Category Archives: Family

Family, GeekWorld

Captain Picard Would Approve

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64  bar steady 29.74 10mph NNE dewpoint 31  Beltane

              Waxing Crescent Hare Moon

The internet continues to amaze me.  A woman from Alabama finds this website and writes to tell of her journey with her son, Tristan, 2 years old and also diagnosed with hemophilia.  In the world BWWW, before the World Wide Web, the probability of our connecting would have been infinitesimal, now it happens within hours of my post about Gabe coming home.  This is a world changing aspect of the cyber-universe, creating links with people, real connections, that were not possible in a less connected world.   It’s the upside of the samed connectedness, of course, that brings our friends the          %$#@ hackers into our lives, but, like most of life, blessing and curse travel together, often on the same road and often arrive through the same door.

The guys from NOW fitness installed the new Landice. Whoa.  I hadn’t seen it, since their only remaining one of this model was in a box.  Geez, this thing is big.  It has a control panel Captain Picard would love, though it still won’t do the exercising for you.  The only problem is that the TV will have to go up about 2 feet or so in the air because the dashboard of this thing is big enough to serve as a small desk.  I went from the treadmill stoneage to the bleeding edge in one day. 

I’m glad it’s here.  Not having the aerobics aspect of my workout leaves me feeling guilty and my day unfinished.  Now, I can get back to it.  In fact, I’m going to do that right now.

Family, Garden, GeekWorld

Life Proceeds in Its Ordinary Way

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58  bar steady 29.81 1mpn SW dewpoint 20 Beltane

                    New Moon (Hare Moon)

Waiting on the service guy from Allied Generator to fill us in on how our generator works and what we need to do with it.  We went ahead and bought it, now it remains to learn how to use it.

Another work outside day.  Cleaning up continues, though I imagine today I’ll expand the clean up to the garden bed.  Kate may get started on the pruning.  9 days or so until the average date of the last frost, May 15th, so planting annuals is still not a good idea.  Transplanting though can proceed apace and I plan to remove day lilies from one bed completely and move them to other sites along the edge of our woods.  The peonies, large now, will get divided and move to the front.

It is the most distressing or reassuring reality, the fact that life proceeds in its ordinary way no matter what the drama in your own life.  I find it reassuring for the most part, though at times it seems cruel, unspeakably cruel.  Sometimes it seems that the pain my life should cause the whole world to stop spinning, to pause for a moment while I adjust, solve or resolve the dilemma, then someone can push play.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Garden, Memories

There Are Days, Ordinary Days

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58  bar rises 29.80 2mph W dewpoint 30 Beltane

New Moon (Hare Moon)

There are days, ordinary days, days you can recall, when your life took a sharp angle turn, or created a swooping curve, perhaps dipped underground or soared up, up into the sky.

It seems I remember, though how could I really, the day I got polio.  I don’t know how this memory got shaped or if it got shaped in the way all  memory does, by our selective recollection of snippets of moments, but here it is.

My mother and I were at the Madison County Fair, held every August on the grounds of Beulah Park.  Mom had wrapped me in a pink blanket and we wandered through the Midway.  There were bright lights strung in parabolic curves and the smell of cotton candy and hot dogs.  I looked out from the blanket, safe on my mother’s shoulder, held in her arms.  And I felt a chill run through me.

Years later I was with my Dad, early in the morning.  We sat in those plastic cuplike chairs in a pale green room.  My mother came up in an elevator on her way to emergency surgery.  Surgeons would try to relieve pressure on her brain from the hemorrhage she had suffered a week before during a church supper.  I got in the elevator and rode up with her.  Her eyes looked away from me, but saw me anyway.  “Soaohn.” she said.  It was the last time she spoke to me.  I was 17.

The evening of my first marriage I wandered down a path in Mounds Park where the ceremony had taken place.  I wore a blue ruffled shirt, music of the Rolling Stones carried through the moist July air.  Butterflies landed on my shoulder.

The night the midnight plane arrived from Calcutta carrying a 4 pound, 4 ounce boy.

The third week of our honeymoon, a northern journey begun in Rome, found us at our northernmost destination Inverness, Scotland.  We had rooms at the Station Hotel, right next to railroad terminal.  It was a cool foggy night and we took a long walk, following for much it the River Ness, which flows into Loch Ness.  We held hands and looked at this old Scots village, the capital of the Highlands.  A mist rose over a church graveyard on our right.

And today.  Planting beets and carrots.  Kate taking a phone call.  The news from the lab about Gabe. Now, after this sunny spring day, life will go on, but its trajectory has changed, changed in a profound way, in a way none of us can yet know.

Faith and Spirituality, Family

A Sisyphean Task

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68  bar steady 29.78 0mpn SSW dewpoint 22  Beltane

                        New Moon (Hare Moon)

The day has passed as we both tried to get our arms around this notion of Gabe as hemophiliac.  As a dedicated user of the internet, I have looked up and printed out several different articles, brochures, information handouts.  Canada Health Services had some good stuff; so did the CDC; and, the World Hemophiliac Federation.  The amount of data, good data, available quickly astounds me every time I reach out for it.  I have not had a disappointing search, ever.

The emotional problem is this:  lifelong.  This tiny guy, still in the hospital from birth at 35 weeks, now has a mountain to climb every day, every hour for the rest of his life.  This is a Sisyphean task because every time he rolls the ball up the mountain, it will come right back down.  There is no cure.  There is only amelioration.  After looking at the various treatments, I became even more convinced Gabe has the right Dad.  It will require fortitude to climb this mountain,  go to sleep, get up and climb it again.

So, life will proceed.  We will all come to some terms with this and develop ways we can support Jon and Jen, Ruth and Gabe.  We all need to learn a lot more right now.

Daffodils have begun to pop open everywhere, so yellow and white is a dominant accent to green here now.  Tulips should come into bloom any day now and the magnolia is out in all its snowy fineness.  Working in the garden, even for a bit, literally grounds me, draws anxiety out and replaces it with the strength of life’s eternal cycle.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Work

Hey, Buddy, Got Any Pictures?

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55  bar falls 29.59 8mph NE  dewpoint 36 Beltane

                 Waning Gibbous Moon of Growing

           grandmaanddescendants.jpg

This is Grandma and her descendants, Gabriel and Ruth.  Gabe still has to learn to suck and swallow.  He also needs to wean himself from the canula that deliver an oxygen stream.  Both of these are maturational tasks that would have completed on their own in the womb, so he just needs to grow and get older.  Right now everyone wishes he’d do both quicker, unmasking one of the many contradictions in human development.  As we age, no one wants to get older and grow bigger. 

Kate came home last night.  She was sad.  Ruthie now knows her and runs up with a smile and arms out, “Grandma!”  That’s tough to leave.  Gabe, too, is in a vulnerable place even though she’s confident he’ll be fine.  She also helped out Jon and Jen with domestic matters like cooking, grocery shopping and Ruth care when Ruth was not in daycare. 

Having a child in the hospital creates stress just because, but there is stress, too, because work goes on while the daily routine gets disrupted.  No one gets enough sleep.  A tough time for the Olson family, Denver branch.  It will receded into the past, someday, and become the stuff of family legend.  When you were a baby, Gabe, you were in the hospital so long and we were so worried.

A reader from the Webiverse asked to see some photographs of my hydroponic setup.  It occurred to me that it might be the feds trying to catch a not too intelligent dope grower.  Go, ahead, buddy, show me your pictures.  Heh, heh, heh.  I hope so, but because boy are they going to be disappointed.

                           hydro2300.jpg

From this and the next angle all you can see are lettuce and tomato plants, but there are also morning glories, cucumbers and three varieties of beets.  These last are not as far along in the growth process and will go outside as soon as the weather warms up.

                           hydro300.jpg

As I’ve begun to work with the hydroponics, this setup seems small.  The megafarm is the larger of the two; the smaller is sold as Emily’s farm.  

                          Here’s the whole deal, including the seed sprouting area. The halide bulb and shield are just out of sight near the top.

                          hydrosetup300.jpg

It’s amazing the charge I got out of working with seeds and young plants when snow and cold weather blew around the house.  I plan to branch out (ha,ha) a bit over the year to include flowers and, maybe, carnivorous plants.  No, I don’t know why.

                         

Family, Garden, GeekWorld, Great Work

Hazards in the Learning Process

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41  bar steady  29.96  0mph ESE dewpoint 24  Spring

                    Last Quarter Moon of Growing

Spent a good part of the afternoon on mechanical and electronic stuff.  It was time for the first changing out of the nutrient reservoirs in the hydroponics. 

I first tried the way the setup suggested, that is, drain the reservoirs onto the plastic shelf on which they both sit.  This is not as crazy as it may sound since the shelf has grooves pressed in to carry used nutrient mix and water toward a drain plug at the end of the shelf.  So, I hooked up some plastic tubing by cutting a small hole in the end of the cap and opened the taps.  This is slow.  The drain hose is not too big.  It’s also messy since the hole in end of the plug allowed a bit of the liquid to drain around the tubing and drip on the lights (electric!) and the floor. 

Hmmm.  Had to be a better way.  Then I thought of all those car thieves hard at work stealing gas.  Siphon!  By chance I had one hundred feet of plastic tubing and it fit inside the drain tubing quite neatly.  I pushed this tube through the hole in the drain cap, sucked on it a bit and voila!  Both of them drained all by themselves.  Still took a while, but it is a handsoff operation.

As I read somewhere, I took the used nutrient mix out and poured on the garlic, garlic is a heavy feeder and impervious to the cold weather we’ve had.  That’s important because you can’t encourage growth in most plants when the temperature can still go below freezing.  That possibility exists here until May 15th.  I also poured it on some daffodils about to bloom.

Then I made 9 gallons of fresh nutrient mix and poured it back into the reservoirs through the pots holding the lettuce, tomato plants, three kinds of beet and morning glories.  A tip I read in the hydroponic bible (according to the folks at Interior Gardens) suggested swapping out the nutrient every three rather than four.  So, I did.  This is fun.

The treadmill still has some hiccups.  I had to rewire it again this afternoon.  Landice apparently thinks they may have sent me a bad rheostat.  If so, that means I swapped a bad one for a bad one rather than a good one for a good one.  More work ahead there.

I also put away all the material from the Weber tours and the bronze tour I have a month or so ago.  The library is neat. (in a manner of speaking.  That is, my manner.)  I have a file to read for the three hour bronze session I have for Family Day on the 11th.  I also have a number of articles and objects to use as reference while I write something about Urania visiting the MIA.

Kate called today, too.  Ruthie ran out of the kitchen yesterday, into the dining room and tripped, falling on the corner of the coffee table.  Big cut.  Lots of angst.  But super grandma was there to be calm.  She and Jon took Ruthie to urgent care for stitches.  This is a busman’s holiday for urgent care doc, Kate Olson, but it gave her a feel for the other side of the examining table.  As she often does, she felt guilty.  Not her fault.  Ruth is a puppy, running and playing and trying out the world.  There are hazards in that learning process and none of us escape.

She comes home tomorrow and I’m glad.  The bris has been delayed because Gabriel still has not decided to eat enough and he’s still on some oxygen.  Until he can eat and breathe on his own, he’ll remain in the level 2 nursery.

And.  No snow!

Family, Garden

Morning Glories in the Lead with Cucumber Right Behind

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52  bar rises 30.13 0mph S dewpoint 39  Spring

             Waning Gibbous Moon of Growing

The moon of growing has fulfilled its role.  Daylilies have popped up everywhere.  A few magnolia buds have popped open.  I found a couple of daffodil’s with flowers still furled around the stalk, but visible now, where they were still hidden a day ago.  No tulip flowers visible yet but the plants themselves are in full leaf.  A few aconites bloom in the front, hidden by the asters of last fall.  I have to cut them down so we can see the blooms.  Leaves to rake.  Last year’s perennials to cut down.  The growing season outside is slowly getting underway.

Kate’s getting ready for her Gabe trip.  She’ll probably head straight to the hospital to see the little guy.  I’ll feel better when she’s there.  She’s got a lot of experience with infants.  A lot.

I’ll take her to the airport, then return here and probably work in the garden for a bit.

The morning glories have begun to rocket up.  I only planted them four days ago and they’re already an inch and a half above the plug.  The cucumbers race right along behind them with, for now, the cylindria beets.  I can see evidence of seedling’s emerging from most of the other plugs, too.  The vegetable garden has begun to grow, right here in our house.  Meanwhile, the lettuce and tomato up top with the halide bulb and the hydroponics continue upwards as well. 

Family, General

The Mohel Is In Israel

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63  bar steady 29.99 1mph W dewpoint 29 Spring

                 Full Moon of Growing

Interior Gardens, where I buy hydroponic supplies, has two Australian Heelers, a dingo related herding dog.  I met Lili and her buddy.  They were friendly and happy to see me from their perch on bags of stacked potting soil.  I bought some more pots so I can make the megafarm a bit more versatile and some trays so I can start more seeds.  So far the hydroponics seems pretty straight forward, but I’m sure the future holds challenges.

The bris will be May 4th.  The mohel is in Israel.  Little Gabe has some respiratory distress. Jon and Jen will be glad when Kate gets there.

Today or tomorrow morning is repair the treadmill day.  I have a harness to replace and it demands matching colored wires with the right sockets.  It seems straightforward, but I confused three colors on the back of the TV.  

Family

An Earth Day Baby

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54  bar steady  29.98  2mph WSW dewpoint 38  Spring

                 Full Moon of Growing

Gabe is an earth day baby.  To have a grandchild born on earthday is auspicious.  His generation will bear the full brunt of the policy decisions now taking place in homes, cities, states and the nation, in fact, all over the globe.  We have the chance to mitigate and in some instances reverse the earth damaging human footprint, but if we don’t, Gabe and his demographic cohort had better learn to swim early, though he resides in Denver, the Mile High city, so ocean rise would have to get severe to reach his front door.

He’s in  a level 2 nursery with oxygen, an IV for fluids and possibly anti-biotics. Kate says if he has trouble it will come within the first 24 hours.  She doesn’t think he will.  He weighed 6 lbs, 8 oz and is 19 inches long.  Lean and long.  Just like his dad.  This is a good weight for a 35 week baby.

Kate spent this morning in whirling dervish mode, controlled but rapid, making phone calls and deciding how to wrap up stuff around here so she can fly out tomorrow.  I’ll stay through Monday AM when I’ll drive out in order to be there in time for the bris on Wednesday.

We had a solid rain last night and though the temps are not as high today we’re still warm enough to encourage growth.  Several of the seeds I planted on Sunday have already sprouted.  I’m not sure what will happen to them left to their own devices for three days, they’re still vulnerable in these first few days, just like Gabe.  Got to think on it.

Family

Oil and Gas Operator

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76  bar steady 29.79 0mph ESE dewpoint 53  Spring

                 Full Moon of Growing

This land baron business creates decisions.  Just got an offer in the mail, unsolicited, for our land in Texas.  On one level it appears to be a generous offer for 40 acres of mesquite, sand and rattle snakes.  On the other hand, how did somebody in California whose business card reads Oil and Gas Operator decide to send us an offer?  Gonna check out the oil and natural gas situation in Pecos County quick. 

The reporter for the Ft. Stockton newspaper who wrote up the scam that sold off a 5,000 acre ranch in 40 acre allotments said to me when I spoke with her,  “My biggest hope is that oil or natural gas will be discovered under that land.  Would serve’m right.”

My siblings and I got this land as an inheritance from a ne’er do well step brother.  We still don’t why.  He died and we got the land.  He bought it on e-bay.

Gosh, I hope we have more suitors out there.  The ideal situation would be for us to lease our land to an oil company so they can put in a well.  Who knows?