So, I made some rocks for my daughters’ rock ceremony last night.
The left, JOY, is for Grace (all-caps intentional) and the right Perseverance is for Maria. Then today, I got the “memory” of the rocks last year.
That was exactly 364 days ago (Understanding == Maria, Enthusiasm == Grace). As cliche as it sounds, it really seems like yesterday. I’m reminded of reading the Stephen King short story My Pretty Pony. The summary seems apt:
The man also “gives instruction” on the nature of time: how when you grow up, it begins to move faster and faster, slipping away from you in great chunks if you don’t hold tightly onto it. Time is a pretty pony, with a wicked heart.
Another year. I’ve hardly written, despite being a much changed man from a year ago.
Last summer was our last with Joey. As I write this, he’s to graduate on Saturday, enlisted in the Army and moving with his father to Alabama before that. I did enjoy having him with us during the summer, as we went shooting, and hit up the farewell Warped Tour stop in San Antonio at the end of June
Joe left; the school year began; and things began going wrong almost immediately.
First, Maria’s teacher endure the slow death of her spouse, attending school maybe 1 of 5 days in a week, and the small private school she attends did a terrible job filling-in. She had multiple substitute teachers during the day–often just other teachers rotating during their planning periods. The class stagnated, then regressed. Then the real challenge hit.
We’d noticed Maria getting a muscle tic and we responded like a hive of angry bees, shuffling her to doctor after doctor with no help in sight. Finally her primary care physician suggested, “Umm….I doubt this is Tourettes. Have you been tested for Lyme Disease?”
Having a diagnosis was great. Getting a treatment would take us months. We began with dietary changes, then we found a doctor, but he’s 375 miles away. For context, that’s like driving from Lexington, KY to Detroit, Michigan, and back in 2 days, with ZERO INTERSTATES. It’s a trial, but it’s helping. Oh, and he doesn’t bother with insurance. Fun.
Amid all this, we got to go to Kentucky for Christmas, one of the most joyous visits anywhere I’ve ever had. We got to reconnect with old friends, do some of our Christmas traditions, and I got a righteous 40th birthday party.
Segue: I turned 40 this year. I got my meds adjusted, and I got a handle on my anxiety. Well, most of the time. I still have my moments and my triggers, but I’m not an angry, bitter jerk most of the time with those that I love.
I’d love to say “I finally have a handle on my health,” but it’s not so. As I sit here, I’m still 265 lbs, with a BMI teetering above 34. I had one major health scare last year (“Another 6 months and I’m sure this would’ve been cancer” are not words you like hearing), and there was the simple indignity of being 39 years old getting a cataract replaced. I can no longer see close-up with my glasses on, so I get to flip my glasses on and off like….well, like a 50 year old man.
Work has been lucrative and personally rewarding. I love working here. I like the sharp tools we’re given, the latitude to use them, and the ownership for what we build, deploy, and operate. Product and Engineering largely work together. Some shakeups have happened in my department, so we’ll see.
We’re still in the same house, but with Joe gone it’s grown much too large. We need about 1000 square feet less and no stairs. Three of four of us deal with chronic pain, and steps don’t help. We’d like land and some peace-and-quiet. That’s no small request in one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation, and that was before Apple announced a new HQ in Far-North Austin.
I now have 20,460 miles on the Civic, 3/4ths of it in Austin traffic. I wanted a manual, and I’ve mostly dealt with the stop-and-go. That’s really a post unto itself, but with upgraded wheels/tires it gets an honest 31 mpg on regular with the A/C blaring against the ATX sunshine.
Whitney’s van is on the way out, needing a new transmission at $8k for a van valued at $5k. At only 130,000 miles, I’m more than a little disappointed. So, in the next couple of weeks, we hope to trade it in on a used Lexus GX460, purportedly one of the few carved-from-a-steel-ingot Lexus models that remain. Yes, I’ve run the numbers and it’ll be an extra few hundred a month to operate.
Tomorrow, we fly up to Kentucky for Joe’s graduation. We’ve not exactly been invited, but so it goes.