February 27, 2003

Writing for writing's sake

Damn. Mr. Rogers has passed away. And yet, he shall live forever in syndication. Is it possible for a person to be homesick for their childhood?

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Ahh. I just saw Marie off to school, and now I have the whole house to myself for about eight hours. There will be yoga, and laundry, and the making of meatballs for dinner tonight. Perhaps I shall play with the dogs, and maybe clean the kitchen. Beyond that, there is Season One and Season Two of Buffy to watch (Archibael loaned me his DVD's, and Season Four comes out in June! Just in time to make up for the departure of SMG). I am so not current with this season's episodes it's pathetic. Rerun heaven, FX, or waiting until 2006 for the DVD's are my only choices.

I think I had the most productive day ever at work yesterday. I was a machine, I tell you - Statistics 101 class in the morning (one more class to go!), handling four drive-by's (that's when a manager pauses at your desk just long enough to tell you to do something, before going off in search of their next victim), rolling up two analyses, summarizing the results of a process walkthrough, and writing War and Peace XIV (that's my weekly report).

Today I'm going to compliment that productivity at work by being productive at home. Whilst battling a headache that I've nursed for the past three days. I blame that on two things - 1) it's been raining for the past three days, and we've already had more rain in these past two months than the entirety of last year; and 2) I've switched allergy and asthma medicine, and I think my body is trying to acclimate. As I was telling Heather the other day, I feel like a walking pharmaceutical - asthma medicine that I take twice a day (anybody else out there take Advair? It's weird), plus my rescue inhaler when I need it, one kind of allergy medicine that I take twice a day, another kind of allergy medicine that I take once a day, eye drops that I use twice a day, and my birth control pill.

Yeesh. If I didn't live in this age of modern medicine, I'd be dead by now. And you can believe that that's a sobering thought.

Last weekend I was making an attempt at doing some yoga. Those of you who perform it will understand that it's just not quite the same if you can't breathe through your nose. I mean, that's pretty much one of the foundations of yoga, that meditative breathing. So here I am, mouth breathing away and feeling completely devoid of any class. Add on top of that frustration, the fact that my allergy meds were performing less and less effectively. I was sneezing my head off whenever any of the animals came near me. PLUS I was having to take my rescue inhaler up to a dozen times a day - and that's no exaggeration. Working out became an exercise in frustration, if you'll pardon the pun.

I made an appointment with my doctor on Monday, and she told me that my body was developing an immunity to my meds, and that I was in danger of my lungs "reconstructing" if I didn't find an effective medication. This was new news to me - apparently prolonged constriction of the bronchial tubes causes the lungs to reform into the constricted state, which equals me toting an oxygen tank around within the next twenty years.

Um. Pass on that, thanks.

It's only Thursday, but I've already seen a difference. Allergies are under control, and I've only had to take my rescue inhaler a couple of times this whole week. So. I have no excuse not to work out. I have 92 days left before my Sabbatical, and I'm a long way from being as svelte as I wish to be for Hawaii.

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Speaking of which, I have many goals I wish to accomplish during my Sabbatical. Other than going to Hawaii, going to Maine, and taking a camping trip back to Big Lake, I also want to:

Take Marie to see a couple of exhibits at the Phoenix Art Museum.
Reconstruct our debt so that we're paying it off faster.
Write, and write, and write some more.
Get a tan. Preferably before Hawaii.
Take a couple of day trips with Marie (and Calvin, if he's not working) to Sedona or Flagstaff, for shopping and hiking.
Maybe go exploring around Tucson.
Go back to Kartchner Caverns (you can read about our first trip, if you're interested).
Marie wants to take photography in high school next year, so I think she and I will do a lot of exploring around the state and become shutterbugs.

Clearly, two months is not going to be enough time off.

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Last, but most certainly not least, I haven't yet shared with you folks the Valentine's Day gift that Calvin gave to me.

Isn't this the most precious thing ever??? He made it himself. He made one for Marie, too, with pictures inside of him and Marie from the wedding, decorated with bears. I'd told him that we had basically a zero budget for Valentine's, and he used his creativity to come up with this (and only spent $14.00).

Yes, I did cry (and I don't care if that makes me mushy, Heather!). It's the best and most original Valentine's gift I've ever gotten. Marie loved hers, too. She said, "I don't know of any other dad who would make a Valentine's gift for his daughter like this."

We're so lucky.

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©Laura Charon 2000 - 2003.