March 9, 1999

Increments

Realized this morning that things when they're done in small increments are a whole lot easier than things done in big chunks. I guess that this journal is an example of that. A bit a day is a lot easier than catching up a week at a time or even just a weekend. Probably with both writing and reading.

Which puts me on a tangent I've wanted to kind of rant about. Some journaler or another was talking about how she gave up because she wasn't getting the support or something weird from her mailing list, and it just boggled me. I mean... I dunno, maybe it's my image of what a public journal is about, or, maybe, it's just my reasons for doing one seem so wildly different than what she seems to profess. I mean, I am not doing this in order to have shoulders to cry on or so that people will know when to write me condolence letters. I've had a few kind letters encouraging me with all this chaos of moving, but I've never expected that. It's cool to get them, but I imagine most people that read this journal just want to look in on a life and in on a self-examination process. They aren't in it to affect someone else's life. To expect folks to be reading solely because they want to help out the subject of the journal seems... astonishingly self-centered.

I guess, though, that journal writers are that. Or else why would we be writing about ourselves so that the whole world could see? Though, I guess the differentiation for me is between 'someone may be interested in what I think' to 'everyone that reads should be interested in making me feel better'. Okay, enough for the meta-moment.

The morning was brilliant, clear and the sunshine was so strong that John was nearly blinded just driving us to work. With his eye injured, he's very sensative to light. I have to remember to be absolutely sure he brings his sunglasses with him to San Jose. The morning was a meeting with folks to mostly discuss our lack of progress. What with the mail changeover, the network changeover, and all kinds of other stuff, things have just lagged like crazy.

Lunch found John and I across the Lake and into a follow-up check of my appointment yesterday. Then we went to Philidelphia Fevere for Philly cheesesteak sandwiches. Tom Gryn told me about them, first, and they really do do an authentic Philly cheesesteak, white cheese and everything. They even have a rack of Tastycakes.

The sandwiches were hot, tasty, and really good. The fries were crisp and perfectly salty and marvelous with ketchup. I really enjoyed the Vanilla Coke, don't get that many places out here, and I savored the sweet vanilla creaminess over the Coke bite.

It's funny, to me, that all these trips to places are now significant to me, that these may be the last times. Taco Time, Philidelphia Fevere, and Kidd Valley. These may be the last times for a while, and for all that they're fast food, they're unique to the area and I always think that the fast food server hasn't any idea that this is actually significant for me, that this single sandwich or taco or whatever is significant, something special, something that will be remembered. Makes me wonder what they would think if they knew. If they'd do anything different.

Likely not. <grin> That self-centered affecting others thing again.

Anyway, it was a really nice lunch.

I got a few things done in the afternoon, which felt good, but less than I would have liked. Just too many interruptions and confusions. We actually went home fairly early, and stopped by the grocery store so that I could get some sea bass, bread, and spinach. We still had all the shitake mushrooms I hadn't used in the appetizer over the weekend, and they went beautifully with the spinach. The fish went in a marinade of sherry, soy, ginger and chives, as I hadn't gotten any more green onions. I forgot, but it all turned out really good anyway. Ginger is a very nice flavor.

I took Fezzik out for a walk while John packed and got his presentation together. That was fun and Fezzik was a very good dog for the walk. As we arrived back onto our dirt road, though, a big pickup went by us and then stopped at the head of our driveway, pulled one of the flyers out of the box and then drove away again.

It was odd, a bit, to realize that folks were showing the house, that there was even a card there that had appeared even before our realtor had even shown up with the flyers and other marketing cruft. Kinda cool to know that things are happening and that people are interested and that there's the possibility of a sale.

I can only be terrified for so long. I mean. Three weeks is a long time to be nervous or stressed about a constant situation, okay, for me even two days is a long time to be nervous or stressed about anything. So it's likely time I stopped stressing.

Hm. For the curious. All the doctor's appointments, blood tests, etc. are because for the last three or four years John and I have been haphazardly trying to get a kid. It hasn't worked, so we're doing the full workup for infertile folks, i.e. those that have been off contraceptives for more than a year and haven't conceived. Basically, we're tackling it like we tackle everything else, with everything we have and in full detail. We've already gone through one of my cycles knowing what we know, and still haven't caught a kid, and it's likely just going to be one of those long-term 'how can we better the odds' kinds of things.

It has its own stresses in its own way. Part of it is that John doesn't want our everyday folks to know mostly because he wants to be able to surprise 'em if things do work out. Me, I like to talk and think and express how I feel about significant happenings to be comfortable with doing that myself. We talked it over and figured that few to none of the folks that he really wants to surprise read this, and I need to express some of this stuff pretty badly. I held off for a while, in part due to his feelings, but he really has told me that it's okay.

The x-ray things were a live x-ray of my internals, to be sure that my tubes weren't blocked, they'd put a cool iodine solution into me, under mild pressure, and we could actually watch the ribbon of ink flow through and then flutter into the internal body cavity bits like a flag. That was really cool to see and to know. Turns out that the x-rays were only half that of background radiation, and while the long-term exposure of a tech is bad, the one-time test isn't bad. That was pretty keen to realize.

Anyway, my dreams calmed down, finally. Cooler dreams that were more of a piece and calmer and more fun.

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