I’m a Mémé! Oth­er­wise known as a grand­moth­er 🙂 My baby girl had a baby girl on Sun­day, Sep­tem­ber 11. Lit­tle Esther is absolute­ly beau­ti­ful, of course — she looks a lot like her moth­er did as an infant.

Both Mom­ma and baby are healthy. I’m for­tu­nate enough to be in Oma­ha with them for now, and I’m enjoy­ing every minute of my time here. There’s noth­ing else like the smell of a sweet, clean infant. It’s def­i­nite­ly worth all the sleep loss.

We’re get­ting lots of good singing and read­ing time togeth­er. I was very hap­py to be able to find Pamela Balling­ham’s Earth Moth­er Lul­la­bies from Around the World series (vol­umes I, II, and III) on CD, as I near­ly wore out the cas­sette ver­sions play­ing them to Katie while car­ry­ing her and after she was born. They’re a fam­i­ly tra­di­tion now!

One of the first books I bought for her? A is for Activist! She’s also fond of Dream Ani­mals: A Bed­time Jour­ney. We’re going to have to find a new copy of Jen­nifer­’s Rab­bit, as Katie’s copy has dis­ap­peared, and we’re very fond of the illus­trat­ed ver­sion of Tom Pax­ton’s mar­velous song.

I’ve updat­ed the arti­cle on our card sys­tem and added a Word doc­u­ment that has blank task cards, to help peo­ple make their own cards. That has been request­ed by sev­er­al dif­fer­ent peo­ple over time, and I final­ly found the orig­i­nal Word doc­u­ment, which made it eas­i­er to do so.

I’m con­sid­er­ing fur­ther updates to that sec­tion, as some of the resources I orig­i­nal­ly linked to have dis­ap­peared and it seems to need more expla­na­tion. I’ll think on it a bit more, though.

The NaBloPo­Mo prompt for today:
What is the first thing you see when you walk in your house?

Right now, the first thing any­body sees is Sam’s desk. No, that isn’t pre­cise­ly right. If you’re look­ing straight ahead at the wall, you see a col­lage by Katie, which is much love­li­er.

The NaBloPo­Mo prompt for today:
How do you feel when you return home at the end of the day?

I’m not sure I should have answered this one, as I doubt that my answer will be in sync with the intent of the ques­tion. I don’t leave home every day to go to work, or leave home every day, peri­od.

How­ev­er, when I do leave home, how I feel when I return depends on many fac­tors. How did I feel before leav­ing? How long was I gone, and how much phys­i­cal, intel­lec­tu­al, and emo­tion­al ener­gy did I have to expend while I was out? Did I have to deal with any­thing unex­pect­ed, good or bad? How many peo­ple was I around? Were they strangers or peo­ple known to me? Did I encounter them all at once, or in small groups of one or two at a time? Was Sam with me as a buffer? fHow’s my blood sug­ar? Am I well hydrat­ed? What was the weath­er like? Did I remem­ber to take my reg­u­lar med­ica­tions? What about tak­ing break­through pain med­ica­tion, anx­i­ety med­ica­tion, or a mus­cle relax­ant before I found myself in a state where they would­n’t work very well? Did I use my scoot­er if there was much walk­ing? How noisy was the envi­ron­ment? Was it drafty, or over­ly hot or cold? Did I have to dri­ve? Was I out to do some­thing I want­ed to do, or was I doing some­thing I had to do?

Fre­quent­ly, I’m so dog-tired that I can bare­ly drag myself in the door. I have actu­al­ly fall­en asleep sit­ting in the car, in the dri­ver’s seat, more than once. (There are plen­ty of rea­sons that I do not dri­ve much any more.) Deal­ing with the secu­ri­ty sys­tem seems an intel­lec­tu­al chal­lenge designed for Ein­stein. I’m eas­i­ly con­fused and my mem­o­ry is beyond poor. Even if I am dehy­drat­ed or I need to eat, I’m too tired to be inter­est­ed in food or even water. If I was out for too long, or if it was a par­tic­u­lar­ly stress­ful peri­od, I get a fever and my body reacts as if I’m in shock. I feel like I’m freez­ing, no mat­ter what the actu­al tem­per­a­ture around me is, and I start shak­ing bad­ly.

So that’s how I feel most days when I return home at the end of the day, if I’ve had to leave home. I think that should go a long way towards explain­ing why I’m such a home­body these days! I am for­tu­nate in that I have Sam, Katie, and oth­ers in my life, so I am able to have a ful­fill­ing life with­out being very adven­tur­ous.

It has to be fall clean­ing because it’s Sep­tem­ber, right? I haven’t done spring clean­ing at any time since we’ve lived in this house, hon­est­ly. I haven’t been able to do it. But between a new pain spe­cial­ist who isn’t all the way on the oth­er side of metro Atlanta (who actu­al­ly lis­tens to me and treats me like an adult human being who might know a thing or two about who own body, even!) and new, appar­ent­ly much more effec­tive dosages of two oth­er med­ica­tions, I’m feel­ing bet­ter despite that oth­er new pesky health thing. And Sam and Katie have been won­der­ful­ly coop­er­a­tive, as much as they can around work and school oblig­a­tions.

Appar­ent­ly the fil­ter for the unit is miss­ing, and the coils need to be cleaned. There’s no obvi­ous sign of mold/mildew, but Sam says that fresh air is com­ing into the bed­room via the unit, and our neigh­bors on that side have been burn­ing some­thing in their back yard.

I found the web site for the man­u­fac­tur­er, and of course the man­u­al for our mod­el isn’t there. The self-ser­vice sec­tion of the site does men­tion that the coils need to be cleaned, but does­n’t say how to do it. I sus­pect that it involves coil clean­er and a hose. Coil clean­er seems to come with a/c ser­vice peo­ple. I’ll have to ask my father if we can get some and use it safe­ly.

Sam remem­bers a fil­ter, but has­n’t seen it since we moved here, so we may have to order a new one from the com­pa­ny. Of course, their not-help­ful site does­n’t have any infor­ma­tion about parts, either. So I sent them an e‑mail, and hope that they’ll reply.

They asked me to do a review about my expe­ri­ence with their site. That was prob­a­bly a mis­take on my site, but I did it. Their rat­ings may have just plum­met­ed.

Now the girl and I need to get to work get­ting the house ready for our Dragon*Con guest next week. I hope the “guest room” isn’t too hot for him! Maybe I should put up a Freecy­cle post look­ing for anoth­er win­dow unit?

More specif­i­cal­ly (I hope), some­thing in it. Not Sam, hap­pi­ly, but every time I go in there, I’m all stuffed up with­in a few min­utes.

We keep that room closed and have a win­dow a/c unit in there, because the house a/c just does­n’t keep up so well.¹ I’m won­der­ing if there’s some­thing about the air not cir­cu­lat­ing to the rest of the house that’s caus­ing dust to set­tle in there?

The cat is sel­dom allowed in the room at all, and we don’t have any oth­er pets. There aren’t any plants in the room.

We haven’t been using the air clean­ers, because I can only get their fil­ters by mail-order and just did­n’t get around to get­ting new ones. I guess I need to order them and see if that helps.

Bah.

In nicer news, the girl and I went to the nice library today. I had gone through my “to-read” shelf at Good Reads and request­ed a bunch of books. More of them than I expect­ed came through all at one time, where­upon I learned that they allow a max­i­mum of 75 books to be checked out at once. Whoops! I had to put two back.

I have plen­ty to read now, though!

Note: This entry went in a total­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion than where I thought I was head­ed! It got very long, and wan­dered around a lot. I got into some­thing that’s real­ly been eat­ing at me for a long time, though, and I’d real­ly appre­ci­ate some feed­back.

I should have my micro­phone tak­en away. I record­ed sev­er­al more poems for some rea­son, but haven’t post­ed them any­where because I real­ly love hear­ing them with the music Sam adds. His edit­ing exper­tise always makes me sound much bet­ter, too! Sam got me wor­ried about copy­right issues, which is why I haven’t post­ed them to Live Read­ings yet.

I miss read­ings. Live gath­er­ings of peo­ple, close­ly or loose­ly con­nect­ed, who come togeth­er to share pas­sages of prose or poet­ry with each oth­er. Not the sort where peo­ple get up at a podi­um, or an event arranged for a par­tic­u­lar author, just friends and acquain­tances shar­ing the joy of the word. If there are authors in the group who share pas­sages of what­ev­er they’re work­ing on, so much the bet­ter! If not, well, there’s a wealth of mate­r­i­al out there that just begs to be heard, that can­not be ful­ly appre­ci­at­ed on the page. I owe my dis­cov­ery of G.K. Chester­ton to such a group, and a renewed inter­est in Mark Twain.

I con­sid­er Sun­day the first day of the week, rather than the last.

It was a week full of appoint­ments for the girl, and get­ting paper­work shuf­fled to var­i­ous bureau­cra­cies. Sam and I had love­ly dates Wednes­day and tonight, although both of us were so exhaust­ed Wednes­day that we turned in much ear­li­er than usu­al.

Yes, it was anoth­er date night. Yay! (They are the high­lights of my week, with good rea­son.) The girl went out on a date, so we had the house to our­selves.

It still feels odd, at times, not to have any kids around, and not to even be wor­ried about pick­ing them up. We like the young man she’s dat­ing, so we feel fair­ly good about her being out with him, and don’t get very ner­vous. Still, there’s a cer­tain lev­el of aware­ness that nev­er seems to go away when you can’t per­son­al­ly ver­i­fy your child’s imme­di­ate well­be­ing.

In any case, it was a love­ly evening. I do love my Sam, and he nev­er does stop spoil­ing me.