kids. and sports.

Looks like we have a problem here. We haven't called the Track-n-Field people about Ignatz yet, but we have pulled the Sniglet out of soccer. Apparently yesterday at practice he was sauntering around the gym not making any effort at all, and his teammates were gritching about it - yes, five-year-olds. And I'm all, sheesh people, get a freaking grip. And DrBob's all, sheesh the Sniglet, get the freaking lead out already. And lo, a fundamental disagreement was revealed. Yes, even after eleven years of marriage, your mate can still surprise you.

Evidently, DrBob believes that Sports=Fun is the default setting for kids, especially boys, and if they don't think sports are fun, it may be because somebody (that would be me, I presume) has geeked it for them somehow. I believe that if you really want your kids to be interested in something, you have to foster that by showing them that you have an interest: by watching sports all weekend, for example, or by playing a sport yourself and - this is key - taking them with you to games. Which is not something we have ever done, and lo, our children are utterly indifferent to the joys of competition. As was I, at that age. So I'm a bit disappointed, because this closes off a potential avenue for fun and fulfillment, plus a way to stay somewhat healthy despite a less-than-optimal diet, but I am not altogether surprised. Whereas DrBob seems to feel a bit betrayed.

Okay, I really really wanted to dance, but was afraid to ask my parents to pay for it. At least I had one interest, and here we get to what bothers me - the boys don't want to do anything. No music lessons, no collecting, no filmmaking or website making or sports or anything hobbylike at all. We've offered everything, we keep trying to provide opportunities. It's not like they have some burning desire they can't share with us, no, they just don't want to do anything. And honestly, I don't think this is good, particularly in Ignatz's case. Because he's about to be a teenager, and I was a teenager with no particular hobbies for about three years there, and it was absolute hell. A few healthy obsessions would have made those years so much more bearable. Would have made me more bearable, because I was really self-absorbed and unpleasant to be around.

In stark contrast to the way I am now.

Oh shut up.

genius inspiration

Hah! Kelly came through for me! She suggested Picasa, which I already have on my computer and did not delete during the most recent housecleaning. Turns out Picasa is actually pretty cool, brought to you by our friends at Google, who also do this blogstuff here. It rustled me up a slideshow out of the Spain photos, so here ya go. I haven't cropped the photos or messed with the page at all, because I'm a lazy git, but I may at some point. It also didn't give me any place to tell the stories that go with the pictures, so I may get around to adjusting that as well. Hope so.

even better!

Anthropologist-lacerating. Yowza.

dithering

In the traditional sense, not the webdesign sense. Nike made up their "Just Do It" slogan just for me. I've been sitting at the computer for half an hour, trying to decide how to get those Spain photos up. There aren't even that many of them. Individual blog entries? A slideshow? I think the travelblog thing didn't work out, since I never finished the dratted things, and actually I can't remember why I wanted to do it that way in the first place. Maybe because, then as now, I didn't know what to do instead.

Maybe tomorrow inspiration will strike. Like, Bam! Ow!

further proof...

...as if we needed it, that Busymom is a genius: Laundry grenade

a note or three

I will get those Spain photos from DrBob and put them up, honest I will. Soon.

Ignatz and the Sniglet now have gmail accounts. They never actually check them, but by gummy, they have'em. If you are um, someone who should know their email addresses, email me to ask for them, yeah?

And finally, it is a really beautiful day today. I didn't get out much, but my desk is at a window, so I did get some good out of it.

rant on clothing my boys

Tchah! The catalogs and department stores keep having stuff that's almost okay, except for its utter crapness, like oo, a rugby shirt! I like those! Only, do you have any without the faux-private school patch, iron-on skateboarder, and words on the chest? "Beach & Fun"; "Teen Style"; "Off Roader Coalition"; Urk. You want me to pay to put your inane message to the world on my child? Hell no, you'd have to pay me, and here's a hint: there ain't enough money on this planet. Ditto the flannel shirts, only can we also take out the sewn-in collar and sleeves of another shirt to create a layer look without any actual layers?

So okay, maybe we go a little upmarket - last friday I actually went into an H&M store, even though I've sworn to boycott them for showing the worst ad ever in the movie theaters, where you can't get away from it, and it's ten whole minutes long, and you want to laugh at how pathetic and stupid it is, but you can only sustain that for maybe three minutes and then you're left with nothing but "Dear God, please please make it stop." But the store is a mob scene, and I didn't buy anything because the baying and snapping of the other shoppers skeeved me out.

Esprit? Hm, is orange the new black? I'm gonna go with "No". And every item says "Esprit" on it, which again, you want people to advertise your stuff, you should pay them. Ditto the Tommy Hilfiger store, I didn't even bother to go in. As for Zara, listen: if you have a daughter, go there. Cute, colorful, fabulous. If you have a son, you get more shirts with words on them. SIGH.

I made Red take me to Target when I was in Seattle. I love Target, I wish it had come to Germany instead of stupid, evil Walmart. But still, even though I spent a whole lotta money for a single shopping trip ($270 or so), I couldn't actually bring myself to buy a whole season's worth of clothes. I'm now regretting that.

german-flavored english

One of the most frustrating things I do is proofread texts written by youngish German academics with multiple advanced degrees in some branch or other of the Humanities - either written in English by the author, or translated into English by my husband, a youngish German academic with multiple advanced degrees in the Humanities. Wow, frustrating and highly specialized!

At the moment I'm blogging in order to avoid doing that very thing, because I'm almost halfway through a 16-page book review and it's driving me crazy. The same mistakes, every time. I think I'm getting worse at this with practice, not better. Because I've been married to a German for 11 years now, and I live in Germany, and half the time I think in German anyway, which probably means my own English is getting German-flavored. I bet if you asked any of my family, they'd ... well, they probably wouldn't admit it, unless you got them drunk, because they wouldn't want to seem disloyal. But I bet I'm putting my verbs at the end of the sentence at least half the time. I know I do that in Spanish, which is bad.

And I bet I'm letting my authors get away with murder by now (metaphorically speaking, of course). You know, you say (or read, or hear) something often enough, it starts to sound normal. I don't think the work I'm doing is good enough anymore.

Am I getting worse at this, or just more critical? Or have I simply managed to stall on the book review long enough that I can now legitimately go to bed? Bingo!

the new face of alala

Got tired of the green, what can I say? This looks much more Novembery, don't you think? Though I may change the background soonish: at the moment brown seems very hip and retrofunkycool, but I'm pretty sure there's a reason why I don't own anything brown.

I also tried to clean out my blogroll, because the sad fact is, I don't have time to read all that stuff. But in addition to the stuff on the list that I do read, there are several things that I just want you to think I read, so as to seem smarter and better-informed than I actually am. So I couldn't get rid of them. Maybe later.

No news. As I've said before, either I have time to blog, OR I have something to blog about. It's never both.

continued...

Oh yes, and speaking of how fabulous I am, let me tell you how I got to be both a great sister AND a great wife - treasure this moment. It probably won't come again.

So yeah, watching football in Port Townsend with Nate (until Mom told us to shut up), somehow we got around to the subject of Lego Basketball players, and I said I wanted to get Robert the Dirk Nowitzki one. Robert's big into the NBA, and his favorite team is whichever one is currently fielding a German player (can you say fielding when the game is played on a court? No, but courting doesn't work either...), so the team du jour is the Mavericks. Because of Dirk Nowitzki. Okay, /backstory. Anyway, I mentioned that there's a Gary Payton Lego guy too, and Nate got all excited, so after Mom banished us we checked the internet and Lo! Gary and Dirk are actually in the same set! Along with Vince Carter. Not shabby. AND, even though Gary's with the Miami Heat now, LegoGary's still a Sonic! So of course we had to buy the set. We had it sent to Nate's house, and that is how I got to be a super sister and be the first to tell Nate about Lego Gary Payton. I'm so proud.

So once they arrived in Denver, Michelle sent Dirk on to us, and he arrived today while Robert was at the gym. Robert was pretty impressed when he got home, and when I mentioned that Nate had gotten Gary Payton and Vince Carter, Robert said "There's MORE of them!? I have to get them!"

My work here is done.

check out my bad self

That's right. I'm dangerous, me.

Heh heh heh.

whoa, ambush

Ooog. My PDA just popped up a reminder that Mom's birthday is soon. Very weird feeling.

photos forthcoming

Robert has put the photos on his computer, and from there it's just a short hop to mine, so there will be Spain photos up here somewhere, at some point. Probably soon.

TOTAL dirtbag on the school front, haven't touched my database books since before I left for Spain. I had a fairly big project for the JOB, which I've just now "finished" - I say "finished" because I think I'm done, but L will probably have a few changes to make, and will probably think they are simpler than they really are, so there is probably actually still a bit of work to be done. Which, fine. It's only another month, really. And maybe I can be a bit sluggish on the database course until that and Christmas are past, and then get it done in January. Or not. Maybe I shouldn't leave it so long, as the final project looks decidedly hairy, and final exams are never, ever fun. And this course is about ten times harder than the first two. I should just plunge in and get it over with, but I'm being very weird. After all that time away, I can't seem to settle down. It's bugging me.

Spain? What Spain?

So DrBob and I went to Andalusia for the weekend, and it was fun. When we got home Monday night I was so tired I nearly fell asleep while brushing my teeth. Today I had to go to Munich to pack up my stuff at the office because my job (which I will not name, having learned that particular lesson the hard way) is moving to the University district, and then tonight was Parent Evening, when we parents all stand in line to talk to our kids' teachers up at the gymnasium, which, since our kids have like 8 teachers, means a lot more standing in line than actual talking.

So even though going to Spain was very interesting and all, two whole things have happened since then, and the Spain trip has receded a bit. I tried to find an internet café so I could blog during the trip, but even though we did pass one, once, DrBob is a very um, busy traveler, and there's no way I could have found time to sit down and blog. Sightseeing with DrBob is a lot like the Bataan Death March, with a history lesson thrown in.

So I may mention some things that happened there, like buying a g-string from a truck stop vending machine, but it's kind of not my focus right now. A lot of what makes blogging interesting and important is its immediacy, and the Spain trip doesn't have that anymore. My blog is also a chronicle, for me to look back on, especially now that it's no longer an ongoing letter to my mom, so as I say, I may get back to it. I may not worry about being timely and upfront and inyaface and right there being real, man. Hell, I don't anyway, do I? If I wanted to use this as a raw, immediate, powerful form of expression, I'd have been in the computer room blogging Mom's death as it happened, like the really hardcore bloggers do. Instead, I waited and processed and thought for 12 hours before I wrote anything about it.

I'm still processing, by the way. I don't know what form that will take as time passes, but for now, she's so much in my thoughts. A week or so before she died, she said, "I guess it's okay that I never made it to Spain, isn't it?" and I assured her that it was fine, that she probably hadn't missed much. Yeah, so I lied. You have to be nice to dying people, and sometimes that means telling a few white lies.

The garden at the Alhambra was amazing, and I really wished she could see it. Everything we did, everywhere we went, I thought about what she would have said about it. I made DrBob take a photo of a purple rose, even though I won't be able to show it to my mom. Maybe I'll show it to his mom instead.

something to remember

I read this somewhere:

"Good judgement comes from bad experience, which comes from bad judgement."

I'm trying to remember it, to remind myself to be more tolerant of Kilian's mistakes. And of my own.

whoopee, hooray?

Okay, correction on the hockey-thing: Kilian says the coach wasn't being rude, he was just asking why Kilian was downstairs in civvies and not upstairs climbing into his hockey gear. So that's all right then.

So it's been a really empty week for Kilian. There's no school, and he didn't have hockey, and we can't sign him up for track now because it's a holiday week, and most of his friends are on vacation because same. He's been hella bored. I did teach him how to change his blog stylesheet today, not that it'll do much good because he won't be blogging for several days. He'll be in Buchbach with Gus while Robert and I are in SPAIN!

Okay, can you say ambivalent? I should be skipping at the thought of heading south for a few days of sunshine in the culture-geek paradise of Andalucía. We'll be staying in Córdoba, and Robert wants to go to Granada and check out Andújar, Jaén and Úbeda on the way, and maybe see Seville too, if we have time. Three days. Uh, no I don't think we'll have time. Okay, I am kind of excited. But I also feel kinda bad about missing even more work, and pressured about school - though that's really my own thing. My teacher gave me an extension until February, but I wanted to be finished by the end of the year. I may have to let go of that. I'm still thinking a lot about Mom, and feeling... not exactly sad, though that's part of it. More like lost. Cut loose, drifting, weightless but not in a good way. And of course, I feel really guilty about leaving my kids after being home only five days. But when the whole Mom-thing came up, Robert and I talked about cancelling the trip, and we decided that after everything that's happened in the last month, I would really need a vacation, so we should go. So we're going. I guess I just probably won't enjoy it as much as I otherwise would have.

We will be staying in a pretty snazzy hotel (click on the More Photos link, I dare ya) - one of those off-season deals, otherwise we could never afford it. So this is one fantastic birthday present, I'm sure you'll agree.

no more hockey

So that's it. I'm not a hockey-mom anymore. Dang. I really liked that community, the moms were nice and some of the kids were too, I thought. But it all went so weirdly, and I'm not sure how I feel now. I was feeling sad and let down that Kilian had so little value for this opportunity, and so little commitment to his team. But I dragged him down there to officially quit, instead of just pulling a disappearing act, and to thank the Coach and Karin, the head Hockey-Mom, and all the kids on the team were like, "What are you doing here?" which is really rude. And then the coach said the same thing, which is even ruder, considering he's supposed to be an adult. We didn't see Karin. So now I'm still disappointed in Kilian's side of the whole fiasco, but ticked off at the hockey people, so then I shouldn't be disappointed in Kilian, should I, I should be relieved that he's not hanging around with those jerkwads anymore.

This also spawned an argument with Robert about Kilian not taking responsibility and about Robert expecting a 10-year-old with ADD to behave like an adult, and about who's being unfair and why. And it also meant that yet again I had to miss Gus's soccer practice, because I had to take Kilian down to the ice rink to Do The Right Thing for a coach who had no appreciation for it. Jackass. Reminds me of Mr. Emrich, that teacher who wouldn't accept Kilian's written apology.

So maybe there's a lesson here. Maybe, when Kilian has a conflict with an authority figure, it's due at least in part to the fact that the authority figure is a fuckhead. Maybe next time Kilian has a problem with a grown-up, I should remember this and not be so quick to blame him.

I want to go home. I want to move back to the States, so when some dickweed decides to pick on my kid I can tell him where to shove it.

home

Gus just called me a snuggle-hun.

Wow. A snuggle-hun. Kilian calls me the Queen of Sarcasm. I really can't decide which one I like better.

So yes, I am back home and the weather is CRAP and I feel a bit overwhelmed about all the stuff I have to do, so I haven't really posted because I didn't want to sound all miserable when really I'm glad to be home. Sort of.

Okay, I was overextended before the whole Mom-thing happened. So now I'm overextended and three weeks behind. That's not great. And Kilian is having problems in school - the usual, sloppy, disorganized, late, doesn't finish things - and problems in hockey, of the not-participating variety. He just stands around on the ice, so when he's playing the team is effectively a man short, and frankly, I'm amazed they haven't turned on him yet. We've decided to pull him before they start blaming him for their many losses, and not without justification, frankly. So that's depressing and disappointing.

I don't know how I should feel about Mom. I think I'm numb right now. Or maybe I had time to digest the information and I don't need to go through the whole denial-and-anger thing. I'm very short-tempered lately, but that may well be because I'm overextended and three weeks behind. And the weather's bad. And I'm very likely premenstrual.

On the slightly-brighter side, my brother days I can cuss all I want. Poophead! Booger! Fiddlesticks!

Hm, that wasn't very effective. I may need some time to work up to it.

en route

I pblogged this on the plane, so here I am transcribing:

I really like this airline. This was pretty much the least-bad transatlantic flying experience I can recall. Flying is never yayfun, but this was not nearly as unpleasant as I've come to expect. I'd say we should ditch Lufthansa and fly SAS from now on, if that didn't mean we'd have to fly up to Copenhagen to get down to Spain.

I made a few swaps Stateside. E.g., I found a green denim jacket hanging on the coatrack, and after much deliberation, I adopted it and left my blue denim jacket behind. Ditto daypacks. The one I brought was given to Robert by Georg - not as a gift from the heart, but as an alternative to chucking it - and it was, you know, an okay daypack. Gray. One hole. But Mom's daypack is black (I still can't imagine why she had it - she hated black) and has water-bottle pockets and packs smaller, so is better for traveling, so I ditched the gray one. Hope Robert doesn't mind (note from later, 1 November: he hasn't even noticed yet).

ANYWAY. The point of this unnecessarily long exposition is that I found a little notebook in the backpack, and it's her "Medical Journal". She started it in June of 2004, and it tracks the whole thing, the discovery of the tumors, her symptoms, changes in medications. Not very in-depth, it's just notes, but it's weird to see the whole thing documented, and to see her handwriting deteriorate over time. I didn't follow the process, here in the blog or anywhere else, because I held onto the hope that it was no big deal and she'd get better. Right up until Tuesday, 11 October, when Dr. C called to say the tumor in her back was spreading, and we knew then that she was much too weak for anymore therapy, and she wasn't going to recover. Not even temporarily. It really seems like I should have known sooner, in hindsight, though I can't say when I should have realized. I just spent so much time reading about cancer survivors that it didn't occur to me that she wouldn't beat it.

ready to go home

Well, I guess I had my long mopey good-bye to Port Townsend. I went to see the Wallace & Gromit movie yesterday, and it was a fine movie, but I'd much rather have seen it with the kids. It's good for moms to have Time Away From The Kids, but I'm finding that there are limits...specifically, two weeks is about as much as I can really stand. Probably not even that, actually. I spent the first two weeks here being really glad I didn't have to take care of my kids on top of everything else, but if that hadn't been true, I'd probably have started missing them a lot sooner.

In any case, I miss them now, and Robert too. I'm being kind of a social zero now, I don't feel like talking anymore. I just want to go home. Red picked me up today and brought me to Jack & Mary's house, and lots of fun foody and social things are planned, and I'm just sort of sitting around waiting to get on a plane. In about 25 hours. Long wait.

So the next question is, how will this change my blog? Mom and Kelly were my only regular readers, and now half my audience is gone. I guess this means I can cuss more.

gradually sinking in

We picked up Mom's ashes from the funeral home today. Jerry plans to scatter them in her garden, so we didn't need to go the heirloom-urn route. We said we'd bring our own, since it was going to be sort of a temporary thing anyway, and then the only thing we could find that was really big enough, without being a clear glass thing (that would be too much information, I think) or a plastic bucket (disrespectful) was the old ceramic cookie jar she used when we were kids. When I say "used", of course, I mean she filled it with honey-sweetened health-nugget pseudo-cookies loaded down with sesame and sunflower seeds and whatever other nutrition-bombs she could pack in, and which we generally refused to eat, since they hardly qualified as actual cookies. I think they were low-fat too, and I know she used whole wheat flour. One of the things I will remember about Mom is how she was always trying to sneak an extra little bit of nutrition into everything we ate. It's certainly one way to show love. So anyway, that cookie jar is now on the dining room table, with Mom's earthly remains in it, and it'll stay there for another few days. Apparently I am the only one who's weirded out by that.

Hell, I'm weirded out by the whole thing. I think I've absorbed the fact that my Mom has died, but the collateral stuff isn't really sinking in yet, the fact that I can't list this as my permanent address, and who am I going to call every saturday evening now, and what am I talking about when I say "home"?

Sigh. Anyway. A little restless now, not sure what to do. I've bagged up the clothes and boxed up shoes and picture frames and stuff and stuff and stuff, Nate's taking the photos and heirlooms to Denver, and he's sorted out all the files and records. I've established with Jerry that the kitchen should be cleaned out by women who live around here and can take proper care of things...absorb the spices into their own kitchens instead of just throwing them away, for instance. And the dishes should just stay in the cupboards until the garage sale, it's the safest place for them. So really I guess there isn't much left for me to do here, except wander around and sort of say goodbye. I feel weird being here in what is essentially Jerry's space until it sells, but I'm not sure I'm ready to go back to Jack & Mary's in Seattle yet. I guess there really isn't any more work for me to do here, so I guess I can go pretty much any time I want, I just don't know when that will be.

Oh, and Gus's birthday was today! Sounds like the party was pretty exhausting, from what Robert says. Gus had fun, though, and that's what matters most. And now he's five, wow, what a thought. And he rides a two-wheeler, another milestone achieved while I was gone. How things have changed in the last three weeks. I really can't get my head around it all.

Life Going On

So Saturday was mostly phone calls and consulting with the funeral home guy. Sunday we took the ferry to Seattle and visited the stepmothers and I did some shopping for the boys. Have I mentioned that I love Target, and wish it would come to Germany instead of stupid, evil Walmart? Yay, at last decent clothes for my sons. Ooo! And we saw orcas off the port bow of the ferry!

And we're now working on emptying the house out. Much less difficult now that Mom is actually gone, because it's somehow less offensive and vulture-like. It's just a job that needs to be done. A big, big job. The hospital bed and wheelchair and stuff went today - they were on loan from an outfit called ECHHO (Ecumenical Christian Helping Hands Organization - yes, Christians, helping really sick people for free, regardless of their religious affiliation, so quit complaining about them, okay?). We have to wait for the death certificate before we can arrange for cremation and talk to the lawyers and cancel credit cards and internet service and start on selling the house and all that.

There may be a buyer for the house, maybe. Nate's wife's younger brother is about 21, plans to stay in town, and is considering buying a house. It would be good to keep this house in the family, sort of, and I hope bad family politics don't arise if the house turns out to be worth more than he can afford. Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I guess my main concern has to be how I'm going to get my stuff from here to Germany. It's not a lot of stuff, just some books and CDs and a few kitcheny-things and clothes, basically so that I have a lot of little things to remind me of her in everyday life. The rest has to be packed up and somehow disposed of. A bunch of stuff went to the landfill today, and Mom's friends will organize a garage sale at some point, and things are gradually getting done, but the job looks pretty overwhelming right now.

Sunday was yucky, but the sun came back today. I'm glad I get to see Port Townsend in the sun. Now that Mom's gone, I don't know when I'll be back here. I really love Port Townsend - yes, I hated it as a teenager, and couldn't wait to get out, but when I came back here with toddler Kilian and was a small-town mom it was great. I know we can never live here because Robert wants to be a college professor, and that makes me sad because it really is my favorite place. But it's so remote that without the family obligation I have no idea when or even if I'll come back. So I'm glad I get to see it in sunshine for what might be the last time.

it's over

Mom died this morning, a little after 8 a.m. I suppose if I were a true netizen, I would have blogged it right away, but that didn't seem like the right thing to do, somehow.

I never really got why people euphemize in these situations - dead is dead, right? No point in prettying it up. But today I had to call people and tell them, and it was really hard to say the D-word, so I found myself using all those other expressions that used to make me wonder. When it's real, it's too hard to say. Awkward.

I was out of the house yesterday for about three hours, and Kate (the nurse) told Nate and Jerry what to expect, i.e., what it looks like when someone dies. It's nice that they tell you these things, because you can't really help wondering, but you feel weird asking. Anyway, (Nate told me later) what happens with lung cancer is that the lungs fill up with fluid, very gradually, and the person gets too weak to cough it up, and as their lung capacity diminishes, their breath gets shallower and shallower, and ultimately the lack of oxygen to the brain is the cause of death. So basically, it's like drowning, only very slowly. So it can be kind of horrifying, and therefore it's really good to know beforehand what to expect.

This wasn't that bad, not as horrible as it could have been, anyway. She started wheezing around 8:30 last night, talked for about two hours and then settled into something very weird. She was vocalizing every exhalation, but not like moaning or anything so emotional. She didn't seem to be in pain, she was just...making noise. There was no apparent suffering, no visible struggle, for which I am immensely grateful, but the noise, the vocalized exhale, continued for almost ten hours. So even though she didn't seem to be suffering, that was kind of stressful for us, because it's very hard to concentrate on anything, but it's also very hard to sit by someone for such a long time.

Nate went to bed around 11, I went to bed around 1, Jerry dozed intermittently but didn't get any real sleep. We were told that this vocalization is not that unusual, and it can last quite awhile, so Nate left for the airport around 7.45, since he was scheduled to fly back to Mississippi today. He was barely out of town when I called him to tell him that Mom had passed, so he just turned around and came back, and the rest of the day has mostly been phone calls, funeral arrangements, and that sort of thing.

It was a bright sunny day, though, probably the last nice day for awhile. The sky was blue, and the garden looked beautiful. I'm only occasionally sad today. It will come upon me gradually.

(Happy birthday to me. I turned 35 yesterday.)

waiting, mostly

Huaugh. Well, it's getting harder to find time to write, especially since Mom's keyboard is kind of loud and I don't want to disturb her. I don't know how to describe how she's doing, partly because I've been here in the middle of it for so long, it's hard to know what changed when. Also because I don't really know how much detail would constitute an invasion of her privacy. And also because I'm not sure how to articulate what's galloping through my head.

She's getting weaker and sicker, the lucid moments fewer and farther between. She does wake up to ask occasionally why she doesn't die - not in a wretched, suffering way, though. She doesn't seem to be in pain, she's just decided it's time to go and is wondering why it's not that simple, I guess.

We're doing a lot of work on getting the house cleared out, but it's challenging. The dust makes me sneeze, and makes my eyes itch. There's so much that we just don't know what to do with, and it's weird to be throwing away things that were important to her, or that she put so much work into. And there's a lot of just-junk lying around, but also a few pieces of genuine history mixed in. There is also a lot of genuine garbage that I left behind, so I'm scratching my head a bit over the motives of my earlier self.

Aaaand I'm staying a bit longer. Now that we know she's actually dying, and how much there is to do around that, two weeks is not nearly enough time. She's barely conscious, but she's still glad I'm here. And even if she weren't, I would not be feeling a lot of self-respect if I scampered off and left this enormous amount of work to be done by her friends and neighbors, and by Jerry, who is a lot more than either of those.

Arranging to stay longer: gack. Apparently I had a completely non-changeable, non-refundable ticket, not even for a death in the family sort of thing, and Lufthansa wanted $3000 for another ticket at a later date. Way to capitalize on other people's misfortune, and don't let anybody tell you that European businesses are less vulture-like than American ones, okay? I did find a decently-priced ticket at SAS, so no major harm done, but Lufthansa will be receiving a nasty letter. Yeah, I got all kinds of time for that. So but anyway, I'll leave here on the 29th, and the general understanding is that I won't be back, for whatever funerals and things end up happening. That it was better to be here while she was still alive, and to make myself as useful as possible under the circumstances. So I guess I better get back to work.

uncomfortable

Well, she's started eating again, and she seems a bit more alert. Nate's here, and we're trying to get things cleaned up and sorted out. It's very creepy to be stripping the house and deciding how to dispose of Mom's stuff while she's still lying there in the living room, listening.

We've been trying to make sure we caregivers get out at least once a day, but I guess I've been gone too much, because Mom's complaining. This makes me feel very squeezed, and irritated. Robert keeps calling to ask me exactly what is going to happen, when will I be home, should he cancel the Spain trip, should he bring the kids out here, what? We all know what is going to happen, but nobody knows when, but he keeps asking, like if he nags me enough an answer will miraculously appear. Which is also fucking creepy, because Mom can hear every word I say, no matter where I am in the house, so my half of that phone conversation has to be heavily censored. It is nice that he misses me, and the kids do too - I rather like feeling needed - but I also feel pulled in opposite directions.

Meanwhile, Mom's getting ... um, querulous is a good word. Annoyed when I spend time with anyone but her, but I can't watch TV - well I can watch, but I can't listen because the sound annoys her, and today Nate and I tried to watch a football game (Seattle vs. Houston) without sound, but she got mad at us for talking about it. And I "wear her out" when I'm bustling around cleaning and organizing things. So yeah. What little shine there was on this trip is wearing off real fast.

But we talked with Jerry about it, about how much time out of our busy lives we can really afford, and I said I didn't feel I could stay beyond the 30th of October or so. He said well, by then she will either have died or stabilized, and in either case, I can reasonably go away. Fortunately, Nate is the executor of her will, not me, so he's the one who will have to come back and deal with stuff. Even more fortunately, he doesn't mind.

I can't believe how much I miss my family.

it's hard to make plans

Well, every day we know a bit more, I guess. She continues to decline. She mostly lies on the bed with her eyes closed, occasionally says something brief, but is not very communicative. She's not eating. I missed the nurse's visit today, oops, but Jerry says he doesn't think Mom will live more than two more weeks. So Nate's coming tomorrow night, and I've decided to postpone my return to Germany until the end of the month. We have abandoned all thought of getting Kilian out here, it's just too late. Mom says it will be too much work for her to interact with him, though she would like to talk on the phone with him one more time. We'll try to do that tomorrow. I am sorry, for his sake, that he won't be able to see her once more, but we have to consider her wishes as paramount right now. And maybe he should remember her healthy and happy, not like this.

bad day

We hoped when the Lorazepam finally wore off she'd be better, and she was, this morning, but this afternoon she was having stomach cramps and throwing up. Jerry was taking his daughter to Olympia when the trouble hit and Mom asked me for morphine. I didn't want to give it to her, but she was in so much pain and I didn't know what else to do. Turns out that was a mistake, one I won't make again. The morphine is only for pain in her surgery scar, not for stomach pain, which I didn't know. I'm feeling pretty guilty about that.

Jerry says Easter will probably be too late. I've emailed Robert about wanting to come out here right after Christmas with Kilian, haven't heard back from him yet, but I wonder if that might be too late too. This is really looking pretty bad. She was supposed to do better when I came to visit, because I was going to lift her spirits. She says she's really glad I'm here, so her spirits are lifted, but her health is still sliding.

The Tarceva prescription came in, and we read the flyer, and we're thinking it's not a good idea. There are a lot of really nasty side effects listed (vomit like coffee grounds? Never a good sign), and it sounds like it would be much too hard on an already weak system. We'll talk to the oncologist about it when he calls tomorrow, which he will do because we just heard from the GP today that last week's MRI shows that the cancer in her back has spread.

For the last few days I've been packing up stuff, sorting clothes, books, yarn, fabric, rummaging through papers, consolidating stuff. I'm now realizing that those were good days - I had to stay close to the house, but I could still get a lot done. Today was a bad day, and I just sat by her bed waiting for her to need something. It's a lot harder than sorting and tidying and organizing.

Doctor visit #2...

...was cancelled. She had a restless night, but she hasn't been fully awake since the Lorazepam kicked in, over 24 hours ago. We heard back from the oncologist about the Tarceva, it's affordable and the side effects sound pretty manageable, so we're going to try it for a month and see if it helps. But clearly we're just buying a few extra months at best. She's dying, we just don't know how fast. A month, two months, maybe even a year.

I was planning to try to get Kilian out here for Easter, but I don't know now. It might be too late. I have to get back somehow, but I'm racking my brain and not coming up with anything. The house needs to be decluttered and sorted and all, and the week I have left isn't near enough time. I should spend more time with her...I dunno. Not thinking too clearly right now. I know I asked myself this earlier, if this is really it and she's actually dying, how crappy will I feel that I only gave her two weeks? CJ said you can't know what's going to happen, you just do the best you can with the information you have, and that was true, then. But I do know now, this really is it and she really is dying. And she deserves more than two weeks.

doctor visit #1

Okay...

Other people can somehow come up with coherent narratives around such experiences, but not me. I'm just a big bag of impressions, and I don't know what the hell is true and what isn't.

The occupational therapist came today, gave Mom a grabby-thing and some theraputty and a bunch of exercises and advice. It was good information, but it wore Mom out a bit, which we hadn't expected at all. If I'd known it would be such a busy visit, I would have scheduled it for Wednesday, when she had nothing else on her calendar. Oops.

So we saw the oncologist today in Bremerton. Mom missed her appointment last Thursday, and the one before that, due to panic attacks in the car. Jerry didn't even manage to get her out of Port Townsend, he said. So this time we gave her a half of a Lorazepam (or something like that) for anxiety, and it made her really groggy. So weird, because she has been fairly perky the last couple days, and now she was just zonked out. She just sat in the wheelchair with her eyes closed while we talked to the doc, and oddly, he didn't seem at all surprised to see her so listless. She apparently walked into her last appointment five weeks ago, so this must have been a big change. Well, maybe he's unflappable. On the other hand, maybe he's expecting this. You know, it's only been a year since this whole thing started, and her condition has deteriorated pretty significantly in that time.

From my notes on the doctor visit, here's some of what he said. This cancer has been etremely difficult to monitor, from the start, so it may be getting worse, even if nothing shows up on the MRI. She is definitely much too weak for more chemotherapy. We might consider putting her on Tarceva, a very expensive cancer drug that has had very good results in a few people, but we are going to have to weigh quality vs. quantity of life, and also to find out whether her insurance will cover it. The Zometa injections she has been getting were to restore some of the bone mass she lost to the cancer in her back, but he said it's to prevent the bones from collapsing, and since she isn't walking she can stop those treatments.

The rest of it was mostly about what a stellar patient she has been, and how lucky she is to have so many people helping her, and that must be because she's been such a wonderful person all her life. And to Jerry, that he is doing a superterrific job of taking care of her, his instincts are right on, this must be really hard for him, and he can be proud for the rest of his life of the good work he is doing here. All of which is indisputably true. But his saying it at this time rather leaves me with the impression that he doesn't expect her to live much longer. That impression may be bolstered by how scarily unresponsive she is right now, as a result of the Lorazepam, and it may be completely wrong, I don't know.

I don't know. What I thought when I first came here was that she can't last more than another year, she's just so weak. But she's lucid, mostly, and reasonably cheerful, and able to do the exercises the occupational therapist gave her, and I began to think she might improve enough to move into the wheelchair at least, and have some kind of a normal life. Now the oncologist's behavior makes me think she's dying. I guess what it probably is is that her chances are not very good, but she still might survive for quite some time, and even improve, and we have to plan for that, just in case.

I had a list of questions that Robert gave me to ask, but I didn't ask them. Because what I've realized in the last few days is that Jerry isn't just doing this because she's a friend. He's taking care of her because he loves her, and the doctor knows this too. Somehow we were thinking that there are things the doctor could tell me that he wouldn't tell Jerry, because I'm the daughter, but there aren't. Jerry has all the information that the doctor has, and me blundering in asking questions that have already been answered looks like arrogance at best. So the whole truth is what they've been saying all along. We just don't know.

Note: I changed the time to this time zone. Just FYI.

late. tired.

Okay, not late. It's about 9pm. But jet lag and Mom have me up at 5:30 in the morning, so this is the end of my day, pretty much. Ignore the posting times, they're based on Germany. Or if you can't ignore them, subtract 9 hours.

Well, dialup's a pain, and Mom seems to be disturbed by the clicking of the keyboard, so I find myself sort of disinclined to blog lately. I'm going to stop hiding the stuff about her, and go back and un-hide what was in earlier entries, because I don't think she'll be reading this anytime soon. But I don't know how often I'll be writing while I'm here. I'm keeping fairly busy.

The situation is still ambiguous. Mom is bedridden, and her physical coordination is not good. She seems generally cheerful, and Jerry says she's a lot better than she was last week, but of course she tires easily and there's been a lot of excitement the last few days. We have only questions and suppositions right now, best-case scenarios that we hope will be true, but no clear idea of what we can reasonably expect, good or bad. Apparently the loss of physical coordination predates the Methadone by a good bit, so she probably won't be getting that back anytime soon. That means no walking, probably for a long time.

Turns out Nate's in Mississippi until just before Christmas, so he probably won't get up here this year, and I have to get as much done as I can in a very limited time. What I have to do, though, is difficult to decide. I've made a list of all the meds she's taking, and with Robert's help, a list of questions to ask the doctors. I've started packing things up, not to get rid of them exactly, but to facilitate getting rid of them if that turns out to be necessary - throwing out unsalvageable clothes, putting all the books together by type, packing all the yarn into boxes... that was today.

There is much more to do, of course. Tomorrow the occupational therapist will come in the morning, and we'll take Mom to the oncologist in Bremerton (with an anti-anxiety drug in her to prevent a panic attack like the one she had Thursday). In the evening I'll meet with an old friend who is a quilter, and see if she or someone she knows can help Mom patch her quilts and take a bunch of extra fabric off her hands. And catch up, of course. Between appointments I'll be decluttering, packing up stuff and finding places to store it until we know better what to expect.

Tuesday is the appointment with her GP in town. I also need to call the library and used bookstore and find out if anyone wants her extensive collection of novels. She wants to keep the art and garden books, and probably pass the history books to her friend Barb, but there's a lot of other books lying around that she says she'll never read again. It's also the day to call the bank about paying off her house. Anything else? Probably.

Anyway, I sincerely hope we'll know more once we've seen the therapist and two doctors. I'll report after that.

So here I am.

The flight was actually about the best a flight can be. Each seat has its own little TV screen, so you can watch whatever you want, which was nice, even though the earphones gave me a headache. And there's a camera mounted on the bottom of the plane, and you can set your little TV to show what you're flying over. That was cool, and of course I couldn't wait to watch our approach to Seattle (since I didn't have a window seat), but of course, after a whole perfect, clear, sunny flight over Denmark, Greenland and Canada, Seattle was shrouded in clouds. Oh well. It was too long, and the narrow seats were uncomfortable and the movies weren't super and the food was only so-so, but that's always true on airplanes. Nothing else was wrong, and that is a rare gift.

And now I'm in Port Townsend. I've only been here half a day, and haven't left the house yet, so I can't tell you much about it. But it is nice to be back, if only for a couple weeks. I was really looking forward to watching TV, but mostly I wanted sort of easy stuff like sitcoms, with a low intellectual investment. Sort of wanted to rest my head, I guess. I'm not real interested in documentaries about dead senators, which is what they're watching now. Maybe tomorrow I'll try to make a request, but with Mom so unwell, and Jerry being such a hero, I don't want to be too much of a nuisance.

general stuff

First off, I've turned on the little gadget that makes you prove you're a human and not a comment spammer. Sorry, that adds an extra step, but I have to keep the swine out somehow. If I get enough complaints (say, 2) I'll turn it back off.

The Tuesday after a long weekend... Somehow, three days of getting to sleep in is significantly different from two days, and the adjustment to normal routine is harder. I know that it's gnerally healthier if you get up at the same time every day, but no way. You couldn't get me out of bed with a catapult at 7, unless there was a really good reason. Unless somebody has to be somewhere by 8:00, essentially.

I found out my brother's in Mississippi. I hope he calls while I'm in Port Townsend, it'd be nice to touch base and hear a bit more about what he's doing.

A Good News is that some friends of mine who have been trying to have a baby forever, have got one to adopt. Very, very good news, even if it means they did have to fly to the States on very short notice. I'm enormously happy for them. They have loads of friends with kids, so they'll have all the baby gear they need, but that was true for my secondborn as well, with an older brother and two cousins to pass down their tiny little garments. Still, I was pleased to get the hat and rattle from a friend here in Munich - it's nice to be thought of. So I'm going to make the new baby a sweater, and hope I don't botch up the neckline, like I usually do. That's the pattern there, on the right. An antidote to pastel poisoning.

So I'm going to America! For two whole weeks! I plan to watch a lot of TV, so what shows should I see? Nothing too serial, if you don't mind, I can only stay for two weeks and I don't want to be in a swivet about what happens next on a show I won't be able to watch again. Other than that, though, any recommendations are welcome.

Mom-update. Well, I called last Saturday and the news wasn't super, so I figured I'd wait until after Monday's call to report. It's still not super. Last week they reduced the dosage on her Methadone, and she was more alert, but after a few days it wasn't controlling the pain, so they increased the dosage and she went groggy again. Saturday night she had chest pains and trouble breathing, so Jerry took her into the hospital and they ran a buncha tests. Everything checked out, so they concluded it was probably anxiety. Anxiety would certainly be understandable, under the circumstances. Anyway, they're fiddling with the dosage again, she was hard to understand on the phone last night but sounded a bit more chipper. Nobody knows what's going to happen, but last night she seemed to be measuring the rest of her life in months, rather than years. But last week she was saying she thinks she'll be fine, so... well, as I say, nobody knows.

Yesterday

Okay, yesterday I met with the occupational therapist at Gus's kindergarten. Turned out to be a sort of general-information, get-acquainted thing. When he learned to walk and talk, is there any possibility of vision or hearing problems, allergies, whatever. Then she went up to meet him and he was very...himself. Little Mr. Sunshine has gotten progressively moodier and grouchier, but he may just be growing into his personality. When he's in a Mood he glowers at the floor and hunches his shoulders, and Robert says he can very clearly remember doing exactly the same thing at that age.

Interesting side note: one of the main reasons it took Kilian so long to get diagnosed is that I was always making excuses for him, the crowning one being: "Oh, it's not a problem, I did that when I was a kid too." So now it's apparently Robert's turn to say the same. Makes one wonder. Anyway, we are skeptical, but we're agreeing for the time being to work with the therapist, just in case. We made a mistake with Kilian, and we'd rather not repeat it.

Anyway. That was that. If Gus does see a therapist, it won't be what you're envisioning, lying on a couch and talking about the digger we wouldn't let him have when he was two and how it scarred him emotionally so now he doesn't think he can commit to a serious relationship with any plastic toy, ever. She'll have a group of kids, and they'll all troop off together for an hour or so on Wednesday mornings for some slightly-more-structured play. And it will happen within the kindergarten day, so it won't be Yet Another Thing I Have To Remember, which is good, because I'm already past capacity. So okay. We'll see.

I talked to Mom last night. She sounded much better, much more cheerful. She saw a doctor yesterday, and he thinks that the tumor in her back, while it's not growing, is pressing on her spinal cord, which is why she's losing some motor control in her legs. She's taking, um, Dexamethecin (sp?) 3x/day to shrink the tumor back and return some sensory-whatever. But she still has to get a wheelchair, which she is cheerful about because it's much easier than having Jerry half-carry her around all the time. And a hospital bed in the living-room, because she keeps scooching down on the couch and can't really get herself back up.

The methadone was knocking her out, but they've adjusted the dosage, so now it's controlling the pain but she's staying alert, so that's better. Her moods are evening out a bit, and she's getting physical therapy and occupational therapy. She probably won't get better enough to walk again, at least not to the point of not needing a wheelchair, but she is getting to a situation she can live with. That's a relief. And if she can avoid any kind of infection while she's still so weak, she probably won't die anytime soon. All good news.

But it does mean we have to start worrying about money. As I understand it, she has to spend down her assets before she can qualify for disability, and then she has to be on disability for a whole year before she can get medicare, which is getting slashed by the stupid government anyway. And disability doesn't have any kind of health insurance to it, and if you can afford health insurance you don't qualify for disability. So if you're too sick to work, you can't have medical care for a year. What the hell? She has something called "COBRA" under which she can get health insurance for $600/month for 18 months after she quits working, so if the disability paperwork gets done in time, she should qualify for medicare about when the COBRA thing runs out. But still, that's $10,800 she'll have to pay for health insurance over the next 18 months, and the way things are working now, she gets her prescription or therapy or whatever and then her insurance decides what it will cover and what it will not, so it's going to wind up costing quite a bit more. At the moment I don't know what to do about this, but I'm thinking about it.

Elternversammlung

I'm losing my English. In my conversations with CJ, half the words we use are German now, because we don't want to rummage around in our brains for an adequate phrase. Eltern means parents. Versammlung means assembly. Parent-assembly sounds like you bought a set of parents in a flatpack at Ikea and now have to put them together with nothing but an Allen wrench and a set of hieroglyphics.

Anyway. The parents of the new fifth graders all gathered in the assembly hall at the school and were talked at for three hours. Information on the tutors; a few charities the school is involved in; the school itself as a charity, i.e. please contribute money so we can buy instruments for the music classes and such; how gymnasium is different from elementary school and how to help the kids adjust; steps to take to resolve a problem between a child and a teacher; rules on choosing their second and third foreign languages - gack on this one. They are already taking English, next year they can add French or Latin, and the year after that they can add Italian or French if they already chose Latin, but if they already chose French they can't choose Latin, only Italian - who makes rules like this? It makes no sense at all. Anyway.

Then we all trooped to the homerooms of our respective children and met all their teachers, who seem quite nice, and heard about oh, the ALF program, which sounds like an equivalent of DARE, the school library, more study tips, what to do about absences, et-fucking-cetera.

It's a nice school, I will say that. But boy do people like to talk. My German is less than perfect, but I am advanced enough to be able to tell when someone is saying in 50 words what they could say in ten. And when you have to concentrate fiercely on every word, only to find at the end of the sentence that it was filler, you get annoyed. Three hours of Wall-of-German, and I was exhausted. I had a headache all day today.

Anyway, sorry I wasted all your time on that, because the point is mainly that after all the other parents were gone, we talked to Kilian's main teacher, Mr. Lanzinger, who is a really nice guy, and yeah, he's already noticed the ADD. He says Kilian is well smart enough to survive gymnasium, so we don't have to worry about him flunking out (whew!), but that his behavior could well isolate him from the rest of the class and make him a target for bullying. Not whew. So of course we'll have to talk with Kilian, a lot, and help him organize his workspace, and supervise him closely and give him routines and make sure he follows them and so on. So of course I was full of resolve when we left, but also full of fatigue, which has carried over to today, and the thought of all the work I will have to do just wears me out before I even start.

I know it sounds easy, "just" set a routine, just "make" him stick to it. But if I have learned anything from my nearly eleven years as a mother, it is that I am uniquely unqualified for this particular task. Oh I know there's no one else to do it, so I just have to, but that's been true for eleven years, and I haven't succeeded yet.

I wish other people didn't make it look so easy.

meander meander meander

Stream of consciousness blah blah blah, killing time until I can reasonably go to bed. I have recently gotten (yes, my British friends, gotten. It's a real word. Deal with it.) around to noticing that other Mamabloggers name their children in code: Busy Boy, Busy Girl, the Preschooler Formerly Known as Busy Baby (Busymom); Thing 1 and Thing 2 (Crouching mommy, hidden laundry); Bumblebee and Sweet Potato. This gets me wondering if I should be attempting to conceal the identity of the Demon Spawn, since I frequently name the town where we live, and anybody who lives around here knows about the American and her grouchy husband and weirdly-named offspring. But I can't possibly come up with anything as witty as the other Mamas have - can't even rely on their nicknames, as I use them interchangeably - they are both, by turns, Peanut, Boo-boo, Scooter, and whatever else pops into my head. One exception: Firstborn is exclusively Ignatz, and Secondbord is exclusively Sniglet, but you can't be expected to remember which is which, can you? The sainted husband would naturally be something like He Who Must Be Humored, but I bet that's already been used by someone else.

Why, oh why can't I come up with things that are still funny and apt after some time has passed? Other people do it.

By the way, Tony says there is no excuse for not writing every day. If I link his name, he will hear it, come read this, and realize that if this is the best I can come up with, well, there's my excuse.

4:1

Okay, they lost this time. To Straubing, the same team they beat so spectacularly last weekend. This time we were in Straubing, a 2-hour bus ride away. Nice town, incidentally. Anyway, last week's win was bigger than this week's loss, so I'm not too upset. The team is still doing pretty well.

I saw Pride and Prejudice yesterday (Friday). I can't decide whether I liked it or not - it's my favorite novel, so I was always going to be nitpicky about it, but I think the movie lacks the flair of Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility - well, there you go. This one wasn't directed by Ang Lee, that might be part of the problem. There are other directors I'd expect a good job from as well, but I've never heard of Joe Wright. Not to sure about Deborah Moggach's screenplay, I guess. The cinematography made me dizzy and the music was intrusive. But since it is my favorite novel ever, I will probably see the movie a couple-three more times, so I'll be able to give a more positive review later. Much later, actually, since I think this was a Special Preview and I won't be able to see it again until November.

I talked to Mom again tonight. She sounds better, more alert, less tired and weak. But the news is not good. She's off the Vicodin for pain, and onto Methadone, which seems to be controlling it better, but only controlling it. She's not healing. She seems to be losing motor control a bit, she can't pick her feet up when she wants to, so I guess a wheelchair is in her near future. She also can't tell when she's standing upright, so there's some loss of equilibrium as well - don't know how much of this is general deterioration and how much is a side effect of the Methadone and Neurontin. Anyway, she now has a local doctor, has seen him once and will see him again Tuesday afternoon. I guess I'd better talk to him when I'm there. She also says she wants me to pack up a lot of stuff and help her get rid of it. If I'd known that was in the cards I would probably have planned to stay longer, but I really do want to get back in time for Gus's fifth birthday.

Well, I guess I'd better plan another trip in the spring. The last time I called her was Monday, to tell her I had my tickets, and that time she was talking about me coming in October, and I told her my brother's family was thinking about coming up for Christmas, and she mentioned that Kilian was the only person close to her that she was not going to get to see. Which sounds to me like she's rather planning on dying soon. If she'd said something before we bought the tickets, I would have arranged it, but I don't know if I can do that now, on such short notice. So I think it would be better to take him in the Spring, during his Easter holiday. I don't really know if she'll hold out that long.

Robert contends that there is a strong psychosomatic element in the pain she's suffering now. This is not at all helpful. Of course, he is being very nice in affording the ticket and assuring me that I can be gone and he won't be overwhelmed and generally not making me feel guilty about leaving for two weeks right in the middle of anything, so I must be grateful for that. Don't be shocked, it may sound like common courtesy but believe me, it's not all that common.

I spend a lot of time lately reminding myself not to worry. Worrying will not help. What will help is going out there, and I'm doing that. I'm writing packing lists and making plans and doing what I can, and worrying will just make me wrinkly and give me coldsores. So stop it.

Word of the Day

momtax n., The bite of my sons' sandwiches/candy bars/ice cream/whatever to which I am automatically and eternally entitled by virtue of the cooking, cleaning, monitoring and general support services I perform daily, not to mention the four hours of labor per child, ten and four years ago respectively.*

*yes, I know that constitutes an easy labor. If yours was worse, you may levy a correspondingly higher tax. Two bites, perhaps, or even three.

la-la-la, dum-de-dum

Hey, I'm on a roll. Look at all these blog entries! So I sort of feel I should keep it up, and I've decided I will not be deterred by nothing much having happened in the last day or so. Today I did no homework at all, and precious little workwork, but I did fold six loads of laundry. Yeah. Six. Pretty much every towel and item of clothing in the house, yes. I do this, I do a laundry blitz and get all caught up, and then I don't need to check the status of the laundry for a few days, which somehow stretches to a few weeks - i.e., if I don't check every two days or so, I forget to check at all, until we all find ourselves borrowing socks from eachother and drying off with Kleenex after a shower, and then I think wait! I bet there's a bunch of stuff in the basement! And lo there is, and I have to do six loads of laundry in two days and then I feel all oppressed. But now my jobs are so stressful and keeping up with the kids' schedules is so demanding, that I feel really good when all I have to do is laundry. Never thought I'd be wishing I was Just a Housewife again, especially since I was such a crappy one.

I wrote to my teacher about, um, stuff that's going on, so he applied for an extension for my database course. He even said if I wanted to take a break for a few weeks that was okay, but I said no thanks, if I do that I'll forget everything I've learned so far.

Other news: in the last 24 hours, um, nope. Don't think so.

first soccer training

Gus had his first soccer practice today. Robert made a little video clip of it with the digital camera, and I will see if I can figure out how to make it accessible to you, either sticking it in here somewhere, or providing a link where you can download it. Robert says it shouldn't be too difficult (um, hello, who is the webmaster here?) but in fact he is probably right. But however easy it should be, I just don't have the brain space for a new thing right now.

But the training was good, and it was an excellent decision to put Gus in soccer in Buchbach instead of Dorfen. Robert's brother coaches the teenagers on the same pitch on the same day, so Gus gets to see him, and a cousin teaches the slightly-more-advanced little guys, so might be Gus's coach in a year or two, and the guy who coached Robert is still there, sort of supervising the coaches and helping out from time to time. And Oma and Opa are there, and it is an excellent arrangement. Gus is a really moody guy, increasingly so over the last few months, I don't know what's going on there. But apparently Bavarians are generally crabby, so no one seems fazed by it but me.

My brother Nate has gone South to help with the mess left by the hurricane. I talked to his wife last night, and she says his company asked for volunteers to go down there. They're covering his salary while he's gone, and paying him overtime because he'll be working 14-hour days, which is splendid of them. He's going to be helping to assess the damage and advise on reconstruction, I think she said. I am tremendously proud of him for helping out, glad the family is represented, and wishing I could do something similar, even without pay, since my salary here makes us more comfortable, but we don't really depend on it. I've tried to figure out a way to get down there, but it's just too much right now, too hard, too impractical at both ends - leaving my life here for however long, but also there - I don't know anybody, so I'd just be consuming resources and occupying space that is badly needed by other people. The people who are down there helping out are heroes, though.

Shel and I also talked about Mom. Shel is generally pretty cheerful and optimistic, so I rather expected her to put a good face on it, but she says she thinks it's not going well, and she's worried. She had also just talked to Mom, and Mom told her to tell me to come in October and not wait for the birthday/Thanksgiving thing. As it is, Nate will be on the Gulf Coast then, or just newly returned home, so it's not a great time for them to have guests either. So I booked a flight for Seattle today. I'll be gone October 6th to the 21st, but I should still be blogging, I think. I have to take my computer and try to keep up with my database course, so I'll need to be online anyway, somehow. Not sure how Mom's internet connection will work, not sure if I can find a WLAN hotspot anyway. Now I rather wish I had a slightly better knowledge of how that works, since I won't be able to depend on Robert to figure it out for me. Well, something will have to work out, I suppose.

Last thing: it's COLD! Ack! Beautifully sunny today, but the wind was chilly. I haven't been able to get warm for days.

Proud. Angry.

I want to say this about the whole Katrina mess. I am deeply proud of my countrymen and how they are pulling together to help the victims. The money donated, the homes opened, the volunteers lining up to hand out soup and blankets and hugs, touches my heart and restores my faith in Americans. There are a lot of good people there, and I did need to be reminded of that.

But I also want to ask why it was necessary for so many homes to be opened, for so much money to be given, for so many ordinary people to step out of their daily lives and go to help. I love them for doing it, but the fact is, they only have to because the government has failed, and that makes me angry. Why does the richest nation in the world have to rely on private handouts to help its own citizens in a crisis? This is what federal government is for - even the limited-government advocates admit that. Americans sacrificed their civil liberties for safety, and the safety they got was an illusion. All this money has gone to the Department of Homeland Security and Americans are not secure. The money went to inept political cronies and the victims of Katrina were abandoned to their fate, and all across the country, people are rightly wondering if they'll be next.

I don't know anybody in the affected area. I don't know New Orleans, except as a cultural icon, and I loved it for that. I've been distraught at the suffering of the people there, and outraged at the way they are being treated - reconstruction contracts handed over to Halliburton, with permission to pay substandard wages and no guarantee that the displaced, who've lost everything, will even be hired for the project. How are they supposed to rebuild their lives? The government is already moving to shift blame and to profit from the disaster - to make a quick buck and stay in power. They don't care that people suffer, and we always knew that about them, but we elected them anyway. And we can't even ask ourselves how this could have happened, because all along we knew that they don't care.

We knew.

A Very Long Post About Some Stuff

Mooo.

Okay, just kidding. No word yet on how the German government will look. The Purples refuse to have anything to do with the Reds, and nobody else wants anything to do with them, with the possible exception of the Greens. The Blacks are thinking about convincing the Greens to join them and the Yellows. Yeah, that'll happen (sarcasm). There was talk of a Red-Yellow-Green coalition, but the Yellows are saying no way will they hook up with the Reds, which is a bit of a surprise, as they have been the most scum-sucking, bottom-feeding political opportunists for the last 50 years. Guess they grew some principles, who'da thunk? Wrong ones, but oh well, at least they're sticking to something for once.

Not that I let Robert's opinion influence me, or anything.

...
A-ha. I think I may be figuring out why people keep more than one blog. There is no way I could maintain two, hell I can barely keep up with just the one. But things are happening, and they may turn out to be fairly major, and the blog is not just to keep the world posted but also to provide a sort of document of these times, because I forget everything as soon as it's over. Another function is to enable me to vent in a somewhat socially-acceptable way, since when I kept a pblog I did a lot of pointless, boring, maudlin navel-gazing, and the thought that someone might read this makes me want to keep it interesting.

The point? Oh! Right! The point is that my mother reads my regular blog, and a lot of What's Going On centers around her, and maybe she shouldn't be reading my take on the whole thing. She probably shouldn't know how worried and frustrated I am, because it can only upset her. And in fact, I have not written much at all about her progress because I wanted to keep her somewhat in the dark about my concern (you heard it here, folks - yes, this is why families lie to eachother), but it's starting to entangle my life, and things are looking like kind of a mess, and I really really have to put it somewhere. So this is going to stay hidden until it's safe to uncomment the text, though that may not be possible - I don't know how long blogspot leaves your posts available to edit.

Yes, this will be a long entry. Glad you asked. Um, we left off in May, more or less, with her cancer responding so well to the chemotherapy that the docs decided she didn't need the last session, yay! Not too long after that, she had a fall, and perhaps foggy on pain meds, failed to get her hands up on time, so she landed on her nose and broke it. Well, fractured, she said, and it was just before my brother's family was going to be in Port Townsend for a visit, so she was chagrined at them seeing her with her face all banged up, but didn't go to a doctor or anything. Not until it didn't seem to be healing for too long, anyway. Early July, I suppose, she went to get it checked out, and they scheduled her surgery for a month later. A month.

Jerry says it was after the nose surgery that everything started to go wrong. I know I talked to her shortly afterward and she was crying and convinced that she was going to die really soon. So I hemmed and hawed and got in touch with Nate, figuring he needs to be kept apprised of all this. I didn't really believe she was dying, but I thought she believed it, so I was worried about her emotional state. Something else also happened that perhaps needs its own paragraph.

Now, I have the highest respect for medical personnel. They do a damn hard job, as well as they can, and I know I couldn't do it. However, this particular situation might could have been handled a tad differently. She had an MRI the week before her surgery, and someone called her at 6pm Friday to tell her they found two more "somethings" on her spine (remember, in addition to the lung tumor she had something in her spine that they couldn't chemo, so they radiated it and she had those burns in her throat, back in April or so?). It was too late to cancel her Monday morning nose surgery, so she went under the knife thinking about two new tumors, woke up with that on her mind, and the limited oxygen you can get through a damaged nose, plus the pain and the meds, was probably affecting her thought processes as well. I think anybody'd be freaked out, under the circumstances. So okay, she saw a doctor ten days after that dreadful phone call, and it turned out the shadows in the MRI were just arthritis, and while I am relieved, I have a small procedural quibble: we were scared as hell for ten days - couldn't they have phoned her as soon as they knew it was nothing to panic about? Why make her wait until the doctor appointment?

So I told Nate that Mom was kinda freakin', and how do we un-freak her, and he called her to tell her that he has a conference in Honolulu next July, and he's taking the family, including Mom, and the tickets were already booked, and rather implied that it would be a much better idea to get well so she could go to Hawaii! Seemed to work, and she cheered up some.

So that was August. Have we already established that The Master Plan was to move Mom down to Denver to live with or near the Nates once she got too old to take care of herself? Well, they are accelerating preparations for that, and that is more or less how things stand. Except that she has been talking of pain recently, in her right lower thorax where they cut her open in December to find that lung tumor. A lot of pain, and a lot of different meds, which have her feeling foggy and strange. When we found out the new things in her spine were only arthritis she started back to work again, but the pain was unbearable and the meds weren't controlling it, so she's given up her job. When she told her doctors this, they admitted that they were surprised she'd held on for so long. Yike. Well, once that was established she perked up a bit - she's never liked her job much, and I think she was somewhat relieved that the pressure to go back to work was gone.

Hmm, hmm, hmm. What to tell next? Her voice is increasingly weak in the phone calls, and each time I call she gets too tired to talk a little earlier than last time. I think we're down to about 7 minutes. She'll be 60 this November, so Robert suggested I should visit her then anyway, and her medical situation makes that an even better idea, so we've been looking at airfares. But I called her last night and she sounded really down, and said I might should come sooner. She's on new meds, and they seem to help, but not really enough...the doc's theory is that the nerve blocker they put in after her chest surgery has somehow failed, so the new medicine is supposed to calm those nerves down so they don't hurt so much while they're healing. Oh, and in this case the doc is (I think) Dr. Reimer, the oncologist (cancer-doctor) in Bremerton. She has no local GP anymore, because her local GP is on some kind of leave. Don't know what that's about, but it leaves Mom in a sticky place. She's also given up the Darvocet for pain, and switched to Vicodin. She has no appetite, is down to about 105 pounds, can't get up by herself, and hasn't been outside for ten days. So basically, the tumors are not growing anymore, so she technically doesn't have anything fatal, but she's so weak that if she gets pneumonia now she won't be able to fight it, and she'll die.

So I talked to Robert about it, and then I called Jerry. He agreed that it would be better to come sooner. I asked about getting her a local doc and he said he has a call in to Dr. Rotchford, a pain specialist in Port Townsend, but hasn't heard back yet. He'll go to Dr. Rotchford's office in person on Monday and find out if he can get her an appointment, and if not he'll ask around for another doctor. He confirmed most of what Mom said, and added that he has a lot of people coming to visit her to sort of force her to stay alert and sit up occasionally. I've also set something up with a friend there to either get her to the library once a week or at least bring her books and take them back when they're due. Also, Jerry never leaves my mom for more than two hours, because she can't get up by herself, and they both mentioned that she'd woken him up in the middle of the night, screaming because she needed her pain meds and couldn't move. No mention of whether this has happened several times or only once, but I gather that it happened relatively recently.

By then Robert had found a flight from October 6th to the 20th, so I called Mom to ask if that was earlier enough. In this second call she sounded more alert, and said it would be better if I came in late November so we could both fly down to Denver and visit Nate for Thanksgiving. Um, huh? Now I'm confused, because in the first phone call she said she had an appointment with Dr. Reimer in early October, but she wasn't sure she could get to Bremerton because she'd have to sit upright in the car for a whole hour, plus she gets really carsick. So how is she going to make the three hours to the airport and then however long you spend on a plane?

Mom has a history of um, somewhat overambitious travel plans. Like our trip to Paris a few years ago, when she didn't want to join a tour group, she wanted us to plan it all ourselves, but then it turned out she couldn't really handle going down stairs, which there are a lot of in Paris, particularly down to the Métro stations, and she couldn't really walk long distances, which, if you can't take the Métro, you sort of have to do. So that was quite a stressful trip, but she seemed to forget the stress as soon as it was over. So I'm inclined to think the trip to Denver won't happen, but how to put that diplomatically to her?

I phoned Nate, got the answering machine, left a message and sent him a terse email that I need to call him. I got a reply from his wife, saying he's with FEMA training to go help out with the recovery work in the Gulf of Mexico - he'll finish the crash course in a few days and then go south somewhere, and should be gone a month. So I will talk to Shel about Thanksgiving plans, but I probably more or less have to figure this out myself.

So that is more or less where things stand. I'm sorry this entry has been so long, but this is three and a half months of things I haven't been able to put in the blog.

German elections

Not that I've been following them, really, because I'm a bit overwhelmed these days. My attitude thus far has been "Wake me when it's over". But I have to admit, it's been interesting. I wish I had time to outline the whole thing for you, because it's been crazy, but the upshot is that the main socially-liberal party has been leading Germany into economic neo-liberalism, which is basically the opposite of social liberalism (I know it's an oversimplification. I told you I was short on time), so Germans are feeling betrayed, but of course the conservatives are also pushing neo-liberalism, so who can they turn to? Bit like England in the last elections, eh? Anyway, the voting was today, and everybody's claiming victory, even though almost every party has lost ground except the Linkspartei ("Left-party") which only formed a few months ago. Neither of the two major parties has anything close to a majority, none of the three minor parties has enough to join with a major party in coalition, so either the two big ones will have to figure out how to get along, or one of them will have to form a coalition with two of the little ones.

I'm trying to find a pie chart for you (it's so cute, German political parties are color-coded)...okay, here's the Deutsche Welle site, with news about Germany in English, so you can read as much or as little as you like, and there's an election results pie-chart graphic on the right that you can click. Don't know if that will still be there when you read this, but you never know. And I can't link you to it because it's a popup. Anyway, briefly:

• Black is the sort of stodgy conservatives - Helmut Kohl was one of those.
• Red is the sort-of Socialists who've been in power since 1998 or so, and many Germans feel betrayed by their recent reforms, which have been a bit too business-friendly, and ordinary people are kinda starting to get screwed.
• Yellow is the assholes, the so-called Free Democrats who advocate a totally free market and letting the poor starve. Republicans, basically.
• Green is the Greens, the anti-war, pro-environment, pro-socialism party who believe in taxing the hell out of the filthy rich, but have lately become more friendly to business, and have therefore lost Robert's vote.
• And purple is the newly-formed Left party, formed by disaffected former Red guys and what used to be the East German Communist party; more left than the greens.

Okay, but here is what I want you to notice: Essentially, Germany voted Left. About 52% voted for the three leftwing parties, and while this is a slim majority, it is still a majority, and it means that most Germans do not want to be like the United States, and this trend toward neo-liberalism will at least have to be slowed. And that is good news.

And one other thing: Germans are pretty smart. The press set themselves pretty heavily against the SPD (red) and consistently predicted that the CDU (black) would sweep this one - a clumsy attempt to swing the election, and it failed. Hah.

someone to pray for

I knew Christie when I lived in Port Townsend in 1998. We didn't keep in touch after I left, so I can't really say I know her now, but I remember being struck by how sensible and tough and hard-working she is - all qualities I seem to lack, especially lately. Her house was the first one built by Habitat for Humanity in Port Townsend, and I wish I'd helped her with it, more than just contributing money to Habitat for a couple years. I wish I'd picked up a hammer and actually made myself useful. She's a really smart, really strong woman, and I have always admired her. She's about to go to Iraq with her National Guard unit, leaving her two kids in the care of her mother and sisters. I wish she weren't going to Iraq, because it's dangerous there and I have questions about our involvement in the whole mess. But I have nothing but respect for the depth of her belief that this is the right thing to do, and the sacrifice she's willing to make for it. She's always been kind of a hero of mine. Now even more so.

hockey today

10:1

That's right. They beat Straubing 10:1.

Cool.

Kilian's on the Dorfen team now, though still the smallest one - his jersey hangs to his knees, you can't even see if he's wearing any pants, it's so cute - and they're playing real hockey now, using the whole ice instead of a third of it, with the offside rule (which Kilian has yet to understand) and penalties and everything. It was actually an exciting game, not just something you have to watch because it's your kid down there. Oh yeah, and we cleared up the Monday thing, he doesn't have to go to practice on Mondays. Turns out there are a few other kids on the team with the same problem. Whew.

small news

Dang! (Sorry for the mildness of the profanity, y'all, but my Mom reads this.) Firefox ate my blog entry! I shall try to reconstruct it, but of course it will lack the extemporaneous flair, the bright-eyed insouciance, of the halcyon times of five minutes ago before firefox crashed on me. Twice.

So I was saying I'd nearly decided to give up ifzijax and return to blogging by hand, as the cave-men did, because the comments, my reason for doing this in the first place, weren't really getting used a lot. But Tony Pierce left a comment on my blog! Ooo, fangirl flutter. He recommended Metafilter, which recommendation I will pass on to anyone who wants to keep up with what the blogosphere thinks of Katrina (nowish) and stuff in general (later, when Katrina's off the front pages). I'm so pleased. I read a lot of writing by brilliant, funny people, and when they're also nice enough to take the time to drop by, well that's just fabulous. Cass Brown sent me an email once (he of cancergiggles - buy his book, okay?), also a really nice guy. Rather restores my faith in humanity, to find that smart, funny people can also be kind, helpful people - I'm not sure why I think there should be a conflict. Some bizarre sense of balance?

Anyway. General stuff-going-on on the Folger homestead. Umm, Kilian started gymnasium on tuesday, seems to like his teachers and has nothing bad to report, other than his whole "school sucks" schtick, which we have told him is getting pretty moldy. There's an Irish girl in his class, who must have moved here fairly recently because her German isn't quite up to par yet. Kilian says she lives in Buchbach. Also it looks like about a third of his class are kids he went to elementary school with, though none of his friends made it into gymnasium. We'll see how this develops.

Kilian also met his um, therapist today. He says she's a psychotherapist. I was (perhaps more wishfully than accurately) thinking of her as a behavior therapist. Robert still seems to be operating on the assumption that Kilian's forgetfulness and poor social skills and all of it are the result of some buried inner conflict, and once we can dig up and identify the source of this inner turmoil, both turmoil and behavior will magically disappear. This is, um, not my take on ADD, but as Robert makes the appointments and has the therapist for a best friend and is on a first-name basis with our regular doctor, and has also been through therapy himself, he is well convinced that I cannot possibly know anything about any of it, so we are doing this his way. I'm not real happy about this, but I am altogether without support here, so right now a solution is not leaping to mind. If one does, I'll be sure to let you know.

Gus has started morning kindergarten. Today I had a conference with his teacher, Monika. She says he seems to be um, not very friendly and not very cheerful and only wants to play with Jonas and then only when Jonas does what Gus tells him. She asked permission to have an "occupational therapist" (um, that's what Leo says an Ergotherapeutin is, but that's not really what I was thinking of) take a look at Gus. It is probably nothing serious, just the adjustment to a new group and having to get up early, but she said that if we wait a few months, and then decide there might be a problem, we'll never get an appointment. So there's that.

And there's soccer. When I called, the guy said "just bring him down to the field Wednesday at 5:30". So we did, and the guy there told Robert there was no more space (in a group for 4-year-olds?), and we should get on the waiting list and maybe next year he could get in. I do think that if it were full, the guy on the phone should have said something. Anyway, it occurred to us rather belatedly that Gus should probably not play for Dorfen anyway, but for Buchbach, because Robert and his brother and his father all played for Buchbach when they were young. And family traditions are nice. And Robert said he would take Gus to training in Buchbach, it's only a 15-minute drive, no problem etc., but it turns out that the Bambini training is on Monday, the one day in the week that Robert really really has to be in Munich. Isn't that always the way?

So I'll take him. I do want him to play, and I love the idea of him being the third generation on the same team, and Mondays are fairly clear for me.

Ooog, that reminds me of one other thing: Kilian has school from 8-1 every day, but he also has to go in from 2:30-4 on Mondays, for art class. This causes a serious conflict with hockey, which was already becoming a problem. The training schedule says training is from 4:15 to 5:15, three days a week, but they have to show up 1/2 hour early for warm-up, and stay 1/2 later for cool-down - peel off 30 pounds of hockey gear, run around the stadium five times, take a shower - so that's two hours, three times a week, for kids whose school workload is just about to increase fairly dramatically. We have been getting increasingly alarmed at the kind of time commitment they want from a bunch of 10-year-olds (although, I gotta say, last Saturday was their first game and it was really exciting - they are getting a lot better), and now we'll have to tell them that Monday simply doesn't work. Not only would he arrive when practice was half over, but it leaves him no time for homework or anything else.

Conflicted. Sports are good for kids. Especially for teenagers, as they tend to get obsessive, and there are a lot of things you could be obsessed about that are worse than hockey. It's been really good for him, overall, but I think six hours a week is going too far. I think we would be okay with skipping Monday practice, but that's not really very good for the team as a community. What to do, what to do?

Let me just take a moment to offer a small prayer of thanks that my problems are this trivial. Still, any advice or opinions appreciated.

insert title here

So I've mostly been following the New Orleans thing, and I can't keep up. I can't read everything and still find time to write about it, can't write anything more than has been written already. I'm reading Jeneane, and Tony, and Jason, and they link to other blogs with more about Katrina, and I'm building up a fine sense of outrage and then not really doing anything with it. I wrote to my congresspeople, and need to respond to their responses, but it's hard to be persuasive and articulate when you're overwhelmed. But so far, the grades for my elected reps are as follows:

Patty - A- (great questions, but just a little more righteous indignation, please);
Maria - C- (more money to FEMA, after they botched everything so badly? What the hell?);
Norm - Norm? Hey, Norm! Anybody home?

Elsewhere, Gus is in kindergarten in the mornings now, and Kilian starts gymnasium on tuesday; the hockey season is in full swing, he has practice Monday, Wednesday and Thursday; Gus will be starting soccer on Wednesdays; Kilian has his first appointment with the ADD therapist-lady this Wednesday evening; I've switched my Day In Munich to Friday, because Wednesdays are too full for me to be gone; The kids need all kinds of clothes, but stuff here sucks unbelievably - the fashion is apparently to take a perfectly reasonable flannel shirt or rugby shirt and ruin it by splattering nonsense words on it, so shopping for clothes is unnecessarily time-consuming, to put it mildly; Mom's cancer doesn't seem to be getting any worse, but she's still in a lot of pain that the doctors can't seem to do anything about, and she's had to give up her job; I really need to get my database course done by November 4th or so, but for some reason, I can't seem to concentrate.

I think that's about it, for now.

addendum

Here's a transcript of the Nagin interview, if you'd rather read it than hear it, or if you want to quote from it.

I really like this guy.

nola

Right, well I haven't done much blogging lately, partly because I'm very busy with the school year about to start and all, and partly because I'm following the news on Katrina and New Orleans and I'm feeling speechless and angry and helpless. I'm particularly ticked off with people who claim that this isn't the time for politics and finger-pointing, because it is exactly the time. Because this is what happens when you put a bad government in power, and because we all need to understand whose fault this is. Nobody could have prevented the hurricane, but the disaster that came after was foreseen by many, and people in power consciously chose to do nothing, and people without power were simply left to die.

People in Europe are aghast at the neglect on display. The US has the money, the infrastructure, to minimize the damage done by natural disasters, as poorer countries don't. (Note, however, that even Cuba and Venezuela offered help.) That they simply decided not to use it is criminal. NOLA mayor Ray Nagin, in a radio interview, was asked what we ordinary people can do. He didn't ask for money - there is money, it's just not getting there. He didn't ask for helping hands, either - they also exist, they're just not where they're needed. What he wants from us is to write to our lawmakers and hold them accountable. He wants us to make sure that they know that we know how preventable this was, and we want to know why it wasn't prevented. I'll be contacting my senators, but I would really appreciate if those of you who have Republican senators and representatives would take the time to ask a few pointed questions.

Here's the Nagin interview.