ladykatza

A quote from one of my favorite boardies: You’re so vibrant and full of life, you give me hope that I can spawn someday and still hold on to my personality, because it’s obvious you’ve managed that.

This gave me a warm fuzzy and also made me want to share a bit about motherhood. First off, its not easy. In fact, it was seven years ago today that I was in a hospital surrounded by nurses and doctors as they tried to stop the contractions before doing an emergency c-section to save the life of my first born. There was a lot of mess and a lot of pain, though I don’t remember much of either. The “experts” say we are wired to forget the bad parts and I believe this now. I do remember at one point insisting on getting up and going to the bathroom and saying “Well, this is rather un-dignified”. The nurse just snorted and said “Honey, ain’t nothin’ dignified ’bout childbirth. Its messy.”

So true. So very very true. And for some reason I found her drawl to be comforting in this dispensing of wisdom. But I think what scared me more than all the trials and tribulations of going through my first pregnancy (the second one was a breeze, really. i think it was because i knew what to expect), was the fact that my life was no longer going to be my own. Now I would be responsible for the life and welfare of a new person.

Personally, I feel that it is most important once you become a parent to take time out for yourself. To do something that re-asserts your own personal identity. The fact that I have a large support network to help with the raising of children is a great boon. For me (and my husband) we are involved in the LARPing and gaming communities. I love to do costuming, and I love to dance, and many other things. I find that when I do the things that make me happy then I am happier around my children and maybe they even become interested as well.

I’ve known women whose entire life revolved around getting married and having children and being completely involved on many levels. They were happy with this because that was their personality and what they _wanted_ to do. There is nothing wrong with this and I feel that (in America at least) we do not give these women enough credit.

I myself, however, decided to have children so that I could show them the world. I want to show them the incredible things that are on this earth in spite of all the ugliness everyone says there is. I want to teach them to be their own person and to not be afraid to take chances.

In the Dune series by Frank Herbert, he speaks of “The Parable of the Shield”. In the story it asks the question “How do you shield your children enough that they can grow to adulthood, but no so much that they cannot survive as an adult?”. Its a hard question to answer, because the instinct is to shield your children from all possible hurts. Yet I see, over and over, people that are so coddled that they cannot function once they are faced with true problems. Sometimes if I wonder if this is what gives rise to “the nanny state”.

But to get back to one of the original thoughts. If you are a parent or find yourself on the cusp of becoming one, you owe it to yourself and to your children to retain your sense of self. Personally, I intend to be that little old lady driving the red sports convertible and leaving all you young whiper-snappers eating my dust.

Procrastinating, pretending to worry
Solving problems by pushing them aside
Wasting time like we’ve all the time in the world

Deliberation instead of solution, another term for blatant lies
Biding time like we’ve all the time in the world

And I’m not the only one who thinks we’re trying to say
To the heavens and all who hear us: behold all we have made!
We bring destruction, we bring war without an end
and we live in hope that tomorrow never comes

We conquer paradise just to burn it to the ground
And we build a future to honour pasts we left behind
We bring destruction, we bring war without an end
And then we live in hope that tomorrow never comes

The problems get worse before they get better
We find excuses to divert our eyes
Let tomorrow deal with what we could have done

And if you think we’re the future, that we build tomorrow
When was the last day without war?
We speak of greatness we have never been

It’s just you and me now
It’s just you and me now
Against the world

- Testament - VnV Nation

We had an opportunity fall into our laps last week and jumped on it. A friend of ours has a family vacation home on Jekyll Island. He wanted to go down there this year with his girlfriend and needed a ride, so asked if we would like to go. Kids welcome, its a big house. Sure! So I did some last minute negotiations with coworkers to get the time I needed. I also decided to spend some money on a camera. Its not exactly what I wanted, but it will suffice. I was very glad to have it with me.

I was picked up from work on Monday and we headed straight down. Its a six hour drive and only an hour into it the kids started asking “When are we going to get there?”.

“When the sun goes down. Stop asking when we’ll be there.” Only a few minutes later Felicity pipes up and asks “When will the sun go down?”.

*facepalm* Obey the letter of the law, not the intent, I guess. We got there with no trouble and the house itself was like a time capsule out of the 70’s. Wooden paneled walls, yellow shag carpet, the same decorative copper form pans that I’ve seen on the kitchen wall of every woman I know over the age of 55. Even some of the medicine in the cabinets was 30 years old. It was… weird. Turns out this was their grandfather’s retirement house. Makes more sense. OH, the upstairs had a library and one whole wall was nothing but cookbooks. I kinda drooled.

But! We went to the beach the next day. The kids swam, and built sand castles and collected shells. They hammed it up for the camera, too.

We also went exploring off the island for some place selling seafood. We ended up in a place called Darian and we drove down to this off the path dock that was lined up with shrimp boats. I found out from one gentleman there that there was no seafood to be had because all the boats were in port because of gas prices. He did recommend a city market close by because some of the big money boats were still running and saving part of their catch for the locals. Got to love inside info! I had to take pictures of the boats though, because the rebel flag and the names just struck me as interesting.

Check out the name:

And here’s a gratuitous photo of me and the kids.

Note the bridges in the background. The short one was an old drawbridge that was retired for a taller one. The energy required for the drawbridge turned out to be too much.

I have lots more photos and stories. I will post more of those tonight.

At the edge of darkness
I step into light
And in that moment
I
am
blinded.

I wanted to write more about my trip, but I couldn’t. Then another idea, but it wasn’t there either. Now I am cursing my wakefulness and my brain’s non co-operative state. My thoughts are scattered and have been for a while. I have been keeping myself constantly busy since Christmas. If I don’t give myself time to be idle, then I won’t think so much and maybe the melancholy will stay at bay. I have neglected some very important parts of my life. Not to mention a million project ideas that are just laying and gathering dust. Literally and virtually.

Tired, so tired. So much needs doing, so much overwhelming, so much… so. much. Any moment I take for myself seem selfish, but I know this is silly and not right. Intellectually anyway.

Its dark right now, the downstairs is empty and quiet and I can listen to my music. I think, what I would like, is a day alone. Just a day with a clean house and nothing i have to do and no one to bother me. A day where I can read, or sleep, or work on a project.

I think, tomorrow, I will go back to tango lessons for the first time in months and months. Despite all my lamentations, I have gotten more rest these past few days off then I have in a while. And I miss dancing. I find it relaxing.

I think I can sleep now.

I expect people to afford me the same frankness. Politeness is always necessary and appreciated in this world, but there’s a difference between being polite and being a doormat. Don’t be a doormat. If you don’t like something and it effects you directly, say so. If someone asks you a nosy question that is none of their business, say so.

Remember, getting older means you can be cantankerous with justification.

If you have to ask, the answer is NO. Otherwise, do what you are going to do, say or ask what you want. If I don’t like it I’ll say so. If its none of your business, I’ll tell you to fuck off.

Simple as that.

“I need new batteries for my shot glasses”

“Every time there’s a surge, a child pops out”

Yup. I got a cold. A head cold at that, most likely caused by sinuses and allergies. Somehow I made it THIS far into the pollen season and I had hoped I’d escaped. I did not.

I’ve got four more days to go until my next day off, two 12’s and two eights. I have to make it, I need the money. Pray hope that this weekend is quiet and I can take my medicine and sit in the chair in a half comatose state.

Oh yeah, and pray the transmission isn’t going bad on my car. Please.

I was up too late last night. Its all the internet’s fault! OK, not really. I blame it on people I’ve been talking with, that and i needed three paragraphs of a story my husband requested before I went to bed. Simon is now home for summer vacation so I wanted to be awake this morning so help diffuse any more destruction caused by the children. They get into things. I keep finding interesting pieces of caveman art in various places around my house. Couple of them were even done in nail polish. Interesting choice of medium, location dangerous. Don’t do it again or I might blow a gasket.

Ooo, coffee’s done. MMMM, coffee.

So I’m going on a vacation! I can’t believe it, actually, because everything just fell into place. A friend of mine helped me out with the plane ticket. This was quite unexpected, but I was told to consider it a birthday present. Now Ava’s picking me up from the airport and we’re staying at her place for the night before heading out to Toronto! I finally get to meet Matthew and I’m so excited about there being a jazz festival at the same time. My mother instilled a love of Jazz and Swing in me rather early, and I remember my father teaching me basic swing moves as a kid.

But aside from that, I get to spend the week with some very awesome people and just have a really nice time. We’re going to be driving by Niagara Falls, which makes me happy. I’ll be abe to get out and gawk for at least a few minutes. This is one of the few parts of the country I haven’t driven through.

Oh yeah. Road Trips. I’m familiar with those. Growing up we had this BRIGHT orange station wagon with brown vinyl seats. It was an AMC Hornet. You don’t get much more 70’s than that, really. It had a Jeep engine in it with a straight six cylinder, so it was cheep and easy to fix with a good amount of power. Dad’s hobby was working on cars so he was always puttering with it. He also installed this awesome stereo system with a *gasp* TAPE DECK! That was the shiznit when I was growing up.

So my summer’s were spent in the back of a 70’s station wagon, driving cross country to see some relative or another. We listened to classical music, Simon and Garfunkel, Taco, and Boy George. (My Mom liked Boy George, I still find this odd) Driving along, when we weren’t a tight schedule, we often took back roads. Dad would ask gas attendants about good local restaurants in the area or something neat to see on the way. This is how we saw Carl’s Bad Caverns and numerous other oddities and roadside attractions. I still haven’t seen The World’s Largest Ball of Twine even though I’ve driven through Minnesota more times than I can count.

Later, after I was old enough to drive on my own and had my own car, I started road tripping myself. At 17, I had wanted to go back and see my friends in North Carolina (we had moved to GA just after my 16th bd), so my parents let me drive myself up there. People thought they were crazy to let a teenager do that. For me, it just seemed natural. Its only been since having kids and needing to keep a steady income that I’ve stopped doing road trips. I’ve been getting itchy foot syndrome. The travel bug bit me.

Suddenly, this drops in my lap. I had dug my feet in about it at first. I didn’t feel like I could go, like I was a bad person for taking time out for myself. Finally my husband insisted. He said “We can handle it without you for a few days, you need this.” And then it really came together.

And I’m going. I’m excited!

So, for work, I’m studying up on database languages. Namely, mysql. The intro that I am reading had the following to say:

MySQL handles databases up to 50 million rows or more. The default file size limit for a table is 4 GB (gigabytes) but can be increased to (if you have a system that can handle it) to a theoretical limit of 8 MILLION terabytes.

HOLY COW! EIGHT MILLION TERABYTES??? Do you have any idea the SIZE of that? I mean, for the most part we are talking about a completely abstract number because humans can’t THINK that large on average. I had to do some number crunching to figure it out.

Alright, take your standard digital camera and look at the info printed on it. Right now, most people are still using 5-8 megapixel cameras. On average one picture, saved in a standard JPEG format is about 1.536 megabytes. What this means is that your 1 gig memory card can hold somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 pictures.

Ok, now lets take this theoretical database and increase it to its maximum size. Then we’re going to convert the 8 million terabytes(TB) into megabytes(MB). It looks something like this:

8,000,000 TB = 8,388,608,000,000 MB

Wow, you say, that’s a lot of numbers. What does it mean, what do I care? Well, now let’s take the average file size of those pictures you take and divide it into that really really big number.

8,388,608,000,000 MB / 1.536 MB = 5,461,333,330,000 pictures stored which would be the equivalent of 9,102,222,220 cameras with 1GB chips worth of pictures.

This means that each of the 6,602,224,175 people on this planet could store 1.4 GB worth of pictures on this one server.

Has your head exploded yet?

So we’re driving back from the movie and Felicity says in her most IMPERIOUS voice “Get that sun out of my eyes!”

Daecon and I just look at each other with a great deal of mirth and he says “Well, you heard her, set already!”.

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about how mopey my husband gets when I’m away. He said “How mopey is that?” and I couldn’t give him a good answer in words, so I referenced a song. “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone” by Bill Withers.

“Are you Persephone?”

It was an odd question to me, because I hadn’t thought about that Greek Myth in forever. I believe the first time I ever heard about it was from my Mother. She would talk about the story whenever Christmas came about because that’s when pomegranates were in season. It was a staple for the elaborate parties my parents would throw. One of the centerpieces was a crystal bowl full of pomegranate seeds that was back lit by candle light. This made the bowl glow with an otherworldly red quality. I imagined myself as Persephone as I ate those juicy seeds and the rain and cold outside were because someone mourned by absence.

Memories are an odd thing, because I don’t think I have the story quite right in my head and that’s not how it REALLY happened. All the images and the thoughts were there, just not sequential, so my memory ordered them in such a way to make it seem more visceral an experience.

Me: So what was the reason for the alarm and how did you fix it?
Admin: I poked something. Do you want the long story?

Of course, I thought it was hysterical.

Well, I had a most excellent week. I will write more about it most likely tomorrow.

In other news, I just found out that I have MOST of Dragon Con weekend off. I am happy!

Yup, its true. I don’t have enough bookshelves. What’s more, I don’t really have enough places to put them. Heck, I need to add an entire room on to my house just for a library. Really.

When I lived with my parents in North Carolina we had a very large two story house. The main living area was on the top floor, and then there was a walk out basement. Every inch of the basement that was not window or furniture had floor to ceiling bookshelves and they were crammed full. We had to get rid of about half of those books when we moved to Georgia, since the house was much smaller. The books got donated to the school library, who had to direct them to the public library. Science Fiction, it seems, was “inappropriate” for high school students.

Can you imagine? Mom felt sick when she heard that.

So the other week, while staying with Mom, we were commenting on some of those design-on-a-dime shows. One of the designers said “You should never have just books on your bookshelves, you need to break it up with something.” WHAT?! Oh, right. Yeah, come over to MY house and try that fer cryin’ out loud. While your at it, give me the money for that extra wing. sheesh. When I first got a job, one of my very first big purchases was a nice set of bookshelves. They cost me 70 dollars, in 1993. I still have them.

So anyway, I’m sure many of you that actually read this can sympathize with my plight of space and my reluctance to give up books.

And on that note, its time to shower and dress for work. Ta tA!

Current Mood:  geeky

I spent the past week driving, and not only that, I was driving people around. Its been a very busy week, and a good bit stressful. Monday I worked, Tuesday I called in because my back decided to have a FUCK YOU day and I had completely run out of willpower to deal with it. I had to take the “knock you on your ass” pills. No driving for at least eight hours.

Tuesday night, however, I had to pack up some stuff and head down to Mom and Dad’s house so I can be there in time to get Dad to the hospital for his hip replacement surgery. Ok no problem. I get there and realize there’s NO DOORS on any of the bedrooms. Why? Well, its because of Mom’s new electric wheelchair. The doors weren’t quite wide enough otherwise. I asked Dad to go ahead and put the door on the room I’m gonna use. “Why?” he asks. Oh god, seriously? I gave him a rather exasperated look and so he muttered something and then made lots of banging noises, grunting and groaning as he puts the door on. Of course, once he was done I oooo’d and aaaa’d appreciatively. Or at least I think I did, anyway.

So I got him to the hospital, everything went very well. I was there for a total of about 4 hours maybe more. Then headed back down to stay with Mom, took a nap, and then headed back up to bring him his stuff and hang out. Thursday, I got to pick up Veronika from the airport! I was so glad to see her, as its been about three years since our last, very brief visit. Felicity wasn’t really talking yet. She was in the States from Germany for about a month. I took her to see Dad. Thursday night we went to a rather impromptu birthday party for Jennifer, and those friends of mine that have heard me talk about Veronika for years finally got to meet her in person. Amanda tried to keep her. I also got to see daecon and the kids briefly, since Mom needs someone to be with her, we are trading off days.

I should probably mention, Veronika was an exchange student my senior year and she was such a great match that she was practically adopted. Now she has a family on both sides of the ocean. :D At least, that’s how I feel.

Friday I had to work. Normally I don’t work on Fridays but I was making up for the day I switched with my co-worker. I dropped Veronika off to get her rental and we took a brief picture out in front of the baggage claim before the security guard shooed me off.

Somewhere in there I got a call about work, the nature of which added more stress to my already busy and haggard week. I think its worked out for now, though. We’ll see. Friday I worked until 10pm, went home, and got maybe TWO hours of sleep before going back to work 12 off 12, then work another 12. I have two more 8 hour days to go and then I’m going to sleep in on Wednesday. First I have to get some laundry and things sorted out and make up snacks for Simon in the coming week. In fact, I’m going to work on that now for about an hour before going to bed.

Current Mood:  exhausted

Current Music: humming of the dryer, bubbling of the fishtank

Since I hate spelling out Renaissance Festival, it will be called Ren Fest instead.

I’ve been wanting to take the kids out to the Ren Fest for some time now. I still have many fond memories of traveling with the festival, dressing up on weekends, finding work with the craftsmen during the week. I lived in a tent for a year, and I think there’s a good portion of it I don’t remember with great clarity. Ah yes. Youth is wasted on the young.

I digress.

So a co-worker of mine agreed to switch days with me (thank you). I packed a picnic lunch, drinks, and we headed out. Hell, we even made it out of the house on time, a feat unto itself. The festival is about an hour drive south of us, and we were meeting friends there.

Of course, even with the food in the car, as soon as we got there Felicity wanted a muffin at the cafe just inside the gate. It being still early in the day, the young man that was acting as host was busy juggling instead. This is part of what got our attention. And while I didn’t get a picture of the juggler, I did get a picture of Simon with a mouth full of muffin staring at the juggler off camera.

From there we wondered along, saying hi to some people I know and looking at the various shops. Its odd being here from this angle, as I’ve never spent money on rides, or face painting, or any of the other things that the kids want to do. Its definitely where they make their money (the fair itself, not the artisans). We did run into an old high-school buddy of my husband’s. I’m sure its going to be interesting at the next class reunion, considering the changes he’s gone through. My kids weren’t sure what to make of him either.

ICK! That’s his name. The Troll, that is. He also informed us of his new line of “Troll House Cookies” that we should invest in. Anybody? ANYBODY?

Next we got on the big ship swings. Simon started crying out “YAHR! Avast ye landlubbers!” then he said “I’m the Captain! You are my Minions! Sail this ship!”. The two kids running the ride were cracking up. I got a cute picture of Felicity.

At this point we decided it was time to sit, and chose The Joust as the venue. We got there about 20 minutes before the show, which means we got to sit up front. The children could not sit still, they had to run around and climb on things. During the show I noticed that one of the jousters was having trouble keeping their horse under control, which had me concerned. I commented on this to Josh, and he had noticed too. We were a bit more vigilant on the kids after this, but all was good.

Shortly after this the rest of our party arrived, and we started up the hill toward the Peacock Tearoom. Here we ran into one of the guys my husband plays D&D with currently. We were talking about getting food with a show going on distracted us. The guy’s name is Dexter and he does… dangerous comedy? He does things like juggle chainsaws and knives while standing on a six foot ladder. His last stunt require almost the ENTIRE audience, and fire and safety gear. It involved duct tape, fireworks, and water balloons. He used the duct tape to strap the fireworks to his chest and gave the water balloons to the audience to throw at him afterwards to “put him out”. Don’t ask, just watch the video below.

This is what happens when you don’t drink, smoke, or do drugs.

Afterward we met up with the D&D people we ran into at the Tea room and had a nice afternoon tea. Not much to report after that, but there was a group photo.

Fini!

Current Mood: sunburned

Current Music: Nothing - Tiesto

Yes, I’m writing about the pollen again. It permeates everything this time of year. Getting things ready for grocery shopping I had opened the car door and then slammed it shut. I got a face full of the fine yellow dust and it caused me to go into a fit of coughing and made my eyes water. ACK!

One of the things I had to do today was take Simon’s recycling to the scrap metal place. I’m always amused when I go there because the demographic of people you see there is so amazingly varied. Also, its almost all immigrant workers there, mostly spanish speaking. For the longest time I really had a problem with people from the Latin/South American culture because they STARE. I found out later on that this is acceptable in their culture, its considered a compliment to stare at attractive women (a certain friend of mine is probably shaking his head at me right now, but its ok, I’ll make up for it later ;) ). I digress though. I LOVE going to the recycling place, its such an ego boost. They stare and try to chat me up, smile, and are otherwise so very helpful.

So , Renaissance Festival is tomorrow. Its a two-for-one weekend, so I’ve organized several people to go with us. I’m taking my camera and possibly even my video camera (if i can find all the attachments). Hopefully I’ll have lost of pictures to share.

And now its Time for Dinner!

Current Mood:  excited

Current Music: My Lung - Jo Mango

The veggies are planted! Hooray! Simon and Felicity both managed to step on everything we planted. Not sure how, but they did. I guess it was exuberance.

I have wireless again! Slowly I’m reclaiming my laptop for what i wanted to use it for. While working for GOOOOOGLE I had installed linux on here. Really, it was too much work. I may work in the computer industry for a living… well that’s not EXACTLY true. I work in the ISP industry. I like dealing with networking and large systems monitoring. When I come home, I just want it to WORK. I get highly annoyed otherwise. I set aside time for studying, I study at work. The rest of the time I have other, more interesting things to do.

Now that my garden is basically done I can start on the potted plants. I need to get the herbs going and plant some more flowers out front. I also need to replace the bird feeder the tree destroyed. It was the one for the woodpeckers and other large birds. I think I will do humming bird feeders again as well.

I am also going to be on a search for patio furniture. And the garage needs to be cleaned out so I can make it a more usable space. A bunch of this is going to be made up into lists of things for the boys to do. Use your males wisely!

Well, that’s all for now, I must get some laundry done and the pot pie in the oven.

Current Mood:  energetic

Current Music: The Edge Of Wisdom -Beborn Beton

Its not exactly been a happy couple of weeks as far as objects behaving accordingly. First the hard drive on my laptop dies. Took it out, damn thing rattles. Got a new, it works now, but my wireless card is still not functioning. Then my washing machine breaks and while I thought it was the same thing as last time it wasn’t. Another chunk of money, so its working when the guy leaves. I put my first true load in and it breaks WHILE STILL FULL. I’m just… so… angry.

Then today I was asking myself why it is that anytime I meet people that are cool and that I feel that I have lots in common with they split? Especially the women. I’ve lost Erin, and Mae, and I’ve met some other really cool people and they live so far away. Not only that, its the friends with kids that split on me. So as soon as my kids make a friend, that friend leaves. Now what?

I try to be friendly with my neighbors, but there’s a serious culture clash. We only seem normal superficially.

This heart of mine, it aches for simpler times. A world in which there is time enough to love those that deserve loving, and to take care of all those things that need my attention. I find myself standing, closing my eyes and the wash of emotion tears through me and I want to scream and cry and tell the world that its gone horribly wrong. There’s been too much tragedy and too much pain. Make it go away, make it stop, make me stop feeling.

Why do you tease me Universe? Why? You wave a few crumbs of joy under my nose and then you take so much else away from me.

Life is Suffering
Life is Pain
Life is Struggle

In the end, we all die alone. I only hope that I’ve loved enough that I’ll be remembered in the end.

Current Mood:  blank

Current Music: Bio-Vital - Decoded Feedback