Do You Believe?

I was reading an online discussion about whether it is a good thing to tell children that there's a Santa Claus. One side thought it was wrong to lie to children, while the other side thought that believing in the magic was a wonderful part of childhood. I never really believed in Santa Claus. It came across as a fun thing to pretend about, rather than a belief that a given person really existed. The pretense never went away, either. As long as we celebrated Christmas, my mom would give me one gift with a tag that said "from Santa."

I didn't really know why I didn't believe in Santa Claus, though. I was thinking that it was more of an attitude by my parents than anything else. Yesterday for some reason I remembered an incident, though, which was probably the source of how I viewed the jolly old elf for the rest of my life.

When I was little, cousins in one family were in a very difficult situation. My uncle was in the Navy and was at sea for months at a time. My cousins were 5, 7 and 9 years old and their mother just decided she couldn’t or didn’t want to care for them alone any more, so she abandoned them. The kids were placed in foster care. (Eventually they ended up living with our grandmother and my uncle retired from the Navy so he could be with them.)

I was five years old and my brother was seven. We didn’t have a real strong belief in Santa anyway, but there may have been something there at that point. Hard to tell. Our family wasn’t wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but we had enough to get by on and our Christmases were pretty good. That year my parents came to my brother and me and explained about the cousins. They told us that our cousins wouldn’t have any Christmas presents where they were. If my parents bought presents for the cousins, there wouldn’t be as much for presents for my brother and me. We would still get presents, but there wouldn’t be as many as there had been in the past. They gave us a voice in how Christmas for everyone would be.

I want to stress that my parents didn’t put the whole decision on us. But we were part of it. And in order to make us part of it, they needed to tell us that there was no Santa Claus.

We agreed that it would be better for all of us, including our cousins, to have something, rather than for them to have nothing. My mom took us shopping with her to pick out the gifts for the cousins so we were part of the whole thing. The only thing I remember from that Christmas was when we went to the foster home to give the presents to my cousins. That was the most important part of the whole holiday.

A rare post

I'm not a good blogger. But I'm here once in a while.

I saw the doctor earlier this week and we talked about my migraines. He gave me a prescription for nortryptyline, which is supposed to be effective in preventing migraines. It's also an anti-depressant.

I took the first one last night and I feel like real ca-ca. Sort of like I'm wrapped in cotton batting or something and I've got low-level but constant nausea. This is the same way I've felt when I've taken other anti-depressants, for one reason or another.

Sidenote: When I was in the nursing home a couple of years ago, they berated me into agreeing to take an anti-depressant because they told me I was looney for being unhappy about being in the nursing home. I took them for a few days and then refused to continue.

I don't know what's going to happen. Maybe this horrible feeling will go away after I take these for a while. I'm not sure whether they'll prevent the migraines, either. I do have a feeling that I may have to choose between migraines every few weeks and feeling like crap all the time. We'll see.

Eighteen years, eight months and five days she was here. Eighteen years, eight months and five days she's been gone.

Bizarro world

Several weeks ago, my arm started hurting. It wasn't constant, but it was really painful. It was like the muscle was on fire and affected either the muscle just above my elbow or just below, but never both at the same time. On the right side. I'd had something similar not long before the whole badness with my innards started, except it was on the left side. It started and then, after several months, just stopped again, with nothing I could figure out as a cause.

When it happened before, I went to all sorts of doctors. I saw neurologists and rheumatologists and every other -ologist I could find. They gave me a whole list of things that weren't wrong with me, but not a clue as to what was wrong. I got a number of misdiagnoses -- someone said I had tennis elbow, which isn't even close to my symptoms. There was no injury or muscle strain or anything like that. It was a bit worse when I got stressed, but it didn't seem that stress caused the pain, just exacerbated it.

So when it started again, I was pretty upset. I was in some pretty severe pain and I knew there was nothing I could do about it. Some folks I talked to suggested minerals, especially potassium, so I made a point of trying to add more potassium-rich foods to my diet. I was taking a multivitamin with minerals, so I didn't think I needed to take much more.

Monday morning, just after taking my daily vitamin pill, I got to thinking about the previous bout with it. It occurred to me that I likely was taking a vitamin pill at that time, too, but ran out just as the whole intestinal thing started and I didn't bother replacing them. I had only started taking the vitamins again relatively recently. Then the strangest thought came to me. What if the vitamins were causing the pain?

I've not taken the vitamins since and the pain is almost completely gone. I've had a couple of twinges here and there and it's sort of generally sore, but not the excruciating fire that I had before. Jim thinks that maybe it's the minerals that were included so, once this is completely out of my system, I can try taking vitamins that have no minerals included. Then I can start adding things one at a time. At least if I get that pain again, I'll know to stop taking whatever I added most recently.

But how bizarre is it that a vitamin pill would cause this kind of pain? Weird!

Counting chickens

I found a job for Jim on the 'net that looks just about perfect. It's exactly what he has experience in, working for the EPA (a government job) and minimum pay would be 170% of what he was making before. Cool, huh?

It's in the general area of where we live -- close enough that he could commute for a while, but far enough that we would eventually have to move. It's just nice to think about being able to stay where we are until the lease runs out, rather than paying a penalty. The area is absolutely gorgeous. I like where we are now, but this is even better.

I started doing some online research on housing (we could afford a lot more than what we have now and possibly even buy a place). I keep telling myself that it's a good thing to look ahead and be prepared, but I have to be really careful not to count my chickens ahead of time. I don't want to be too disappointed if it doesn't happen.

The job was just recently posted and they'll be taking applications until the beginning of August, so I have a lot of time to both worry and count. Fingers crossed, though.

We're now a statistic

Jim just called to tell me that he has been laid off. He knew something was up because he got a call yesterday from the lab manager, saying that he wasn't to come in early like he usually does, but to wait until a meeting that was scheduled for 8:00 this morning. The meeting must have been a little early because it's now 7:40.

We'll be all right for a while. He gets a month's severance pay, and health insurance will continue for that time. Then he will get the back vacation pay they owe him, which is almost 8 weeks, so we have income at the same level through September. I doubt that we'll have insurance after this month, though. He said he has some paperwork that he's bringing home, so maybe there will be information there.

The thing that just kills me is that he gave so much to that company. Way over and above what anybody has the right to expect from an employee. On days when he was coming home "at the normal time", that would mean that he only worked 10 hours -- with no breaks -- instead of 12 or 14 hours. Several times he went four or more weeks at a time without a day off at all. And they shaft him.

On the up side, he has referred to the lab as "the bad place" for a long time. He joked about this being his opportunity to become a professional poker player. :-) At least we should be able to spend a few days of just being together before he gets into dealing with resumes and interviews and all that goes into looking for a new job. At least it's not cold out, and we don't owe any money to anyone.

I can't tell you how much I hate this...

... but I have to agree with [choke, gasp, gag] Sarah Palin.

I don't watch David Letterman, but I think somebody would have to be living under a rock not to have heard about the comments he made about Sarah Palin's daughter earlier this week. It is completely unacceptable. The reason I'm posting this is that I expect that at a later date some of the more conservative people I know will claim that this didn't bother me and no matter how much I might protest that it did, without dated proof that I wrote it, they won't believe me. So this is a "for the record" post.

This morning, Gov. Palin made two points in an interview on the Today Show which I had to agree with. First, she talked about how, during the most recent campaign, Obama asked that people keep families off limits. Mostly that has been respected, but not in the case of the Palins. I think that families, especially children, should not be mentioned at all and, if they are, only in the most benign manner.

Back in the early '60s, I remember a joke that mentioned a president's child, which I thought was pretty cute at the time and still do. I believe it was Stan Freberg who said that Krushchev had called the White House on the red phone and every problem between the US and USSR was solved within five minutes. Then Caroline called her daddy to the phone.

That's a cute joke that doesn't in any way denigrate the child, but rather was a comment on the presidency and referred to families everywhere. Letterman's jokes were very pointed, no matter which of the Palin daughters he was referring to.

Sidenote: I do wonder about some of Palin's supporters who are up in arms now and whether they were similarly up in arms when Rush Limbaugh compared the young teenage Chelsea Clinton to a dog. (Limbaugh lamely claimed that the incident was an accident when he was called on it, rather like Letterman's lame excuse of referring to the older Bristol Palin instead of 14-year-old Willow.)

The other thing I agree with Gov. Palin about is that this kind of joke contributes to an atmosphere where the denigration and abuse of women is somehow acceptable. It is an attack on all women, and especially on younger women. As bad as the personal attack on the Palin daughter (whichever one he meant) was, I think this is more serious. But not surprising.