A stressful few weeks

This has been a challenging few weeks for the family.  I’ll give you a few more details so you can get an idea of what I’m talking about.

Things began, of course, with the foot disaster, which I’ve already talked about a bit (twice, even).  Although there’s still a decent chance that our middle child have to have some sort of surgery to deal with that, there’s also a possibility that he won’t.  Apparently.  There’s been a lot of doctors’ appointments and talking to doctors on the phone and running around.  This complicates things, because there’s also ...

Our annual Heroscape tournament was a week ago, and it was a great success.  So in general this was a happy thing during this time period (which, as it turns out, is somewhat of a rarity).  But it also required a lot of preparation from yours truly.  I had already planned on taking 4 days off work during the 2 weeks leading up to the tourney, but, with all the extra medical stuff going on, I ended up taking 6 days instead.  I was actually really excited about the format, because we did some something radically different this year: we went to a team format, where we try to pair the better players with the more experienced ones.  When you play as a team, your and your partner’s fate are tied—for that one game.  Next game you get a different partner, and, at the end, we can still do an overall ranking, as is proper for anything you want to call a “tournament.”  But the great thing about this format is that it’s now in the best interests of the good players—who also tend to be the more competitive players—to make sure their partners do well also.  And the end result is that they start passing on their winning strategies to some of the folks who rarely win, except if they happen to end up playing each other.  This year, there were folks who got a taste of victory for the first time in a tourney setting, someone who placed fourth overall instead of being one of those at the bottom of the rankings, and my own Smaller Animal, the same kid with the giant piece of graphite embedded in his foot (see above), actually won a prize.  Now, understand: the way we do prizes is, we divvy up the entrance fees into a few piles, so there’s some cash on the table, and we tell people they can bring something for the table if they want to, so some people do, and occasionally someone will bring more than one thing (this year I personally brought 3 things), so the number of prizes always varies wildly.  There was even one wacky year where everyone got at least one prize, and some people got two, because we had to start over letting everyone choose which prize they wanted.  But usually we manage to have just enough prizes for about half the participants to get something, which is where we came out this year.  My kid got the last (or maybe the next-to-last) prize on the table, and it was one of the big Heroscape dragons.  A dragon that we already own, I might add, so he’s seen it dozes of times, and of course he could have been using it any time he liked.  But this one is his: he won it.  He was so happy ... it’s hard to describe what that meant to me.  Normally I have to be consoling him and telling him that he’ll do better next year and that he’s still learning.  This year I had to explain to him how his new dragon’s powers worked, and what sort of army he might use her in, and how he could figure out a way to play Heroscape with his friends at his homeschool park days.  It made a huge difference, and I have to thank our newest group member for casually suggesting a team format, which suggestion I then went crazy with, working out the exact details and how to keep team games individually competitive, and so forth.  So I’m very glad we did it.  But it was a huge amount of work, and I got very little sleep those last few nights (culminating in what I think was about 3 hours for the night before the tourney), and that was really a mistake because ...

I’ve been sick for about a week now.  So, after only putting in 2 days’ worth of work for two weeks in a row (and only physically making it into the office for half of those days), I was suddenly saying I still wouldn’t be coming in because I was likely to infect all my co-workers.  I did continue to work from home, but it’s been hard: this week was supposed to be the week I finally wrapped up my work project.  You see, I’ve been working on this big project at work (I believe I’ve mentioned it here at least once), and it’s been going on for a while now.  A few weeks back, I turned a corner and polished off the last truly difficult part.  I figured it was all downhill from there: just wrap up a few things, dot a few i’s, cross a few t’s, that sort of thing.  But then the foot, and the time off for the tourney prep, and now the sick?  I’m taking a month (of calendar time, granted, but still) to polish off what really should have taken a week or so.  Also, being sick is not fun.  I smoked for many years, and, while I like to believe that I quit in time for my lungs to heal before I get truly old, there’s no doubt that I can hold on to a cough like nobody’s business.  You’re sucking on cough drops all day and popping Nyquil in order to sleep at night, waking up with cough drop hangovers where your tongue is coated with that sickly-sweet mediciney taste ... I mean, come on.  It’s already hard enough to concentrate on work.  But it gets worse because of ...

You may have heard of something in the news called the “Borderline shooting,” which happened this past Wednesday night.  This was actually very close to my house, relatively speaking ... I’m not saying it’s within walking distance or anything, but it’s just a town or two over.  It’s the town where we used to live before we bought this house.  My eldest son still works in that town.  It’s right next door in our eyes.  And we knew one of the victims ... not well, but she was in our homeschool group.  She was close to the same age as our eldest.  The Mother and the kids would see her on park days sometimes.  Note also that many of the same folks who were present at this mass murder were survivors of the Las Vegas shooting last year, where The Mother also knew someone who was killed.  This was a lot for us to process, but there wasn’t really time to do so, because ...

Thursday afternoon my phone made that harsh noise it does when you get an emergency alert, and we had to start worrying about something called the Hill Fire.  Now, if you haven’t spent any signficant amount of time in southern California, you may not know what the Santa Ana winds are.  We get them every autumn, and they’re kind of scary: on bad years they can approach 100mph, with gusts going over 150mph.  Even on “good” years they’re no picnic, as every loose thing imaginable is suddenly in your yard, in the middle of the road, and, of course, clogging up your pool.  This year the Santa Anas are about average, I’d say: we’ve fished 2 heavy pool chairs out of the pool (one of them twice), not to mention countless other small debris.  I’ve given up trying to keep the intakes clear.  But, really, the inconvenience of dealing with the pool is only the tip of a very large (and much scarier) iceberg, because a fire that would normally be put out pretty much instantaneously can be caught up by the Santa Ana winds, and fanned, and carried, and spread, until it becomes declared a state of emergency by the governor.  This happens with disturbing frequency this time of year.  If you live in Florida, you worry about hurricanes; if you live in Missouri, you worry about floods; if you live in Kansas, you worry about tornadoes; and, if you live in California, you worry about wildfires.  And also earthquakes.  And sometimes mudslides ... actually, why does anyone ever live in California?  Oh, yeah: the beautiful beaches and year-round summer.  But there’s always a price to pay, I suppose.  The point is, when you get an alert on your phone telling you there’s a fire, you sit up and pay attention.  On the Ventura County website, they tell me about the Hill Fire and that it may be headed my way, but it’s still a ways out.  Don’t get me wrong: we knew people impacted by this as well.  CSU-Channel Islands had a mandatory evacuation, and our eldest has a close friend there, so we were trying to get in touch with him and make sure he was able to get out okay.  But it didn’t seem like we needed to be personally worried.  The Mother was taking the eldest to work at the time; I sent her a message saying I didn’t think we needed to worry yet.  She told me she could see the helicopters dropping the fire retardant.  I said, that’s crazy, the Hill Fire is all the way in the next valley.  She said you’re looking at the wrong fire.

The Woolsey Fire started in the open space of Liberty Canyon, which is just south of us.  It quickly grew out of control and in fact become a much bigger threat than the Hill Fire.  Perhaps the quick response of the California firefighters (who are, let’s face it, insanely amazing individuals) kept that one from getting out of control; I can’t say for sure.  But I’ve read that it’s at least possible that the quick committing of all available resources to battle the Hill Fire may have kept the Woolsey Fire from receiving immediate attention.  I don’t say that to blame anyone; it’s just a terrible coincidence that caused some dominoes to start to fall.  By Thursday evening, we could easily see the glow of the massive fire over the ridge out our window.  We had packed our “go” bags, gathered all our animals into the house, and were sitting around praying for the wind not to shift.  It did not, and that’s excellent new for us.  However, we have many close friends to the south of us, and the fact the winds stayed steady, blowing south and southeast, put them right in the path of the fire.  Just to give you a taste of the weird combination of tension and worry that we were all experiencing:  Friday afternoon, our middle child came into the room where I was trying to fix some issues with my big work project.  “It’s park day,” he announced.  “And it’s 2:30 ... why are we not at the park?”  I gently reminded him about the “big fire.”  His face went slack and he nearly burst into tears.  “Oh, right, I’m sorry, I’m an idiot, just forget I said anything.”  And then he ran out crying.  Becuase, you see, he had been excited all week about playing Heroscape on park day (see above), and for a moment he forgot about the danger and was just focussed on doing something normal, and then I had to go and remind him that there was a very real possibility that his two best friends were now homeless, and he felt sad, and guilty, and worried, all at once.

Currently, the fire has left our area and has gone on to burn down Malibu, which is exceedinly tragic, especially considering it wasn’t that many years ago that a decent chunk of it burned in another wildfire (also fanned by the Santa Ana winds).  As far as we know, both the families of the Smaller Animal’s friends still have homes to go back to: in one case, the fire went high up on the ridge and their house is in the neighborhood below; in the other, the fire came so close as to singe the lawn of their next-door neighbors.  But we still don’t know what sort of smoke damage they’ll have to deal with, and that can be devastating all on its own, even when your property never sees a single flame.  As far as I’ve heard, neither family has been able to get back to their homes yet.  So while we are very thankful that our house was spared, we’re still very concerned (but hopeful) for our friends.  And of course there were many who were not so lucky as that.

So it’s been a pretty stressful week, coming off a fairly stressful few weeks prior.  We’re safe, and we’re grateful to whatever forces run the universe, and hopefully we continue to appreciate each other and what we have.  But we’re also sad, and worried, and trying to remain hopeful that things get better for everyone.  And we send out our condolences and our deepest regrets for those who lost loved ones in the Borderline shooting, or either of the two wilfires.  Next week will be easier, I’m feel sure.


Please help support the mother of our friend who was killed at Borderline by contributing to the memorial fund set up for her by our homeschool group.

Further foot follies

According to my schedule, this should be a long post week.  However, between the upcoming Heroscape tournament and the foot disaster, it’s been a pretty hectic week.  I only physically made it to work once this past week, and can only claim about 2 days’ worth of work completed.  So it’s been crazy around here, and there’s just no way I can do a full post this week.

As a stopgap measure, I’ll give you an update on the Smaller Animal’s condition.  After being told it by 3 doctors in a row, we’ve finally started believing that having a chunk of graphite embedded in one’s foot isn’t an emergency which has to be handled immediately.  Apparently, graphite is no big whoop: we should all have great chunks of it skewered deep into our flesh on a regular basis.  In fact, it it wasn’t for the fact that long chunks of graphite in the middle of the arch of your foot just might impact your ability to walk straight, we shouldn’t even consider taking it out.  But, you know, it might, so therefore we probably will.

Our pediatrician thinks the graphite will come out on its own.  Our first podiatrist thinks surgery will be required.  Our second-opinion podiatrist thinks it’s possible it’ll come out, but it’s not bloody likely—it’s just too deep at this point.  But the one thing everyone agrees on is, there’s no downsides to waiting, and only good things can come of it.  If by some miracle it comes out on its own, then we don’t need the surgery.  If the large piece breaks up into a bunch of little pieces, then it might not need to be removed anyway: as long as it doesn’t interfere with walking (which smaller pieces are less likely to do), then it’s easier to just let the pieces break down naturally and be reabsorbed by the body.  In the meantime, we’re using some drawing salve (unlikely to help, but can’t hurt), neosporin (certainly can’t hurt), antibiotics (because, above and beyond the graphite, there’s also a giant hole in his foot), and he’s sort of walking on it again.  Still not putting his full weight on it, but it’s a major improvement nonetheless.

He has an MRI scheduled for Tuesday evening and an appointment with his cardiologist Wednesday morning, and, if a surgery is required, it will most likely be after the next blog post.  Which will be another short one, as it’s coming the day after the tourney.  Which all my children will be in attendance for.  Unless someone manages to do even more unscheduled damage to their extremeties.

From heart to foot

Last night, our middle child stepped on a pencil.  We examined him as best we could, but couldn’t see any evidence that there was any graphite left in it.  So we cleaned it, disinfected it, applied some neosporin, and put a band-aid on.  This morning, however, it didn’t look better ... in fact, it looked a bit worse.  What worried me more than that, however, was the fact that he was showing a lot of sensitivity when pressing on his foot—even when pressing the skin well away from the wound.  This is usually a sign that there’s something, probably something sharp, under the skin.  So off he went to urgent care.

We’re not sure if it was just the angle that he stepped on it, or the fact that he freaked out a bit and yanked it out too hard, or just plain bad luck, but, as it turns out, x-rays show that there’s a relatively long shaft of graphite embedded fairly deeply into his plantar fascia (that’s the connective tissue that forms the majority of your foot’s arch), almost all the way to the bone.  I say “it is” embedded rather than “it was” embedded because they did not remove it today.  We have to get him an appointment with a podiatrist ASAP and he will most likely have to undergo some plastic surgery.

Now, as you may recall, this is the same kid who underwent heart surgery nearly a year ago.  Compared to that, this’ll be nothing.  But, at the same time, it’s pretty frustrating to have survived all that—breastbone broken in half and tied back together with wire, giant tube in his chest that they had to yank out, piece of a dead guy’s heart in him now—only to be sent back to the hospital by a friggin’ pencil.  I told him quite frankly that it wasn’t fair, and I know it must completely suck to go to a bunch of doctors who don’t even have the good grace to take out the annoying thing that’s stuck in his foot.  And I told him we’d figure out a way to make it better.

So, you know: now he’s planning for surgery gifts.  Last surgery got him a Nintendo Switch.  He’s already negotiating: will this surery be big enough to warrant a whole ‘nother console? or just a really good videogame?  Just how good of a game are we talkin’ about here?  We’re holding off answering these vital questions until we talk to the podiatrist, which will hopefully be tomorrow.  But I’m guessing it’ll need to be a pretty damn good videogame.

Sigh.

Another Virgo birthday season successfully concluded

Well, it’s the second weekend of our Virgo birthday season, so my eldest has been in charge.  We kicked off the weekend by hosting the kid’s crew for a marathon roleplaying session, to which we weren’t invited, so at least that made it easy.  And the kid had to work on Saturday—apparently being an adult means you have to work on your birthday sometimes.  Who knew?  Today has been more chill, with animal fries from In-n-Out, Chinese food, and an extended horror movie night featuring the original version of The Thing and The Return of the Living Dead.  With all that excitement, is it any wonder that I couldn’t manage to put together a full blog post?  You know, it’s weird, but back when I was trying to do a full post every week, missing two in a row during the Virgo birthday season never seemed that bad.  But, now that I’m just shooting for one every other week, missing two in a row seems unforgivable.  Weird, eh?

But, unforgivable or no, that’s the situation.  Tune in next week to see if I get it together.  Or not.

Entering the Virgo birthday season once again

This is The Mother‘s birthday weekend, but we’re primarily taking it easy, with activities such as swimming in our pool, going out to pick up Mexican food, and watching the new version of Tomb Raider (decent, although nothing to write home about^*).  Hey, whatever The Mother wants, The Mother gets, right?  That’s what we’re here for.

The Smaller Animal is back from camp and had a lovely time.  The Mother and the sprite are back from beach camping and had a ... well, a time, at any rate.  I took a couple of days off and tried to catch up on a few tasks I had, but mainly what I caught up on was sleep.  I dunno why I’ve been so exhausted over the past few days, but it’s been nice to be able to just fall asleep whenever I felt like it.  Next week, back to work—for four days, anyway.  Then another birthday weekend, but hopefully a full post for the blog anyway.  We shall see how it goes.

__________

* Or, perhaps I should say: nothing to write blog about.  Get it?

Perl blog post #57

This week I’ve done a full post over on my Other Blog as regards YAPC 2018.  Which I really should refer to as “The Perl Conference,” now that they’ve changed the name, but I will always think of it as YAPC.

This year was in Salt Lake City again, and we took the whole family (as I mentioned last week) and spent some time with the kids’ grandparents and one of their many uncles.  We didn’t do much as far as Utah sightseeing goes, but it was a chance to enjoy some quality family time, so it was good in that sense.  And we stayed in this wonderfully weird, creepy house which was built in 1889, and various doors kept opening by themselves and scaring the crap out of us, so that was fun.  Other than that, the only exciting thing we really did was go see The Incredibles 2, which was pretty awesome.  I think everyone enjoyed that.

So, now we’re back at home after a week away, including 4 days of 6 – 7 hours’ worth of driving, which is about all we could manage at a time.  We considered trying to make it straight through in one day (even only trying to do so one way), but, in the end, we figured that 5 humans and 2 canines in a car for 7 hours is damned plenty.  We stayed in a newish hotel in Mesquite, Nevada (right near the Arizona border).  I spent some of the driving days doing things (mostly Perl things) on my laptop while riding in the car, which I’m old enough to still think is pretty amazing.  My kids are all like, yeah, so?

Another thing we did while at the Utah rental place, in the company of grandparents, was to officially graduate my eldest child from homeschool high school.  We adopted the rough format of the Sudbury school where said child first attended school, which is that we asked for a thesis on why the student should be allowed to graduate: in order words, to what extent are they prepared to go out and be a self-sufficient adult?  And then there are some questions (occasionally even quite pointed questions, making the person defend the thesis), then there’s a vote (which is mostly pro forma) and then we proclaim them graduated.  So we did all that, and it was pretty nice.  It’s perhaps not the formal, hats-in-the-air ceremony that most get when they get out of high school, but I think it was impactful, and hopefully memorable.

But it’s nice to be back home, back in one’s own bed, with one’s one shower, one’s own recliner, one’s own TV, eating one’s own food instead of mostly bad-for-you fast food and whatnot, and so on.  As we get older, it gets harder and harder to be away from home.  I used to think that was because you just needed more crap as you get to be an old fogey: you need your medicine, and your special pillows, and all that sort of thing.  But now I think it’s more that, at my age, I’ve spent years and years working out what I need to have to be at my most relaxed and happy, and, when I leave home, I’m leaving all that behind.

Or, then again, maybe I’m just looking for excuses to avoid admitting that I’ve become the old fogey myself.  Either way, good to be back home.

Numeric Princess

"Fairy Tales Can Come True"

[While this is not technically part of my series on my music mixes, you still might benefit from reading the series list (for definitions of terms), and/or the introduction (for general background.]


My smallest human child just had a birthday, as I mentioned last week.  I may have also mentioned that, of all my children, she is the one who most shares my love of music.  Like me, she loves nearly all kinds of music, and she even likes some that I don’t care for.  Like, say, music from Disney movies, and in particular Disney princess movies.  Now, it is practically a cliché at this point to have a little girl who’s obsessed with singing the songs from Frozen, and my kid is not really bucking that trend.  But she’s also perfectly happy to sing songs by Ariel, or Tiana, or Snow White, or Moana.  So The Mother suggested that I make her a Disney princess mix.

Obviously I resisted this suggestion.  There are two broad classes of music that I really can’t stand: country and opera.  And as far as I’m concerned “opera” encompasses light opera (e.g. Gilbert and Sullivan), and, of course, Broadway show tunes.  I don’t care for musicals, and that includes Disney musicals, because they consist of hideously annoying show tunes, and I hate those.  Like, a lot.

And, here’s the thing: if I’m going to make a mix, I’m going to do it right.  And, as part of making a mix, I listen to the music over and over again, choosing the perfect songs, trying to determine the best order, sometimes making decisions about how much space to place between the tracks, and so forth.  And, here’s a batch of music that I really don’t want to listen to even once, much less over and over again.

But, hey: I love my baby girl, right?  Yeah, I must ...

So here is a mix of Disney princess songs.  I learned ever so much about Disney princesses while doing this.  For instance, did you know that there are 11 “official” Disney princesses?  And that there are rules for qualification to that august institution?  Of course, there are 4 princesses who conform to the rules but aren’t princesses—that would be Elsa and Anna from Frozen, weirdly, who it’s just assumed would eclipse all the other princesses if they were let into the club, and Moana and Anastasia, who it’s assumed will eventually join the ranks—and 1 princess who doesn’t conform to the rules but somehow still is (that would be Mulan, who is neither born into royalty nor marries a prince)?  So Alice (from Alice in Wonderland) isn’t a princess (no royalty), and Maid Marian (from Robin Hood) isn’t a princess (not human), and Elena of Avalor isn’t a princess (derives from a TV show, not a movie), and Mary Poppins isn’t a princess because she’s not animated ... even Princess Leia—who, goshdarnit, has “princess” right there in her name—can’t be an official Disney princess because she’s not a friggin’ cartoon.  Well, I personally like to think she’s just too cool to be a Disney princess, but obviously I’m biased: as a child, I was way more into Star Wars than Sleeping Beauty.¹

But, I say: screw the rules.  By my reckoning, Alice and Maid Marian and Elena of Avalor and Mary Poppins should each be considered the princess of her story.  Plus their music is cooler than those “official” princesses.  So I’ve included one song each from the 11 official princesses, plus a song from 3 of the 4 non-official princesses,² plus the 4 extras mentioned above, and I threw in Megara from Hercules for good measure (primarily because she also has a fairly cool song, and this mix was crying out for hip).³  So that’s a total of 19 songs by strong Disney female characters, presented here for your consideration.  Well, really they’re for my daughter.  But you can enjoy them as well.

Let’s start with the list this time.  For each song, I’ve actually credited the character, which makes sense for my little girl.  However, I didn’t want to completely ignore the talented women who provided the vocals, so I put their names in as extra notes.  Note that in a couple of cases, the songs are duets (typically with the “prince” figure), or even larger ensemble pieces.  Also note that there is actually one voice actor who was not just one, but actually two Disney princesses: Lea Salonga is both Jasmine and Mulan.⁴  Finally, note that every selection here is a single: there is no way in hell I’m tossing you a link to an entire album of Disney music.

Numeric Princess I
    [Fairy Tales Can Come True]

        “Part of Your World” by Ariel {Jodi Benson} [Single]
        “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes” by Cinderella (with animals) {Ilene Woods} [Single]
        “A Whole New World” by Jasmine (with Aladdin) {Lea Salonga & Brad Kane} [Single]
        “Reflection” by Mulan {Lea Salonga} [Single]
        “For the First Time in Forever” by Anna (with Elsa) {Kristen Bell & Idina Menzel} [Single]
        “Belle” by Belle (with townspeople) {Paige O'Hara & Richard White & Chorus—Beauty And the Beast} [Single]
        “I Won't Say (I'm in Love)” by Megara (with the Muses) {Susan Egan} [Single]
        “Once Upon a Dream” by Aurora (with Prince Philip) {Mary Costa & Bill Shirley & Chorus—Sleeping Beauty} [Single]
        “Colours of the Wind” by Pocohontas {Judy Kuhn} [Single]
        “When Will My Life Begin” by Rapunzel {Mandy Moore} [Single]
        “Love” by Maid Marian {Nancy Adams} [Single]
        “A Spoonful of Sugar” by Mary Poppins {Julie Andrews} [Single]
        “How Far I'll Go” by Moana {Auli'i Cravalho} [Single]
        “Almost There” by Tiana {Anika Noni Rose} [Single]
        “Let It Go” by Elsa {Idina Menzel} [Single]
        “Noble Maiden Fair (A Mhaighdean Bhan Uasal)” by Merida (accompanying Queen Elinor) {Emma Thompson and Peigi Barker} [Single]
        “Pay Attention / In a World of My Own” by Alice {Kathryn Beaumont} [Single]
        “With a Smile and a Song” by Snow White {Adriana Caselotti} [Single]
        “The Right Thing to Do” by Elena of Avalor (with Esteban) {Aimee Carrero & Christian Lanz} [Single]⁵
   

Total:  19 tracks,  56:01

Since several of the princesses offered a few different choices, I also ended up learning a lot about the different types of Disney princess songs.⁶  Typically the opening song is an introduction, which sets the scene for the audience and lays out the situation so everyone’s on the same page.  Then there’s generally an “I Want” song: this is where the main character (nearly always the princess⁷) sings longingly about all she doesn’t (yet) have.  Often the “I Want” song is the best choice for a princess: they’re terribly popular, they’re nearly always solos, and they tend to feature strong vocal performances that make them memorable to young girls.  The classic examples of an “I Want” song to be found on this mix are “Part of Your World” by Ariel, “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes” by Cinderalla, “When Will My Life Begin” by Rapunzel (from Tangled), “How Far I’ll Go” by Moana, and “Reflection” by Mulan.

The absolute best “I Want” song of all time (at least in terms of Disney princesses), though, has to go to Tiana, for “Almost There.”  Now, the songs from The Princess and the Frog are just better than other Disney songs in general, and that’s because they’re not really show tunes: they’re much jazzier, which makes them far more palatable (at least in my book).  But “Almost There” is particularly notable in another way: even in the modern era, most “I Want” songs are fairly passive—e.g., listen to the lyrics of “When Will My Life Begin,” which is nice song and all (more pop than show tune, so that’s a point in its favor), but it’s still all about Rapunzel just sitting and wishing.  Not Tiana: she’s not sitting around waiting for her dreams to come true, she’s working her butt off to make them come true.  In fact, while “Almost There” give us our volume title this time around, it’s perhaps instructive to hear the whole verse:

I remember Daddy told me:
Fairy tales can come true.
But you gotta make ’em happen—
It all depends on you.

This is absolutely the sort of message I want for my daughter.  Contrast that with the sappy “I Want” song from Snow White: “Someday My Prince Will Come.”  Okay, it was 1937, sure.  But still: oh, my life will be so much better as soon as a big, strong man comes and sweeps me off my feet?  Puh-lease.  This song also embodies another type of song that I completely made up myself after sifting through dozens and dozens of princess songs: the “Ain’t He Dreamy?” song.  “Someday My Prince Will Come” is probably the worst offender in that camp, but “So This Is Love” (from Cinderella) is pretty bad too.  For that matter, “Something There” (from Beauty and the Beast) drifts dangerously close to this territory.

Beauty and the Beast was problematic in several ways, actually.  The super-popular song is of course “Beauty and the Beast” (a.k.a. the “tale as old as time” song), but Belle doesn’t sing in it—not a single line.  So that didn’t feel appopriate here.  And I already threw out “Something There.”  So it really only left me with “Belle,” which is the opening number.  The introduction song for a princess movie is rarely sung by the princess; it’s more about the princess and might be sung by an expository character (or the chorus).  But “Belle” is really her song, with the townspeople contributing bits here and there.  Plus it’s way more tolerable than the “old as time” one.

Similarly, for Snow White, I just went with the one I could tolerate the easiest: “With a Smile and a Song,” which is nothing to write home about, but at least it doesn’t offend my sensibilities as a father.  Aurora (a.k.a. Sleeping Beauty) is also problematic (for many of the same reasons), but I settled on “Once Upon a Dream,” which, while it does feature the charming prince and consequently verges on “Ain’t He Dreamy?” territory, has the twin virtues of being a) less sappy than “I Wonder” and b) short.

At least those older moves offer lots of choices, so I could throw out the really awful ones.  Jasmine, of course, has the opposite problem: there just aren’t any good choices other than “A Whole New World,” which also features Aladdin.  But it’s fine.  More problematic still was Merida, who just plain doesn’t sing at all.  But the fact of the matter is that Brave is the best of the princess movies,⁸ and Merida is actually one of the official princesses, so I didn’t want her to go unrepresented.  So I’m cheating a bit, but there’s a flashback scene in which Queen Elinor sings a comforting song to toddler Merida.  It only lasts about 12 seconds in the movie, but the soundtrack has the full version, and, most importantly, Merida sings along with her mother at the end of the song, so technically it counts as a princess song.  Yeah, I know: I’m reaching.

Anna and Elsa, of course, were never really in question: “For the First Time in Forever” and “Let It Go” are the songs from Frozen, and, as much I may personally dislike them, I was sort of stuck with them.  Since there are two princesses in Frozen, I felt justified in including two songs from it; “Let It Go” is unquestionably Elsa’s song, and, while Elsa does sing a bit on “For the First Time in Forever,” I think most people would agree that it’s really Anna’s song.  I consider it an “I Want” song, personally, although I’ve read that some people think the one about building a snowman should be considered the “I Want” song for Frozen.  But, hey: this one includes the incredible line “don’t know if I’m elated or gassy,” which is by far the best line spoken by a Disney princess, like, ever.  “Let It Go” I’m just plain sick of, like pretty much the entire rest of the universe.

“Colours of the Wind” is the least worst of a bad bunch for Pocohontas.  “In a World of My Own” is a fun little ditty from Alice in Wonderland.  “I Won’t Say (I’m in Love)” is actually a pretty good song from “tough chick” Megara.  And, while “Love” by Maid Marian certainly does border on “Ain’t He Dreamy?” territory, it has the advantage of being a really pretty song (and it’s also short, so it doesn’t wear out its welcome).

The “princesses” who didn’t make the cut:  Jane (from Tarzan) doesn’t sing anything.  Esmerelda (from The Hunchback of Notre Dame) only sings “God Helps the Outcasts,” which ... no.  Just no.  Nala (from Lion King) isn’t considered a princess because she’s not human; I wouldn’t hold that against her, but there’s no good song choices there.  And Kida (from Atlantis) only fails the princess test for the absolute worst reason: her movie wasn’t a commercial success (yep, that’s an actual official Disney princess rule).  But she also doesn’t sing anything.  No doubt the crazy Disney people think Atlantis failed because it wasn’t a musical.  Naturally that only made me like it better.  But oh well.

That just leaves us with two tracks.  In the case of Mary Poppins, I know that I’m really stretching the definition of “princess” here.  But I offer a few mitigating counterpoints.  Firstly, the original Mary Poppins has, hands-down, the largest collection of non-vomit-inducing songs of any Disney musical ever.  Pretty much every song in that movie rocks.  Secondly, “not animated” is a terrible reason why you can’t be a princess (second only to “not commercially successful”).  But, in the end, what it really comes down to is that the Ultimate Disney Princess CD has “Spoonful of Sugar” on it, and, dammit, that’s just a fun song.  Also a good message about cleaning up your room and whatnot.  What kind of father would I be to leave that one out?

Finally, the third worst reason to bar entry to the Disney princess club is that you’re a character from a TV show rather than a movie.⁹  Elena of Avalor is a princess from the Disney TV show of the same name, and there’s a song in every episode, and they’re actually good songs (well, most of the time).  Elena is not always the singer, so my choices aren’t as broad as they might be, but still there’s several good options.  I went with “The Right Thing to Do,” despite the fact that it’s a duet, because it’s got a little bit of a rap/hip-hop vibe that provides some much-needed (in my opinion) musical diversity for this mix.  Doesn’t make a bad closer for the volume either.

So that’s our Disney princess mix, volume I.  Will there ever be a volume II?  Probably not—this one was painful enough as it was.  But, then again, I do love my daughter, so one never knows.  The great thing about her, though, is that most of the time her musical taste is much better than this: in addition to this mix, I loaded another one onto her tablet.  I haven’t written that one up for my musical mixes series yet, but let’s just say it skews more heavily towards P!nk and Joan Jett than to Julie Andrews and Mandy Moore.  And she loves them both equally.

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1 Fun fact: I’m pretty sure I saw both of these in the theater.  Sleeping Beauty was originally released before I was born, of course, but Disney films have a tendency to be rereleased regularly, and SB hit the screens again in 1970.  I would have been only 4 or so, but I do have a very vague recollection of seeing that big black dragon up on the big screen, at least.  Sword in the Stone came back around in ‘72 and that one I remember very clearly.

2 Although Disney ended up with the rights to Anastasia when it bought Fox a few months ago, I’m still a little iffy on the whole idea of thinking of Anya as a Disney property.

3 Also, a lot of these songs are very short.  Even with 19 tracks, this mix is still just under an hour, which makes it the shortest mix I’ve ever produced.

4 The talented Ms. Salonga was born in the Philippines, in case you were wondering.

5 Few of the Elena of Avalor songs have been officially released, which is a shame, because they’re generally pretty good, as Disney princess songs go.  This one is only available on YouTube as far as I know.

6 Actually, I gather they’re just the general types of songs in any musical.

7 Nearly always.  Of the official princesses, only Jasmine is not the protagonist of her story—the movie is named Aladdin, after all.  Of the unofficial ones that I added, Megara and Maid Marian definitely qualify, and Mary Poppins is a bit of a toss-up ... is she the protagonist, or is it the children?

8 Most likely the lack of singing is a strong reason for my opinion on that score.

9 Closely followed by: you’re a character from a movie, but it’s a sequel.  Who makes these rules anyway?

End of another birthday season

When I announced the new blog schedule, I had hoped that I wouldn’t have any occasion to do a “short post week” twice in a row.  However, I suppose I failed to account for the March birthday season.  So we’re busy surviving another birthday weekend—second this month—and the tyranny of an unchecked six-year-old (who already thought she was the center of the universe) should not be underestimated.

Funny story: Friday night she apparently discovered that Toys R Us was “shutting down forever!”  So, despite the fact that she probably can’t even remember the last time she went to one, we were required to go on Saturday afternoon.  (Extra fun fact: if you followed the link about birthday weekends, you’ll notice that I covered her trip to Toys R Us/Babies R Us—the exact same one we were just at, actually—on the occasion of her second birthday.  In that discussion, I noted that: “Maybe Amazon is about to put them out of business too.  Wouldn’t surprise me.  (Or disappoint me, really.)”  Practically prophetic, as it turns out.)  Other than that, our weekend has been fairly predictable: screenings of movies such as Hop and Ferdinand, a morass of Littlest Pet Shop toys underfoot, a sparkling pink cake that looks as if a unicorn barfed it up, and enough replays of “Barbie Girl” to make one reconsider one’s life choices.  The one unusual point came in the food situation.  Oh, sure: we got McDonald’s, and we got donuts.  But, somehow, my little girl, who wants a cheeseburger everywhere she ever goes (including KFC and Subway), and is offended when she can’t get one, sent me to Jack-in-the-Box for chicken nuggets, scrambled eggs, and a grilled cheese sandwich.  (Which, due to JitB’s fantastically varied menu, she received.)  So that was ... unexpected.

But, overall, a happy birthday weekend for the littlest one, I believe, and we’ll shoot for a longer post next week.  Perhaps I’ll even combine a little family news with music news and share the Disney princess mix I concocted for her birthday.  Till then.

Birthday Weekend: Middle 12

This weekend is the Smaller Animal’s birthday weekend, so there’s not much time for blogging pursuits.  The only movie out right now that he wants to see is Early Man, which is the latest Aardman effort.  Unfortunately, it seems that the big splash of A Wrinkle in Time has pushed the smaller movie out into the fringes, and almost every place still playing the film in our area is a) not really in our area, meaning it’s a half-an-hour drive or more away, and b) at remarkably silly times, like 9AM.  Who is really getting up at 7AM to go watch a movie?  Literally the only place playing Early Man in the Los Angeles area any time after noon is the theater in the tourist-trap shopping cluster outside Universal Studios, and we simply didn’t have the time to take out the second mortgage necessary to be able to afford that.  So we just ended up renting Coco from Amazon.  I actually didn’t want to like that movie—I’m quite sensitive to the argument that Coco is just The Book of Life redone by a bunch of white people, and that even aside from questions of cultural appropriation, Pixar is 3 years too late to the party and is just using its massive reputation to club a bigger audience into the seats, whereas Book of Life was almost criminally underrated (it really was a great little flick).  But, despite all that, Pixar just doesn’t make a bad movie.^*  Highly recommended.

Food-wise, we’ve done Panda Express and Subway so far (specifically, lots of orange chicken and meatball subs).  Oh, and birthday donuts.  Still KFC to come for dinner tonight.  Gift-wise, there’s a number of videogames, of course, and some Pokémon crystal things to go on some wristband thingy.  I don’t know; I’m old.

Anyway, that’s all you get from me this week.  Tune in next week for a longer discussion about ... well, whatever I find to meander on about, I suppose.

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* Okay, maybe Planes.

Contemplation of Disinterment

Today I dug a hole for our guinea pig, mainly because I thought it might finally be time to reclaim that shoebox-sized space in our freezer.  I would say it took me a good half an hour to dig a hole which is perhaps a foot square and maybe half a foot deep.  If I’m being generous.  The whole time I was performing this arduous task, all I could think about was all those people on TV who discover they have to dig up a body, because there’s some vital clue that was buried with it, or there’s some lost artifact in the coffin, or because the body itself is a necessary component in the spell that’s needed to save the world, and, several minutes later, there’s one or two characters at the bottom of a hole they have to jump up to get out of.  And, as I was thinking about that, one word kept recurring to me: bullshit.

Also, why do these people always have shovels handy?  Before I spent half an hour digging the hole, I had to spend half an hour locating the shovel, which I guess I didn’t put back in the garden shed from the last time we had a pet die.  If you had come to me last night at this time and told me I needed to help you dig up a body, I’m pretty sure we’d have still been digging when the sun came up this morning, and probably not in any danger of getting that nice satisfying “thunk” of shovel-on-coffin any time soon.

But perhaps I’ve spent too much time thinking about this topic ...

Happy (slightly early) New Year's

Tonight is New Year’s Eve, and we’re all prepared to drink sparkling beverages and eat appetizers while we watch fireworks on TV.  We even got some ... well, we usually call them poppers in our house, but don’t try Googling that, unless you want to learn all sorts of new and exciting facts about drug culture.  (To be fair, I should have remembered that term from reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but that whole experience is a bit of a blur.  Which is to be expected, I suppose.)  Wikipedia has them listed as bang snaps, which is a super-bizarre term that I not only have never heard another human utter, but I’m relativley convinced that no human ever has uttered.  Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.  But, anyways, we found a giant-size box of them at Costco (because, of course)—I’m pretty sure serious fireworks are illegal in California, but apparently a bit of silver fulminate slips under the wire—and we just couldn’t resist.  So we’re going to add a new component to our New Year’s Eve spectacular celebration, and then probably regret it tomorrow morning when our patio is littered with all the leftover cigarette paper bits.

Two weeks ago, I posted a bit more post-surgery news (check out the links in that post for further details, if you need them).  In that, I described the Smaller Animal’s suture granuloma and mentioned there was a chance they would want to do a second (although extremely minor) surgery to remove it.  Well, the good news this week is that we finally got him back to the hospital the day after Christmas (visit was delayed due to sickness), and spoke to a different doctor, who confirmed that, yes, the potential infection seemed to have disappeared, and, yes, that little black line at the bottom of the former bubble was indeed the stitch, and he could just cut the end off it and leave the rest and we could come back later if any more of it came close to the surface, and he could just do it right now, and just lay back, and I started to open my mouth to say “should I come around there and hold his hand while you do it?” and he said “it’s done.”  And we were like, oh.  Okay.  And then we came home.  So that’s done.

And that’s all I’ve got for you today, as per the new blog schedule.  Tune in next wek for a longer post.

There's a Kind of Hush

This year my annual holiday-themed post is reaching you right on Christmas Eve.  And, when I say “holiday-themed,” I do actually mean that.  I’ve ranged the gamut from extensively quoting Jesus to exploring pagan Yule traditions, and I’ve at least touched on Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Pancha Ganapati, among others.  Plus I’ve given you not just one, but two mixes of alternative Christmas music.  (If you want to read all my past holiday posts, you can get the list in my series listing post on the informals.)

Typically I use this post to talk about why you should value your family, or feel goodwill towards the general populace, or that sort of thing.  And that’s an excellent message for Christmas Day, and also for Kwanzaa, and even Yule.  But Christmas Eve is, to me, more about anticipation.  It’s the sense of waiting, the calm before the storm of wrapping paper and videogames and Christmas cookies and telephone calls to absent family members.  This is mostly a good waiting, even though the kids can get frustrated sometimes that Christmas isn’t coming along fast enough for their tastes.  But that’s why we have separate traditions for Christmas Eve than for Christmas: it’s lots of stuff to get the little ones’ minds off the fact that they can’t bear to wait one more night.  Many people do their big Christmas meal on Christmas Eve, and some folks also open a single gift the night before, to help ease that crushing anticipation.  There are other traditions too, like the putting out of the Christmas cookies and milk (or eggnog, or beer, or whatever you think Santa will like best).  Or the hanging of the stockings, or the addition of one final Christmas ornament—in my parents’ house, for many years that was the placement of a holiday verison of the starship Enterprise on the mantel; when you pushed the button underneath, Spock flipped open his communicator and wished all of Starfleet a very merry Christmas.  These are all just distractions for the younger family members of course—with maybe just a touch of hopefully wearing them out so they’ll fall asleep quickly and Santa can come at last.

When I was a kid, Christmas Eve was for going over to my grandmother’s house, where we had the standard holiday mega-feast,¹ followed by exchanging gifts with my grandparents, aunt and uncle, and my two cousins.  These gifts were often less serious, since the extended family were the people you had the least idea about what to buy.  So often you’d just give up trying to find something they actually wanted and just go straight for something that would make them laugh.  There was a long period of time when either me or my brother just counted down the moments till we could open our cheap cologne and proudly proclaim (in unison) in our best Eddie Murphy: “Brut! by Faberge.”  And everyone would giggle, though undoubtedly at least some of them had no clue what we were talking about.

So that’s what Christmas Eve means to me.  It’s a little bit of delicious anticipation, and a small measure of practice run for the serious gift unwrapping and eating to come, and a time to just take a breath ... sometimes, the last truly relaxing time of the year.  Tomorrow there will be schedules to keep and visits to make and instructions to read and phone calls to field.  But today ... today is just chill, and bask in the glory of family.

We have a lot to be thankful for this year, of course.  Our middle human child survived a fairly scary heart surgery with surprisingly little fallout, and I continue to have a great job where they put up with my eccentricities and pay me a comfortable wage to do so.  And we continue to live in a beautiful house, in beautiful sunny southern California, with lots of room for us to avoid each other when that’s necessary and to come together again when we need to, and a pool with a spa out back where the humans will spend nearly every afternoon in the summertime.  We’ve suffered losses, true: for several years now I’ve told you that our family consisted of 5 humans, 2 dogs, 3 cats, 1 guinea pig, and assorted fish and shrimp and snails, and last year we even added a bearded dragon.  This year we are but 5 humans, 2 dogs, 2 cats, and a fishtank ... a runaway and two funerals² have shrunk the family size this year.³  But we all still feel very privileged to have each other, and to be lucky enough to expect a decent-sized bounty from the Big Man tomorrow.  So, today, we wait ...

Anticipation is a funny thing, if you think about it.  It’s torturous, especially when you’re smaller.  But it’s also exquisite—it’s a sensation to be savored, building to an inevitable climax of some almost unilaterally positive emotion: joy, or pleasure, or relief, or (in the case of Christmas) satisfaction, with a touch of decadence.  And, in just one more week, we’ll have New Year’s Eve, with even more anticipation, culminating in the release of a new year, a fresh start, the chance to put all the bad parts of the old year behind us,⁴ and embrace a new, as-yet-unsullied future.  Anticipation is nice, is what I’m saying; no matter how much you want it to be over, you can’t help reveling in it just a little.  Because it’s a sign that good things can still happen, are still happening.  It’s a sign of hope, and a sign of life.  And life goes on.

So that’s what Christmas Eve means to me.  From all of us here, to all of you out there, we hope your anticipation is just as savory as is ours.  And we hope that your Christmas (if you celebrate it) and your New Year’s (if you celebrate it) is glorious and wonderful and all that you hoped it would be.  And, even if you celebrate something else entirely, or perhaps your particular celebration has already been put to bed, we still wish you hope, and peace, and happiness.  Because you deserve it.

We all do.

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1 “Holiday feast” in this case means it was basically the same meal for Christmas Eve, Thanksgiving, and Easter.

2 Honestly, one loss is so recent that there is one funeral yet to be conducted.

3 And, if you’re one of those people who think the animals don’t “count,” I’ll refer you to one of my earliest blogs to educate you that “pets” are people too, for the long version.  For the short version: I don’t judge your family; don’t judge mine.

4 And, let’s face it: if you happen to live in the United States, the old year has been overflowing with bad parts.

A bit more post-surgery news after all, as it turns out ...

Well, I had hoped that there would be no further surgery news to report as regards my middle child, a.k.a. the Smaller Animal.  But there’s a bit more, as it turns out.  If you’re not caught up on the latest, you may want to check out the last update and possibly work backward from there.  (Note that this counts as a partial post in my “off week,” according to the new blog schedule.)

This past week, the kid developed a “bubble” up at the top of his incision scar.  At first it just seemed like a skin irritation of some kind, but soon we could tell there was pus gathering underneath it.  So we took him back in to the cardiology department of Children’s Hospital, where they told us that he has a suture granuloma.  This is a type of abcess that develops when some part of the dissolvable stiches (generally one of the knots) doesn’t dissolve and/or get absorbed completely.  In this case, the granuloma is pretty solid and there’s no discharge, which means that there’s no sign of infection so far.  Also, the doctor pressed the granuloma pretty hard to make sure it wasn’t too delicate, so it seems unlikely that the abcess would rupture any time soon.  However, while the chance of infection is low, the danger is significant, because the site is directly over his heart.  If an infection were to settle in, and if it were to migrate down instead of outward, that would be pretty bad.

So they gave us two options:  1) Have a very minor surgery, essentially right away, to remove the suture remnants.  This would be light sedation (i.e. no intubation tube) but still full anæsthesia (i.e. no eating after midnight, we’d have to show up at the crack of dawn, etc).  2) Go on 10 days of antibiotics and give the stitch more time to get absorbed naturally.  At the end of that time, if there’s no improvement, he gets the minor surgery anyway.  But at least there’s a chance he could avoid it.

So we went with option #2.  Since 10 days from the day we went in is Christmas Eve, we’re going back on Friday.  Hopefully it ends up being a wasted trip entirely and they say, “nah, everything’s fine.”  And, even if they don’t, this type of minor procedure is nothing compared to what he’s survived so far with flying colors.  But, still: it’s a bit more stress, and it’s likely I’ll have to take another day off from work, which sort of bums me out due to a big project going on (although my work is very awesome about such things: my bosses—including our CEO—have already let me know that I shouldn’t worry about the project ... but of course I still will, because I’m me).

Now, in the couple of days since then, the abcess has collapsed, which might mean that it ruptured and all the pus leaked out.  Except that we can’t find any evidence of that.  So it could also mean that the antibiotics kicked the crap out of whatever infection was developing in there and now there’s nothing to worry about.  I’m thinking that, if it continues to look as benign as it does right now, we might take him in a day or two early to see if we can duck out of the surgery appointment.  Because the downside of maybe having to make that two-hour-long round-trip twice is easily outweighed by the upside of maybe not having to do the second trip at all.  But we’ll see.

So, it’s a very minor setback, and nothing for anyone to get too excited or worried about.  But I thought I’d let everyone know, in case it was of interest to those following along.

Heart is where the Home Is

Things around our house are finally getting back to normal after the Smaller Animal’s surgery.  Make sure you’ve read last week’s update, if you haven’t already.  This will be the final update here, barring anything new and major coming up.  Next week I hope to get back around to entirely-surgery-unrelated topics.

And that’s primarily because there just isn’t much to report.  He’s been to both his regular cardiologist for a standard check-up, and back to the hospital for removal of suture, staple, and steri-strips.¹  Everyone who’s seen him agrees that he’s doing amazingly well.  He’s almost completely back to normal, aside from repeated attempts to scratch his chest (which we have to discourage, according to the docs and nurses).  We’ve finally started putting the brakes on lording it over his siblings, and, while they can’t go back to physically trying to kill each other, they’ve pretty much all graduated from the “we’re being nice to you because you might have died” phase and have moved on to the “I’d forgotten how much of a pain in my ass you can be” phase.  Which is actually sort of nice, oddly, in that it represents a return to normalcy.

Of course, he still has to wash his chest with two separate washcloths and can’t allow the shower to spray directly on it.  That keeps up until the scabs finish forming and then fall off.  He also can’t submerge the incision (so no baths or hot tubbing) or put any cream or lotion on it² until all the pinkish-redness fades completely.  And even then, no riding in the front seat or doing anything that might involve falling or getting hit until a full 8 weeks has passed, which is also when his sibling can go back to tackling him and sitting on him and whatnot, presumably.³

During this healing phase, his skin is being held together by that dissolvable stitch, and his bones are actually held together by a thin wire.  This wire is now a permanent fixture of the Smaller Animal’s body.  It’s not enough to set off metal detectors,⁴ but we have to notify anyone that wants to give him a CAT scan or MRI in the future that it will produce a blurry area in their readouts.  I believe I reported previously that his elder sibling was pretty jazzed about him now having a bit of a dead person in him.⁵  The demonspawn had already proclaimed that this made their little brother “undead.”  Now that they know there’s a bit of metal in him as well, they’ve proclaimed this makes him an undead cyborg.  What more can one ask for in a brother?

I suppose this is the point in a life-changing experience where we typically stop and reflect on what we’ve learned.  But I’m not entirely sure what that is, other than how incredibly lucky we are.⁶  Lucky to live in a major metropolitan area, where it just so happens that one of the best cardiac valve replacement surgeons in the country—if not the entire world—is also living and practicing medicine.  Lucky to have made it 11½ years on a leaky valve, to the point where my kid is nearly 5 feet tall and just over a hundred pounds, which gave him a much better shot at a positive outcome.  Lucky to have a kid who’s put up with all this massive amount of pain and discomfort with hardly any complaining at all.  Lucky to have friends and family who have been very supportive, a job where I could take as much time as I needed, a homeschool group who’s been feeding us for two weeks now so we haven’t had to cook.  All of these things have contributed to this experience being far gentler than we had any right to expect, and I thank all of you folks reading this, all those folks not reading this who nonetheless contributed in some way, and whatever engine runs the universe—be it random, kharmic, or divine—for having this play out as it did.

It’s possible that we were supposed to learn to be kinder to each other with the limited time we have on this earth.  But then I think that lesson was already pretty much in our faces from the time the kid was born, so I’m hesitant to fall back on that old chestnut.  It’s also possible that we were supposed to learn that it pays not to rush into big life decisions, particularly those that are medical in nature, without doing lots of research (which we obviously did, in this case).  Or maybe there’s no lesson at all—maybe Patton Oswalt is right and everything is chaos and we should just be kind.  I’m okay with that too.  It’s just that, if the universe were trying to tell me something, I’d hate to miss it.

At the end of the day, our kid is home, desperately trying to beat Breath of the Wild on his new Nintendo Switch and chilling out by watching the new Punisher series with me.⁷  He’s sleeping well, which I know because he’s sleeping with me, at least temporarily.  We all feel better if there’s someone next to him in case he has an issue in the middle of the night, and his old sleeping place—the top bunk in the demonspawn’s room—is not really an option right now.  While he was in the hospital, I started reading him a book—the first book in the Wednesday Tales trilogy.⁸  Now, at night when he goes to bed, I’ve started reading it again, trying to finish it up.  It’s been a long time since he was willing to sit and listen to me read to him.  I hadn’t realized that I missed it.  But I guess I did.  It’s nice.  I’m really enjoying it now.  Not sure that counts as a lesson, but ...

I think I’ll take it.

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1 For those who like medical details:  The suture was to close the hole where his chest tube was poking out.  The staple was at the bottom of his dissolvable stitch, and I assume it was just there to keep the stitch from unraveling prematurely.  The steri-strips were basically just little strips of packing tape that were holding the incision closed along with the stitch.

2 Not even neosporin, which is making me crazy.

3 Fun fact: 8 weeks from his surgery date is exactly January 1st.  So I fully expect the day after New Year’s Day to be pretty crazy around here.

4 Currently.  The doctor pointed out that they it’s always possible that they might make more sensitive metal detectors in the future.

5 This would be the cadaveric valve installed as part of the Ross procedure.

6 If you are religiiously inclined, you may wish to substitute “blessed” for “lucky.”  Go ahead.  I won’t stop you.

7 Both highly recommended, by the way.

8 Also highly recommended.  Even more so, really.

Heart Homecoming

Well, I’m a bit tuckered out tonight, but I have time for a quick update on the Smaller Animal’s surgery.

We brought him into Children’s Hospital at 7am on Monday; they took him back for surgery around 9:15am.  By that point he was already doped up and feeling pretty happy.  By 1pm he was back in ICU, his Ross Procedure a great success.  His surgeon stopped by to let us know that all had gone well, but it was a very short conversation—Dr. Starnes is a man of few words.  The patient was, as expected, very groggy for most of the rest of that day, although he could recognize us and answer questions ... well, yes or no questions, at least: they didn’t take out his breathing tube until around 1am.  By the next morning he was sitting up and playing his new Switch; by dinner, he was already up to eating meatballs and peas.  After dinner, they removed the chest tube—it was the only time that he would cry (or even complain) while in the ICU.

On Wednesday he started doing walks around the floor.  That night, they finally removed his dressing and we got to see his cool new Frankenstein scar.  By Thursday morning, they were prepping him to go home.  A little after noon, we left the hospital.  (This, by the way, was more than a day earlier than we were told was the absolute minimum stay he could expect.  Which is pretty positive, overall.)

Life at home was a little better than in the ICU, as you might imagine.  He had his familiar food around him, no one was telling him he couldn’t eat bread because it’s made with milk and his stupid parents made the mistake of mentioning he’s lactose-intolerant (for the record: lactose intolerant does not mean you can’t consume anything that’s been waved near a cow), and everyone was falling over themselves to do things for him.  He got to sit on the reclining couch and he didn’t even have to put the legs up (or down) himself.  We finished up the new season of Stranger Things in 2 or 3 marathon sessions.  The Lasix (a diuretic) they had him on was killing us, because it made him need to pee every 15 minutes (if not more often), and getting up and down off the sofa when your breastbone has been cracked in half and jammed back together and wrapped up with a wire is not so easy.  But it wasn’t so bad, and he never complained, or even asked for more pain meds.

Which brings us to today.  Early this morning he developed a headache that was so bad it made him cry—and, remember, this was only the second time he had cried since his surgery, and the first time was when they pulled a big tube out of his chest and cinched up the skin around the hole by just yanking the sutures taut.  So it was obviously pretty bad.  Then he started complaining of nausea, and then the barfing commenced.  Needless to say, we took him back to the hospital.  Now, in general, going to the emergency room with a sick kid is a pointless exercise that consumes hours upon hours of your life and, in the end, your kid just gets better on their own and the doctors do absolutely nothing you couldn’t have done yourself.  I would love to tell you that it’s different when you have a kid that just had heart surgery under a week ago, but unfortunately that would be a lie.  But, on the plus side, they took another chest X-ray, which indicated that all the fluid is out of his lungs, which means he can get off the Lasix, which was probably the source of the problem all along.  Guess what happens when you’re peeing every 5 to 15 minutes?  You get dehydrated.  Know what the symptoms of dehydration are?  Major headaches and barfing.  So I guess that was something we couldn’t do at home after all.

Anyhow, the upshot is that, tonight, he’s been more animated than I’ve seen him in quite a while.  (Because, you know, even in the days before the surgery, the nerves and stress meant that he was a bit more subdued than usual.)  But tonight he was joking around with his siblings, doing a lot more things on his own, actually excited about eating for a change ... actually showing some signs that this whole ripping-him-open-and-putting-him-back-together thing might have left him better off than before.  Which we’re all pretty excited about, obviously.

So, it’s been quite an ordeal, and a very stressful week where none of us got much sleep—and the sleep we did get was absolutely terrible: I’ll probably have to go to the chiropractor every day next week to unkink all the joints that I’ve ruined from sleeping at the hospital—but I think the end is in sight.  We would like to thank our doctors—Dr. Starnes, who did the operation; Dr. Leong, his regular cardiologist; and Dr. Wong, a partner of Dr. Leong’s who visited him in the hospital several times and had the final say on getting him out so quickly—and our nurses—Kristen, Nicole, Natalie, Amber, and Sofya—and Leon, our respiratory tech who got his breathing tube out so he could talk again.  And we’d like to thank all of our friends and family who sent us their positive energy, in whatever method they were most comfortable doing.  Plus a big shout-out to our homeschooling group, who’s been feeding us since we got home by dropping off food every day so we don’t have to think about cooking.  All of you have been a great help and have made it much easier to get through this.

Looking forward to happier days ahead.

Final approach to heart repair

First, a recap, so you know what we’re talking about:

• Initial post (on this blog) about my son’s heart condition—rough description of the issue, including a link to my original writings about it
• Post giving the heart condition update—this is when the doctors told us it was time to start thinking about the surgery
• The actual surgery announcement
• Brief description of this past pre-surgery month
• Even briefer surgery countdown

So, this post is reaching you in between our pre-surgery appointment, which was this past Friday, and the actual surgery, which is tomorrow (as you read this).  Since we’ve had another trip to the hospital—far more medical than our last one, which was mostly about talking to the doctor—I can now also give you an even more thorough

Brief medical breakdown (for those who like gory details):

• The exact procedure being done is called the Ross procedure.
• Side note: the nurse practitioner said that Dr. Starnes will attempt to do an aortic valve repair, which would theoretically obviate the need for a replacement valve altogether.
• Of course, Dr. Starnes himself never mentioned this; presumably that’s because the chances of success are slim, and he didn’t want to get our hopes up.
• Therefore, we’re not getting our hopes up.
• The replacement valve will be a cadaveric valve, also called a “homograft.”
• The surgery will take about 4 hours.
• We will be arriving at CHLA at 7am.  No food after 11pm the night before (not a problem, as he’ll be asleep by then), and no liquids after 5:30am.
• He will come into the ICU with chest tubes and wires; hopefully already extubated.^*  He’ll be on morphine until the tubes and wires are gone (which will hopefully be in under 24 hours) and then on Lortab (i.e. oxycodone) and OTC painkillers (e.g. Tylenol) after that.
• He’ll be getting back to solid food as quickly as he’ll tolerate it.  Also, they will encourage him to get up and moving as soon as he can; it helps with drainage, apparently.
• He will most likely be in the hospital for a total of 5 – 7 days.
• During this time, mother, father, and older sibling (who is over 18) can be in the room at any time.
• Younger sibling will not be allowed in at all (due to “flu season”), so hopefully he can get out of bed and come to her when she visits.  Otherwise, Google Hangouts.

Practical stuff, if you’re here to see what our schedule will be:

• I will be completely off from work for the week (I actually started as of Friday, due to the pre-surgery appointment).  I may poke my head into the chat rooms, just because there will be lots of waiting and I may get bored.  Or then again I may not.  Nice to have the freedom.
• The following week I will return to work, but perhaps not physically.  I’ll probably work from home at least part of the week, depending on where we’re at with the recovery period.  I’m very lucky to have a job where I can totally play that by ear.^**
• Similarly, I will probably not be doing anything related to any of my online responsibilities, including but not limited to my position as admin at Heroscapers.com, my various CPAN modules, and this very blog.^***  But then again I might.  If I get bored.
• The Mother will likely not be doing anything for the entire two weeks (if not longer).
• The demonspawn (our eldest) will be missing classes on Monday (already cleared with the professors), but returning to class on Wednesday.
• The sprite (our youngest) is just on extended vacation for a few weeks.

Final thoughts:

Time is winding down until this whole ordeal is over, one way or another.  I hope for a good outcome.  I even go so far as to expect a good outcome, as best I can.  I would like to believe that the universe is not done with my son, even if it’s only to keep teaching me valuable lessons about what’s important in life.  But the truth is, anything can happen.  And, as I pointed out in one of those other posts above, it’s ostensibly true that anything can happen at any time, and I try to remember that as much as possible.  But having that “anything” shoved down your throat with a bunch of fatalistic (literally) medical forms is an unusually stark reminder of the mortality of your loved ones.  Bit of a signpost for the fragility of life, and routine, and family.

Except that’s wrong.  Family is not fragile.  This past week the two younger kids (or “the littles,” as we sometimes call them) went to CostCo with The Mother.  While there, they picked out giant teddy bears (not quite as big as they are, but pretty close): one with a dress, and one with a T-shirt and jeans.  These were promptly named after themselves, and it was agreed that, when the Smaller Animal went to the hospital, he would take the girl-bear with him, and the sprite would keep the boy-bear with her.  You know, as traveling representatives.  So that, no matter how far apart they are in the coming week, they’ll have each other, via proxy bear.  That’s the strength of my family.

No matter how difficult it may be for me to remain positive, my son has no such problems.  He continues to smile regularly and make jokes.  As I write this, he’s in the other room playing video games with one of his best friends, who’s spending the night with him in a tent on the floor of our front room.  He’s having fun.  I’m doing my best to be inspired by how well he’s taking it.  I’d like to tell you I’m being strong for him, but I think it might actually be other way around.

So we’re going to keep on supporting each other, and clinging to each other, and we’re going to get through this.  I can’t yet see how it’s going to come out in the end, but I know that, whatever happens, we’ll be stronger for having had each other, and for having had this wonderful child.  Now it’s time to see what the future has to offer.



For those of you who know us personally—and/or who just feel so inclined—we will gratefully accept your positive energies, be they in the form of prayers, rituals, spells, or just good vibes, should any of those be a thing you believe in.  And, even if not, thank all of you for your support and friendship throughout the years.

Once we have further news, I will be disseminating the information as best I can.  If you’re connected to me on Facebook, there will likely be a post there, as well as one in the chat rooms at work.  Barring that, I may try to return and edit this post with the outcome at some point.  Worst case scenario is you’ll just have to wait a week.  But probably not.

Thanks again.


UPDATE: As of Tuesday morning (11/7/17), the Smaller Animal had a successful surgery, is back in ICU, and finally got his breathing tube out (at around 1am).  The surgeon said the procedure went well; he did look at repairing the valve, but it wasn’t feasible, so they went ahead with the Ross procedure.  (Or, as his older sibling put it, “there’s a little piece of a dead person in him now ... it’s kinda neat.”)  He’s talking, more or less alert, and surprisingly not complaining about the myriad of tubes still sticking out of him.  So he’s a trooper, and he’s doing great.

Thx to everyone for your positive energy.  We all appreciate it.

__________

* That means with the breathing tube removed.

** And thank you very much to my bosses, who have been extremely supportive throughout this process.

*** For more info on my online responsibilities, you could read my posts about Heroscape, CPAN, and the masthead paradox.