yesterday was savannah's 4th birthday. this is for her:
dearest savannah,
has it really been 4 years? it seems like you've been around always, sometimes... and other times, as if i've just met you.
you are no longer the baby i once knew; you are a fascinating complicated little girl. you make me laugh, and sometimes make me cry. and your grip on my heart just seems to get tighter and tighter each day.
i used to worry about you a lot when you were younger. now, i worry about the things beyond you. the world that i love and hate simultaneously, and the things and people in it.
i am teetering on the brink of having to share you with this wonderful and evil world. i am about to see you strike out on your own, to experience things without me, on your way to becoming the person that you will eventually be.
i am happy and sad and exhilirated and terrified.
of all the things in my life that i have never wanted to share, this is the hardest. i don't want to share you. the world does not deserve you. and, i don't want to let you go.
i wish that the world was not such a different place than it was when i was four. i wish that the things that have embedded themselves in my mind were not there... columbine. september 11th. the war, today.
and, while i am vaguely concerned for myself how any of these things will affect me twenty years from now... i am truly scared for you.
but, i know that i have to let you go.
and, i have loved watching you become who you are today. and, i can't wait to see who you are tomorrow. i love to watch you grow, as bittersweet as it can be. because you become even more wonderful, with each day i know you.
i have so many wishes for you. but, most importantly of all, i want you to be happy. as happy as you can be.
and, i thank you for mornings like this, when i wake you up and we snuggle and giggle in your bed together. i thank you for your sweet smile when i tell you good morning. and, i thank you for even your uncooperative-ness when i ask you to go potty after you get up. i know times like these, and mornings like these are numbered.
all too soon, we will be in too much of a hurry to lounge in bed when you wake up. and you'll have to be off to go to school. and i'll have to make sure you're ready to go.
you are growing up so quickly. and, i will only get to watch my little girl grow up once. so, i'm doing the best that i can. and trying to pay attention, even when i make mistakes sometimes.
you make me so happy and proud, with everything you can now do. and, i can only hope that i've done well enough to give you a good start. i hope that i've given you all that you'll need, so that it will stay with you, even when i am not around.
know how much i love you, no matter what and know how lucky i feel for every single day i get to spend with you. i wouldn't trade anything, for the complete joy i've felt in getting the chance to be your mommy. not. one. thing.
so, my dearest, i wish you a happy fourth birthday. and everything that goes along with that. you deserve the best of everything, today and every day.
i love you always,
mommy
i had a great birthday; better than i've had for a long time. i've dreaded for years turning 30, finally. and, in all honesty, it isn't all that awful. i don't know what i was freaking out about, exactly. beyond the fact that i expect it will take years until i really feel 30-anything.
it didn't start out great, as wallace sort of 'dropped the ball'. we worked it out early on, and the rest of the day continued to get better and better.
i checked my email, and received an iCard from 'sted. i then chatted with wallace about wanting to go take a shower, and then deciding what else i wanted to do during the day.
wallace got offered a full-time job, with a salary on the higher-end of generous and accepted it. we got the mail, and i received cards from my parents and wallace's parents; both included birthday money i hadn't expected.
i then ended up spending some time online, and read the really kind and thoughtful entry in 'sted's quill about me. cried, happily. and then tried to write a coherent response to her words.
wallace wrapped up his work for the day. and, we went out looking for something i wanted to spend some of my birthday money on.
i considered a few things; a pda, a new webcam, a desk. i've really wanted a pda for years now. i was only lucky enough to get my very own computer in december of 2002, so i am still fairly content to lust after them, rather than spend that much money on one right now.
after a fun and delicious dinner at joe's crab shack, i bought a new cam at circuit city.
we stopped and got ice cream on the way home, which pleased savannah very much. and, i spoke to my mom on the phone as she wished me a happy birthday, and my father called me an 'old geezer' repeatedly in the background.
we put savannah to bed, and i set up and starting messing around with my new cam.
i got a phone call from my friend, josh who wished me happy birthday as he was going out for the evening.
and then, i got online and chatted with 'sted a bit, before i picked up the phone and called her. we chatted until her mobile got tired of me, and i went to bed -- happy, contented and tired.
so, wallace starts his new job today. i was up at 06:45 for the first time in many months, to show my support for him, as he made his way out the door at 07:30.
i hope he likes this job, and i hope that it will be a good next step for him.
i'm happy about about the stress-relief that comes from a full-time job, and i'm thrilled to be able to look toward the future hopefully again.
oh, i took the cam back, as it didn't make me as happy as i'd hoped. and, i opted for a real computer desk. i'm still getting things organized here in the office, but i like it a lot. and, i'm looking forward to so many things in the next few months... my sister's wedding, savannah going to school and maybe even a little time for me here and there.
things are looking up for a change, and i'm glad we made it though the really tough times -- as i suspect it will help us to appreciate our good fortune, even that much more.
yay!
i'm not going to talk about the war, or my opinions regarding it.
this is not because i care if others agree or disagree with me -- it is because, if i start, i am not confident in my ability to stop, until there is nothing left to talk about...
rather, i would prefer to concentrate on the new brighter spots in my own life, as there haven't been many of them in the past year or so. i want to be able to be at least cautiously optimistic for a change, and begin to look forward again.
and, i will hope that other things, over which i have no control, will work themselves out as well as they can. because really, what else can i do? what else can anyone do?
we have two important things occurring tomorrow (actually later on today, as it is 01:27) -- and i won't be around here to write about them then.
wallace has an interview for a job that could be good. and we also have an initial meeting with a potential client for a project for iqdw.
please send good thoughts or cross fingers for us, as both of these would be very beneficial to our current situation. and, additionally would make for wonderful birthday presents for me.
i promise to let everyone know how it goes. unless it sucks horribly.
thank you!
i have started to turn my webcam on again. and now, with my own computer and a DSL connection, i'm hoping to leave it on most of the time. unless it crashes the computer too much, or does something else equally awful to my computer's ability to function as well as it should.
savannah likes to watch herself on cam, so you will probably see her popping on often.
i am also considering obtaining a better webcam, but that will depend largely on how much i like having it on, and whether i can afford one or not. so, it's possible, anyway.
i did, however, make the navigation a little better on the journal page, as well as allow access to the cam pop-up.
today is a mostly yucky day again. i do hope this week improves vastly tomorrow.
wow, it's yucky outside. relatively cold, wet and slightly windy. it makes parts of me sore, and overall me just generally miserable.
i used to laugh at people who talked about aches and pains flaring up when it rained. i'm not laughing anymore.
my back hurts, but it usually hurts when it's sunny outside too. and then there's my strange feet...
i have big weird feet. they are bigger than anyone else's in my family, except for my dad. they are big and strange and difficulty-prone.
i will not wear shoes unless i have to, and am constantly barefoot in my house. i used to care a lot about the shoes i wore, when i actually wore them. i gave up sneakers for almost a decade, and would wear black heavy-duty boots constantly. i wore them with pants, shorts, dresses (when i wore them) and everything else. i loved them, and my feet almost always hurt.
last january, i had surgery on my left foot. i had finally gone to see a podiatrist, to see if he could repair the most troublesome aspect of either of my feet: a rock-like anomaly embedded in the middle of the ball of my foot. his suggestion was for surgery, to both remove previously mentioned anomaly, as well as correcting the positioning of the bones in that area to avoid aggravating it further in the future.
so i said, 'sure! let's do it! anything to make it possible to walk on the bottoms of both feet again, without pain.'
so, right after new year's, i went. outpatient surgery. knocked me out, did their stuff, wrapped my foot up, sent me home. i couldn't walk on it. something happened and, i had to have half of it done again the next friday. they had to add another pin to the bone, make sure it was place properly. and then, they put a cast on my foot, all the way up to my knee.
i hope to never have a broken bone. casts are evil, horrible, uncomfortable things. i didn't have enough drugs to let me not care about the cast on my foot. i hated it, passionately. and, i had to wear it for over a month.
after all, this was in the interest of making my foot less of a problem, right? it should all come out okay in the end... we hope?
after the cast, i received a removable cast/boot. it had a little pump in it, to pump it up (like those crazy sneakers!) and make sure it fit snugly. and, i still wasn't supposed to walk on it.
it was bothersome, for someone barely 29 to have ride in those little motorized carts for 3 months, in the grocery store, in target. i never bothered going to anywhere like sam's club during those 3 months. i was afraid i'd be there for a whole day, or even worse have one of those things decide to stop running while i was in the back of the store or something.
savannah, on the other hand, thought they were great. she couldn't understand why mommy didn't ride in them after the three months were over. i think she still misses riding on mommy's lap in the motorized cart, rather than having to sit in the one mommy pushes instead.
anyway, after all of this, my foot still hurts. not all the time. and, not in the same way... but it does still hurt. and, it seems to hurt the worst on days that it rains.
no one needs to remind me how i am turning 30 at the end of the week. although, the forecast does not mention rain on friday, so i hope i'll feel less like 30 by then.
somebody shoot me already. i had but four hours sleep last night, and now i'm wrestling with stylesheets from hell!
this is not how i wanted to spend my evening. i have a feeling that i'm going to have to let it go soon, and go collapse into bed.
i want to learn css, but... maybe i should concede that tonight is not the night it's gonna happen.
there are some things missing from my site, and the stylesheet is messed up for tonight anyway... must.go.to.sleep.
i had been wanting to do some kind of new project. and now, here is at least part of it... movable type for all of the previous incarnations of a journal i've maintained sporadically since 1999.
and, it's all in one neat place.
four years worth of writing. some of it, i like a lot and am happy to display here. some of it is merely forgettable, and the last bit, is just downright bad. all of it is mine.
maybe i should call this 'the good, the bad and the forgettable', instead.
look forward to fiddling and tweaking and fine tuning of this on my part, as well as some fresh writing. i'll continue to peek into manipulating MT to do what i want, and see how much free time i'll have to devote to my web-projects.
i miss this, and hope to make it more worthwhile.
the beginning of the month is always so hectic. i'll be so glad when this week is over.
we had a nice weekend. maura and orlando came over, and were kind enough to take us out to dinner. my only complaint was that i wish they had been able to stay longer.
in preparation for our visit with them, i cleaned almost the whole house. and, hopefully, this weekend i will be able to take some time and get it all done. spring is coming, and i need to feel better about my space.
so many things coming up. so much is possible.
i'm cautiously optimistic, as i always try to be.