Vacation 2009: Houston to Evansville

On Friday the 18th we left for vacation with the cats.  This is a challenge because cats don’t just go in the grass like dogs do, and our younger cat can’t hold his bladder as well since the diabetes started.  We managed to pack the car so that everything was in the trunk, with the exception of a small suitcase and a big computer monitor.  That left the back seat for cat crates and the floor with their litter box.  They got antsy and it took Monkey a while to be brave enough to use the litter box with the car running, but they got used to it.  Our first stop was Waxahachie where we stayed with Andrea and her family.  We always leave after work on a Friday and drive about 5 hours so the next day we can make it to Evansville without losing our minds, and Andrea conveniently lives about that far away.

It was pretty fun at Andrea’s.  I got to meet her youngest child for the first time and we got to talk about all sorts of random stuff.  It’s great being close enough to visit, but it’s too far for a one day visit so it’s hard to schedule an overnight.  I don’t think we’ll be stopping on the way back since we have two full days and will want to take it easier.  I suspect we’ll stay in Arkansas.

The next day we drove 800 miles to Evansville.  The cats had less patience but gave up and slept so it was quiet.  Carrie’s depakote levels were dropping so she was progressively getting worse.  When we got in she went to the hospital to figure out which medication was tanking and I went on to her mom and step-dad’s to try to sleep.  I did the drive with 3 5-hour energy drinks and some other stuff so it took me a while to get to sleep but it helped being there while her mom stayed at the ER.  They agreed to boost her dilantin just to give her a little extra seizure support and got home about 3 in the morning.

We spent the next day, Sunday, in Evansville visiting the kids to hand out presents.  First up was Carrie’s step-sister Naomi who has three kids.  We haven’t seen the oldest since she was 3 (and she’s 12 now I think), and we never met the boys.  We gave them our full Rock Band set with a few games.  They were very stoked and didn’t care that it wasn’t new, which is good.  It was fun to get to hang out with them all.  Carrie had a seizure but covered so the kids didn’t know.  She also gave Alandra a talking to about making good choices and not doing things to get in trouble just because her friends are doing it.  Those two have a deep bond that even 9 years away can’t break apparently because she wants to talk to Carrie again when we get back down there next week.  The funniest part was when a cop came to the door.  Carrie and her sister looked at each other and were instantly paranoid.  Her boyfriend and I are all, open the door, because it’s just a cop.  It turned out to be nothing, just them checking on something that someone else did, but it was funny how quick they slipped into old habits. lol

Now I need to get back to stuff, so I’ll continue updating later…I have a bit more to add about Evansville but I need to let Carrie sleep and get back to fixing my mom’s computer.

New job

I can finally talk about this!  lol  I am starting a new job February 22nd with WesternGeco.  I’ll be a seismic engineer – data analyst.  It’s a 3 year training program, with 3 promotions during that time.  The position keeps me in Houston, but in northwest Houston instead of southeast.

I’m excited at the career prospects and learning something technical and useful.  I’m also excited about the travel.  It’ll be a little tricky initially which includes 2 weeks of training followed by 2 weeks of regular work and then 6 weeks in Abu Dhabi!  I’ve never been anywhere besides New Zealand and Antarctica so this will be really interesting.  Once I’m done with that initial training everything else will be in Houston.

I put in my notice on Monday and am now just doing odd jobs at work – basically I’m like a coop. lol  It’s nice to have the stress off me from certification.  Next Friday we’re leaving on a nice vacation back home so that cuts into how much stuff I have to find to keep me busy.  I’m looking forward to seeing lots of people including friends that I haven’t seen in many years.  We were able to buy presents for a lot of people as well which made it less stressful and more fun to prepare for.

So it’s been an interesting month with big changes coming up.  We’ve got further tweaks to the strategy to get Carrie more stable so she’ll be ok on her own while I’m on travel for work.  It’ll be good for us in many ways.

Death, holidays and then some

I can’t believe I haven’t posted for two weeks.  I was so incredibly busy.  I had something on the 19th which I spent countless hours preparing for.  It went well.  Then, on Friday the 20th the doctors and family agreed there was nothing more that could be done for my grandpa and they disconnected the machines that night.  He passed peacefully.  Ironically enough, Carrie’s (great) grandma died on November 20th a few years back.  I think the family scheduled the services on Saturday for the following Tuesday and Wednesday which was just too close for me to make.  Spending the money now would really cut into what we could do for Christmas.  Besides, I’m not sure it would have been good for me.  I saw how certain things still triggered old family issues while reading the obit and other things so being home wouldn’t have been healing at all.  Instead I worked through things a bit more on my own time.

For Thanksgiving we made a bunch of food.  I made the pie and cole slaw the night before.  Carrie made the turkey and prepped everything else (dressing, golden mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce, and rolls) all before I woke up.  I stayed up quite late hoping to snag some deals for Christmas.  I actually lucked out at 2am and got my brother and sister-in-law’s present for a good price through Amazon.  Thanksgiving went well overall.  I think it’s a lot less stressful to not have lots of family around at this point.  In time Carrie will be stable enough that the stress will be limited to normal family stress.

Yesterday we went to the Texas Renaissance Fair after a failed attempt on Friday.  I got a chance to pick up a damn good camera from Best Buy on friday and it worked well.  The pictures are on facebook here.

Here’s a video of the parade:

For some reason the quality is much poorer when I put it on youtube.  The quality is better on facebook.  Oh well.  Tomorrow I hope I feel better than today, it feels like I’m coming down with something.  Time for rest.

Grandpa’s heart attack

My Grandpa Meyer had a heart attack around 1am today.  It was very severe.  He’s stable, but still in critical condition after 12 hours of fighting with medications.  He has a heart condition called IHSS which other members of my family has.  His medication conflicts with what they wanted to use to treat the heart attack.  The attack itself is in the same side of the heart as the IHSS affects.  Since his heart wasn’t working, his kidneys weren’t able to work.  They have him sedated, a machine pumping his heart (I think), a ventilator, and I’m guessing they’ll do dialisys as necessary.  My family is all pretty scared.  Heck, it’s scary for me too if I allow myself to get to that place.  Instead I’m doing my best to follow the advice of the guides – Trust my faith.  That leads me to a bigger question – what is my faith? lol  Is it my faith that everything works out for the best in the end?  The faith that everyone happens for a reason, to propel us forward on our life plan?  Or faith that he’ll be ok and survive this?  Because everyone working out for the best does not mean someone lives, if living is not the best option. (on ambien, this may not make sense lol)

 

I do wonder where he’s going while sedated.  Maybe he got to have a nice long chat with my Aunt Sallie, or his first wife who died before I was born?  Don’t take this the wrong way, but hopefully he’ll gain some wisdom and bring more love and less judgment within the family.  To speak up against judging one another, thinking badly of each other, and try to heal the rifts that have formed over the years.  After all, who are we without a strong loving family?  We are always a bit less because we lack that kind of energy within us, a strength that comes from knowing there are those who love you unconditionally.  So many of us want that – a real extended family instead of the small nuclear families we return to.

 

Don’t get me wrong, we’re continuing our new tradition of a Christmas Eve early dinner with Turkey and all the fixins.  It’ll be the nuclear family, my parents, me and my brother, plus spouses (both named Carrie, no way that’ll be confusing lol) and hopefully his son who is 6 now.  We will probably also have my mom’s mom over, since she lives just down the road, but that’s up to my mom.  Grandma is a delicate subject at times, and the goal is to avoid negative influences.  We’re also going to my Aunt Diane’s to make candy together.  It should be a very fun bonding experience in her huge but old kitchen.  It’s a bit of nostalgia with a new tradition as well.

 

I struggle with it, but I want connection.  I just don’t know how to get that connection with the average person.  I’m hoping Andrea and Karen will have some Reiki treatment or something that will help me begin this process before it bites me in the ass.  *hint hint*

I think the ambien is really kicking in, the typing is harder.  That means it’s time for bed.  Teaching Ascans in the morning, which is going to be awesome!  They’re all so enthusiastic because they haven’t been ground down by years of training before they fly.

Psych appointment

Today we finally saw the psychiatrist to see how we can improve Carrie’s medications to get her to sleep.  The doctor was really nice, gave her a full hour, and made some initial changes.  First, she figures Carrie’s on too much anti-depressant which is causing her to not sleep well.  She also doesn’t want her taking her medication in the evening which can cause her to be too ‘up’.  We have 2 weeks before the next appointment, and that should be enough time to see if a new strategy is working for her sleep needs.  Then they’re going to take her off the depakote and switch to lamictal, assuming the seizures don’t act up again.  It’ll be a tricky situation, but hopefully it works because lamictal isn’t as harsh.  She’s also supposed to start going to some therapy which will not only help her (possibly) but shows that she’s committed to her own treatment in ways that the outside world understands.  This will help her when we go to foster and adopt.  I hope these changes help because she’s made so many good changes that having the right medication should put her over the top to healing and living the life she wants to live.

 

I’m hopeful.  For the first time in a while I’m thinking about children.  Even though I don’t want to take on added responsibility right now, I don’t want to be 35 and a first time parent.  Of course, if that’s when things work out, I’ll roll with it.  But for now, we need to get her as stable as possible.  :-)

Wings Over Houston

This is over a week late.  I’m just not quite in the right head space to write I guess.  Last Sunday I went to the Wings Over Houston air show for the first time.  I’ve only been to one other air show before, while I was in MOS school in Pensacola, Fl.  It’s a little strange, since I grew up only 40 minutes from the EAA air show, but it was expensive so we never went.  This one is interesting because the majority of the planes are old war planes from WWII through Vietnam, all refurbished.  It’s really amazing to see this old planes fly!  Honestly, I find military planes more thrilling than the aerobatic fliers, so this made the air show even more fun than a civilian focused one.  It doesn’t matter that the war planes are slower or anything, but they touch something inside of me that makes it all matter a bit more I guess.

Carrie’s knee hurt too much to go, so I went by myself.  I took pictures of virtually all the planes on the ground and then very bad, small video of the Tora Tora Tora and pilot rescue re-enactment.  It was really interesting to see the Air Force heritage flights, which gave a visual history of US aviation.  There’s no way to compare where we were at to the F-15 without them being in the air.  It dwarfs the old planes, which I was really surprised with.  And of course, the F-15 demonstration flight was absolutely phenomenal.  It’s very hard to imagine a plane climb 3 miles in 20 seconds, even after seeing it happen!  But what’s funny is, even after seeing that, I’m still more thrilled with Marine Corps aviation – F-18 and Harrier.  They’ll always remain near and dear to my heart and are impressive in their own way.

The Blue Angels closed the show.  They’re always amazing and a great end to the weekend.  I’m going to make time to take Carrie to the Lone Start Flight Museum in Galveston, since many of the warbirds are located there.  Maybe someday I’ll get a really big bonus and buy a flight!  It’s a few hundred for 20-30 minutes of flight, but so worth it.  There aren’t many flight worthy planes like this that are available to fly, so I really want to take advantage of it.

My pictures can be found on facebook.

 

Michael Jackson’s This Is It

Saturday night, Carrie and I went to see This is It at the IMAX.  We got there early, expecting crowds.  Instead there were probably 50 people in the Imax theater which I attribute to Halloween.  The good thing is we were able to get a perfect seat right in the middle and Carrie only had to climb a few stairs.

The movie starts a little slow, making me wonder just what it was going to be.  But it quickly got more interesting.  They show a few minutes of how they auditioned dancers and it was insane!  They were of course amazing.  Watching the rehearsal footage was really more like sitting in the audience during a show run through.  There are still some kinks, but minus the costuming and pyro, it’s the show you’ll see the next day.  I felt like I had a good feel for what this tour would have been, which makes me quite sad.  It was going to be amazing.  His voice is still pristine at 50.  His feel when he dances is solid.  I enjoyed watching him interact with the musicians.  He got one of the hottest female guitarists ever – Orianthi.  Check out her myspace page, her guitar work is just sick and makes me happy!

Overall, I just found myself marveling at a man who was so sweet with everyone.  He wasn’t feeling the bass line, which was critical in a funky song, and he ended his request for more of it with ‘it’s all about love’ or ‘god bless you’.  Seriously, he didn’t raise his voice, get angry…He even apologizes about having to conserve his voice so he isn’t singing out in rehearsal.  But the dancers are so into it, he can’t help but push a little more to give them a performance.  I hope everyone watches this and sees his spirit.  There’s nothing dark in it, he’s just a bright and shining light that makes you want to be better.

I find myself still very affected by his death.  I can’t figure it out.  Some of it is simply that he was so bright, and he went out when he was reaching a higher level of brightness.  Another aspect is because we know just what we lost, at least with this tour, and who knows what else he would have given us.  And third, he doesn’t get a chance to reclaim his name.  I don’t believe he ever hurt a single child because he is the most compassionate, caring, loving person I’ve ever witnessed and he wouldn’t do something that knowingly hurt a child.  He knows what it’s like to have sex pushed on you at a young age, and he’s keenly aware of how other people are feeling.  So it just doesn’t add up.  I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that he was a straight man with no tendencies toward pedophilia.  I believe he was a very sensitive child who faced abuse in many ways and learned some weird coping mechanisms, but he did find a few people in the world that he loved and loved him.  And now, thankfully, he is surrounded by nothing but love back Home.  I just hope he can come back before long and bring his spirit back into our world.  We still need it.  And in the end, I guess that’s why Carrie and I have to be successful with music – because the best and brightest have been leaving us lately so we need to carry on their legacy of inspirational music.

I don’t claim to know why the Universe works the way it does.  I don’t know if there is one central intelligence that is dictating everything, or if there are just smaller committees that work with a subset of people to work out their lives and situations.  Maybe this was just a gift for MJ to finally have peace and get us to create that peace ourself in our own lives and spread it.

 

Anyway…this needs to be released on DVD soon.  I hope they have more in it that didn’t fit so we can see as much as possible.  I think I may need to use this as inspiration.  I’ve never lived my life literally spreading love everywhere I go.  I wonder how that works?

forward and back

I’ve had a rather rough few days.  I made a relatively minor mistake at work (one of those, everyone else is doing it moments) but since I’m already in trouble from before it’s a more major issue.  I don’t know what will happen until this week, but I’m not in a good situation.  While it’s a bad situation, I realize my part in getting into it and try not to focus on the parts other people played.  On the plus side, I made some big changes real fast because I had so much motivation to do so.  I just hope it’ll be enough to buy the time I need to find another job if necessary.

I’ve spent more time thinking about careers.  I’m still not in a position to transition to music with Carrie, so I need a job that is satisfying and supports us as we transition over the next few years to a new joint career.  I may not need to change jobs, but with layoffs always being considered at work, I have to be prepared.  In my last real semester of grad school I took geophysics, which was a pretty cool class.  I have always enjoyed geology but chose physics in undergrad.  I wonder if that was a bad decision, but it wasn’t really.  I walked the path I needed to.  Now I live in one of the main oil centers of the world so I’m looking at these exploration companies that need people to do geophysics work.  Quite a few will hire people with no experience and train them, which is cool.  However, so many of the jobs are in other countries, or they make you do months of training in a foreign country.  This wouldn’t be so bad if Carrie were healthy, with friends and family around to help her out.  But she’s still healing, doesn’t drive, and doesn’t know anyone around here.  To top it off, the cats wouldn’t want to be away from her so that makes things really complicated.

Overall I’ve been thinking about how I could leave Carrie alone for months (not that I have to worry about it right now), as well as why I’m self sabotaging at work.  Maybe I’m just overwhelmed and not able to make good decisions unless the consequences are really high?  Hopefully I gain some insight soon.  If nothing else, I’m going to do my best at work.  Lots of studying to do, and little else honestly which is hard for me.  Too little structure means I have enough rope to hang myself…

So, I’ve learned things about myself, for better or worse.  I’m not sure how to fix everything, but at the least Carrie is improving in many ways.  We’ve been told she’ll start to really improve once her mom leaves and she has her house to herself again while I’m at work.  It’ll be interesting!

I’m going to hope for non-anxiety filled dreams and good sleep so I can start the week on the right foot.

Carrie’s mom’s visit

Carrie’s mom arrived Friday night.  We were able to get a good deal on Southwest (as long as she flew out of Louisville) and she didn’t have to change planes so it was a straight forward process for her.  She’s here to help Carrie do things when I’m not here, plus Carrie likes having her around for short bursts of time at least.  I mean, at some point everyone gets sick of family, but it’s different when you’re sick.

Right now, Carrie and her mom are at the emergency room.  We’re still trying to make sense of her medication requirements and right now it’s not going well.  It’s improving in some ways, but the medications don’t play well with each other so it’ll take a little while to get right.  As they say, it sometimes gets worse before it gets better.  I do know she’s make incredible progress dealing with the abuse she suffered so many years ago and that will pay off.  Hopefully she’ll feel better this weekend and we can all go to the balloon festival at JSC which is only $10 for a carload of people and should be interesting.  It’s kinda funny that the big balloon boy story/hoax happened this week and now we’re having the balloon fest.  The following weekend is Wings over Houston so it should be a fun month for flight enthusiasts.  Hopefully we can enjoy it as well.

She’s home!

Blas came home tonight, literally in the 3 minutes I had before work while I dropped off a movie for Carrie.  I’m so glad she has a distinctive and loud meow.  I still don’t know how she snuck out since I never got far from the door while putting trash out but she must have been determined.  She seemed fine, real thirsty, but I didn’t have time to wait and find out about her adventure.  Monkey was so mad at her, he was hissing and yelling and growling because she smelled like other cats.  Poor Carrie had to deal with that so I wouldn’t be late for work.   She’s in trouble, but I’m still just so relieved to have her back that I can’t be too mad yet.  I was literally shaking with relief.  I cried so much thinking she was dead.  I mean, she’s 18, so she’s been with me since I was 13, more than half of my life.  When she does pass it’ll be a damn big deal for me, as I discovered yesterday.  I’m just so grateful tonight…