial backwater, a place where people know about cows and fishing, perhaps mining or corn, but not a whole lot else. Bah, I say! Minnesota gives us the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party which "has its roots in third-party protest movements" as the DFL site says. Minnesotans not only gave us Paul Wellstone, but Keith Ellison (the first Muslim elected to Congress), Governor and former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura, and, most embarrassingly Michelle Bachman. Minnesotans shouldn't be counted out! I'm watching the Bachman and Ellison re-election campaigns (and seriously pulling for El Tinklenberg). Minnesota could also give us Ashwin Madia, son of Indian immigrants who went to the University of Minnesota, NYU Law School, and served as a United States Marine in Iraq.

I've now pushed myself to a 20-hour day that included manual labor (and I've got the sore muscles and bruises to prove it) so I'm going to wrap this up but I'll go to sleep tonight hoping that next week will finally see an end to our long, dark Bush/Cheney-fueled nightmare. Help us out, won't you?

Labels: politics

Pramas recently updated his blog with some commentary on divisive politics ( Real Americans ) that pretty much exactly matches what I would have to say on the topic. I've just had no time to post recently I was just going to do a simple "Me too" and link to it but something else caught my attention just now and I am so disgusted I have to say something.

From the Gen Con and Origins Charity Auctions report site:

Labels: gaming, politics, rant

We're making some changes around the house.

Before the Green Ronin Summit I did some serious cleaning and reorganizing that will be ongoing through the fall and into the winter. We've gotten rid of a couple dozen boxes of old books, a few VHS tapes, and I'm seriously eyeing many of my CDs now that I've ripped them to MP3 (and backed them up to boot). Chris has been going through the office with an eye toward paring down our gigantic game collection, and Kate and I went through the books, toys, clothes and miscellaneous items of hers that were taking up the whole guest bathroom and making it unusable over the last couple of years. Yet more obsolete electronics were recycled, seven giant boxes of Styrofoam peanuts were donated to our local UPS store, and I managed a trip to the dump for things that were truly garbage as well.

I also moved and organized a lot of Green Ronin's files. Contracts that were spread out between multiple file boxes are now largely concentrated in a single filing cabinet and one file box and located in the upstairs office. We're now moving on to the next step of reclaiming our garage and possibly the attic as well. In an ideal situation I would like to install an attic ladder for both our house attic and the yet-to-be-finished garage attic. If we can significantly clear out the garage, I'd also like to insulate and finish the garage completely and turn it into a usable room. My mother's house has a converted garage that was a laundry room/family room with a carpet and a wood stove and a small area divided off to be a pantry/storage area with shelves and a chest freezer. In my fantasy, it could be a place where Chris could set up big minis games or where Kate could keep a drum kit.

Why yes, I do have a rich fantasy life, why do you ask?

Anyway, even if I don't accomplish everything I'd like to I do plan to move to separate the Green Ronin parts of the house more from the everyday life parts of the house. My daughter is going to be 13 in a couple of months and I'm all too aware that the time I get to spend with my family is precious and fleeting. I'm really, really trying to keep GR business out of my carved out "personal time" even as we're constantly under the gun to make up for lost time cost to us by flaking freelancers, or slow approvals, or incommunicado third parties, or whatever. I have a zillion things to handle for GR and I'm chipping away at them but that balance thing just has to happen for me to keep my sanity and not look back on my personal life with regrets.

Labels: home, life

Seattle diners, this one's for you!

For the last 15 years I have enjoyed Muhammed Bhatti's wonderful restaurant, Cedars on Brooklyn. When I heard Cedar's was changing hands this spring and going to be Cedars in name only, I was dismayed! I needn't have worried, because Mr. Muhammed is back and better than ever in his new location, Northgate's fantastic new Saffron Grill.

We're in the midst of the annual Green Ronin summit and I had a few places in mind for tonight's team dinner but those went out the window immediately when Marc told us that we could have the same delicious Cedars food, the same friendly and attentive service, at a new and better location. I knew I had to bring the guys there.

I was blown away by the modern new space after many years of being cramped into Cedars on Brooklyn. It's a crying shame that a restaurant calling itself Cedars still occupies the space that Mr. Muhammed's restaurant lived in for so long because this will certainly result in confusion as the zombie "Cedars" continues to trade on the reputation that was built by others. Kate has tried butter chicken all across Washington and in Vancouver BC and solemnly declares the Saffron Grill's (to her, still "Cedars") to be "the best ever, seriously."

The heart of the Cedars on Brooklyn we've known and loved now beats in Northgate's Saffron Grill. Pass it on!

Labels: food, restaurants

I cannot believe this needs to be said but apparently it does.

REPUBLICANS in Washington state do not want to run for political office as REPUBLICANS these days. I've noticed this in ads and signs this campaign season, "Vote for Jon Doe, GOP" but not, never, "REPUBLICAN" anywhere to be seen. Dino Rossi, the bitter, bitter REPUBLICAN loser of the last gubernatorial election in Washington is the most prominent example of this but he's by no means alone. Hell, to listen to Sarah Palin in the VP debates the other night you wouldn't know that the REPUBLICANS have been in control of anything since Clinton. But back to Rossi...

Dino Rossi is a REPUBLICAN and has identified as a REPUBLICAN in every other election he's ever participated in. This year, he's "prefers GOP Party" and it's causing confusion. State Democrats lost their bid to force Rossi to identify himself as a REPUBLICAN on this year's ballots, despite the court acknowledging that the trick "could very well engender voter confusion and make a substantial difference in the result of the election," according to Washington State Democratic Party Chair Dwight Pelz. The Seattle Times' chief political reporter David Postman noted that a poll back in June found that about 25% of Washingtonians didn't understand that GOP means REPUBLICAN. Appallingly, 7% thought that the REPUBLICAN candidate was the Democratic candidate. Even Rossi's own lawyer admits that 18% of the REPUBLICANS in the survey didn't realize that GOP means REPUBLICAN.

This is no accident, it's 100% cynical ploy. Not only that, it's Rossi's plan to obfuscate his REPUBLICAN credentials is succeeding. Christine Gregoire leads the REPUBLICAN Dino Rossi 51% to 41%, but only leads 48% to 44% when REPUBLICAN Dino Rossi merely says that he "prefers the GOP party".

It's underhanded, it's insulting, and it's completely typical. Don't be fooled, Washington voters! GOP means REPUBLICAN. Dino Rossi is a REPUBLICAN, as is every other "prefers GOP party" candidate. Vote for them if you like REPUBLICANS but I think they should at least have the balls to admit fair and square that they're REPUBLICANS.

Not to mention that it's really stupid and redundant to try to claim there's a "Grand Old Party" Party. If you're going to spell out the "Party" you should have to spell out the rest... only no one would know what the hell a "Grand Old" Party was, would they? Argh.

Labels: politics, rant

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