It may just happen…

… I found a little bit of magic code that unlocked the CDROM and now I am in the middle of the process of installing Linux to the new laptop. Well, the new laptop isn’t exactly new, it’s more like clunky old technology but I have installed Linux onto it. Now we’ll see how it works out.

EJ has been learning to Squawk like a goose. It’s very funny when she just starts doing it very loudly in public. People look at me and her like there is something that I am doing to make her do that, or that I could do to stop. Squeaky the Squawking Short Person.

Very funny.

Observations

Nathan dropped Eliza-Jane off with me at work last night so he could have coffee with some friends and just be a grown-up for a while.

EJ got hungry. I was working with the medical director at the agency. He’s an MD and he’s European, so he didn’t bat an eye when I popped her on my breast and continued to discuss the role of adenosine in platelet aggregation and how best to express it to pharmaceutical reps. In contrast, an American and a Japanese rapidly exited when they saw what was going on: almost fell over trying to walk backwards too quickly.

It really is a terrible shame that the breast has been fetishized to the extent that breastfeeding makes both mothers and others uncomfortable. I can only do my part: breastfeed brazenly.

Thursday

So it comes after Wednesday. And before Friday.

so so

We almost always have a really great morning around here. Squeaky is very happy to get up and face the day. Her smiles and activity in the morning is really, really priceless. She loves to work on her gym mat. Her morning exercises. She pulls the little bug down from it’s roost and lets it go back up without the slightest bit of effort. She loves to manuever herself around to tbe able to look at herself in the mirror dangling on the cross bar.

I can get a lot of chores and tasks completed in the morning and during her nap at noon time. She is sometimes down for two whole hours, today it was about an hour. When she wakes up in the afternoon, she is ready to go go go! She really loves being outside, especially now that fall is in the air.It really tires me out to resist her, there is already a battle of the wills. yup, it’s true. Daddy is the type who does not mind getting grounded to his room, he will entertain himself quite well with his own devices. EJ is a real go-getter, she loves being outside and with people. When we are outside she wants to be facing the forward direction so she can see where we are going.

I am so thankful that we got a backyard because it would be so difficult to keep it up. I have trouble walking around the neighborhood and finding an excuse to go into the same stores over and over again and again. Mostly this is because I have so much trouble relating to people, particularly strangers. When I have a role in life that gives me a defined set of responses or reactions that I am ‘programmed’ to deal with, no probelm. I can be the PA on the street who keeps residents of the block from walking on the sidewalk because we are making a movie. Or I can sell someone shoes, or deliver a package, or give orders, or some other ‘business’ role.

Being a free form human in society, interacting with other humans, that scares me. I haven’t an identity to hide behind. I am quite the introvert. “But you can be so forthcoming in your blog writing!” Well, yes, I can spill almost any sort of deep emotion or thought from without my innermost quarters, because I have an identity that is ready formulated. I even can sense it’s being grown and expanded with each truth that I write. Yet, when I walk down the street, I find it difficult to grasp a good notion of how to respond to each third person who pokes their face into look at EJ and say how cute she is.

Oh yes, she is cute.

She’s my child.

Then they are gone, soometimes I am able to speak with people who I know I never would like yesterday there was a woman in an electric cart on the sidewalk that we spoke for about five minutes. But I think the difference there was she included me into the conversation. Isn’t that just the strangest thing? I’m carrying the baby, I am the one who will be able to answer any questins or make any statements and yet, people are much more interested in making the observation to themselves out loud that she is a cute baby. I think it is just to make themselves feel better and to tell themselves that they really aren’t as bad or as rude or as lousy as they think that they are. So they over compensate.

It pisses me off. I want to snap at them, and tell them to get out of our way. I want to whack them on the head. The worst offenders are the fat, old italian granmas ( or the puerto rican grandmas) with their mustaches, grimy layered t-shirts over track suit bottoms and sneakers. They waddle right in and say things like, “Oh I just have to touch the feet.” Or “My goodness what a doll. Doesn’t she look just like a doll?” More than one fat, old lady has thought that she was a dollbaby, like an actual doll. Why must I suffer these fools?

Oh, I guess I still have more to learn. It is difficult to hold my tongue so that it does not transmitt my exact thoughts to the people I meet and thus demonstrate behavior which I do not want Eliza-Jane repeating in her life. So, I do my best, that’s all we can ever do.

In a new direction, of sorts

EJ went to work today for the first time. Well, sort of. See today, I woke up with the plan and intention of going into the city and putting in some volunteer time with Emerging Artists International. They are an organization who are supporting and organinzing a city wide Open Studio for Artists in New York. I signed on a couple of months ago, and indicated that I’d be willing to help out and well, today that was my intention. I was going to take the Squeakazoid with me and figure out a way to do both.

We went to the address that was on the website, that I had linked to from the email I received. (A special prize, yourself must be given for following that sentence structure, Yodaspeak, I have got.) So there we are on the Westside of Manhattan, in a building with pretty nice galleries and it’s not there that we are supposed to be at, I look up a phone number that I should have called in the first place, and get directions out to Williamsburg.

EJ met a dog named Xanadu as we walked into a studio space that desperately needed some organization. Basically the entire organization is one guy, with some help here and there. So we cleaned and moved things around so that the work space will be much better . I found a spot where Eliza-Jane could play on a blanket and sleep when she needed to, and helped out all around the best I could.

We left and commuted home and she was very happy the whole day. we did not have an hour of nonstop crying, we did have a little bit of time of whimpering but that led right into napping. When she saw Mommy again at night, she was very happy and proud of herself. Our Little Girl is growing up! Ahh!

Bizarre events of the day

So I’m sitting around all day trying to install Linux onto an ancient laptop. Well, that’s the first thing, the mailman rang the bell at nine in the morning with a box of Linux CDs from the Netherlands. The strange thing was he actually was at the door when I got there, normally they rang and dash, leaving only a little yellow slip of paper that you find hours later. So, EJ and I are working on the laptop after lunch when the buzzer goes off again.

At the Door is a Korean woman and she has got this stroller that someone was trying to sell yesterday at the stoop sale. She asks if I am Nathan, naturally I say yes. Then she gives me the stroller and a bag of books, clothes and a stuffed rabbit (no comments about what the Local Australian population has to say about that!) and tells me that she doesn’t normally do this sort of stuff. Then she tells me that; and I have to quote her here because you just don’t get words like this in everyday life from strangers on your doorstep; “You should consider this a message of love from God.” My next door neighbor then chimes in with a great little quip about how it’s just one great, big, Happy family out here in Bay Ridge.

I do not want to be ungrateful, and in fact I am not really ungrateful, I do appreciate it. I told Steph yesterday that we would get a new stroller later when the one we have is no longer suitable. Here I turn around one day later and it is given to me. I guess it’s time to get a new stroller. This really did freak me out a bit, especially since recently I have been dealing with some depression and even some anger. It’s difficult to just really put any sort of scope on what has just happened right now, but I do know that whatever is in store for us in the near future, it will involve me getting out of the house much more frequently. Perhaps this will help me as well.

Upper Sixties and Cloudy

We had the Art outside again today, but there were no fish biting. The weather did not have as many people just walking around all day, but none the less it was very nice day. Steph got wiped out by sitting on the sidewalk and talking with the next door neighbors, but she seemed to really enjoy herself while out there. My friend Jack came over and we discussed plans for creating a website for him. This will be fun to make a website for someone other than myself, I am looking forward to this little test of my skills.

Eliza-Jane really liked having Jack around all afternoon and has been making some serious squawking noises to demonstrate her pleasure and excitement. It is becoming more and more apparent that she is enjoying the change in temperature as well. She has always liked being outside, but as the temperatures are beginning to fall, she is becoming more and more insistant on going outside. I wonder what will happen when wiinter comes around? I guess that will be fun to see.

Mission Accomplished

Steph woke me up at ten this morning, asking me if I wanted to sell my paintings today. Now, it wasn’t just something out of the blue, that crawled up her back and prompted her to ask me that this morning. OUr nextdoor neighbors had told us at the beginning of the week that there was going to be a block wide stoop sale, saturday and sunday. They suggested that I might want to set out my artwork and sell it. So that was what prompted the wake up call.

I set the paintings out and stood on the sidewalk waking up with my coffee while the neighbors kids both talked at me, simultaneously. While this was happening outside, inside I was getting more and more anxious. Anxious about having to talk to strangers about my artwork. There is probably nothing in the world which I would rather do less. Fortunately, I had another option. Football practice.

It all worked out great. Steph stood around gossiping with the neighbors while people looked at my art and bought comicbooks from the guy down the street. I got to think about chasing a ball around a patch of grass and not even realize that total strangers were looking at my artwork and judging it, liking it, hating it. I know that there needs to be some sort of feedback in the loop between creator/performer and audience. It just completely wipes me out to have to get that feedback in person.

Immediately after football practice ended, I began to wonder how Steph was going to get the heavy plywood pieces inside. When I finally got through the subway system (by the way, how come the Metrocard vending machines are not used to provide updated system changes?) and got hoome, the paintings were all inside and Steph was sitting there with EJ and her friend Jen. Jen is Canadian and eight months pregnant. These two hearty women with babies lugging my paintings up the stairs, what a mental image. Not only did she bring the paintings back inside, she had sold one of them! Great!

EJ ate steak tonight.

Really,Late@Night

….but you might call it morning. I am now finishing up my latest little project. I can hardly believe how much of a geek I have totally become in the latest six months. Maybe I was always this big of a geek, I just never had the computer to realize it. I have spent the night setting up a really cool ( for me) program that will allow me to pretty much run my digital life from one place. Now, I will have to finish up the little projects I have got all over the place.

Creating Passionate Users: Subvert from Within: a user-focused employee guide

Creating Passionate Users: Subvert from Within: a user-focused employee guide

I seriously hope that there are several people within Microsoft who have read this and are taking it to heart. I’d like to hear about it from them, although it maybe too late, as I have already crossed over into Macville and possibly into Linuxland very soon.