First Tooth - GONE!

Moose lost his first tooth! Click on the picture below to see three shots of him being all funny with the camera.

first tooth

Long Live the Witch Doctor

I haven't taken the time to post a lot lately, till today with my third post of the day.

A long while ago I wrote that Moose and I both saw a Craniosacral therapist. I like referring to her as his Witch Doctor, in that it was tough to tell exactly what she did. From just figuring out where to lay her hands, she did some amazing things including helping me recover from a pulled muscle, draining my sinuses (I'm serious), and helping Moose become more focused and alert. Over time she, Norma, became a good friend of the family, regularly working on Moose, less frequently working on me, and even taking numerous voice lessons from Wife. It seemed she and Moose had a deeper connection than we did with her. He knew she was there to help him feel better. Hell, it was her job to make everyone else just feel better, but somehow the two of them were connected, mentally.

It's unfortunate that no one was able to help her feel better. On August 9 she died after a five-year long battle with breast cancer. Wife wrote about her at the beginning of this month. We only just learned of her death last weekend, since she went to a different state to die with her family nearby. Anyway, soon after we met in 2005, she already had Stage 4 cancer (i.e. it was advanced) and had prognosis of about five months to live. She held it at bay WITHOUT chemotherapy for a handful for years and led a good, healthy, active life. The disease became too much for her in a matter of just a few short weeks.

It's hard to believe she's gone. She died less than two months after our move away from SCT, so there are several friends we've not seen since the move. We don't actively "miss" her any more than we miss our other SCT friends since we no longer were going to see her regularly. Still, it's odd knowing she's gone. She's sorely missed. Moose is still saying "night night Norma" at least once per day, so I wonder if he's aware of her passing. I'm not sure, but I bet somehow he knows.

Sometimes I find death depressing, but this time I'm more at peace. It's not that I'm at all happy Norma is gone, but in her case I'm relieved that she's no longer battling cancer. I do think it's just wrong that a fifty-something woman who did nothing but help others her entire life had to be consumed by that disease. Just doesn't seem fair to me.

I know, I know: Life ain't fair. Perhaps death is, though? Hell, I dunno.

Regardless of your own view on life and death, please keep Norma and her family in your thoughts for the next day or two.

Toothy Moose

Be sure to take a look at Wife's post earlier this evening about Moose losing his first tooth!

Fall is here?

Even though I'm not certain where in the world the month of July went, I'm in a particularly good mood today because I'm excited for the autumn. It's odd to say this, I realize, especially since my last post was about spending summers on our screen porch. However, I'm ready for the summer to be over. Summer was a time of transition, upheaval, and HEAT. OK, heat is nice in certainly places and situations, haha, but I'm looking forward to the weather, AND MY LIFE, cooling off just a bit. I'm getting settled into the job best I can for now, and our house is feeling like home.

Also, I'm excited to finally get back into finishing up these interviews for my dissertation. The data I have thus far is very interesting, and I'm looking forward to filling out the sample and moving onward more heavily into the data analysis. I have another interview Thursday back in SCT, so that should be good. I hope it leads to just 3 or 4 more interviews, and then I just may be done. We shall see, though...all part of a larger iterative process of analyzing data and building a theory from the ground up. It'll be good to get my "scholar" hat back on my head. I've had enough of the life transition stuff for a while, (though I certainly don't begrudge the reasons for the move!).

K, bye.

Summer on the Porch

This isn't the greatest picture photographically, but this happens to be a shot of my point of view right now. This picture was taken in July, though (note the patriotic decorations). I'm presently sitting on our screened porch, reading an article on creativity, writing this blog post, while watching Moose playing in the pool (kiddie pool). One of the many things that sold us on this house was this porch. We've already sat out here for numerous meals at various times of day. It's just fantastic, I must say. Well OK, it's hotter then HELL right now, but I'm enjoying the outdoors nevertheless.

(it's good to have the wireless Internet access set up too...glad it extends out here to the porch!)

Wife is inside teaching a voice lesson right now, if you can believe it, which is the reason why us "boys" were banished outside. One of her students from SCT was nearby visiting her grandmother, so she called yesterday to see if she could take a lesson today. I do hope, for Wife's sake, that this is just the first of many, MANY lessons that will be taught in the living room of New Chesterley. We're hoping that the move to Large State Capital will bring about a new, and more prolific, group of students for Wife's at-home studio.

Ah, a breeze just came through. Sigh.

I've had a decent couple of days working on the diss. Status report: I have stopped trying to find participants at this point. The professors aren't even around, let alone any students working on senior projects. This isn't really a surprise to me, though I had hoped to have all interviews completed prior to the move. Oh well. I'll have to extend the interviewing out a month or two into the fall semester.

The good thing is that now I have time to do the edits my committee wanted me to do on the proposal/first half of the diss. I am SO glad that DC had me write the first three chapters as the proposal itself. It's a big relief to have half of the writing completed already. So, I don't mind the editing for now, though I do look forward to having the interviews completed so I don't have to depend on anyone else but myself to get the work done. I still plan to finish sometime this fall.

OK, that's about it. I'll try to publish some more pictures of the house when I can. Bye.

Moose is going to be Houdini

Take a look at this post over at Wife's blog. Great Scott!