The Wild Winds of Fortune

Still exhausted.  I think unless I am significantly better by Monday, another visit to the doctor is in order. 

I have had a busy day, running errands, going to my Thursday class, some housecleaning.

I have about ten different tabs up on my Firefox windows that need to be written up.  The most important, of course, is about the Senate version of the defense authorization bill.  I need to write it up soon, because once the President vetoes it as he has threatened to, it will be moot. Well, maybe not: the very fact that the Senate passed this turkey — and voted down the Udall Amendment that would have fixed the worst parts — says a lot about the state of the country. [Edited to add: wow, I’m far more intellectually-challenged than I thought.  Of course I know about the reconciliation process, and that this may get changed before it ever reaches the Oval Office…]

There is also a tab about Siri, Apple’s automated personal assistant, and issues it has concerning women’s reproductive rights.  This post would also more generally talk about the wisdom of having an automated response system with attitude.  When a machine replies to “I need the morning after pill” with “Is that so?,” hipness and snark slide over into offensiveness.

There are, finally, various holiday themed tabs.  I will probably just compile those into a single post.

Even beyond that, there are other posts I keep thinking about.

I need to write.  I need to write.  I need to write.

But I am so damned tired.  Before, when I first got sick,* I did not have the energy to write, but I also did not have the energy to care.  Then I spent a lot of time resting, and doing some writing that was not too taxing. Yesterday, I had the energy to write, but then I had not really done all that much.

Now I care.  I just have no brain capacity.

Meh.

*Turns out everybody else in the family probably did have the bug from hell I had a few weeks back that turned into bronchitis.  It is, according to the Rocket Scientist’s doctor, a “para-flu” — he has it currently.  It hits people who had their flu shot very mildly.  The Red-Headed Menace (who gets sick if you look at him wrong, and who stays sicker longer than anyone else) had it and was out for three days.  I had it, was in bed for at least four, and then it turned into bronchitis.  I first got sick on November 8, and I am still not completely over it.  Guess who is the only person who has not had her flu shot in this household? Want to make any bets about whether I’ll remember to next year?

Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul,
         Like a weaned child with his mother;
         Like a weaned child is my soul within me. 
                                                   Psalm 131:2.

It has taken awhile.

Usually, in the fall, I am filled witha sense of calm and well-being. The lengthening days and increasingdark soothe me.

For a variety of seasons that simply did nothappen this year.

Today is a gentle day. I amexperiencing a sense of calm and content that has eluded me for awhile. The sky is the clear cornflower blue that I love so dearly. The afternoon sunlight “pours in like butterscotch,”* anddrenches everything in a golden glow. The light is almost visible.

The holidays are coming. I can listento holiday music now without my family complaining (too much). I amnot going anywhere this December, so I can look towards a hopefullynot-too-stressful Christmas. The traditions of our family, whichwhatever the condition of my faith mean a great deal to me, are onthe horizon: The Not-So-Little Drummer Boy will be home in a coupleof weeks, there will be the annual tree hunt and decorating, and thelatke dinner cooked by the Resident Shrink on the second night ofHanukkah. And this year, I may return to Midnight Mass, thecomforting ritual of a Catholic upbringing. There are always thecarols we sing on Christmas Eve evening, a holdover from The RocketScientist’s family.

There will be the lights, and theannual trip around various neighborhoods to see the displays. Thehighlight for the past few years has been the ten-foot tall reindeerin Willow Glen. The lights bring me great joy.

This is not to say there is not a lotin my life right now that is cause for concern or sadness. I amstill without a job, with all the economic and personal uncertaintythat brings, and a close friend just lost hers. Various members of myfamily are going through times of great stress, even pain. I amthere for them as much as I can be. I am still recovering from beingsick, given to bouts of great fatigue. (I recognize that this maycontribute to my sense of calm: I really do not have the energy to bestressed about anything.)

But my life is what it is.

And at just this very moment, that’sokay.

*From “Chelsea Morning,” by JoniMitchell.

…and still pretty wiped out.  I had two different meetings today, and now want to nap.

 It is vitally important not to try to watch the Colbert Report while drinking milk.  Oww.

… and you know who you are.

“[Geocachers] use multimillion dollar military equipment to find Tupperware hidden in the woods.“*
Ken Jennings, during a talk abut his new book Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks.


*Just to be clear, he thinks geocaching is a great thing.

“Silent Night” is a simple song.  That’s what makes it so very moving: simple does not mean empty or shallow.  It is like “What Child Is This?,” beautfiul and simple but not plain.

That simplicity may be why so many singers choose to add all sort of flourishes when they record it.  I am going through iTunes looking with little success for a version that is simply sung, in the spirit of a song written for voice and guitar (because the organ was broken), not for trumpets and strings.

It is a song of quiet wonder, not glory and majesty. 

That should be saved for the “Hallelujah Chorus, ” or at least “Angels We Have Heard on High.”

I am really trying to post every day, whether or not I think I have anything to say.  Writing something is the beginning to writing something worth reading, and this is the forum I am most comfortable writing in.  What this means for you is that there may be a lot of dross for the few flakes of gold.  Sorry about that.

I must have been much sicker than I thought when I went into the doctor.  I knew I felt bad, but generally bronchitis does not mean three days in bed for me, especially not on Zithromax.  Usually with Zithromax, I feel a lot better the next day, or certainly the day after.  I do feel a little better, just not by very much.

I mentioned this to the Rocket Scientist this morning, and he did not look surprised.  He had said he had been prepared to take me into the doctor on Wednesday whether or not I agreed, because he said I looked really ill and he did not want to spend Thanksgiving in the E.R.  When I told this to the doctor, he looked at me very seriously and said “You need to tell him thank you.”

I am can tell I am getting a little better — I feel really weak and unable to do anything, but I am bored and developing a bit of cabin fever.  I may go out to the drive-in Starbucks just to get out of the house for half an hour, and then come back to bed.

[Edited to add: did that, now I feel like I want to collapse.  Bad idea.]

I don’t even have the energy to write a post on the “Happy Holidays” versus “Merry Christmas” crap that always rears its ugly head this time of year, like some really obnoxious gopher. (I am firmly in the Happy Holidays and Season’s Greetings camp.  The best explanation I can give is this one, although that was written at a time I felt a lot more filled with faith than I do now.  Even though I currently lack personal and emotional resonance with what I wrote, I find it still valid intellectually.)

I hate being this sick.  The Not-So-Little-Drummer Boy is home for Thanksgiving, and I want to go do things with him and his brothers, rather than what I am doing right now, which is lying in bed, writing on my computer and listening to Christmas music through the cable service. Well, we are definitely going to our traditional Saturday morning Starbucks coffee tomorrow, even if I have to go home and sleep the rest of the day.

After he goes, we have two weeks to get the house ready for his return for the holidays.  He’s bringing a friend with him, so it won’t be quite the same, but it still is so lovely to have him around.

Have I ever mentioned how utterly cool I find my kids?

And it’s not just mine.  I know mine are special, but I know few teenagers that are not at some level interesting.  I have never figured out how people can be so dismissive of them.

This may be why we have never faced full-on teenage rebellion.  Yes, there are discipline issues, and no, they do not get to do whatever they want (except for the NSLDB, because he just turned *gasp* twenty-one), but we have never been anything other than perfectly clear with them that they are their own people.  To the extent that rebellion is a matter of differentiation from parents, ours don’t have to do that: they are already different, from us and certainly from each other.

I talk to all of them.  I enjoy their company.  I know a lot of parents who do not feel the same way.

I am so so lucky.

A list of fifty things I give thanks for, in varying levels of importance:

1. For my household. The boys, The Rocket Scientist and the Resident Shrink.
2. For my mom and my siblings.
3. For my friends.
4. For continued employment for my husband.
5. For the roof above our heads.
6. For the food on our table.
7. For the clothes on my back and the shoes on my feet.
8. For health insurance.
9. For the meds I take and the medical equipment I use to keep my health conditions at bay.
10. For Zithromax.
11. For my doctors, of every stripe.
12. For the U.S. Constitution, especially the Bill Of Rights.
13. For writing.
14. For Georgia, and before her, Jan, who opened the world for me.
15. For this blog.
16. For Facebook and LiveJournal, which make it possible for me to keep track of friends all over.
17. For Occupy Wall Street, for speaking the truths that need to be speaking.
18. For the Loft, and Tuesday night trivia, and the friends I have found there, who make me feel valued.
19. For Starbucks. 
20. For Venti Non-fat No-whip Salted Carmel Mochas.
21. For Coke with grenadine. 
22. For Thanksgiving dinner.
23. For tangelos.
24. For kind strangers.
25. For good public schools.
26. For the classes I’m taking.
27. For Jane Austen.
28. For Terry Pratchett.
29. For Jon Stewart.
30. For Stephen Colbert.
31. For Alton Brown.
32. For Stephen Sondheim.
33. For road trips.
34. For the colors of the leaves in the trees in Oregon and the vineyards in Paso Robles.
35. For fall.
36. For California weather.
37. For the ocean.
38. For the color blue.
39. For good music.
40. For good books.
41. For good food.
42. For good wine.
43. For good coffee.
44. For good sex.
45. For love in all its varied forms and with all its myriad complications.
46. For art.
47. For light.
48. For beauty.
49. For laughter.
50. For life.

I am currently under orders from my doctor to rest, having been diagnosed with severe asthma, acute bronchitis and a sinus infection, all courtesy of the crud I had a couple if weeks ago.  (I should be better in a few days.  Thank God for Zithromax!)

In between doing odds and ends for Thanksgiving dinner (the heavy lifting — both figuratively and literally — is being done by the Rocket Scientist and the Resident Shrink), I am amusing myself by watching the PBS specials with Brian Greene*, “The Fabric of the Cosmos.” I like programs such as these because they make me think about the world beyond my experience or understanding.

In my exhausted, oxygen deprived state, just as I’m about to nap, I keep thinking about the theory of the multiverse.

We know the universe is bounded.  We can determine where the boundaries are due to the background radiation that is the remnant of the Big Bang.  But if there are indeed a multitude of universes, what about the space** in which the multiverse exists? Is that bounded?  Logic says it probably must be, that the multiverse exists in a larger… super-universe? … but is that bounded? Where does it end?  Is it turtles all the way down?

The other issue has to do with the nature of the debate.  I still cannot grasp from watching the show the extent to which the multiverse can be shown empirically beyond the realm of mathematics.  That is, the math says that it must exist, but it’s not testable.

So at what point does the belief in the existence of the multiverse approach religion?  Although, as The Rocket Scientist said, there is a lot more mathematical support for the existence of the multiverse than the existence of God.

And that’s not even discussing M-theory, which as far as I can tell from watching the program, gives the necessary support for these ideas.

I feel stupid.  Maybe I should watch this when I am better, and have more brains than a sheep.

*No relation, unfortunately.
**I’m not sure if that is the right word, but I’m not sure what word to use, so indulge me.

First Thanksgiving disaster: I put too much pineapple in the cranberry sauce.  It’s too sweet: almost a cranberry-pineapple preserves rather than a sauce.  Pooh.

I wonder if adding Tabasco (heat) would help?

It’s Thanksgiving week.  Followed by the holidays in December.  I have too much to do.

I am declaring myself on a political moratorium at least through the end of the week, both here and Facebook.  It won’t make that much difference here — for the past little bit I have only occasionally been posting political items.  Over in Facebook, I do a lot more.

This does not include posts about law.  While it is true that the two are almost inextricably entwined, I do not view a post on the implications of a case to be the same thing as a rant about the Tea Party.

I don’t rent cranes or other construction equipment, but if I did, I know for sure who I would not rent them from.  As can be seem in this photo,  U.S. Cranes, LLC is refusing to hire people as long as Obama is in office.

Note: when contacted, the owner did not say he was unable to hire people, but that even if he could, he would not as long as a Muslim in the White House.
 
The answer to this? Boycott U.S. Cranes and all other businesses that espouse this position. Any company that places political ends above the well-being of their fellow citizens deserves to go out of business. That is as true of the guy shown here as it is of Bank of America.