Oh Happy Day

Jess returns home tomorrow.  The world begins to right itself, centering once more on its axis.  The lion lies to the lamb, then has roast lamb and invites all his lion friends - everybody wins.  Except the lamb.
  

Insert NO KIDS logo here

Before we got married (actually, years before marriage seriously came up), my wife and I confided in each other that neither of us wanted to have children.  Eleven-and-a-half years of wedded (mostly) bliss later, and neither of us has shifted one iota in this conviction.

That's why this isn't an argument so much as an affirmation.

I'd just like to say here that Tempus makes a finer and much more patient parent than I ever would have.
 

Haiku Status Update - 10 October 2010

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Feeling old today;

Like a typewriter ribbon.

frail and faded.

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I have a cold.  Not a "Man Cold", but a genuine, knock-one-off-one's feet doozy of a chest infection.  I think I'm over the worst of it, but I'm still congested as all hell and my head feels like it's been unscrewed and stuffed full of cotton wool, which itself has since become filled with mucus (thus accounting for the heaviness).  Unfortunately there's more where that came from, as the two tissue boxes I've emptied in the last couple of days will attest.

I hate being sick.  Partly because I hate the feeling of being sick, but more so because people assume that I'm not sick at all but just looking for some sympathy.  I don't do that.  I'll usually go to work unless I'm hurling or exhibiting a temperature higher than 102°F. In fact, I took two vacation days off last week to try and get over this affliction.  And I'll show up at work regardless tomorrow - hope I'm not contagious, like my boss who I probably caught it from (Thanks, Susan! It's been neat!).  

Speaking of health, I'm happy to report that Jess is up and around under her own steam again, and should be out of her convalescent internment in a week or so.  She came home for lunch today, and when she's back for good I'll get her to write out our vaguely Japanese/Vietnamese miso noodle broth recipe which we enjoyed today, and to which I owe at least 30% of my better-feeling at this point, and post it to our nascent Pragmatic Kitchen blog (as yet, unsullied).  It is a curative on the level of "Jewish Penicillin".
 

Built to last

The concrete facades may be falling off the remaining Brezhnev-era buildings dotted around Moscow, but oneSoviet-built monument to progress is not only still intact, but may well only need its batteries recharged to be operational once more; the Lunokhod-1 rover, launched in 1970 and "lost since '74.  Read about it here, courtesy of the good folks at MIT's Technology Review.
   

The road not taken

If I had it to do over again, knowing what I know now, I think the biggest thing I would change is my career-path, which was diverted in primary school, primarily by my parents.  I was a semi-talented, self-taught artist as a child (all big ideas but no technique).  This was something my mother encouraged me in, as she was a painter and ceramicist herself.  At least until grade seven; Near the end of the year I, along with bout half-a-dozen other of my Westminster peers, were offered the opportunity to attend a different public high school to the one I would normally attend (based on geography), in order to take part in an intensive Art course for promising talents.  Ironically, the alternative school was actually closer to where I lived.

I had some reservations - I knew a few of the other kids that had been offered the course, and I knew a couple of them were way better artists than me.  I wasn't sure if I would make the grade.  But the ultimate decision was my parents'.  Each for their own reasons, they decided that it would be a mistake for me to take up the offer; Dad because it wouldn't lead to a real job (essentially the same reason I had to drop out after year ten), and Mum, because she thought it would expose me to drugs and the wrong sort of people (those, I guess, who had no chance of getting a real job).

What shits me the most, looking back on it, is that nobody could make a compelling argument for why I should take the course (apparently an pilot program run by the school).  The options for visual artists career-wise are many and varied, and were even then.  At worst I might have gone into store window-dressing or become a photographer's assistant.  But what I think I would have really liked to do is build a career in typography.  I think it would have suited my particular suite of talent, technical proficiencies and bordering-on-asbergian passion for detailed minutiae.  God knows, I wouldn't be any richer (poorer, more likely) than I am now, but I think the product of my labour might have been more worthwhile, more of a contribution to the whole.

Vale Tony Curtis - 3 June 1925 – 29 September 2010

I grew up knowing Tony Curtis only as the Danny Wilde from the slick 1970s television series, The Persuaders!  Years later I began to realise that he was a movie star way before his brief television foray.  Every character I saw him play (up until Spartacus) exhibited something of Danny's irreverant, ironic, and flirty style that resonated with my idea of how fun it might be to be a grown-up.  Back then I had no idea how close Danny's hinted philosophy was to Curtis's.  There's a touching and funny rememberance of the great man by Tom Junod over at the Esquire magazine website*.

As for role models, I think I could probably have done worse.


* A big thank you to Tempus Fugit for bringing this one to my attention.
  

Tanka Status Update - 23 September 2010

[Note: I started writing this post about two weeks into "the incident", but didn't post it - this makes up the first part of this post.  Jess has got a lot better since, but all of us - her specialist, the nursing staff, her family, Jess and me - all had doubts at one time or another as to whether she'd really come out of this as she was before it began.  Now I can say with some assurity that she will be back to what passes for normal in our pocket universe in a matter of weeks.  She's still in hospital, but should be home again in terms of weeks rather than months.]

Haiku Status Update - 27 July 2010

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A sudden start wakes

her from her troubled sleep, her

parody of death

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After thinking about it for a few days, I'm going to pursue the subject of my wife's current convalencence.  She's a very private person and for years she wouldn't talk about her condition to anyone.  That's been changing in the last few years, with close friends and immediate colleagues being brought into our little circle of knowing.  I wasn't going to write anything, but then I thought, what's the harm? Nobody we know will read it anyway.

Well, I'm not going to talk in specifics, but surfice it to say, she has a chronic condition that flares up every so often.  In the past it's taken her a couple of weeks to get over it, with a couple of days loss of some functionality (i.e walking with a limp, unable to write by hand).  This would happen every couple of years, annoy the hell out of her, and pass.

This time is different.  it's hard to describe without betraying a confidence, but this incident has laid Jess low.  It's robbed her of her ability to move around independently and to speak.  The simple act of swallowing is denied her. She has an I/V drip and a feeding tube, and the worst part is she's still in there, a little groggy from the veritable pharmacopia she's being fed, but alert, thoughtful and - when she can make herself understood - wise-cracking, trying to cheer up those around her.  Jess's prognosis is good, but it's impossible to stay 100% positive 100% of the time.  Doubts creep in during the quiet times - mostly in the medical profession

This, I guess, is why they make you take vows when you get married.  I wonder how many people ever really think about what they're committing to.

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Tanka Status Update - 23 September 2010

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Freedom -to one who

misplace theirs - comes to take

a narrow focus:

the ability to walk,

to pour a glass of water

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Jess is up and around again, albeit with some assistance.  She started to regain her speech and facility to swallow about four weeks or so from the beginning.  Now she's eating pizza and insisting I bring dessert when I visit after work (although she says the dessert jag will end when she gets out of hospital).

I'm looking forward to getting back to normal again.  Jess is looking forward to getting back to work.  We're both looking forward to having some time together, alone.