Home is where the heart is..

Superwoman and the kids are off to family reunions. I didn't have the vacation saved up so I am at home working. Coming home isn't so fun without the family here. I can't wait till they get back in a few days.

What me Post?

Well I haven't been posting. But it hasn't been for lack of material. A lot has been going on, good and bad. Here is a rundown of it all.

The Good: The family. If it wasn't for the wife and kids I don't know that I could have slogged through the last month. The kids are growing well. Tank, Cakes and Cookie Monster are as fun and as adorable as ever. I love spending time with them, when I can. I am gone 14 or so hours most days, so I never feel like I get enough time with them. I was worried little tank wasn't going to know who I am. But he grins and smiles with me any time I get to spend time with him. I've decided I'm going to take the summer off of school so I can spend some precious time with them all.

The Bad: School and Work. I can't seem to get ahead since Christmas. I feel like I'm always behind in something. I've been sick a lot so I've been behind in hours at work. If I miss much more I could lose my insurance, so I've been working come hell or high water, and there seems to have been a lot both lately (see below). In school I have never felt so behind. Up until now I've been able to maintain a 4.0 grade point average. I'm worried I'm going to lose it with the test I take this weekend. (I really should be studying now) Spring break is next week. Hopefully then I can catch up a little in both school and work.

The Ugly: I've had a sinus infection for over a month. It has sucked. I have had a headache every single day, but I can't just lay in bed and get over it. If I miss any more work I'll be in serious danger of losing my insurance, if I miss any more school I'll be in serious danger of failing. I've just had to muck through it, its been a little miserable.

The first round of antibiotics didn't knock the infection out. I went to an ENT and he wanted me to have the antibiotics out my my system for 2 weeks, followed by a CT scan of my sinuses (I guess they want to see my sinuses in their most hellish condition). I finally had the CT scan today and I'm back on antibiotics. Hopefully the infection will clear up in a couple of days. I should also know by then if I need another surgery to open up the sinuses. Hopefully I can get by w/o surgery, but right about now I'd do just about anything to stop having infections. I've been averaging one a month for the past year.

But life isn't all bad. I feel like I'm through the worst of it (I hope I didn't just curse myself). I can't wait for summer. I am really looking forward to warm weather, working 40 hour weeks and spending more time with Superwoman and the kidlets.

Home Sick today and....

.... having fun w/ the boy.



Tank says hi.

Tank is home and doing good. His newborn sleep patterns are 'fun' to deal with but we are making it through, if only just.

I have less than a week left of this semester. Since the baby has come I've had a hard time concentrating. But I'm hoping I can stick it out long enough to keep the Grades I've been working so hard on up until now.

I'm writing a game of Pong for my final project in one of my classes. If you have a Mac (writing it using UNIX system calls which Mac OSX is built on top of) you can send me a e-mail if you would like a copy. I'm going to get all the requirements for the project out of the way, then add a few features just for fun.

I don't expect I'll blog too much until my finals are done next week. Wish me luck!

Autum weekend.

I took a test Friday. The first Midterm for me this semester. After the exam I wasn't feeling quite right. I came home and went to bed. Next day I was sick. Sick Saturday. Sick Sunday. REALLY Sick Monday. Still-sick-but-on-the-mend today.

Today Superwoman's kind mother came down and helped us out in the yard. I was at work and school and didn't see the results until I got home. She mowed the lawn (that I didn't get to Saturday) and got the garden ready for winter. Lots of work. Thanks Super-Grandma!

When I got home everyone wanted to go on a picnic. I wanted to stay home, but spending time with Superwoman and the kids comes few and far between lately, so I went cold and all. We went to a local pond and ate fried chicken and chips and then fed the ducks day old bakery bread.

The ducks -the bigger ones who are about the size of Cakes- were a little aggressive tonight. There were two white ones in particular that kept charging the kids, I would drive them off, but the kids kept getting scared, and dropping the bread, instead of throwing it, which encouraged the ducks to come closer.... which scared the kids etc... Well eventually one of the big white (almost goose sized) ducks had enough of waiting, and decided to take Cakes for all the bread she was worth. It charged her from close range. Instead of dropping the bread, she ran off screaming with the bread in hand trailing behind her. The duck bit her hand and Cakes was very upset. (she is fine, no skin was broken, but I do think it hurt a bit) She sat on my shoulders the rest of the time.

About that time Cookie Monster caught on to the idea that ducks/geese are cowards and that if you charge back, they will run off. He spent the rest of the evening chasing down the ducks and geese. Pretty much tormenting them (not physically). The geese looked like they were getting a little sick of it. I was sure if he kept it up that the geese were going to mount an uprising. We finally managed to convince him there were better things to do before he got flocked. :)

I've got another test this week. Tests, to a student like me, are sources of a lot of stress. People laugh because I always get good grades, and wonder why I get worked up about them. But in my case the stress helps me to do well, I'd rather have that stress with the good grade which comes with it, than earning a bad grade and being stressed about that after the test. Hopefully I don't give myself an ulcer.

Who has the time?

..... Not me. I was meaning to post over the weekend. About what? I have no idea, I had an idea floating around but it has since left me and I'm not sure there is room enough in my head for it to return. It ended up being a busy weekend.

Friday Superwoman and the kids picked me up to from work and we to a case lot sale. Which is when a store sells a case of cans/pasta/whatever at a discounted price. A great way to get the essentials like spaghetti, ketchup, canned veggies and the like.

After that we went to the mall to pre-order Wrath of the Lich King which is the next installment/expansion to World of Warcraft. While there we also looked for a tv wall mount, to mount a computer monitor (old crt) to the wall. We didn't find one, but I did find an updated version to a classic old game, Payday. I played this all the time as a kid.

Then we went to The Home Depot where I did find the a CRT (instead of flat panel) TV wall mount. They are getting harder and harder to find. By then it was late and we got the kids home for dinner and bed.

On Saturday we went for a drive around the Nebo Loop for a picnic and to enjoy the mountain scenery with the leaves changing colors. Then Big'Sis and Grizz treated us to a Teppanyaki dinner, MMMMM. I had a program due to be turned in online the next day and I was up till 3 AM working on it. I didn't get it done.

Sunday was no less busy with church and a family get together. I worked on my programming assignment during every spare second of the day, at midnight I finally had it right, but I stayed up another hour and a half trying to help a friend that was also having problems with it.

Between all that I completely lost my topic for post. :) So Monday instead of blogging I started working on my program due next week, in case it was as intense as the last one. It wasn't, I had it done in about 3 hours.

So I'm through 4 weeks of the current semester. I have the option of finishing two of my classes early, if I can handle the added workload of getting ahead. That would be nice as the baby is due to come about 2 weeks ahead of the end of the semester. So far I'm about a month ahead in one class, a week and a half ahead in another, and right on schedule with my third.

The funeral and work.

The funeral was a bit exhausting. We drove around 24 hours in two days time, but the services were good, and worth all the driving. We dropped off the kids with my cousin and his wife. Big Grizz and Big Sis' rode in the van with Superwoman and I. I'm sure they are sick of us by now.

I missed work Monday and I'm trying to make up hours so I don't have to work very much on Saturday. Not what I had in mind to do with my vacation from school, but again, going to the funeral was worth it.

I haven't unloaded my camera, so pictures will have to wait. My Grandmother and Grandfather (on my mothers side) ran a ranch in the high country of Idaho near Salmon Idaho and the Montana border. It is beautiful up there, even though the weather can be harsh. It's been more than a decade since I have been up there and it was nice to go back.

I took my final for Stats Thursday of last week. I'm a little nervous that I didn't do as well as I would like and that I will no longer have a 4.0 Grade Point Average. Its nice having the class out of the way, but I hate waiting for the results.

Life, Death and Sushiboy

I'm not sure how to start this post off other than to say it might be lengthy. Read on if you have some time. I think I've started and scrapped some version of this post a dozen times. I just didn't have the courage to write about it or post it. Crabacuracha posted her touching story about her relationship with her father and I was really inspired by her bravery and openness. Thanks LaC. Shortly after her excellent post I've had a few more brushes with death. The first, one of my best friends father passed on. Which, along with LaC's post, brought back many of the emotions and feelings I felt when my own parents passed away. Then someone I know took their own life, and that brought back the time in which I almost took my life, and how glad I am that I didn't.

I can tell you the exact moment that my mother died. I don't know the hour, minute and second, but that moment is memorialized in my mind. Mom was fighting her second battle with cancer, and this time there was no chance that she would beat it. Barring that, she fought with everything she had, largely, she admitted to me, for me. She fought, she lost her hair, couldn't keep anything down other than coca-cola, and endured the living hell that is chemotherapy so that she could be around a little longer for her kids. When she was dying she was fighting. The pneumonia which was drowning her, forced her to fight for every breath. As I sat by her bed, she kept fighting and turning to look at me. Deep down I knew this was it. But I couldn't admit it. So she fought. She fought well into the night, drawing ragged, raspy breaths and looking at me with the love of a mother in her eyes. When I couldn't deny the facts any longer, I told mom that she could let go, that I would be OK. She stopped fighting and looked into my eyes until her soul left her body. I saw her empty eyes, and I felt that special space of my soul that was hers hollow and drain from me. There isn't quite anything like accompanying a departing parent, other than witnessing the birth of your children. Though one is the deepest sorrow and the other the deepest joy, the experiences are very similar, an intense spiritual experience that only has come when another human soul arrived into or departed from my life.

Like most people who look into the eyes of a dying loved one, and promise they will be OK, I wasn't entirely truthful. In my mind, from that moment on I hadn't promised I'd be ok, I'd promised I would be perfect. And for about 10 years I tried to be perfect and beat myself down mercilessly when I fell short. In most ways the promise I made to my mom has been a good thing. It forced me to grow up and accept responsibility, and more importantly I finally believed what my mom had told me time and time again, "Sushi, You can do anything you put your mind to." Mom would look me in the eye and tell me this often. I'm not sure I really ever believed her until that day. Mom was right. I'm smart. I don't know how much I accepted that before that day. It turned me a round in a lot of ways. Confidence was not a quality I possessed. But one I which began to instill from that day forward, and was a key to any success I've had since then. My intellect (humble as it is in certain areas, like spelling) is my greatest strength. One of the defining things about me is my ability to absorb information by reading. I feel a lot like Hermione Granger. The first thing I do, when trying something new, is read all about it, and then I try it. And I'm good at it. Before my promise I rarely earned any A's, not so now. There are times that I collapse under the weight of my own expectations, and that, other than the grief, is probably the hardest thing to get over.

That being said, you may think that I became suicidal after my mother passed away, after I was failing to live up to my impossible expectations. Not so. I had long before that I would never take my life. For me the hard part was knowing these deaths were looming before me.

It's the rain that I hear coming
Not a stranger or a ghost
It's the quiet of a storm approaching
That I fear the most
Innocente: Delerium

Mom was diagnosed the second time, the fatal time, my senior year of high school. We were just forced to enter my dad into a nursing home because my mom and the family couldn't take care of him anymore. Dad had been withering under the effects of Pick's disease. It came as my mother and I were planning a senior trip so that I could see Yellowstone National Park for the first time, one of my mom's favorite places. That trip never happened. The rest of the world seem stacked against me. I hadn't been a good student and wasn't looking forward to college at all, I hated construction (which is what I was doing at the time), my sister was engaged to an abusive idiot (I'm glad she married Big Grizz' instead) and worst of all in the dreary sunless future, I could see the gun primed and aimed straight at my heart. When it went off, when my parents died, I didn't think I could survive. I was in a deep as a depression as I have ever felt.

It happened one day as I was driving down a country road. I was giving my little brother a ride. I had two severely handicapped brothers, and some people may think this was another strike against my life, but my brothers were two of the only bright spots in my it. My brother saved my life. My brother, who I had taught to walk, who I'd cheered for my whole life, who I'd loved like I love my son was sitting behind me. Almost without thinking I had begun to steer a Geo-Metro into an oncoming Mack Dump truck. I looked back at my brother to say goodbye, and realized if I went, I'd take him with me. I'd murder my brother. That shook some sense into me. I took my brother home and I thought for days on suicide. I weighed the issue over and over in my mind and finally decided that was the most selfish shitty thing I could do. Was I so anxious to end it all that I almost took my brother with me? What else would I have done? I would probably have killed my dear mother. It wouldn't have been the cancer that killed mom, it would have been me. She fought for me, she lived for me, and if I would have given up, I think the end of her life, as painful as it was anyway, would have been immensely worse. My life, as little as I valued it then, I realized had real and tremendous value to my family.

I can't judge those who do end up taking their own life. It's by divine intervention that I'm alive today. If my brother hadn't been in the car, I'd of probably smashed myself and that tiny car into the grill of that dump truck. (can you imagine the emotional effect on the driver of that truck?) I know what it feels like to have no hope, no light, no promise in life other than pain. If you feel this way you may be tempted to end your life, but DON'T. As I said before, I'm no dummy. I'm a pretty smart guy, but I just about made the worst, the most final awful decision I could have ever made. I don't want to preach how about how much pain you will cause (and you undoubtedly will) if you make that decision to take your life. What I will tell you is, life is better than I ever could have hoped. When I looked into the future all I saw was the loaded gun. Yes it went off, yes it hit me, yes it hurt like hell, but there was an entire life waiting for me on the other side. A good life. A great life. If you feel no hope. Get some help. Please. Now I can see what my life is, I wouldn't trade it for anything, but I had to take it on faith for a few months. For me it is Superwoman and the kids and the little joys that are sprinkled everywhere (like blogging). Your life may hold something different entirely, but it is worth living. And you are worth more than you will ever fathom.

I know good things
I know bad as well
any witness of the world can tell

If there is sorrow
there is beauty and trust
a secret pearl inside the heart of us

So, truly there is life and I wanna see
now that I know what I am living for,
Truly there is love and I wanna feel
Here in this world is were I wanna be
cause I cant cry anymore
Truly: Delerium

Mom's death, and then Dad's and each of my brothers that followed, were inevitable. Death is a part of life, its been a big part of mine. But in the end, the best parts of my personality, what makes me who I am, were developed while I was piecing my life back together.

The recent suicide, apart from the tragedy of it all, reminded me again how blessed I am to be alive today. Please, if you think life is too hard to go on, get some help. Life is hard, no doubt about it, but it is worth it. Live it!

Hooray!

It may be Monday, but is also the last week of classes! I just have this week (and finals next week) to make it through and all I'll have to do is my 40 hour a week job, till early January. 1 Semester down 8 to go :)

Next semester should be a bit easier on me. I have classes in the mornings instead of the middle of the day. So I don't have to go to work and then school then back to work and home. It should save me around 2 hours a week.

It snowed pretty hard here on Saturday (here and the rest of the nation) it's beautiful even though it's frigid. I forgot to take down the trampoline, so by the time I got to it on Saturday it probably already had a couple hundred pounds of snow on it. I cleared off as much as I could then disassembled it. It was a pain, my back still hurts. (I had to take off the springs which was hard because the snow added more weight to the mat, which added more tension to the springs, which then took much more effort to stretch enough to unhook) But I had sushi Saturday night, so that made everything all better. Superwoman and I also took the kids to the Festival of Lights. (A local park that has been decked out in festive lights) We also went sledding on the hill behind our carport. It was a busy day and I didn't get much homework done, but I had a lot of fun with the Sushiboy family. I don't get to see them a lot between work and school, I really crave Saturdays where I get to do so many things with them.

How was your weekend?