14
Sep
One Rough Week
Topic: Family and Friends, Kai
I think this is the first time since I started my blog that I went almost a full week without a post. Maria and I were hit with a number of difficulties: Maria’s father has been diagnosed with some extremely serious health problems, Maria is contending with some health problems of her own, my good friend Jay’s work situation in India has turned into a disaster, Kai essentially boycotted the whole idea of sleeping more than two consecutive hours, and this high-stakes yet cartoonish Presidential campaign has both Maria and I on the verge of shouting from the rooftops.
Over the past few nights we’ve succeeded in turning around Kai’s sleep situation: he’s now “sleeping like a baby” (I put that in quotes since the intended meaning of the phrase, IMHO, bears little resemblance to reality). How did we do it? We took advantage of Kai’s soft-spot: his Thunderbird toys. He’s obsessed with them. Although the recent Thunderbirds movie (based on the much cooler old TV series) was terrible, Kai of course loved it, and it’s resulted in a slew of new Thunderbirds toys on the market. We explained to him that four consecutive nights of good sleeping - illustrated by means of a chart where he would place star stickers every morning - would earn him a Tracy Island (normally we don’t spend that kind of money on his toys, but his Thunderbird toys provide endless hours of entertainment). The parent-toddler relationship is a fascinating composite of love, understanding, discipline, and - when you’ve played all your other cards to no avail - bribery.
Maria hurt her back running, and her doctor says it looks like her ongoing plague of fatigue is a low blood-sugar thing. Now that we know the cause, we can work on a solution.
I’ve been counseling my friend Jay over the phone. He’s in California right now, on what was supposed to be a short vacation from his research in India. But his partners there are reneging on their agreement, and putting Jay in a very difficult position in regard to his expected payments and retaining control of his intellectual property (in case you don’t know Jay, he’s doing HIV/AIDS research). So he’s working on developing a strategy to salvage what he can from a difficult situation.
Another reason I didn’t post much here last week was that I was busy setting up a new website. I worked myself through a cycle of political rage by starting WhereWasW.com, but I’ve already shut it down. The blogosphere is already awash in a flood of political commentary, and to make my own stand out, I quickly realized that I’d have to dedicate the kind of time that I just don’t have. I wrote a couple essays for the site, and I’ll archive them here when I get a chance.
Lastly and most importantly, we just learned that Maria’s father has been diagnosed with bone cancer and lung cancer. It’s probably not appropriate for me to say much more here, since this is a public forum, but please keep him in your thoughts and prayers.
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