jonathanhickman.com

Annoyances, in no particular order

• I put the first dent in our new minivan. I feel absolutely horrible about it, even though it’s not terribly noticeable. What got it? A shopping cart at Petsmart.
• This cold. Damn, I hate it. I feel like doing little other than staring at a tv set. Are tv’s still sets?
• Cricket. I ordered Katie a new Cricket phone this week. Cricket’s not the best deal for everybody - the telephones aren’t as deeply discounted as the major carriers, for example - but for only $45 bucks a month you get unlimited text messages and anytime minutes, not to mention free long distance. But they haven’t shipped the phone yet, and it took several calls to get them to figure out that we’d even ordered the phone, which was supposed to ship today although that apparently hasn’t happened yet.

Teh sickness

H got sick over the weekend and was sick when he came home Monday.

E picked it up Tuesday.

I woke up this morning feeling great but by lunch knew that was no longer the case. And it hit Katie all of the sudden this evening.

bleh.

First album

For the record, the first album C ever heard was Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky.

I’m not so great at baby’s firsts. I never had a baby book, so I’m less than driven to help complete one for C. But it is funny to know what album was her first. Wilco was the first music she heard outside of commercials on television at the hospital where she was born.

I’m sure no one knows what my first album was. My parents are a few generations behind in their music preferences. Although they rarely if ever “put music on,” they tend towards the classical. And the only radio my mother listens to is NPR, which does suggest that she has good taste; my dad only listens to talk radio.

My mother once remarked that the only pop song she really liked was “Bridge over Troubled Water.” She made this statement when my brother was going through a “classics” phase and had just bought his first Simon and Garfunkel. One could only assume it was also his last.

I will be around for countless firsts for Charlotte; it kind of blows your mind to think of being with her the first time she saw the sun or felt rain. Heck, I was there the first time she breathed!

I do wonder what my first album was. Will C care about hers? What firsts will she want to know about?

Currently Listening To

(I just discovered mp3sparks.com.)

Some births are “easy”

Katie says she’s not jealous, because her pregnancy went so well compared to her sister’s. But Katie had five days of labor before a caesarian.

Well, there’s a new niece in town, and her name is Nancy Catherine. She weighs in at 7 lbs 2 oz. And her mother was in labor for less than 20 hours and apparently barely had to do anything at the end.

So there you go.

Can’t wait to meet her.

Not really here today

Katie is at the doctor with E, who apparently broke a bone in his foot this past weekend. C is being cute and needy. Katie’s sister is in the hospital about to give birth to Nancy Catherine.

Ever have one of those days at work when you’re not really there? This is the best place for me right now; there’s very little I could do for anybody anywhere else (just hold the baby, which I’d love to do). But I can’t bring myself to focus on my work.

Yesterday wasn’t much better. If I don’t get something accomplished soon, my boss is going to get irritated with me for sure.

It’s not the heat, it’s the overwhelming sense of worry

That’s how I would’ve titled this post.

And I think she’s got a point, although I also think that last heat wave (it is over, right?) was more than just the standard hot week in the summer. In all likelihood it had nothing to do with global warming, but it was still hotter than normal longer than normal.

Finally updated my site a bit

I kept thinking I was going to find a new theme for my blog, but the main wordpress theme viewer appears to be broken, so I’m finally going to admit that it ain’t happening for a while. So I took the thirty minutes this morning to add some plugins and overhaul my blog roll. The blog roll is still only a fraction of the links I read; I can’t ever decide how to run the thing. And I installed a new comment spam plugin, because I’m tired of seeing the same comment spam (they never make it onto the site; they just show up in the moderate last about ten times a day). So if you find yourself unable to comment, please feel free to email me.

I’m going to try to get back to work now.

Current desktop background

Chronic pain

I’ve been having stomach issues since college. I started drinking coffee (black) when I was 14, and I probably drank four to six cups a day until I was twenty. I generally switched to Mountain Dew after lunch. Then I noticed that the Dew increasingly made me sick, especially when drinking it with a meal. So I stopped drinking sodas. I stopped and haven’t had one since; I haven’t even wanted one.

My stomach was better for a while, but then it started getting worse again. Before long, I had given up coffee, too, saying that my stomach just couldn’t handle it anymore. On the upside, I switched completely to tea, which is far healthier anyway.

Since college, my stomach mostly stayed the same for several years. It was volatile but not terrible. Some things really irritated it while I could generally eat spicier foods with impunity. It took Katie to convince me that my stomach was really getting worse slowly and I just hadn’t noticed it. In fact, my stomach had gotten so bad that I simply couldn’t eat out any longer, and I found myself sick several times a week.

Of course I went to the doctor about it a few months ago and was given several diagnoses with a regimen of pills. Now I’ve got the problem much more under control, although I still have my bad days.

It took the exhaustion of living in the hospital for several days while C was born to admit to myself that my stomach problem really is a problem. We’re talking “chronic pain” problem.

For some reason, I’ve always avoided the word “chronic.” I guess no one wants to think they have an issue like this that will never go away. But I’m definitely there now. Chronic pain.

I will have stomach problems for the rest of my life.

Damn.

The Church Question

Katie reminded me this morning that we haven’t been to church in some time. We’re both churchless churchgoers. Katie is a lifelong Episcopalian, and I’m Presbyterian (pcusa). And now that C is born, we need to decide on a church to raise her in.

The problem is me; I own up to that. There is a really good Episcopal church not 15 minutes away by foot. I like the community there, too, as well as the building. The only thing I don’t like is that it’s not Presbyterian. I just can’t get into high church, with the smells and bells. And I don’t feel like taking communion every week or be “that guy who stayed in the pew.” I want to like our neighborhood church, but ultimately I don’t feel a hundred percent comfortable there. It’s hard to build a church home for your family in a church where you don’t really feel comfortable.

My church, on the other hand, isn’t that far away - about fifteen minutes. And I really like it. It’s forward-thinking and comfortable and good. So what keeps me away? That was the church my first wife and I picked right around the time we got married. We showed up there as a couple, visited as a couple, played softball as a couple, and jpoined as a couple. I went back a few times after she decided marriage wasn’t for her, and I felt really uncomfortable, like everyone was wondering where she was. I even took Katie and the kids there once, but it felt kind of weird since it hadn’t been that long since I’d joined the church with someone else.

Despite my pretty open writings here, I’m a pretty private person. Heck, I’m pretty shy in some ways.

So now we’ve got to decide what to do: go to the church she likes but makes me feel uncomfortable, go to the church I love but might still feel uncomfortable in, or try to find another church. It’s time to stop putting this off.