DALEKS INVADE NEW ORLEANS!!!! It's a Catastrophe!! Run for Your Lives!!!!

Oh, that's our Dalek Erik, voiced by the fabulous Lewis D'Aubin, who knocked out this commercial in a WEEKEND of work.  Good gracious me, I have no idea how he manages these things.  Here is a shot of them greenscreen filming in my garage over the weekend...they were VERY VERY hot in the bright especially warm afternoon sun: 

AGH! I am Uncatastophe'ed: I have a MELD score of 6

So...a MELD score of 6, you say?  What in the world is that?

It means that I am closing in on the very bottom of the scores that are even on the computer stuff describing liver disease.  Not there yet, so, yay, me!  However, I do have a score, which is new for me.  It looks like, based on a cursory google or two that I'm not even on the radar for the lowest end of the transplant stuff, which is not a surprise, but what was a surprise was that I had a score at all.  My guess is that this is one of the hoops that has to be jumped through to try to get Aetna to pay for the medicine which might kill the Hep C forever.

Dead virus.

That would be a blessing and a miracle.  I have long since reconciled myself to the idea that the Hep C might kill me, but in the words of the very first transplant doctor I got sent to in 2000, I was mostly likely to die "from the Hep C, or from a parachuting accident when you are 80".  This guarantees that when I turn 80, if I get so lucky, I should DEFINITELY go skydiving.

All my life I've been told I "wouldn't live past *x* age" by some nimrod in a white coat pontificating about all the lifestyle changes that might ensure I live even that long.  I remember being told by a perinatologist (who was reading from a PAMPHLET I'd seen six months earlier) that I'd have to get an abortion because I'd never be able to carry the child growing inside me safely...she's 20 now---

...and isn't she just as cute a monkey as you've ever seen?

So, at some point, in self-defense against all the death predicting, I made decisions based on what was best for my children in the right now short term (she was little back then, and I knew that your early life never fades, and who I was and how available I could be mattered, so taking years out to try risky drugs was a no go).

Now there is a new drug.  It comes with a great deal of hope.  Seeing as I've carried the virus with me since 1976, an unfortunate stowaway on a prophylactic transfusion, I've really come to terms with it.  It's part of me.  That won't stop me from evicting it if that is possible, realistic, and if it won't cause me to fail to be a good mom to my son.  He still needs me.  If I have to wait, I will.  I'm sure someone will tell me I'm going to die if I wait, but maybe we've all grown past all of that...

One can only hope.

In the meantime, the real work must be done by the PA who must take her lance in hand and go jousting with the Black Heart of Aetna.  I wish her good fortune, and blessings, and would be happy to lend her my guardian angel for a while if that will help.  I certainly am no good at fighting them.

An Uncatastrophe.  Long may it reign.

My Superpower in ACTION!!!

So, we drove a fair amount this weekend...mostly to half the journey between the Firstborn and Bry-bry, da boyfriend, and so I spent half a four hour trip on my own in the car with Gilbert and Sullivan boy two days in a row.  This allowed me plenty of "alone" time to USE my amazing superpower:

"Do you hear that?"
"Hear what, Mommy?"
"The noise--- the car is making a noise?"
"No, I hear a lawn mower out in the distance though."

Turn off car, listen to world around me...no lawn mower.  Panic.

Panic more.

Call Firstborn, tell her you will have to use HER car to come back for her because you don't dare drive yours because it is making a noise that sounds like a lawn mower in the distance and it only does it when you are driving TOWARD the sun (because that's how mechanical things work, don't you know?!?)

Get in car the next morning to go to grocery (because I need to see if it does it when I'm not driving toward the sun).  No sound.  Decide the noise must have actually been da Creature's Kindle making a vibration noise in the console.  Feel relieved.  Embarrassed.  Call Firstborn and tell her I'm a stupidhead and it's all okay, so I won't have to take her car.

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Cut to end of second return trip.  Sun's out again.  We are driving toward the sun again.  The noise starts.  Even the Firstborn with the hearing impairdedness she has can sort of hear it, and it sounds JUST LIKE a lawn mower off in the distance.

Sit in driveway, listen intently to the sound.  Dread starts to form like sweat beads on a hot, still afternoon before a thunderstorm...
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After much discussion and investigation, and even recalling last year when I took it to Honda and insisted there was a noise and the mechanics told me in six different ways to Sunday they could hear NO NOISE, and how insulted I was at the time, da Firstborn and I, after listening to the outside of the car (no lawn mower) and extensive listening inside the car, make the humiliating discovery that inside the console, where there is plugged in a transformer thingie that turns a car lighter into a plug so da Creature can watch Gilbert and Sullivan while I'm driving, you know, something we only do on the last leg of a trip to keep him entertained, we hear: a sound.  We look, and I notice that the actual transformer has vents...oh, and a tiny little loud fan that sounds....

Just.  Like.  A. Lawn.  Mower.  In.  The.  Distance.

Catastrophizing is such fun...if you don't have this superpower, you should try it sometime.  Life is never as much fun as when you realize how ABSOLUTELY stupid your imagination makes you.

Laugh.  It's hilarious.  Seriously...if you don't laugh at me right now, you're dead inside and should seek immediate medical attention.

The Summer of Our Discontent

For an expert catastrophizing middle-aged mom like myself, the end of school brings an enormous amount of anxiety as one watches the school district you are wedded to become a seething pit of uncertainty because planning for next year is simply not possible in a world of contracts and bureaucracy and funding and all the "and's" you can put in that sentence... O_O   So, I've decided that it is simply not possible to predict how horrible next year will be with any real accuracy and assuming the worst-case scenario is best for now, so I can have a horrible, illness-focused summer, and be good and insane by fall.



***screeching noise***


Wait, what did I just type?????

There has to be a better way.

When you find it, and you don't live WHERE I do, and have to deal with WHAT I do, let me know.  In the meantime, I'm going to try very hard to focus on what can be accomplished this summer and let go of what cannot, and start trying to make a few good memories in the shit pile of life while I still can.

So, in honor of a summer of worrying about things I cannot control, trying to control things I can, and absolutely no wisdom to be had on any front by any means because the world has gone nutso around us all, I'm going to spend a LOT of time staring at my garden because cucumbers grow almost fast enough to WATCH, and sit at the pool shouting variations of "NO, Eric, don't, you'll drown; NO, Eric, stop, you'll drown him/her; NO, ERIC, STOP---do NOT eat the thing you found on the ground."

We will also be exploring fishing (yes, I'm having to watch YouTube videos on how to kill, gut, and clean fish because there are no men available in my world who are willing to do that sort of thing---thanks deskjob nuclear engineer husband, for being squeamisher than I ever thought possible), building robots, writing essays on books, setting things on fire in the back yard (did I say that out loud?), and laughing uproarishly at Gilbert and Sullivan daily and in Houston at the performance of The Sorcerer.

Oh, and for good measure...so you don't forget it's me, I'll also do a LOT of this:

Birthday Parties of DOOM!

In this family, we have different sorts of birthdays... for one thing, Mama doesn't like her birthday, so it is celebrated after the fact and minimally at best, and not for the reasons you might assume.  I don't like my birthday because of lots and lots of early years that created trauma triggers for me, and are best left to the dusts of time rather than re-lived.  Kids, though, they can have birthday parties.  Really elaborate ones some years, requiring lots of hard work from the grown-ups.

Sadly, I'm not social enough (introverts, unite, just, you know, separately, et al!) to provide my poor children with adequate friend opportunities, so we have a long history of creative, fancy, fun, exciting and POORLY ATTENDED parties.  It has always created a sad alongside the happy.  There is always enough food left over to feed the starving children of Antagonia.  This year will probably be no exception to that trend, but HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL and I will yet try again to entice folks into coming to our house and playing with our toys.  I think any boy invited to THIS party would have fun, but every year I am surprised by the lack of interest in things I think sound cool, so what do I know?  Wouldn't you think this was fun?

MALL OF DYSTOPIA DREAMS PARTY

 (The invitation reads "Boys Will be Boys Party" 
but this is what we're calling it around here)

The Mall has really gone down hill, and you are invited to come play in what's left...

(Wear swim suits and shoes and bring a change of clothes and shoes---

...it's gonna be icky up in here!!)

Food Fight Court---grab a can of cheez whiz, some whipped cream and a koolaid water gun and the obligatory pair of safety glasses and make your own fun.

Wishing Well---there's some Gold Dollar Coins in there, somewhere, and various other things, under the green slime.  Keep what you catch!

Build-a-Blank Workshop---the cardboard tower and surrounding structures are yours to paint, tape more pieces of cardboard to, whatever makes you happy.  When the party is winding down we will destroy the whole thing (as safely as possible, mind you) or, if the fire department agrees...we might set it on FIRE and hose it off with power sprayers.

Egg Shooting Gallery---if you can't use the catapult, you could always just throw them at the tree target.

Funky Off Fountain---run around in sprinkler land to freshen up, spray your friends, use the BIG water guns...clean up for food!

There will be field day type games, hot dogs, ice cream, chips, dip, cake and plenty of hand sanitizer.

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We'll see how many boys come.  I'll post as many pictures as I can get before someone slimes my camera.  :D

Wish us luck.  I really want my son to be able to cut loose and have fun and maybe make some friends along the way.

Throwback party remembering...da Firstborn's cardboard party (tea party in the replica cardboard house I made for her) was much, much, much more civilized (and yet, still very very fun):

An Entire Year of School Has Totally Passed Without my Bloginess :-o

My children...Jawa Eric and Imperial Guard Claire and the Mouse Droid of Grampaness

My last post was so bleak, so yucky, so sad, and the year has been so full of eventishness.  Some good, some bad, but nothing like the bleak awful yuck of last summer, which I am trying hard to forget.  Insights learned?  Doctors are full of crap, by and large.  Being full of crap is uncomfortable, and colonoscopies can solve that if need be.  Seriously...don't go to a spa, just schedule one of those things and you'll never ever need to be reminded that regularity rocks and anything else is just ugh.

So, in good news, da Creature has had a very good year in the schools.  He even did an amazing thing at the Spring Talent Show:


We have been to a LOT of conventions, and met a great many of our heroes, and had that work out about like you'd expect, given the averages of humanness in all persons, celebrity or otherwise.

Matt Smith, looking a bit dazed by his NOLA Wizard World experience

 There has been cosplay, costume contest drama, winning costume contests, losing at costume contests, and LOTS of new prop making skills acquired.  That Jawa up there alone caused me to get a second dressmaker dummy and a serger as presents at Christmas, and almost set our kitchen on fire doing electronics wrong the first time.  Just kidding, but seriously, don't hook everything up to the same side of the box, folks, it ends in brightly burning out LED's and dangerously hot batteries and red faces and buying more electronic components.  It's funny, but that's kind of short lived.  :D

There has been excitement in therapeutic riding, and we found out that Eric will in fact clutch a trot strap like his life depends on it, when it is clear his life could depend on it, but also...it probably would have been better to teach him emergency dismount first, before the horse had a temper tantrum while he was trying to sit on it... O_o  All's well that ends well.

As for my health...beware your aging hormones, ladies...they will bite you in the digestive tract and make your life a living hell from which no physician will look you in the eye because they are so busy telling you that you imagined the whole thing.  BOO HISS.  I had myself tested damn you (like Sheldon) and I'm not crazy, so failing to fix any of the distress while charging me thousands of dollars was kind of unfair and cruel.  In the end, I have learned to manage the more flamboyantly horrible symptoms and will at some point have my ovaries completely removed if it doesn't settle down in the next year or two.  Blechness, to be sure, but much better managed without terror of digestive cancers (thanks, GI docs who didn't treat a single symptom I needed your help with, but loaded me up with tests that were all pointless and expensive).

So, it's off to reclaim the garden this year, and plan a summer of excitement for da Creature, and be thankful of wonderful new things rising on the horizon...there is a new person following us on our travels and we will call him... the Firstborn's Boyfriend or Bry Bry, for short.  Aren't they adorable?

I will be posting again, now that I'm not sick ALL the damn time.  See 'ya round the blogosphere and out there in the convention world.  Our next outing is NOLA Time Fest 2014 and will feature a panel by the AMAZING GRANDPA on the making of Dark Smalek, our new family member, an 80% scale Dalek, with a shiny black helmet and completely RC controlled superness.  "100% of the evil, 80% of the packaging."