Intermittence

Donnell commented a few days ago on a patch of gray in my beard, and I got a little choked up.

It’s not that I’m aging or that she noticed that I’m aging but, rather, just this: I wasn’t graying at all when we met, and I suddenly felt so fortunate that I’ve been able to spend enough time with her that she’s seen this change in me.

I hope to be very, very gray and wrinkly and wizened well before our time together comes to an end.

Not much going on lately, huh?

I’m trying to wrap up some previous commitments before re-doing my web site. First is wrapping up a program for my martial arts instructor, to help him manage accounts and students and so on. Next is rewriting a PHP truck-booking program in Rails and figuring out how to deploy it on a Mac.

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Then comes recoding Donnell’s web site, and then I might get to my own site.

I also need to make business cards and take care of all the other details having to do with Wicked Things.

I’m tired just thinking about it.

I fell down on my resolution to post here weekly, but it took me a full month and a half to do so. Well, that one’s out the window. Too bad…

I’ve been thinking about my site, and I’m going to try something a little different. Not that it’s never been done, but it’s never been done by me. I’m going to create a multi-faceted site which touches on my interests and accomplishments and projects and so on, but in a more dedicated way. I’ll have a page or two discussing my film-making, some other pages on Tae Kwon Do, and so on, and then just maintain a list of notes and comments on what’s been updated and so on.

How does that sound?

My mother-in-law had valve replacement surgery yesterday. It was, and I say this without any hyperbole at all, the most stressful day of my life.

Some observations:

• We are masters of partitioning off our thoughts and feelings as necessary. We were sitting around the hospital bed after Pat was hooked up to the IVs and arterial lines joking and having a good time, all the while knowing what was coming. The head nurse came in, said “Are you ready?”, and the tears came freely within moments. The fear was palpable. What evolutionary benefit does this capability confer upon us?

• Everything is fine so far, I feel I should note….

• I am shaken to my core by kindness. The sensitivity of our family and friends, who I will not name lest I offend by accidental omission. You know who you are: the ones who gave freely without hesitation or reservation. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such selflessness.

The surgery went well, and we saw Pat briefly regain consciousness before leaving her in the ICU for the night. The nurse said that she’d already started to exceed the ventilator, which should have made it easy to wean her off last night. We’re heading back to see her this morning, and I hope to see her smile.

This is so very, very hard.