Dog Days

Posted on June 2, 2010 by Alex Gorman

Florence is wrong. The dog days are just beginning. If, by dog days, you mean, the days when the dog makes a pain in the ass of herself.

Now that it’s getting warmer, we’re spending a lot more time outdoors. I know, this sounds unusual. Normally we wouldn’t engage in such frivolity, but Abigail apparently enjoys it. Go figure. She demands to eat outside every lunch, dinner and snack, if she can get away with it. The advantages, from her perspective, are clear. First of all, she’s outside. As mentioned, she likes that. Second, she’s noticed that there are clearly fewer restrictions on leaping up from the table and running around the grass with food in her mouth when she’s outside. It’s unclear whether this is because she is outside or if it is because the table it two feet tall, but either way, this seems to be true.

One of the disadvantages of a two foot table is that everything is directly at Maggie height. She’s usually pretty good, but we have to watch pretty closely. We’ve seen what can happen when she eats a lot of cheese. That’s not happening again.

The other factor that comes into play with outside eating is that the sliding door is often left open, which makes it easy for the cats to make a break for it. Now, we’ve gotten used to the idea of Henry going out. We even went and got his shots and everything, so that if he gets beat up by another cat, he won’t die of leukemia or … feline … fur disease. Or something.

Anyway, Henry is in the clear. All the same, we like him inside at night since we didn’t inoculate him from Coyotes. And Limbo’s system is apparently too fragile for shots, so outside is no good for her at all.  I believe she was where all the extra, unused genes ended up in her litter.

When we leave the door open, the cats get out. This isn’t usually that big a problem because we can corral them back into the house. Naturally, if you’re a dog and you see your owner corralling cats, your first thought is to offer assistance.

This is not helpful. In the unlikely even that you are a dog and you are reading this, please remember: This is not helpful.

What does a cat want to see when running back into the house? The answer is not a large dog, ears up and alert, ready to snap at the next furry creature to try for the door. This is, in fact, a disincentive to a feline.

Maggie will dutifully go into the house if told to, but the second the cats start approaching, it’s time to pitch in once more. You have to give her credit for wanting to do her part.

I anticipate that this will be an ongoing problem for the next few months.

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Nebula Awards

Posted on May 31, 2010 by Alex Gorman

I’m a little behind schedule on this, but the Nebula Awards ceremony took place two weeks ago. Now, I’ve read four of the six nominees and I’m 85% of the way through the fifth, if my Kindle isn’t steering me wrong.

Naturally, the sixth won the award.

I’m looking forward to reading The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi, but I haven’t had a chance yet. It’ll be next, I swear.

And I hope to have a review of Flesh and Fire shortly, if only so that I can stop reading it. It’s that good.

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Abigail’s Selection

Posted on May 30, 2010 by Alex Gorman

Abigail filled out her own World Cup bracket today, and, according to her, South Africa will win it all. This might seem like a longshot, but she had a pretty comprehensive system. Sure, in the later rounds it was based largely on selecting the team I named second, but in the first round, she chose by jersey’s she liked. A few of the groups were challenging because there were no “stripies.” You know how it is.

So that now brings the count of people who have filled out a World Cup spreadsheet for me to myself, Abigail, Wired Magazine (okay, that one wasn’t really for me, per se.) and, of all people, my mother. She picked Italy.

I should point out that if you ask Abigail directly “Who will win the World Cup?” her answer will be an emphatic, “Maggie!” So if you’re looking to participate in the soccer bracket competition, and you want to remove, say, North Korea, you could fill in “Maggie” and I’d have no problem with that.

In unrelated news, apparently it doesn’t play the audio if you just give the link to the post, so I’m giving you the direct link – again – to Sean’s blog. Seriously, play the audio in that first link. You’ll be glad you did. Or you’ll be confused you did. Either way, I feel it’s a win.

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Stuffs!

Posted on May 28, 2010 by Alex Gorman

I ain’t got much to say today. I know. Shocking.

First of all, I’ve added a couple blogs to the blog roll, both sibling-related. First, I offer you the sage words of my brother, Andy. His blog, Handing Down Life Lessons, is all about coding and stuff. I’m sure it’s awesome, because I know Andy and what he typically does is awesome. But this is all about coding, so I am in no position to judge. Or, frankly, to comprehend.

I will recommend one of his links to everyone, since it actually discusses his successful struggles with social anxiety. It’s an awesome read and I’m sure my linking to it will lower his anxiety levels substantially.

Next, I offer you my brother-in-law Sean’s blog, Turning the Green Light. It’s a collection of his thoughts and ramblings and it is an awesome read. I highly recommend it to pretty much anyone who doesn’t hate things that are good.

Finally, I will now return to the topic of high art. This comes up a lot with Abigail, since she is the casual mastery of beauty and self expression. Plus, we often have to draw things on placemats when we’re restronauts to keep her occupied. Tonight, I would like to offer you some examples of our work. First, is my rendition of Abigail’s cranparents, my parents, Mike and Pat:

That’s cranma on the right. There were some difficulties with cranpa on the left, which led me to draw him sitting on a cactus. And yes, there are some height and general anatomy problems, but that IS NOT THE POINT.

The point is that this is Jessica’s drawing of our cat, Henry:

Clearly this is a feline cyborg of some kind, perhaps returned from some cat-dominated future to enslave us all. I particularly enjoy his tail/scythe.

That is all.

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Flower Power

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Alex Gorman

I’m going to keep it brief today. Not as brief as yesterday. That was pretty brief indeed. I’d be surprised if you even caught it.

Today I’d like to talk about flowers. Flowers and negotiation.

When we go on walks these days, we come back with a harvest. You can see two days haul in the picture, you’ll find somewhere in the vicinity of this sentence.  The market forces in a typical walk work thusly: Abigail is working to make sure she gets as many flowers as possible, and I am working to limit this number as much as I can. Here’s an example of how our conversations might go.

“I want another flower.” (Really, it’s more “a-nudder flower.”)

“You already have three flowers, honey.”

“I need that flower. Over there.” (Actually, you can pretty much swap all the ths for dds, if you’re looking to create an authentic sounding experience in your mind.)

“Alright, you can have ONE of those flowers.”

“I need another two flowers.”

As you can see, without parental controls, we’d go through a period of rapid floral inflation. Plus, when we get back, she immediately announces, “I want to put them in water. Fresh water.” So we’d be out of bowls, too.

On a tangential note, related only by the Abigail, here is a picture of Maggie with a band-aid on her head. These take off more fur than you’d expect.

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And Now For Something Completely Different

Posted on May 24, 2010 by Alex Gorman

Well, maybe not completely different. We went to the pediatrician today and again got confirmation that Abigail is fine, except for the cold she’s getting over. Our doctor reiterated that these are common and don’t cause any long term problems.

And I have to say, Abigail seems fine. She’s her usual gleeful self. By way of example, she was sitting on her potty before bed tonight and said that she was all done.

“Did you go pee-pee?” Jessica asked.

“Yup.”

“Really? I didn’t hear any pee-pees.”

Abigail’s face broke into her biggest grin. “That’s because I didn’t have any pee-pee.”

NOW for something completely different.

Blackpool won promotion to the Premier League in England this weekend. Look, I’m not going to explain it. Look here. Suffice it to say they got promoted 4 times in 9 years, which is … well pretty much phenomenal. Especially when you consider that they did it through playoffs every time.

Like it said, read the link.

Anyway, their coach, Ian Holloway, is an interesting guy and I’m really looking forward to seeing his post game press conferences. Here’s my favorite quote of his I’ve seen:

“Right now, everything is going wrong for me – if I fell in a barrel of boobs, I’d come out sucking my thumb!”

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Aftermath Day

Posted on May 23, 2010 by Alex Gorman

I want to thank all our friends and family that wished us well today. We really appreciate all your support. Abigail is doing great. She’s been her normal self today. For example, the dog is covered with stickers. Things have been pretty normal.

There have been a pretty wide variety of reactions. When I told my mother that Abigail had a seizure, she just said, “Yeah,” as though that were the most common thing in the world. I mean, if she’d made a fuss everytime I’d had a seizure…

It turns out she thought I said fever. No doubt when I mentioned EMTs she became concerned about some latent hypochondria in me.

We slept with Abigail in our bed last night, which was relaxing for Jessica and I. We wouldn’t have been able to sleep otherwise. We would have been jumping at every rustle and sigh from the monitor.

However, Abigail immediately spread out like she was trying out for lead singer of Creed. That made our already small bed into a tiny one. Plus she needed to have her baby handy. And she woke up more than once in the middle of the night to say, “Hi, Maggie!” Sadly, Maggie was downstairs and didn’t get to receive her greeting personally.

Those wake ups don’t count the ones we induced to give her medicine. We woke her up every three hours, alternating between tylenol and motrin to maximize the fever reduction. The first time we tried this, she was extremely displeased, shaking her head back and forth as we tried to get the dropper in her mouth. By the fourth time, she held the dropper between her teeth, sucking out every last drop of sweet medicated goodness.

“Abbey’s helping daddy,” she said, when I finally popped it free.

The only really tough part of the day was naptime. The seizure happened near the end of her nap yesterday and I don’t think either Jessica or I could relax during Abigail’s daily rest today. We were both exhausted and could have used a nap ourselves, but instead we were busy around the house and checking on Abigail every half an hour or so.

But she came through it just fine. A little grumpy, but that’s pretty normal. I wake up from naps pretty much the same way.

I’ll keep you posted if there are any changes, but again, thank you for your thoughts. I think we’re going to be just fine.

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Traumatic Day

Posted on May 22, 2010 by Alex Gorman

Let me start off by saying that Abigail is fine. She’s downstairs with her Mom right now, watching an Elmo video.

Today was a rough day. It was the kind of day with the traumatic stress you have trouble getting post.  What I saw and felt today will haunt me. I’m not saying that I’m just like a combat veteran or something. Just that I know where that comes from.

Because I will never be able to forget the sight of Abigail having a seizure. When I close my eyes, I will see hers rolling vacant in her head. When I look at my phone, I’ll see that hourglass “wait” symbol that came up when I pushed the button to dial 911. I never forget the choking sound she made while I held her to my chest, to my spit-damp shirt. At the same time, I can’t remember the sound at all. It was just the sound of hell, the sound of not being able to tell if my daughter was breathing or not.

When I got back from the hospital, I saw the baby monitor on my desk, still rasping and clicking where I’d left it. Even though Abigail was safe, resting with Jessica downstairs, I started to shake, just a little.

The bad images aren’t the only ones that will stay with me. I was with her when it happened. She wasn’t alone. I could hold her tight and let her know that I was taking care of her.  I’ll also remember the EMTs, reassuring me that the reactions they were getting were exactly what they were looking for. I will remember Abigail commenting on the cars out of the back of the ambulance and the way she said “hi” and “thank you” to the nurses. And I will remember the way she took her baby doll’s temperature after we took hers. (Fivety-three eight, for those who are curious, according to Dr. Abigail.)

Abigail has had a fever this week and apparently when they spike, you can get a febrile seizure. A sudden rise in temperature – like when she’s waking up out of a nap, as she was – can cause her system to short circuit.

The normality of the situation makes me feel better. The fact that her blood tests were all normal makes me feel better. And that I had an ambulance at our house less than 10 minutes after the seizure started reminds me that I had this well in hand. I will remember that her grandparents abandoned their cart at Costco to rush to the hospital and that it was still waiting for them in the middle of the aisle when they got back. I will remember holding her in my arms in the ER, band-aid on her finger where they’d measured her blood sugar and sensor strapped to her toe, measuring her vitals, when she sat up and announced that she was “all done.”

But while it was happening, I had none of those reassurances. The need to take action was a thin sheet holding back the landslide of panic. I called 911, but a huge part of me wanted to run out into the street screaming for help. I answered the questions of the person on the other end of the line, clearly enunciating my address and phone number, when I really wanted to scream at them to make her okay.

And she is okay. Really. We had to keep her from doing too much running around. She was laughing with me only a few minutes ago, giddy at the word, “Kiddo.”

I didn’t break down until after Jessica got there, safe and sound despite what I’m sure was a panicked drive back from San Diego. I held it together for Abigail until I could let go, and then let it go I did, like a baby.

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The Pinnacle of Terrestrial Evolution

Posted on May 19, 2010 by Alex Gorman

Now, I’m not being one of those overly proud dads here. I mean, if you follow the logic of the Drake Equation, I’m suggesting there literally may be thousands, if not millions of organisms in the universe that are almost as good, maybe even as good, as Abigail.

But seriously, where’s her competition going to come from on Earth? She’s clearly the best human, so what other species holds a candle? Camels? I’ve seen camels. Ain’t no camel coming close.

Even dolphins only come close. She’s even going to be a better swimmer than they are.

In Abigail’s swim class today, her instructor, Bret (or Mr. Bret, as he is know around the 2 and under set), gave her an appraising look and asked me how old she was. The answer, of course, is just over two. He rocked his head from side to side, lips pursed, clearly debating something.

“The next thing we have to teach her we don’t start with kids as young as her,” he said, clearly torn on the issues of advancing her already advanced aquatic education.

The next step, it turns out, is popping her head up to take a breath mid-swim. Right now, she can swim underwater from one side of the pool to the other without a breath. They teach them that way because when a kid goes vertical in the pool, they sink. Better to keep them flat in the water until the reach the edge. She’s also done a lot of drills hauling herself up out of the pool. Helpful stuff if you’re two and frequently around a swimming pool.

But taking a breath in the middle of her swim requires her to tread water for a second and then lower her head back into the pool and keep going. Even with older kids, the tendency is to pop the head up, tread water and stay there, panic increasing as the second pass and the instructor stares at them with weary, weary eyes.

Bret decided to give her a chance. Abigail leapt from the edge, chasing Bret across the pool. He had her lift up halfway across and she immediately dove back down to continue pursuit of her underwater quarry – ie, whatever toy Bret just picked up off the edge of the pool. Usually something brightly colored.

They went through this drill several times. Abigail never missed a beat. Her biggest problem was that she’s so good at holding her breath, she didn’t really feel the need to come up.

Bret said you never see kids her age that advanced, doing something like that at 25 months. I pointed out that she’s not 25 months until next week, actually.

So there you have it. Documented proof of Abigail’s greatness. What you got to say now, camels?

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Reading Yellow Blue Tibia

Posted on May 18, 2010 by Alex Gorman

I meant to read one of the other Nebula Award nominees next, but when Yellow Blue Tibia arrived in the mail, it proved too tempting to resist. First of all, the cover is inundated with Soviet iconography. I love Soviet iconography. As this novel extensively attests, the Soviet state was not a good place to live, but man, could they do imagery.

Second, the book is called Yellow Blue Tibia. How can you not be intruiged by that.

I won’t tell you what the title means. At first, I thought it might refer to alien bones or something, but it’s much more awesome than that. At least, if you’re of a certain mindset, like myself. That’s most of you, right?

Yellow Blue Tibia is a joy to read. It takes place, as you might expect, in the Soviet Union, starting just after World War II and running through the mid-80s. The main character, Konstantin Skvorecky, is a jaded, sarcastic old science fiction writer, whose ironic world view creates a perfect balance to the Soviet world around him. Much of the book is absurd, almost abstract, but Skvorecky grounds the entire story, giving the reader someone understandable to focus on.

The writing is brilliant. If you enjoy clever prose, then this entire novel will be for you. The text always flows well, never feeling forced until the end. The wit frequently appears like this:

The phrase Soviet x is the finest in the world had evidently been etched in his brain for, I would hazard, any value of x. Indeed, I daresay he believe that Soviet alphabets contained the finest xs in the world.

The only place Yellow Blue Tibia fails is at the end, and even then, I’m not sure if I can call if a failure. Most of the book, it doesn’t have to be science fiction. Everything that happens could be explained by normal phenomena. It doesn’t even deviate from the normal timeline we all know about. But at the end, things get a little … odd.

I actually liked the science fiction components, but was it completely satisfying? That’s one of the things about science fiction; readers like things wrapped up in tight little bundles. While I’m willing to give a writer tremendous latitude in a conventional scene to have characters do absurd things, that changes once you slap the science fiction label onto it. I wanted a more fleshed out narrative in the last chapter or two.

But Yellow Blue Tibia is a rare book. It defies standard categorization and that’s a wonderful thing. If you’re a hard core science fiction person, you may find this book frustrating. This may also be true if you’re a hard core believer in the supremacy of the Soviet Union. That said, this is another stunning book in what has been an excellent year for fiction.

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