Future Past and Present Memories

Jury Duty

2009-04-20T09:54:00.002-04:00

Woke up this morning at the usually time had planned to go to school for a few minutes but did not happen. Got to the Justice Center before 8. Got up to where we to register for jury duty and there was a massive line waiting to be registered for Jury Duty. However I have a vague feeling that I did something wrong. Which was why I was in the line. However it did pass by rather quickly.

Sat down with a group of ladies and ironically 2 of the people at the table were educators. We had a great time chit chatting waiting for the instructional court video. We waited for 45min to 1hour before the video started. While waiting I read the news paper and looked at the horoscope and read the the following

Aries:
Take your time and understand what is going on behind the scenes. Research and quiet thought are the first steps. When you go to implement a decision, it must be well-grounded in order to convince others that you are on the right path. Tonight: Do what you want.

Taurus:
Zero in on what you need to do. Your clarity and style work. The end result will be that several people will rethink their decisions and transform their stances. As you know, a realization works better than forcing your opinion on others. Tonight: Where the action is.

from Jacqueline Bigar

Not even reading between the lines both horoscopes screams that I will be picked for a Jury today.

After the video we waited for our names to be called. It feels like a lottery that nobody wanted to win. as I sit now they have called out 4 jury groups and our table of 7 has dwindled down to 2.

They are calling again.

Innocent questions difficult answers

2009-03-29T23:02:00.003-04:00

When I was getting Liam ready for bed tonight he asked me "Where did I (Liam) came from and mommy and daddy and ..." I started to answer well Liam you came to be because Mama and Daddy had a lot of love to share and we had to make another person to share that love. I then explained that I came from my parents because they had lots of love to share. Then Liam reasoned that Mama came from Funny grandma and uncle Marvin. Which I think would be a reasonable hypothesis for Liam because that is the limit of his close biological family, and the only people not paired up were Cindy and Marvin.

I had to correct him and said to him that Funny grandma and Mama's daddy had a lot of love and made Mama. Liam then asked the predictable question. Where is Mama's daddy? Is he far away, is he dead? I had to say Mama's daddy is far away.

How can I say to Liam that your Mama's biological father's love was so tenuous that he is almost dead to her? How can I say to him that Barrack Obama has held you more times then your grandfather has? How can I say to him that your right to eat as a 2 week old caused discomfort to your step grandmother? How can I say to him that your Mama's biological father had love to give to other women and left your Funny grandma? How can I say to him that your Mama's biological father had not enough love to pay all the child support payments due to her when she was a child? How can I say to him that most of the family on your mama's biological father's side loves to gossip and speak ill of each other behind each other's backs, and frankly you don't need this dysfunction.

How I wished I could have said something, anything, otherwise.

Trouble at school

2008-09-19T22:53:00.002-04:00

Liam started in his pre-k class on August 27th at Lincoln Elementary school. We were all very excited in the weeks previous getting the supplies needed and looking high and low for a backpack for him that is his size and not smeared with co-branding or logos. I had quite a busy summer with teaching at Shipwreck camp and working to get Design Lab: Early College High School ready for its student orientation and start of year. I have started a second blog to cover my muses on this subject. So pretty much from the 3 week of July I was working everyday.

Anyway, Liam has been getting negative reports from his teacher from his Pre-k class and there has seem to be problems with Liam in class. From the start of the second week the teacher said that Liam's behavior was of such concern that the teacher started sending home a behavior chart that has three catagories: Hands/Feet to self, Listening, Group. Ahmie since the first note has tried on several occasions to be in contact with the teacher via e-mail, but the teacher has not responded.

We tried to support this behavior chart by removing privileges from getting poor ratings (frown faces) and giving incentives for good ratings (smiles) and nothing for neutral ratings (neutral face). We tried to do this for about 2 weeks until This Thursday when Ahmie tried to ask the teacher when picking up Liam about why Liam is still getting Frown faces in his behavior chart, the teacher told Ahmie that "you should ask your son and his friend."

When I got that phone call from Ahmie I was livid because of the unprofessional nature of the response. Then I was told that Liam was not given his snack in class because of his behavior. Now Liam had told me about him earning his snack back last week later in the week, I had thought he meant that he had earned his juice for the ride home from school. I was pissed and still am.

I can see perhaps that I am getting one part of the story and I should not get so incised but the lack of story from the teacher's side of the conversation is not good either. As a teacher I could not tell a parent why their child was written up by responding "why don't you ask your child?"

I am so very angry for several reasons.

1) Where does the teacher think she has the right to withhold food from my child? When I was managing a group home I could get in trouble if I did this to any of my clients. Where does she think she has the right to ostracize my child in this way in front of his classmates.

2) The behavior chart is meaningless since the teacher has failed to define what she meant with these ratings.

3) If his behavior was so difficult to manage why is it that the teacher not contacting us about working together to help Liam be better behaved in class.

4) If she is charting the behavior, for what reason, and to what end? Charting is pointless unless the teacher has a plan of action to correct my son's actions in class. If she does have a plan, she has yet to let us know anything about it. Since this was the second week of her charting my son's behavior his behavior is not changing, so what is next?

5) When Ahmie asked the teaching assistant in the class about what is going on in class the assistant did not seem to think Liam's behavior is that extraordinarily bad.

6) Why is the teacher so lazy that she could not communicate with us so that we can help parent our child so he can behave better. She has not given any communication about any incident at school who Liam may have hit or kicked, or tripped? Without any context I cannot in good judgement punish my child for his misbehavior. Without information we cannot have Liam apologize to the kids he may have hurt.

7) Liam is starting to dislike school because of all of this, he only goes to school for like 3 hours a day and there is no way that this teacher will make my son hate school.

I really want to be the ugly parent and rant and rave at the teacher and give her a piece of my mind. However this is not productive as much as I wish to do it.

1) Liam has picked up that Ahmie does not like his teacher. I cannot let Liam see me yell at his teacher, that would be disrespectful. I don't like it done to me so I should not do it to others.

2) I should really see what is going on. Monday I am taking half a day off to observe the class interactions.

I should be very precise and critical with the teacher and with the information that I already have I think I can evaluate her with a very cold critical eye.

I really want my son to love to go to school and learn, he is starting to ask good questions about things. Like he asked about the moon, I try to explain it to him in a scientific way.

Apparently Liam has learned to be quite careful about recycling his things before throwing things out.

I guess we are doing something right.

Catch up

2008-06-18T00:26:00.004-04:00

Well I know I haven't written much since October of last year and that since transferring to a different school I haven't written at all. So here is a short recap.

0. Originally I posted that I received the transfer notification at the end of September. However due to delays due to inadequate notification and the number crunching after ADM week 1 (week where enrollment is verified for staffing reasons) I did not get the transfer meeting until the end of October.

My principal was wise enough to take me off the schedule and I work as a kind of building substitute teacher, helping out when needed. It was kind of hard to keep explaining why I am still at the school to the students and after a week of this I eventually just came to work and avoided interacting with the small school principal and just went to my classroom. There were three of us teachers Mrs. Korb and Mr. Lewandowski. Mrs. Korb was the most principled she helped students review for their OGTs while I just hung out. I felt like Peter in Office Space or Milton. I just came to work and sit there and well get paid to be in teacher limbo.

In fact I actually watched the movie in my classroom with the projector with Mr. Lewandowski on one of my last days at East Tech.

1. I went in to the transfer meeting with several schools in my mind namely Jane Addams or Rhodes. Both schools are high schools each school has pros and no real cons. Jane Addams was located near East Tech where I taught so my commute would be the same (mostly highway). Rhodes is my mother in law's alma mater (as well as Drew Carey's). I was ambivalent about both schools and flipped a coin. Jane Addams if heads, and I got heads. The staff at the transfer meeting was amused by the way I decided.

2. I had a day to get ready I moved my stuff and it took a better part of a day to do so. I inherited 2 Chemistry classes and a Senior OGT Science review class. The classes I inherited had many issues, the most frustrating was that the long term sub made up grades for the Chemistry classes and did not assign any grades for the OGT Science class. It was quite a struggle to overcome the long term sub's bad habits.

3. It was great to teach at Jane Addams I finally felt like I was part of a department, My department Mrs. Ammon worked with me and helped me prepare for teaching Chemistry which was a new topic for me to teach. She shared with me materials for labs and reading materials which was great. I enjoyed doing some of the chemistry labs, Mrs. Ammon was happy to see labs were being done.

4. I really enjoyed working with Mrs. Ammon she was like a mentor that I never had as a teacher, she was really pleasant to talk with and it was nice to be able to talk with her about how to teach Chemistry. I think I really learned much from her this year.

5. I really got into recycling this year. It is nice that Lakewood has plastic 1-7 recycling along with glass, metals and paper recycling. Some time after the start of the 3 quarter (late January) I started recycling in school, first in the teacher's lounge with a found can crusher for aluminum cans. Then in March I placed a recycling bin in my classroom to collect the plastic bottles and cans that students often toss into the trash. Apparently as I recycled more the more I had an aversion to seeing recyclable materials being tossed into the trash. In fact I recycled the boxes that were left behind when the school received 55 new computers. It took me several days to collapse the boxes and sort out the recyclables and several trips to the recycling center to get all the computer packaging to be recycled. I still lament that I could not find a place that would recycle the styrofoam packing materials for the computer and monitors.

By the end of the year most of my students actually recycled their papers and drink cans and bottles when they are finished with them.

6. After settling at Jane Addams I got into a very popular reality show it was called the Presidential Primaries of 2008. I had to watch CNN and MSNBC every night and checked Huffingtonpost and Realclearpolitics everyday to get last minute information on the ~~characters~~ presidential candidates and poll information. This pretty gobbled all free time that I have in the evenings. Ahmie and I first were rooting for John Edwards, after he dropped out of the race we rooted for Barack Obama. We went to see him talk in Youngstown, in Cleveland, and for a town hall meeting in Parma, we even went to see Michelle Obama talk at Cleveland State University. We rode the highs and lows of the campaign from Supertuesday to early June with Hillary Clinton's concession speech.

There is of course more to say about the past 8 months but that is for another night. I just finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy and I am planning a meditation on my reaction of the book.

Stages of Grief

2007-09-27T00:58:00.000-04:00

1. Denial

I waited all weekend for the letter notifying my impending transfer but it did not arrive as I had hoped on Saturday. I grew more frustrated over my situation because I need the written validation. We went to church and a equinox party afterwards but still burning in the back of my mind was that I that I still am in limbo since I haven't seen the papers I cannot accept that I am being transferred.

2. Anger

I was pretty angry about the whole situation even though I did not receive any verification on Monday during the day. I was tired of the hold up.

I did not really go through the bargaining stage.

3. Depression

I got a fax of the letter Monday night which was open night for parents to see teachers. Mr. Laux handed me the letter I expressed appreciation for giving this to me. I understand that East Tech is not a special school, it was some time in the past with various programs but other schools now have special programs to draw more students and talented students. But Mr. Laux and other administrators go on to try to bring in exciting programs and partnerships to help revive this school that is bereft of its brightest students because of competition with magnet schools with special programs.

It was hard to deny I saw it on paper it said that I had to meet on Wednesday 9/26 at 2pm to discuss placement.

It was even more difficult because I could no longer deny that I am going to be moved. I had to talk to parents of good students and say to them, I had a great time teaching to (student) but I will not be her teacher much longer because I am being transferred.

It was a humiliating experience. I was glad that the parents showed sympathy and even understood as some of the parents have in the past been transferred involuntarily. It still made me feel dis empowered. It was exhausting telling all the parents that I met this.

4. Acceptance

I accepted that I was going to be transferred with this letter, but it was hard finding high school science positions in the transfer list. I knew that I will have a job but I accepted that I will most likely have a choice like this

You can choose between the 2nd circle of hell or the 1st circle of hell its your choice.

Since I have low seniority I expected that all the better schools or programs would have already chosen so I would probably get a job any job and like it. I spent parts of Tuesday talking with other teachers finding out which schools may be the better choice

Today Wednesday Sept 26th I accepted that this would be my final day I even bought donuts for my students as a good bye treat. I had closed up all student work and had already given a test to go over the final topics.

Mrs. Korb tells me during period 3-4 that the meetings today was postponed until Monday I looked at the Plain Dealer and found an article stating the same thing. I'm glad that the city newspaper knows more about my work situation then myself that is wonderfull (dripping with sarcasm)

1. Denial...

Moving on

2007-09-22T01:04:00.000-04:00

I received news today.
The good news is I have a job.
The bad news is that it will not be where I am currently working now.

I was first told of this change in situation by my department chair Ms. King, she seemed upset and I was suspecting that something like this was coming. The school had a decline in enrollment this school year so I was suspecting that the probability was high that there world be redeployment of staff elsewhere in the school district. I had a total of about 55 to 60 students total which is on the low end.

Ms. King apologized to me that she had to tell me this news. I was stoic when the news was given to me. I understood that the way in which this school district operated teachers with less seniority would be the first to be moved or laid off. I felt a twinge of irony because this week I finally got around to putting book numbers in the textbooks that I am using with my students.
When I put an indelible mark is when I have to leave.

I walked upstairs to the 1st floor and talked to both my school principal Ms. Wright and Mr. Laux. They confirmed that I was indeed to be elsewhere in this district. In fact all of the departments were hit with transfers. Again I kept my stoic face up. What was the point to show sadness at this point in time. I knew that I still had a job so my most basic concern (having a job) was met.

I walked back towards the C building (where my classroom is) and stopped by several teachers to tell them about the news. They were all very sympathetic and were sad to see young teachers go, some expressed the fact that I could end up at a better school, or worst school, because it is a real crapshoot.

I packed up my papers and my clipboard and locked my door and left for the day it was hard to talk to students in the hallway and try not to show the roiling sea of emotions underneath my genial face. I got into my car and drove out of the school. I was flipping through my phone for some songs to commensurate to. First I listened to Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, then The Distance by Cake, and last before I arrived home Overkill by Collin Hay, it was nice to belt out to those songs just to vent out some of my sadness.

I was not the only member of the science department that was to be transfered out. Mrs. Korb was teaching the last part of the day I was not sure whether or not she was told of this yet. But from the looks and responses from the other staff I was most likely one of the first to find out. I wonder how she took the news, I wondered who finally tells her. I said to Ms. King that she should tell Mrs. Korb before she goes home today. Instead of having her find out by mail on Saturday, because I'm pretty sure that the principals would not likely have told her this afternoon.

I guess that since I have taught longer than Mrs. Korb, I can make do and go on. But she is a new teacher and very much so, I remember her last year and she has grown much as a teacher and has much more enthusiasm than I can muster up ever. Now not that I do not teach with enthusiasm but overall I am pretty low key. I think she is on the right path and that she will be a great teacher. I just hope that this transfer does not stunt or discourage her development as a teacher. It is not unusual that the "new" teacher would most likely get the most challenging students and can be really stressful. Heck the relocation is stressful especially in a last minute situation that we are in (we need to be moved and start teaching at our new school by next Monday).

It is hard to pinpoint how I feel. I know that there is nothing that could be done to prevent this from happening on the short term. Teachers are moved based on their seniority and Mrs. Korb and I are both on the bottom of the list because we both joined the district this past year. I think I was having good rapport with my students. The thing that sucks is the I will have a new group of students to get to know and my students will have to get to know their new teacher whoever that may be.

It is hard to not dwell about being abandoned and alone because I have never had an involuntary transfer, I like to staying in one place for a while. I will miss my coworkers here and I will miss working with the Robotics Team students and see the development of this years new students joining the team.

Strangers in Paradise

2007-07-18T00:08:00.000-04:00

I was checking some things online when I stumbled upon the Strangers in Paradise Website. Its been quite a while since I had picked up a copy of this comic, I think my last issue was issue 53. I was sad to find that Terry Moore published the concluding issue in June. I had know all about this for over a year and with the year that I have had with my parents moving in with me, Ahmie pregnant with Delano, buying a home, and having concluded my first year teaching at East Tech High School. This reminds me a bit of my first year of teaching, in short I was way busy.

Reading comics had been a hobby of mine for many years I started reading translated manga published by VIZ comics, then I started reading Marvel comics titles like the Punisher, and later the X titles. By the time I reached my later high school years I was looking for something more to read I followed the X men and read some manga titles. As interesting as that was I wanted something more, something more real. A title that I started to read was called Negative Burn, an anthology title that show cased comics of diverse talent and story style. I picked up the first issues of Strangers in Paradise in 1993

From the first panels that I have read I loved this book. I looked all over for the previous 3 issues published by Antarctic Press which is a small independent publisher. I eagerly waited the two to three month times between issues. What interested me was not the way it handled provocative issues such as AIDS and homosexuality. But, rather the portraial of the characters Katchoo, Francine, and David. They were realistic characters it was interesting to see their daily life in the comic and learn about their back history. Also I did have quite a resemblance to David the only main male character in the comic.

Truth is the character David resonated with me. For a short time I felt that what ever happens to David in the comic would happen to me in real life. I mean in the early issues each of the characters seems to be desperately trying to become themselves, there was some type of underlying tragedy. Katchoo was haunted by her childhood and the time she spent as a call girl, this was catching up to her as her past friend with whom she had worked with was dying with AIDS. Francine who was in love and was insecure about previous relationships being only physical in nature. She waited for a whole year before she would allow her boyfriend Freddy to sleep with her. Sadly Freddy was a real dog and cheated on Francine which utterly crushed Francine. David did not seem to have much baggage in the early story, which in time will reveal to not be true. David was in love with Katchoo, desperately so. Unfortunately for David, Katchoo was in love with Francine and Francine did not know it.

It did not stop David from pursuing Katchoo. They had a strange deep friendship that could have evolved to something more. This was how I felt in high school. I was always the friend to many girls that I was interested in. Perhaps that was the reason why girls were not interested in me I became their friends and had gotten to know about them before I felt comfortable enough to try asking them out. This was the same in my freshman fall in college also. I asked 3 different girls out and was rejected mostly due to the fact that we had known each other (i guess) too well.

Then in my Spring semester Literature class I met Ahmie, granted I never changed my tactic I always wanted to know and get to be friends with women that I was interested in. (Now this is does not mean that I only get to know women that I am interested in.) I believe that this was also about the same time David and Katchoo was together as a couple.

I never knew when I first met Ahmie that I was going to be with Ahmie for the rest of my life. I have to say that the past eleven years has been quite a ride with highs and lows much like a comic book story.

Unlike my relationship with Ahmie, my relationship with the comic book Strangers in Paradise eventually ended as the story became exceedingly outrageous with the Mafia story line and its repercussions and I found it hard to connect with the characters and how they dealt with everyday life.

Even though I have not picked up an issue in a good 3 years I think I will go back to the beginning and read it all including the ones I have not picked up yet to see how the story goes.

Catch Up

2007-07-10T01:24:00.000-04:00

Well as I have posted several weeks ago, Ahmie was in labor and the birth of the baby was imminent. As I have posted before birth of a child is a life event and well ... the baby was not born within 24 hours of that post instead it was more like almost 3 days before the baby was born.

I have reflected on this birth experience that we had at home. We had many people over sunday night: Serena, Clare, Sabrnia, Cindy (Ahmie's Mom) and the person who helped us with the Homebirth. As nice as that was to have so many people present it was hard to have so many people there.

It was also hard to have a sense of intimacy because there were so many people around. Ahmie and I have discussed this and have decided that as nice as it was that so many people showed up at Ahmie's call perhaps it might have been better if there were fewer friends attending at a time but have people rotate and take a shift. This is because, Ahmie felt that she needed to give birth sooner because everyone had an emotional investment with Ahmie and wanted to see the birth. However the side effect of this is that life goes on we don't go into our own pocket universe when a child is in the process of being birthed. Life outside of the birth was seeping in and Ahmie sensed tension this prolonged labor is causing in her friends.

However I cannot express in words the gratitude I feel for all the people who were present for the birth. Even though it was a long and tiring experience it was wonderful to catch my second son in the intimacy of home.

At 7:17am on Wednesday June 27th 2007 Delano Cheuk-Sing Yeung was born. His weight was 7lbs 12oz, 19 inches long. Now Delano's name comes from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who is one of Ahmie's favorite Presidents.

I have to say that Delano is a very different he sleeps so much. it seems that Delano is closer to what is a normal activity level for a baby. He will nurse and sleep for 2-4 hours without waking up. This is much different from Liam who would nurse every hour or so and sleep for 45 minutes to a little over an hour.

Liam is adjusting well to having a younger brother. I is incredibly endearing that LIam is so attached to Delano. Liam tries to be helpful and help take care of his younger brother which when directed was helping bring diapers and wipes and other things. When not guided meant trying to pick Delano up or poking at Delano's umbilical stump. The first night Delano was crying and Liam was crying hysterically thinking that it was his fault that Delano was crying.
Liam said to Delano:

Liam broke Jiue Jie(Piglet in Cantonese) tummy.

Ahmie explained to him that Delano is crying because he does not like his diaper being changed. I think we told Liam that he could help comfort the baby by saying Jiue Jie all safe. He still does this when Delano is crying.

Delano's two weeks old today!

Piglet is coming soon.

2007-06-24T17:35:00.000-04:00

Ahmie has been having more consistent and closer contractions throughout Sunday. We went to church and I was not with Ahmie during the service because the childcare was loaded with kids and I opted to help out. During the service I checked in on her and she told me that she was having a period of 3-5 minutes between stop and start of contractions, with the contractions lasting for about a minute.
After church we went to Malley's and Ahmie picked up an Ice Cream Sunday. (She promised herself that in early labor she would have a Sunday.) We had called our Midwife and she came and checked on Ahmie and found that she is about 4 cm dilated and thinks that she would likely deliver in the next day or so. While this is all happening I was furiously trying to clean up the blue room.
It seems that Sabrnia (one of Liam's Godparents) is coming up from West Virginia to be here for Piglet's birth. Also Ahmie's mother Cindy will be arranging time to be here also for the birth.

Ahmie thinks that Piglet will come in the next 24 hours.

Is Piglet's arrival imminent?

2007-06-24T00:05:00.000-04:00

Ahmie has been feeling more contractions this past week and over the past two days she has been feeling them a little bit differently. She has been noticing contractions since before Summer break started but they were irregular and infrequent, they were a bit more frequent last week and it seems that as this week (week of June 17th). She has been feeling them come with more frequency and this evening she had been noticing that they are between 5-10 minutes apart. Ahmie had a glass of wine this evening to help slow down these contractions.

I wonder if his arrival is imminent because the contractions she had this evening, as she described them "they are inwardly focusing" and she said that she felt the contractions "starting higher up and washing downward towards her backbone and pelvis". Ahmie's due date is July 7th which I think would be really cool. Ahmie is however not disappointed if our baby piglet (because this is the Chinese year of the Boar/Pig) were to be born sooner because she does not like hot weather. She does not look forward to the hot weeks ahead. Suprisingly it has been quite cool the past several days.

We have been cleaning sorting and rearranging the house a bit. So far the living room, office, and kitchen are pretty clean and tidy. Our bedroom needs to have clothes hung up the bathroom needs some attention and the blue room has had much improvement but we still need to vacuum and organize some things in there. Our bedroom is getting there we have our mini cosleeper set up next to Ahmie's side of the bedroom.

Ahmie wanted to give birth at home for Liam's birth but due to several reasons we decided not to give birth at home but instead at a hospital attached birthing center. Most of the hang ups were with me. I did not know for sure how Ahmie would endure labor with Liam. I just was not sure what happens during a birth. I was concerned what if something went wrong. Personally being part of Liam's birth and being there and seeing how Ahmie knew and was very aware of birthing Liam. I was much more comfortable with Ahmie having a home birth with Piglet. I however wanted to have help and assistance to oversee Ahmie's labor. We decided after moving to our new house that we should home birth.

Reasons (in no particular order)
1. We are really close to the hospital. In the back of my mind I do fear some sort of complication but we are like 3 blocks away from Lakewood Hospital.
2. Birth is a life event and rarely a medical event. Since we are in a home that we own and plan on living here for many years to come . I think that it would be great that our children born at home and have a deep connection to the home that they live in.
3. Both of my parents were born at home.
4. I know Ahmie can give birth and I have faith that she will be able to bring Piglet into this world also.

Liam is so wonderful it is hard to imagine life without him. I think he would be a great big brother. We knew that he understood that there was a little baby inside Ahmie and it is just priceless during winter when he would say:

Piglet come out mama's tummy help Liam shovel (snow).

Recently, Liam has been in the habit of pretending to take Piglet from Ahmie's tummy and holding the pretend Piglet in his hand and carefully holding the baby. When we had the mini cosleeper set up he did exactly that and he placed Piglet very gently in the cosleeper and then gave the imaginary Piglet a kiss. It just melts your heart.

We have also decided to start really potty training Liam, he can go most of the day without accidents if we ask him to go every 30 to 45 minutes it seems that he can hold it while he naps so things are good.

But Friday Liam developed strange red splotches all over his body and on his face. We were concerned and we took him to an Urgent Care and the doctor said that he may have a systemic allergy attack, meaning he ate something he was allergic to. He seems alright but he looks horrible with the splotches all over his face. Obviously this puts a hamper on the potty training and complicates preparing for Piglet's arrival. He mostly seems to be itchy. We give him Oatmeal baths and lotion him up and give him Benedryl to try to treat this. Tho the doctor at the urgent care gave a prescription for Zyrtec I wanted to try to give him something over the counter before giving him a prescription. He is still splotchy but seems to be diminishing, still itchy but lotion seems to take care of that along with the oatmeal baths.

Its getting late and I should make sure I rest up. Because I know I won't pretty soon.

I know it's been 10 months, anyway My 30th birthday and Scrapblog

2007-06-13T23:30:00.000-04:00

I know it has been about 10 months since I last wrote on this blog. Indeed much life has occurred during the interim I started teaching at a new school, most likely I will be back teaching there again this year. Ahmie became pregnant again and is due soon. Along with my parents we bought a double house in Lakewood. I think other than the year I started teaching in Virginia this has got to be the most stressful and action packed year in my life.

April was my 30 birthday and it went okay. I have to say that I probably should have invited my friends to the party earlier but having been so busy with work and the Robotics Team and home life I just did not muster the energy to call anyone any sooner. I invited my co workers and ex-coworkers and friends. I had hoped my ex-coworker friends Josh and Clark would have made it. However the party went well anyway. More the problem was the foot plus of snow that we had the week before the party and I had wanted to have a party in the back yard. But the yard was muddy from all the melted snow.

Check out the scrapblog below for pictures of the party and my brother visiting for my birthday.

Marvin called me Saturday morning from the airport asking for me to text him his ticket confirmation number because he had forgotten it. He arrived at about 11 am and we went out to eat and afterwards we went to church for an evening of boardgames. We spent Sunday afternoon together after church. Dropped Marvin off at the Airport Sunday afternoon around 4pm and had to pick him up because of heavy rains canceled his flight and the next flight would not be until early in the morning. It was great because Liam was heartbroken when we had to drop Marvin at the Airport and Liam was so surprised when Uncle Booger... ahem I mean Uncle Marvin came back. This meant I had to wake up extra early to drop him off at the airport so he can be harassed by the TSA and not miss his flight.

I think I will most definitely post some more soon.

Liam Used the Toilet Today

2006-08-21T20:41:00.000-04:00

Liam after taking a bath this evening was walking around the living room naked like he usually does before settling down for a diaper. He told Ahmie "potty" and lead her to the bathroom and stood on the stool and peed into the toilet.

Hopefully, he is ready for potty training.

Well I'm Back ... (home that is)

2006-08-11T21:47:00.000-04:00

The trip back to New Rochelle was eventful and while traveling I took notes on my trusty palm pilot, but I need to go back and finish editing and adding to those entries as I took spare moments to jot down my thoughts. Hopefully they will be posted soon.

Thoughts on Changes in the Old Neighborhood

2006-08-10T00:29:00.000-04:00

Audioblogger Test

2006-08-08T18:39:00.000-04:00

Old Friends don't die or do they?

2006-07-02T01:20:00.000-04:00

(I know I haven't written at all for the past several months and I should write more often, but you know that life happens while your making plans to something else)

Every once in a while I get an urge to try to get back in touch with old friends. This would not be very difficult if I was an organized person. For those who know me, they should know that being organized is a difficult thing for me. Having a two year old in the house does not help either.

I have a crate that I have my very most important things in the world. I try to rifle through them and find things that I do not need as urgently and sort that out somewhere else and then place other things that I do hold high in importance in. Mostly I have old journals and yearbooks that I hold for memory and names. I also have correspondences filed in there for recollection.

Usually these are the same times that I get nostalgic and have an urge to get in contact with friends that I have lost touch. So if I know you and have not seen or have talked with you in the past year look out, I may just give you an e-mail or possibly a phone call to try to get back in touch.

With Google on my side who knows who I may find!

When Stepfamilies don't mix

2006-04-21T23:40:00.000-04:00

I haven't written much lately but I was watching Primetime tonight and was outraged by their story on Stepfamilies. It was shocking to find out that within the next few years that there will be more stepfamilies then the traditional first marriage family. However what was more shocking was the segment on the Nelson family where the segments shown on how the parents Joe and Lynn targeted the daughter Kyle who came from Joe's first marriage. Kyle is a teenager who had depression bouts and ADD. She lives in a home environment where she is belittled and terrorized by her parents on a regular basis. On one occasion shown in the segment Joe (father) jumped on top of Kyle and slapped her many times. I was shocked that there was no mention of Child Protective Services called on the Nelson family by the producers of the segment. I was so upset that I wrote this letter to Primetime.

All of the people involved in this program dealing with the Nelson family should
be ashamed of yourselves. It is abhorrent that when the abuse surfaced the story
should have stopped there. But instead of doing the right thing you allowed the
girl Kyle to be subjected to further verbal and physical abuse. The abuse does
not end at her, your own footage shows that the other children in the Nelson
household are clearly affected by the verbal abuse, the children covering their
ears and saying prayers is telling.
From the shaping of the story there seemedto be NO consequence for the parents in the Nelson family to the physical abuse and verbal abuse that they inflicted on Kyle and the other children. Child protective service should have been called the moment you observed abuse.
The message that I get from watching your program is that it is OKAY to physically
and verbally abuse your children, BECAUSE there appeared to be no consequence.
I hope that the people involved in the production of the Nelson family segment,
are found guilty of child neglect and endangerment because they failed to their
human duty to report the abuse of the children in that family.

Anyway from reading the message boards for Primetime I believe the Nelsons address is this Joe and Lynn Nelson 1166 Fletcher Farm Road Bloomingdale, NY 12913
I hope that CPS is called upon that family and that the remaining children in that family will be given a better environment to live while the "parents" get the help that they desperately need.

And I hope the Primetime segment producers gets charged and found with child endangerment.

Meeting Strangers

2006-02-11T23:41:00.000-05:00

Last week I finally sat down for an entire service at church. Usually I try to sit for the service but eventually I would have to walk Liam down to the Nursery room so that he could play and not be too distracting in the sanctuary. The sermon last Sunday was titled "Guests in our own home." The ministers were talking about meeting strangers, the ones without and the ones within. It was a very moving service, or perhaps it was so moving because this is the first time I attended service with Liam in the Nursery. Anyway during the sermon I was thinking about the strangers that I have meet on my travels on the Greyhound bus.
Before I met and started dating Ahmie I went everywhere by bus. I grew up in the suburbs of New York City; I grew up riding the subway and the busses everywhere. I remember before my dad bought a car we took the train and subway to Chinatown Sunday for Chinese school and grocery shopping. As I grew up I went into the City all by myself to wander around, go to shops and museums, I loved being able to go anywhere I wanted by public transit. As my junior year in high school rolled by I started to visit colleges on my own by taking the Greyhound. I visited University of Rochester, Cornell University, and Case Western Reserve University (now known as Case).

For the most part the University visits were fairly generic and did not stand out very much in my memory. What do stick in my mind were the discussions that I had with some of the people traveling on the Greyhound with me. I remember a discussion that I had with an elderly gentleman on my way to Cornell. The elderly man was taking the bus to visit some family upstate. Although the key points of the discussion are lost in my mind, what I remember was camaraderie and the almost instant connection we had when discussing the many topics we talked about, I remember talking about Kierkgarrd and existentialist philosophy.
I also remembered talking with a black gentleman on my way to Cleveland to visit Case we talked about family and family obligations and how he is helping his sister move and that is what families do for each other riding hundreds of miles to help move and drive the moving truck. What I thought about during the service was that I was able to open up to strangers, not necessarily minute details about my life. But rather having an honest discussion with no pretense.
Perhaps it is my introverted nature that I find these transient conversations worth thinking about. I think it is being in transit that people are the most purely themselves, knowing that the scenery will change as surely as the people will change there is no need to pretend to be someone that you are not. Since the people encountered while traveling, are not in the usual cast of characters in ones life story, there is no need to be guarded and play the same role that one normally plays.

Sometimes I miss riding the Greyhound.

Looking into the long past

2006-01-16T09:35:00.000-05:00

Over the Christmas break I worked on digitizing the family tree. It was quite interesting work, apparently my family from Liam goes back twenty nine generations. From the fourteenth generation on there was detailed description of birth day on the Chinese lunar calendar, birth year under which emperor's rule, marital status, sons born, and when they died. I know that at least the family goes back to the Qing Dynasty but what my parents have is only a copy of the cliftnotes version of the actual family history, apparently there is an entire box of books with family history somewhere out there my father believes with one of the uncles.

My parents want to at least scan in the documents so that there will be a record somewhere in case the paper copy disappears. I want to do one better, I want to do as through a genealogists work up with a computer program so that we can have a more meaningful understanding of where and when my ancestors existed. Also I would like to have that genealogy reach to the modern generation of Yeung/Young family members (the east coast 楊 are spelled Ye/the west coast 楊 are spelled Yo). My father is one of ten children and from looking in the history my grandfather had the largest family in history. My grandfather and grandmother had 6 sons and ironically of those six sons only three of those sons had male children, which would make it my generation there are in total four male children who carry the family name, two already have children, myself and a cousin in California who is the son of my fifth uncle. My cousin Gene who is not really into making a family, and my brother Marvin. I would love to see the Yeung family name carried on to future generations.

Of course there are a number of problems in finding a genealogy program for recording the family history.

That is all of my ancestors had Chinese names, therefore any software I use must be able to support Chinese characters if nothing else just for their names.
I want to use a program that will exist for years and generations to come so I need a program that will be continued to be upgraded for a long time.
I don't really know enough Chinese to do justice for my ancestor's history.

I have been looking for a software that will do family trees but the only one that I have a sustained interest is Personal Ancestral File which is published by the Church of the Latter Day Saints. I do not agree with the beliefs and practices of the Mormon church, but the thing that they do well is genealogy, I know that this software will be supported for years to come since they have a fascination with genealogy.

It is somewhat humbling to realize that I am part of a much larger family, a family that has history that goes into the past for hundreds of years, that has survived war, plague, and hardship that are inconceivable today. I look at Liam and hope that he will help carry the family name for generations to come. On the other hand I hope there will be a world for Liam's children and his children's children to inhabit. I fear that humanity may have reached its peak, I fear that life will become increasingly harder, our resources depleting, the rise of extremism all around the world. I fear that within 30 generations humanity will cease to matter because we would have choked ourselves out of the picture with war and or pollution.

I hope that thirty generations from now some one like me is pondering the same questions as they try to create or update a family history for the Yeung family.

Garvin, its nice to meet you my name is Garvin

2006-01-16T01:30:00.000-05:00

When I post enteries on the blog I often click on the Next Blog button and scan for interesting blogs to read while I perculate my thoughts. Well tonight I stumbled upon GARVIN. From scanning his blog and reading his profile I find some interesting similarities between us.

He is Canadian and I was born in Canada.
He is Chinese or of Chinese heritage and I am also Chinese.
He likes pho and I like pho.
He is an Aries and I am and Aries also.
He is a technophile and I am a technophile.
He dislikes the Bush Whitehouse, I also dislike the Bush Whitehouse.

I emailed him, I hope that he writes back.

What a strange little world.

The Christmas Plague

2006-01-03T01:43:00.000-05:00

I love teaching; there are very few jobs where you can have Christmas and New Years off and all the days in between. The trade off of course is that when you are teaching the rest of the year you do not have a life.
I have been working myself too hard in December. It seems for me work doubles when I am preparing for time off, you know tying up loose ends, grading everything and so on. So naturally when I have some down time I get sick, almost no fail. I started feeling unwell Saturday the 24th and by Christmas I got full blown sick, coughing, feeling like you cannot breathe because you are so congested, ears clogged, sinuses hurting because you are stuffed up.
I should have known something was coming up when my ears felt like something were inside them on Wednesday the 20th. As usual I went on, and kept going on and on.
My parents arrived Friday Dec 23rd, of course Ahmie and I spent all day cleaning preparing for my parents visit. It was not too bad mess wise, we are settling in our apartment and much of our things have a place. They came on Greyhound and arrived about 7 in the morning, I picked them up and showed them a little bit of Cleveland, and where I work. Liam slept in that morning and Ahmie and I got a chance to chat with my parents, which was nice, and Liam had a chance to sleep well and greeted his grandparents (nai-nai, and yeh-yeh) with bright eyes and full of cheer. It has been several months since Liam has seen them. Later that day we went out for Dim sum at C & Y Chinese restaurant. We also invited our friends from church Serena, Jasmine (who returned from her first semester at college), Carlos and Sharon (Serena's parents). The food was wonderful; it was interesting having dim sum with two vegetarians. They do have some excellent dim-sum dishes for vegetarians. Afterwards we did some shopping for Asian goods.

We decided to lay low for the rest of Friday and Saturday to have a nice dinner, relax and enjoy each other's company. Saturday night we attended the Christmas Eve service at Westshore. Saturday night we enjoyed a delicious turkey (which started the week of turkey leftovers, turkey soup, turkey lo-mien, turkey fried rice and so on). Sunday we opened our Christmas gifts before church. I started feeling unwell Sunday morning, my throat started getting horse before church, however I was convinced to do a reading that morning and apparently I did some justice to the piece even though my voice was a little horse. I got to feeling really unwell Sunday afternoon, I had to sleep a little bit and I really felt sick.
I felt unwell until Wednesday, which meant I could not participate in the usual after Christmas bonanza of clearance deals, probably a good thing. Of course Wednesday was when I went to see my doctor. The doctor gave me a prescription for antibiotics, and a steroid/broncodialator for my cold and chest congestion. I started feeling better almost right away.

Starting Thursday I worked on scanning in some family documents for my Dad. By then everyone at the apartment was feeling a little under the weather except my Mom. Ahmie and Liam had a bit of a cough, and dad was coughing also. None of them got as bad as I did.

My parents returned to New York on Sunday night and it was a very long but enjoyable visit from my parents.

Christmas Service

2006-01-03T01:04:00.000-05:00

Even though I was feeling sick on Christmas day, my parents and my family all went to church on Christmas day. The service was very interesting, the congregants were asked to share something with the congregation, which was very nice. I was asked to do a reading for a fellow church member; I was told that he could not read what he wanted to share with out getting very choked up. I agreed to do so even though my throat was full of phlegm and my voice seems to be on the verge of going.

I got the reading, it was titled Christmas at Aunt Ida's by Dick Feagler who is a long time columnist at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I read the column twice before I read it aloud before the congregation. I was very moved by this piece, since I am so moved I would like to share this to the readers of this blog out there in the blogsphere.

Christmas at Aunt Ida's

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Dick Feagler

Plain Dealer Columnist

With a nod by Dick Feagler to the issues of today, we republish his Christmas column, which first appeared in The Plain Dealer in 1993.

On Christmas, when I was a kid, we all went over to my Aunt Ida's house -- an old house in the old neighborhood.

Just what did you think I was going to do today? Talk about politics? The chaos and uncertainties of Iraq? All of our fellow Americans who dream of a white Christmas but see one the color of sand? All of the fears and uncertainties that lie before us? Not today, my friend. No fears today. Not on the day when an angel once said, "Fear not!"

Let us rest our weary brains. Let us consider matters more lasting than the day's headlines. Let us turn our backs on all earthbound dramas and traumas. Let us ignore notorious tyrants made famous in headlines for their infamy. Let us visit some people whose names get into the newspaper only when they die. And even then, just in the tiny type of the death notices.

Let's go to my Aunt Ida's house. Come on. It'll only take a couple of minutes.

You'll be home in time for the 11 o'clock news, I promise you.

The house wasn't far from the steel mills, and the fallout from the mills made the dirt in Aunt Ida's yard black and rich. When the wind was wrong, the air in the neighborhood smelled like a chem lab. Breathing it might have been bad, but nobody knew that then. My Aunt Ida had great luck with flowers.

On Christmas, we'd all be there. The old folks, the young folks and the kids. The young folks were the young men and their wives still recovering from the great upheaval of World War II. The old folks could remember World War I.

The kids, like me, weren't old enough to remember much. We were busy collecting memories, and this is one of them.

There was no TV. The only one among us who had a TV was my cousin Stanley, who sold them. He hasn't yet sold one to any of the rest of the family, but he keeps trying. He knows it's only a matter of time. For, what isn't?

"I have a 10-inch screen," he tells us, a cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth, a tall brown beer bottle at his elbow. He's sitting at the dining room table with the rest of the young men, playing pinochle. You'll notice that they have all, just for a little while, assumed the present tense. A Christmas present tense.

"They are never going to be able to make a screen bigger than 10 inches that will give you a decent picture," Cousin Stanley lectures. "According to the laws of electronics, 10 inches is as big as you can go."

The Army Air Corps gave Cousin Stanley a job fixing radios. That's where he got his electronic knowledge. So my Uncle Ziggy, who flushed out snipers on Okinawa, and my Cousin Melvin, who knocked out tanks in Italy, listen to Stanley with respect. Stanley - the trumpeter of the dawn of the age of television.

By now, the tiny type has recorded Stanley's name. And Ziggy's. Melvin's, too. And my Aunt Ida's. Time killed them. The tanks couldn't do it and the snipers couldn't do it. But Time? It does it every time.

Time erased my cousin Billy's name. He crossed the Rhine River in the bloody, final act of his war. He lived through obscene and notorious battlefields. He died at 85 cutting wood in his front yard in Parma.

Time is the inevitable eraser, but it does not erase cleanly. If you look hard enough, you can still see traces of them all, faintly. And if you look even harder - why they are right here!

The women are gathered in the living room, talking about babies and recipes and operations. Nylon stockings that have come back again, so you can throw the leg makeup away. Electric stoves that practically cook your meal for you. Jobs they can quit now - are expected to quit now - because the men have come back from the war.

Their woman talk would make a feminist despair. They talk of "female trouble" and permanent waves. And the Christmas crowds at Halle's and Taylor's and Bailey's. And the big Sterling-Lindner tree that looked even a little bigger this year. And Hough bake shop cookies. And trolley cars that turn on Public Square, showering the safety zones with a blizzard of sparks.

Jay Leno is not here. I told you, there is no television set, except the one Stanley is describing - sketching it in the air with the smoke from his cigar. Nobody has bothered to turn the radio on. There is just talk - endless, trivial, sometimes mysterious. Sometimes, if a kid comes into the room, the talk suddenly stops. "Ix-nay," one of the aunts will say. "Little pitchers have big ears." There are things, in this long-ago time, that a kid is not supposed to know about. If for some unfathomable reason anybody said the word "condom," it would take the room an hour to recover its equilibrium.

Where are the kids? Would you mind, my friend, if I went in search of myself? It won't take long. I know just where to look.

I am with my cousins in the unheated bedroom at the back of the old house. We are burrowing under the piles of coats that have been dumped on the bed. Moutons, mostly, with a few Persian lambs, for animals do not yet have rights. Just a glimpse of myself is all I want. I don't want to look too hard. Because for me, this trip is a wistful mirror.

The bedroom door opens and Aunt Ida is standing in a rectangle of light.

"You kids go into the living room now," she says. "Santa Claus is coming soon."

We go. And as soon as we leave, Aunt Ida opens a bureau drawer, reaches under some flannel sheets and pulls out a moth-eaten Santa Claus suit and a scraggly beard. The pants of this suit have long since disintegrated. So my Aunt Ida hikes up her dress and yanks on a pair of my uncle's blue serge pants. Over these she tugs galoshes.

She takes a pillow from the bed and plucks off the pillowcase. She stuffs the pillow under the Santa jacket to give herself a tummy. She fills the pillowcase with toys from Woolworth's, Kresge's and Grant's She puts on the beard, the cap. She tiptoes out into the hall. Then out the back door and into the night - air so cold it makes her nose sting, sky lit with a faint glow from the mills.

Around the house she goes and up on the side porch. She pauses and peeks in the window.

She sees what we see now. Me at 7. My young, handsome father and pretty mother.

(Death took my mother gently, during a nap. My father followed her the next year. But memory brings them back now, and makes them young again.)

On the frosty porch, my Aunt Ida sees us all - the old folks, the young folks and the kids. Moving, though we can't feel the current, down a river of time.

We don't see her. She is on the other side of the dark windowpane. The adults know she's out there. We kids aren't sure. It's a moment of great suspense for us. We are not yet old enough to understand that life is fairly predictable. That you can usually tell what will happen next. That there are only a handful of plots, endlessly repeated.

I promised I'd get you back. But let me take a last look into that room. Almost all of the people we see there are gone now. But they haven't gone far, and on Christmas they are very close. They are just the other side of the windowpane.

We can't see them. But we feel them there, those simple people who loved us and took care of us. They left us blessings we too rarely count. And, if we let them, they come back at Christmas with gifts of everlasting life.

The church member who could not read this himself I could only imagine that many of his family members are now on the other side of the windowpane and that he would like to be reconnected with those dear departed family members.

I was also very moved myself fortunately I never had to deal really with the passing of close family members except for my Uncle Joseph in 2004. I have been blessed with a child hood where nobody dies, nobody that matters, that is. I however saw myself in Dick Feagler's character and some day in the future thinking of resplendent Christmases of days gone by.

I know that my aunts and uncles will die someday, I know that my parents will die someday also however I hope that it will be far off from this Christmas, and many Christmases to come.

T-minus 13 minutes

2005-12-31T23:46:00.000-05:00

Well its about 13 minutes to 2006, thus far the evening has been nice. My parents, Ahmie, Liam and I went to a Chinese Buffet tonight. For this night we also made Tong Yun which are flour dumplings with sugar and (my father's favorite) peanut butter fillings, in a simple syrup broth. It was a family affair, Ahmie and my mom made the dumplings and I cooked the dumplings and made the syrup broth.

Still waiting for the ball to drop.
My resolutions for this coming year.
1. Get a better teaching job, time to start looking is in January.
2. Get our fiances in better order. (getting a better job helps)
3. Try to reach my students better (its going to be tough, I think resolutions are supposed to be hard)
4. Lose weight (currently I weigh about 210 lbs)

...5, 4, 3, 2, 1, open sesame, Happy New Year!
Have a Happy New Year! ...

The past 3 months

2005-12-29T23:22:00.000-05:00

I have been buried with work and have not been able to post nor compose anything at all. Work has been difficult at the school that I teach at, I hope this break will afford me the opportunity to reflect and refocus before the start of the second semester. When I return from Winter break I will have about two weeks before the start of the next semester. Work has been more anguishing and frustrating than uplifting and enlightening.

A regular work day starts for me goes like this

5:30 am, I get up, eat, get dressed, and out the door ideally by 6:30
am.
But I usually linger, watch some news, or drink a second cup of coffee and
usually out around 6:45 am.
7:00-7:15 am, I get to work depending on traffic. I sit down turn
on my laptop and print out my lessons for the day, go to the copier and make
copies.
7:45 to 12:00 pm, I teach three 80 minute block classes.
12:00 to 12:25 pm is my actual lunch. Usually I am tidying my
classroom for the next teacher.
12:25 to 1:45 pm is my planning block I try to be productive and spend most of
that time grading or doing other small teaching tasks. Sometimes
I just need to sit down and not be productive and relax
from
a bad morning of teaching.
1:50 to 3:10 pm is my last block class and is usually my best and most
productive of the day.
3:10 to 4:00 pm is my planning time which I try to tidy the classroom and
then try to organize for the next day. Sometimes students come in for
extra help, sometimes I have students serve detention (which most don't show
up). Perhaps talk with my coworkers on work related issues.
4:10-4:30 pm is usually when I leave for home.
4:30-5:00 pm is usually when I arrive home.
5:00 to 8:00 pm is unwind time with Ahmie and Liam, depending on if dinner
is made or not 6-7 is spent cooking something edible.
8:00 to 12:00 pm or later is spent working on grading, writing lesson
plans or class notes, powerpoint presentations.
5:30 pm wake up.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Well at least I get the summers off right.

The nature of Love

2005-10-03T23:40:00.000-04:00

I find myself thinking about love lately. I hear familiar refrains in my head as I think about this.

Love is a wonderful thing.
Love conquers all.
All you need is love, love is all you need.
Love is a letting go.
Love is all consuming.

What is the state of love in my life. I have to say this is mostly prompted by a letter written to me about a month ago by an old friend. This has prompted me to start getting back in touch with other old friends. In all honesty, I don't make friends easily. I am not the type of person who makes casual aquintances. The friends that I make I keep for life. What I mean by that is friends to me are like books. I have a story of friendship between my friend and I, sometimes we get out of touch and the book goes on a bookshelf. Time and distance does not diminish the stories in a book, nor does it diminish the value of my friendships. All I have to do is pick up my friendships back up, blow the dust off and I pick up where I left off some time ago.

But I digress.

I have been thinking about love lately. I find that I have an almost unbareable love for my son Liam. Not that it is difficult to love my son, but rather the depth of the love that I feel for him is as deep as and wide as the ocean. I know that Liam is a beautiful and very cute child. However my love for him is beyond the physical.
When I come home from work I cannot wait to see Liam, I find it hard to shake out of my work clothes then spend time with him. Half the time I will hold him closely after my arms are free to pick him up and hug him. My love for him is so great that I feel what he feels, my heart fills with joy when he is happy, and laughing. My heart hurts when he has a cry of anguish or pain. I know now that I am a big part of Liam's world. I am his Sun or Moon that revolove around him and help solve his needs.
I know that someday I will not have the sway over him as I do now. It pains me to know that he will grow up someday and not love me as overwhelmingly as he does now.
I know that all things change and that this is a natural part of life which gives life meaning. However this does not mean I will stop loving my son so very full heartedly, enjoying every step especialy now.

Transience Update

2005-09-27T00:36:00.000-04:00

Carol called me this weekend and told me that she got a job teaching in Chicago, considering it seems that Carol had to make a major life change to move with her partner Heidi to Chicago. I am glad that she is now teaching and in a good job at a Magnet school. From what she described to me it seems to be a cake job.

Best wishes and good luck on your new teaching job, Carol.

Liam's Kisses

2005-09-27T00:12:00.000-04:00

Well Liam has finally learned how to kiss other people with his mouth closed and not biting when kissing other people, or at least to Ahmie and I he has been kissing us or giving his cheek for a kiss. Liam is a very affectionate child but it seems that he has a taste for human flesh. So it is horrible when he plays with other children, or the one time Ahmie and I had left Liam at Church daycare for service Liam climbed on top of another young child and bit him in the cheek and cause the other kid to bleed when the daycare volunteer was not looking. So I almost always take Liam to the daycare area of our church and often miss the service and sermon because our church is currently undergoing major renovation. I have to watch him like a hawk to make sure that he is not patting other children too hard nor will he get the opportunity to bite other children when he tries to hug them.

The frustrating thing about all of this is that Liam is a sweet and affectionate child but he intimidates other children even ones that are older then him by a year or so. This is mostly because he has the tendency to pat hard or bite when he hugs and kisses.

Sorry Carol, I guess when Liam sees you next he won't be a horrible boyfriend to you and bite you in both cheeks when you pick him up.

Transience is a constant

2005-09-10T02:38:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite essays was titled Eros and Thanatos (a new refutation of), now this essay was from my senior year Lit magazine Opus. The essay talked of Love and how Love transcends time and is immortal, those not in Love is in a transitory universe going from moment to moment. Yes, seems quite melodramatic. However, parts of the essay is stuck to my mind like really thick peanut butter.

With apologies to Tara Baltazar

In the sixth grade I thought I'd kill myself over a fight with my mother. Today, I can't remember the fight. In this age I am seeing someone. Twenty years from now someone will only be marked by time and place. Nineteen ninety-five, East Village. A photograph may remember.

excerpt from Eros and Thanatos (a new refutation of)

My friends Carol and Heidi are moving to Chicago today and I will miss them. I remember Heidi from one of my first times visiting the Westshore Unitarian universalist Church in Rocky River, Ohio. I did not remember what the sermon was about by I was struck when she came up to the podium and talked about how her partner (Carol) and her lives were set and seemed to be smooth going and then both she and Carol lost their jobs and how frightful this experience was. Heidi ended with a different job as a social worker, and Carol was continued at her teaching job despite being laid off earlier in the summer. I think that Ahmie and I approached Heidi after that service and introduced ourselves.

That was the start of a beautiful friendship. Now Carol and Heidi are all packed up their apartment is mostly empty except for some trash that needs to be tidied. Heidi is going to seminary school in Chicago training to be an Unitarian universalist (UU) minister. Carol is going with her and trying to find work there.

I feel a strong urge to wake up early in the morning an make sure I take a picture of Carol and Heidi before they drive off.

Two Thousand and Five, Lakewood. A photograph may remember.

My Rejection letters

2005-08-28T12:36:00.000-04:00

Well I did get the job with both the Summit Academies, and with Hope High School. I ended up taking the job with Hope High because they offered me $31,000 which was less than I had wanted but not as low as the joke of an offer from Summit Academies which was $27,000 with no acknowledgement of my teaching experience.

For prosperity I will attach in this post all the rejection e-mails that I received from my Spring and Summer of applying for teaching jobs.

I'm posting my rejection e-mails in reverse chronological order.

This was the rejection letter from Lakewood Schools for a High School Science Teacher position.

July 5, 2005

Dear Candidate:

Thank you for your interest in the Science Teacher position at Lakewood High School. We were fortunate to have a number of outstanding candidates interview for this position.

After careful consideration, the position have been offered to and accepted by another applicant.

Once again, thank you for your interest.

Sincerely,

JoAnn M. Berkowitz
Director of Personnel

JMB/kr

Here is rejection letter from Lakewood for a Middle School Science teaching position.

July 5, 2005

Dear Candidate:

Thank you for your interest in the Middle School Science Teacher position at Emerson Middle School. We were fortunate to have a number of outstanding candidates interview for this position.

After careful consideration, the position have been offered to and accepted by another applicant.

Once again, thank you for your interest.

Sincerely,

JoAnn M. Berkowitz
Director of Personnel

JMB/kr

This is a letter of rejection from the Lorain County Joint Vocational School for a Science Instructor position, this was dated July 20th.

Thank you for taking the time to apply for the position of Science Instructor. We were impressed with your qualifications and experiences. I must tell you, we have concluded our search for this position and have offered the job to another applicant.

Please keep us in mind when considering employment opportunities in the future. Thanks again for your interest in the Lorain County Joint Vocational School.

Sincerely,
Michael S. Larson
Assistant Superintendent

This is a letter of rejection from Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Schools for a Substitute Teaching Position, this was dated Aug 11th.

Job Posting: Substitute Positions - Daily - for Teachers / Educational Aides / Other Professional Positions
Posting ID: POS20040805000001
Location: Board of Education

This position has been filled. Thank you for applying and please feel free to apply for other positions in the District for which you are properly qualified.

This is another letter of rejection from Lorain County Joint Vocational School for an Alternative Learning Monitor (In-house Suspension Teacher), this was dated Aug 23rd.

Thank you for taking the time to apply for the position of Alternative Learning Monitor. We were impressed with your qualifications and experiences. I must tell you, we have concluded our search for this position and have offered the job to another applicant.

Please keep us in mind when considering employment opportunities in the future. Thanks again for your interest in the Lorain County Joint Vocational School.

Granted I applied for way more than five positions over this past spring and summer. However I believe that the school systems should a least give the meager courtesy of notifying potential applicants about their rejection instead of not communicating at all. I applied for many positions over the Ohio State Department of Education's Online Job database. Basically the schools just log on to the database and pull the applicants that they saw had applied. I cannot imagine that it would be very difficult to pull the names an e-mails of applicants an make a mail merge to send out a mass email of rejection.

Even though the letters of rejection above were generic and canned. I applaud them for having the common courtesy of replying back to me with a rejection letter.

Been holding my breath

2005-08-18T22:34:00.000-04:00

Well its been a while since my last post, about eight months I think. Not to say that there has not been very eventful things happening in my life. Much has happened; Liam spoke his first words, walked his first steps, had his first birthday, and endured his first Harry Potter Book release party in these short months.

Don't you love Google Maps?

To talk about where I live. Now I live in Lakewood Ohio in a nice and quiet neighborhood. We have lived here since May of 2005. We had to move out of the "Murder House" in February because our new neighbors were very abhorrent people who I don't feel like describing right now. They were so bad that we had to move ASAP when they moved in at the end of January. Let just say the fact that they moved in at 1am was the least bad thing we had an issue with. We then moved with the help of our friends Katie, Carol, Heidi, KC, Tim, Andy, and again with a lot of muscle from my brother Marvin. We moved our stuff to a self store, Ahmie's uncle's basement, her mom's storage area, and the bulk of stuff we moved to our friend Jenny and her baby's daddy's house in Cleveland Heights Ohio. This was not too bad we thought but it was tough to live without our own kitchen and on the third floor. It was just plain tough to cramp ourselves into the attic of her house. During our stay March to May my parents visited we were hoping to buy a house but the deal fell through and we decided to look for a place to live in Lakewood, we spent several weekends looking for an duplex before settling for a duplex on the same street as our friends Carol and Heidi. As you may have guessed we are still trying to "settle" into our apartment.

Working has been tough in the past eight months, I lost my QMRP (assistant manager) twice. The first one quit on me, and I said don't let the door slam on your ass on your way out; good riddance. The second QMRP I have her name is Maria Hisey, and I loved working with her she was my brain twin and was a really good QMRP. I believe she started working with me in February. We worked through some tough times but in May she was promoted to being the Manager in charge of the Supported Living division of my company NCC. I could not have been happier that she was promoted to this demanding position because she is very talented and this will suit her personality. But, I was sad and upset that I was finally ready to really work well with her and Susan our nurse as a management team and then she was tapped for this important position in our company. She is thoroughly challenged in her new position and I don't think she has ever met a challenge that she cannot conquer. Every now and then I talk to her and ask how she is doing she does have very much in her hands. She seems tired I hope that she is doing okay with work and her family, granted her children are all older, but it is tough to juggle work and home.

But, I digress.

Since the end of May I have been running Royalton House by myself and have been working very many long and hard hours to make sure things are done. Staffing has been okay but I had certain responsibilities that I could not delegate to others and thus ended up working many weeks for 50-60 hours. Since I did not have a second person at the house I ended up being on-call for over 2 and a half months. I have gotten to the point where I cringe upon hearing the work cell phone ring. All of this has caused much strain in my relationship with Ahmie. I know that I should be better with her. I feel that I am running all the time from home to work, running circles at work, and run back home where I try to take care of Liam and cook and other stuff. But by the end of the day I don't feel like anything. When I wake up in the morning I don't feel like doing anything, I don't want to go to work. Some days I spend at work plunged in deep despair, feeling trapped in this job. Some times I just stare at the walls or mindlessly surfing the web because I don't seem to be motivated to do much more than that. But I manage to do what keeps the house afloat but I did not have energy to expand my presence at work. I now have a third QMRP and his name is Charles Hester and of the 3 QMRPs that I have had Charles by far is more experienced then my other two QMRPs. I hope that he and I will have a good collaborative relationship. Although I hope Charles can tolerate a good surprise.

What about teaching?

Good Question. Cleveland has been a very difficult market for finding work as a teacher. Especially with companies leaving and school levies failing and the state of Ohio not able to properly fund its school districts, makes the Cleveland area a tough teacher market. I have tried since April to apply for various positions for local school districts, they take my applications but don't call back. This is tough for me. I found that being a teacher is my calling and really ingrained into the definition of who I am. It is hard for me to check websites for teaching jobs, applying for them and not get any response, or follow up and find that the position was already filled, but I get the "Check back with us there might be more positions opening up later". I was pretty ready to give up when Ahmie found several ads for teaching positions at local area Charter Schools, and a school for a Juvenile Correctional facility.

The first place I interviewed at was for the teaching position at the Juvenile Correctional Facility. It was an interesting experience walking into jail and having to walk through a metal detector but the job was interesting, but the job was a all year gig for 35,000 which was not so great when you factor the fact that you will teach or be at "school" all year. It required 3 weeks of training in Columbus which would be too much time away from Ahmie and Liam.
The second interview was for a position with Summit Academy for a position in Parma Ohio, which would not be too far of a drive. The school was interesting because Boy Scouting is used as a character development part to its curriculum, but the pay was really bad 27,000 and they did not count my teaching experience outside of their school so forget them.
The third interview was for a position with Hope High which is part of White Hat Management group of EMO's (think HMO for education). This job is in downtown Cleveland they gave me a range of pay between 28-32,000 and I will be teaching in a newly renovated building with new equipment, all of which excites me, and includes some off site training for some of the science teaching equipment which really excites me. The Principle Mr. Longino was very interested in hiring me, but he needed to process my file with his HR department. Unfortunately he did not submit the paperwork until Monday morning and has to wait for HR to finish their background check stuff before a job offer can be made. So I have been waiting for almost a week and I guess I don't have the patience at this time to be cool and calculating about this. I hope I will get the contract on Friday, because school starts on next Thursday.

It has been tough this summer for me, between work stress and the stress of trying to find a teaching job. I feel like a double agent, sneaking away time to work on my portfolio, filling out applications, sneaking time out to talk to schools and interviewing. But this last week I feel like I am barely breathing, holding my breath wishing for some change.

Winter Holiday Review

2004-12-29T23:57:00.000-05:00

Well my parents and my brother Marvin are on their way home to New York right now. For the past week and a half my parents have been visiting with us in Cleveland. It has been an eventful week and a half with lots of snow and lots of my parents enjoying time getting to know Liam. But let me digress, the Winter Holiday really started almost 2 weeks ago.

Two weeks ago we visited New York for my Uncle Peter's 70th birthday celebration, which was really nice since last month we saw the passing of my uncle Joseph who was the older brother to both my uncle Peter and my Father. We also visited my aunt Pat and my cousins Gene and Wendy. On Monday the 20th Ahmie and I drove back to Cleveland with my parents for a visit. (We have been preparing for several weeks for this visit house wise at least.) My brother had finals that week and did not come to Cleveland until Thursday of that week. Of course Cleveland had a huge snow storm that week and we were buried under a foot and a half of wet snow. I did not spend as much time as I would have liked with my parents because I had to work. I spent half of Christmas day sleeping because I had to work a 3rd shift at work, which was not great.

Fast forward to today I took the day off so that I could spend time with my parents and get some family pictures taken.

As I'm closing the post now my parents are just boarding the bus back to New York from Cleveland leaving from gate 7 and will arrive in New York at 9 am.

Liam's first taste of Christmas

2004-12-06T23:26:00.001-05:00

MMM... Santa tastes different.

This picture was taken at my company's children's Christmas party where they had a Santa to pose with the children. The santa was good, his beard was real. Bogged with work, hopefully more to come soon

Heres to you Uncle Joe

2004-11-22T22:36:00.000-05:00

In diapers -- report cards
In spoke wheels -- in speeding tickets
In contracts -- dollars
In funerals -- in births
In -- five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you figure
A last year on earth?
-"Seasons Of Love B" by Jonathan Larson

My uncle Joseph died last Wednesday. He had turned eighty years old this past July, we had just moved to Ohio and Liam was just too young to go to New York to see him. I learned about his passing last Friday.

Other than my uncle Peter, uncle Joseph was one of the few uncles that I can actually say I had regularly talked with and got to know a little. My father was 9th of 10 children so my father's side of the family is huge. He lived around Toronto Canada with my aunt.

Sadly we never brought Liam to see Uncle Joseph when he was in New York for his eightieth birthday. When I heard from my mom that he had passed. The news hit me like a stack of bricks. This really reminded me of the mortality of my parents. I know that my grandmother lived to her eighties so I know that most of my family is fairly long lived but I hope my father will live long enough to see Liam and his siblings grow up and maybe marry and have children, so my dad who is now 65 will have to live to at least his 90's. I hope that he will be around that long.

To mourn my uncle's passing I have for every night until when he will be buried (November 29) I pour wine, burn inscents, and leave food as an offering for my uncle. I say a prayer for his passing. I do all this for my own peace of mind, mourning rituals to me is for the living, it gives people a time and a way to deal with the death that wait for us all. It gives us a way to transform the pain and loss into something else something less scary. Since I can't be there for his funeral I can at least do this to mourn him.

"To everything
(Turn, turn, turn)
There is a season
(Turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose
Under Heaven

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep..."
"Turn Turn Turn (There is a season)" by Pete Seeger

We are all part of a cycle as some are born some must die. As I was overjoyed by the birth of Liam, I am sad for the passing of my uncle Joseph and I guess that is the way it has always been.

The Week that never ends!

2004-11-05T23:06:00.000-05:00

Monday: November 1st

Day started pretty much ok not much done at work, caught up on paper work from my Friday off. Had a nice weekend with Sabrina and Eric when they visited this past weekend for Ahmie and My 5 year wedding anniversary.

Tuesday: November 2nd

Woke up at 8am and got dressed and ready to go vote. Got a phone call saying that the Medicaid Surveyor was at the house to do the annual inspection and asked me to come ASAP. So Ahmie and I went to our polling place and voted, unlike many other polling places around Cleveland our polling location had a short wait, 10 minutes or so when we were there voting. Got back home from voting and went to work.

Anxiously driving to work because the Surveyor comes once a year to inspect the operation of the house that I manage. If we don't do things "right" according to the standards set in the Medicaid standards I run the risk of being cited for deficiencies. Which requires action on my part to correct the deficiencies and so on. Plus my boss does not like the managers to have too many deficiencies from surveyors. The Medicaid surveyors have the right to pull funding from a place that they visit if there are too many problems seen. But this is only reserved for major problems, or not correcting problems identified.

I was anxious because we have not started preparing for the survey, I was hoping that we would start this week to prepare for this. I was about half way to work when I noticed that my car was running very hot as in line beyond the red in the temperature gauge. So I stopped the car at the first parking lot I could and looked under the hood. Some steam came out and I did not see anything out of place. So I let the car cool for 10-15 minutes and started the car again. This time the car heated up very quickly again. I was thinking "great', exactly what I need on the day of my first Medicaid survey. So I stopped at the first strip mall I found and called Ahmie about the problem. Then I called my boss Jessie and he said that he would pick me up. When I got there at about 11am, everything was pretty settled, the surveyor was going through the books. Ahmie and her mom were helping me with the car. Cindy was driving the car to Polaris Career Center to get it looked at.

Through the afternoon it went pretty well, another surveyor came and did an inspection of the facility. I got cited on a facility issue which is beyond my control, so I am not so worried. The other surveyor stayed and observed dinner and had some suggestions for the staff. Ahmie picked me up at 7.

But before that I was "initated" by Floyd who was an employee of mine. The staff have been talking about giving me an "imitation" for a week or two, so I knew it was coming. I got shaving creamed. Yes it was a little embarrassing, but I think the staff will have something interesting to talk about. I think little things like that strengthen work morale. (picture to post soon).

Coming home I took our old car (92 Saturn) home. We had given the car to our friend Libby and her daughter Katie. However neither Libby nor Katie took care of the car and in the end they did not want it. So Cindy and I took the car back Monday night.
When we got home we were glued to the election coverage. I stayed up past midnight knowing that we had little chance of having a Shrub free presidency for the next four years.

Wednesday: November 3rd
Woke up at 4 am to go to work. Rolled into work at 5 to be there for the Surveyor for her observations. For the most part the rest of the day was uneventful from the Survey. We had the exit interview at about 3 pm and I did not get any citations! Yes! After the exit interview I went home.

Ahmie had the bush blues after hearing Kerry's concession speech and was enraged that her mom voted for the Shrub. She was enraged because the whole reason that swayed Cindy's vote was a political cartoon of Kerry.

Ok enough for this post!

Halloween Fun

2004-10-31T20:46:00.000-05:00

Halloween Costumes

Here is a picture of us at church today. We were asked to dress up for the service although I spent most of it preparing food in the kitchen for the pot luck after the service. Liam was dressed up as a monkey, Ahmie was dressed up as a tree, and I was dressed up as the scariest thing I can think of ... (gasp) ... a ... Republican. It was so scary I could not bear to wear the home made button saying (Bush,Cheney 04) although if you read carefully it also said www.factcheck.com underneath.

The explanation is this, Liam is a monkey. Ahmie is a tree that nourishes the monkey, in fact the costume has a flap that allows Liam access to breastfeed. I am a republican who is interested in having the tree chopped down because Ahmie is an old growth tree, and am willing to allow it to be chopped down for pennies with no thought about the consequences. Scary huh.

This evening Ahmie, Liam and I went trick or treating unfortunately the pictures did not come out right. We walked around our street and trick or treated with Liam in my arms. Afterwards I manned the porch and gave candy to the neighborhood trick or treaters.

Liam is 5 months old today

2004-10-26T23:43:00.000-04:00

Liam turned 5 months old today. After work this afternoon Ahmie, Liam and I went walking around Big Creek Park to enjoy a fleeting fall afternoon. Ahmie wanted to take some pictures of the park trails with the flaming foilage.

Father, Son and Mother Nature

While walking around to find the paved walking path Ahmie took the picture above. He has grown so much in these five short months.

Been too lazy to blog lately.

2004-10-23T23:17:00.000-04:00

I have been very busy with my new position as House Manager at Royalton House and have been pulling average 50 hour weeks the past three weeks. So between all that work and the kingdom of loathing, I have been a little too lazy to write enteries.

But here are some pictures of Liam from the past 4 months, enjoy.

I like trees.

2004-10-23T23:08:00.000-04:00

I like trees.

Here is a picture of Liam behind a tree at church two weeks ago. Ahmie did not want to take a generic picure of Liam laying on the grass so we leaned Liam against the tree here and he stood pretty well.

Daddy, name badges are yummy.

2004-10-23T23:04:00.000-04:00

Daddy, name badges are yummy.

This is a picture of Liam and I at Case Western Reserve University, for our reunion weekend 2 weekends ago. If you look carefully you can see that Liam is wearing a name badge with his name on it but it said class of '74 on it.

Hello Tree Again

2004-10-23T23:02:00.000-04:00

Hello Tree. Again!

This is a picture of Liam at church on a tree. The Sunday that this picture was taken the church was doing an animal blessing and we took our cat Artemis in for the blessing. Liam dressed up as a tiger (tigger) to show support for Artemis. Well we thought that Liam was a Monkey dressed in a Tiger costume. We thought people would get a kick out of the irony.

2004-10-23T23:01:00.000-04:00

Hello Tree

Fortune Cookie Analysis

2004-09-26T01:41:00.000-04:00

I have a dirty little secret. I love eating Chinese food (duh, I'm Chinese). What I really enjoy when I go eat Chinese food is getting a fortune cookie at the end of the meal (by the way, fortune cookies are for Americans. Real Chinese restaurants don't serve fortune cookies at the end of a meal). I love the little messages enclosed, it is just fun to read and share at the end of the meal. Some people like to add the sophomoric epithet

... in bed.

However, I have always found fortune cookie messages to be good pondering points. Saturday night Ahmie, Liam and I went to a Chinese buffet restaurant to celebrate my Promotion. The buffet was cheap but not too good. Their fortune cookies were unpalatable. I actually spat the cookie out (which is rare for me, since I am usually not picky about what I eat) because it was really nasty tasting.

So my fortune cookie read:

You are interested in public service and would make an outstanding statesman.

Well I thought this really fit with my promotion since I will be working in a service which serves community needs. I am going to need to be a good statesman in order to win the confidence and respect of the people who will work under me.

Ahmie's fortune cookie read:

You will find an outlet for your creative genius and accomplish a great deal.

Well I think this is sort of obvious. Ahmie is a very creative person but her current outlet for her energy has been Liam and she is using her imagination to nourish, encourage and entertain Liam.

I hope for good fortune ahead.

Liam will be 4 months old on Sunday

2004-09-25T23:52:00.000-04:00

It's hard to believe that Liam will be four months old tomorrow. Amazing how the time flies and is slow at the same time. As of two weeks ago Liam weighs 17 lbs and several ounces (which was a surprise to me). He is now 26 inches tall. According to the doctor she said that he is near the top of the growth curve. (I beam with joy at those words. God I must be a dad).
He now regularly turns over from his belly to his back and will scoot around on his back. His new favorite play things are linking plastic rings. Ahmie is still exclusively brestfeeding Liam and it is so cute when he falls asleep while feeding. He hugs Ahmie's breast. It's very sweet. I also enjoy watching him fall asleep when he is tired and all I have to do is talk softly to him and gently rub his head from the back of his head to his forehead. This triggers a reflex that babies have, which encourages the eyelids to shut.
Ahmie took Liam to Picture people for his 4 month pictures on Friday and she said some of them came out right and I will post those pictures as soon as I get them back. Some of you readers may say hey I thought Ahmie IS a photographer. Well we have a coupon and also they have props that we don't have so that is why.

Liam is 4 months old today, oh how time slowly flies.

Promotion

2004-09-24T01:17:00.000-04:00

Tuesday I interviewed for a House manager for royalton house which is a small group home with 8 residents. Since starting with Northeast Care Center in the start of July I worked hard in the past two and a half months learning about how to run a group home as a Manager in training. So I was pretty much training for this position. I had only one other competitor for this position. That applicant is the current QMRP (Qualified Mental Retardation Professional) who has worked at the house for the past year of so. I thought the interview went really well although I did not feel very prepared for the interview. I dressed well, (I always do) for the interview and I think the old saying is true, as shallow as it may sound.

The Suit makes the man.

It's like a little ritual for me, preparing my physical appearance helps quiet my mind and focus on the interview ahead. The interview was fairly routine, questions about strengths and weaknesses, what I will bring to the position, how will I deal with staff. I addressed all the questions but my essential message was that I would be a good and effective communicator, I tried pretty much to address the question and tied it back to my central selling point. I think I showed a fair amount of ambition during the interview.

To be honest I will follow through with everything I said in the interview and communicate with the staff and residents to see what can be done together to maximize the benefit of staff and residents of Royalton House.

So Thursday morning, we had our monthly Admin meeting, which ran pretty routinely. At the end of the meeting Jessie the Executive Director asked me to talk with him for a second. He shook my hand and congratulated me on for being chosen for this position. I was shocked and really it almost felt a little unreal in retrospect. I have got to keep this information to myself because the other applicant has not been notified about their decision (the person should have been at the meeting but was not).

I am concerned about how the working relationship between the QMRP and I will be since we both applied for the position. I hope we can work well together.

Maybe communication will bridge this awkward divide.

Detachable License

2004-09-20T01:50:00.000-04:00

License! Yay!

I finally got my Ohio Teaching License. After a weekend at Sabrina and Eric's for their Handfasting, I got to check my mail at about 11ish Sunday night and found my License in a very unassuming mailer with Credentials Enclosed printed on it. I was expecting something larger and more official looking but hey I got my License.

I feel complete again. Even though I have learned about the fact that I had obtained my license last Friday. I did not want to proclaim this fact to everyone until I got the paper in my hand.

I feel like the narrator in this famous King Missile song if you replace the p-word with the word license, that would adequately explain my sense of loss and frustration of the past 2 months. However I don't think "Detachable License" would carry the same panache as the original.

I saw my License lying on a blanket next to a broken toaster oven. Some guy was selling it. I had to buy it off him. He wanted 22 bucks, but I talked him down to 17. I took it home, washed it off, and put it back on. I was happy again. Complete.

I am happy again. Complete.

3 years ago today

2004-09-11T23:30:00.000-04:00

It started out like any other Tuesday morning, woke up at 6:30 am, showered, shaved, and ate breakfast, dressed while catching the morning news out the door by 7:30 am. Dropped my wife at work at about 8 am. Got to work at 8:30 printed my work for my Earth Science class. 8:45 I was prepping for my first period class. 8:55 am the bell rang, students herded in to my class. We start lessons, I think class went on for about 5- 10 minutes and I heard from one of my students coming late into class. A plane crashed into the World Trade Center. My students suddenly roared into talk and panic. I tried to reassure the class that there was probably some pilot error and that we should get back to our lessons. A few minutes later another student came into the room and said another plane crashed, and told us that Mrs. Clark had the TV on the news in the Computer Room.

Like my students, I had a mix of dread and curiosity, while I followed some students to the Computer room and I was shocked by what I saw. The picture of the Twin towers with smoke and papers blotting the blue out of the sky. I told my students to return to the class room, a few did but I did not force the students who did not want to go back to class. I tried to focus my students back to my planned lessons but we did not progress very much. None of us knew what was going on except that 2 buildings got crashed into and they are now burning. I spent the rest of the period trying to allay my students' fears. But during the middle of the period another student came in and said the Pentagon got hit by an airplane. Pretty much after that I tried even harder to keep my students on an even keel and told them to wait and not to be afraid.

10:30 rolled around and all the students crammed into the computer room and saw the footage of the collapse of the Twin towers, and the scene of chaos at the pentagon. My heart stopped and I felt sick. The rest of the day students trickled out of class as parents called their children to come home early. Nothing much got done that day. We spent much time talking about what was happening.

After work that day I went straight to my wife's school and talked to her and asked how her day was. She told me that she was teaching a student the Pledge of Allegiance to a student in ASL during the time the plane crashed into the Pentagon and expressed the same grief difficulty in teaching anything except consoling the grief and fears of students.

I remembered that the sky was the most brilliant hue of orange that evening, with no contrails in sight.

For about a year after that dark day I lit a candle for those who died every night.

I think I feel as many Americans did that day. We were united in our loss. Like many New Yorkers still to this day, I walk around with 2 tower shaped holes in my heart.

I took a minute and closed my eyes and reflect back on that day.

I guess you can't go home again.

2004-09-11T01:04:00.000-04:00

Friday morning Ahmie, Liam and I helped transferred our title over to our friend Libby. We gave her our old ailing Saturn SL2; it still runs, but, just not like a dream. We recently bought a 96 Dodge Grand Caravan (yes a mini van. tho there is nothing mini about that car). Since we had to go to the title bureau which was located in downtown Cleveland and Ahmie also had to drive Libby to her doctor's appointment at the Free Clinic. Since we were half way to the Free Clinic already I wanted to see the Clinic since I had volunteered there during college.

I can remember the moment that I saw the poster advertising the Free Clinic's need for volunteers. It was the start of my sophomore fall semester, and Ahmie, Bryce and I were walking up the stairs of Sherman House, the dorm in which Bryce and I lived in. The poster was posted to the left of the door to our floor (2nd). I read the poster and picked up a card which was tucked into a pocket on the poster.

It was at that moment which leads to me achieving one of my life goals. I had since my turbulent teen years, always wanted to work on a crisis hotline. I guess I had always wanted to help other people. Hey you can't become an Eagle Scout if you don't want to help other people. I guess I always wanted to help in a meaningful way but stay anonymous.

During college (sophomore to senior years), I had volunteered at the Cleveland Free Clinic's Together Hotline. For 2 1/2 years I volunteered 4 hours of my Thursday night from 6 to 10 pm every week. The Together Hotline was a crisis counseling hotline we helped people from simple sex, drug questions to situations where callers were on the brink of suicide. From my fuzzy memories, I remember some chilling calls that I had helped callers through some rough moments of their lives.

The hotline room where the volunteers worked was a dim, narrow brick room in the basement of the free clinic. Tho' it may seem grim, the room was like a womb, the light was soft, and my heart was in the room when ever I was there. The yellowed white walls were covered with graffiti and sayings left behind by volunteers. There was a feeling of permanence, because during my time working there, the together hotline had been in existence for over 20 years. Part of my heart and soul was left behind when I moved to Virginia after I graduated from CWRU, I left with fuzzy memories of chilling calls where I tried to help others in need in very desperate situations, and times of change.

I was forewarned of the drastic changes that the free clinic had gone through in the past 5 years. In fact the old clinic is no longer there, it was torn down after a new clinic building was built adjacent to it. When I drove up Euclid Ave and under the RTA tracks. I saw the new building, and where the old building was, it is now a parking lot. It is a very nice looking building, Brick and concrete blocks and with large glass windows in the modern style. When I walked into the foyer/ admit area. The building was very clean and looks very much like a hospital admit area.

In the back of my mind I was comparing the old building with the new building. I remember that the old clinic was an old dingy brick building, with a very unassuming sign proclaiming that it is the free clinic, now there is a very artistic sign in front of the building stating that this is the Free Clinic. The inside of the Clinic in my mind was aging, dim and was well worn with plants everywhere. The floor was covered in old tile flooring that had a pattern of streaks of green with some other white streaks. The new admit area looks like any hospital admit area, bright, light colored walls, with light colored wood railings. I did not look at the floors.

I walked up the admin secretaries, and asked for the two people who I knew were the people in charge of the Together Hotline, Jane Loisdaughter and Deby Auberbach-Brown. The admin secretary calmly told me that they no longer worked there. In the back of my mind I knew that was possible. Then I asked the heart breaking question "Is the Together Hotline here anymore?" She answered no, again calmly. I thanked the secretaries for their time and I told my wife that I will go to work.

I don't know who the philosopher who said this. You can never cross the same river twice. That is true, the shape of the river changes, the speed of the flow changes, the water it self changes all the time and flows away. Perhaps it is silly of me to think I come back to the Free Clinic and think nothing has changed in the past 5 years, and that I would come back and walk in and see that nothing has changed. But, I was sad to find that the Together Hotline no longer exists. My heart ached, it felt like a long needle had been poked into my heart piercing my soul. I had hoped to come back and return to help other people anonymously when they need it most.

I now feel some need for some consoling but there is no one to call.

Liam's first purchase

2004-09-05T01:51:00.000-04:00

Last night we went to Petsmart to buy a parakeet for Cindy. Cindy's old parakeet died a few weeks ago and Ahmie wanted to (let Liam) buy a new parakeet for her mom Cindy.

So as you can see

Do you take card?

Liam made his first purchase.

They grow up quickly don't you think?

Making Red Eggs

2004-09-05T01:17:00.000-04:00

Eggs

Well, Liam is 103 days today and we will be going to a family reunion for Cindy's mother's side of the family and we will also be passing out red eggs to help celebrate Liam's first 100 days.

Making the eggs was very eerie. When I placed the eggs into the pot of water the eggs started to "chirp", while letting air that was in the egg out.

Another thing that we tried to do this weekend for Liam's first 100 days celebration was to purchase a pendant for Liam that is in the shape of a gold lock. The reason for the lock in Chinese traditions is to help lock in good luck for the baby.
We spent all afternoon Friday looking for a gold lock and on Saturday we even tried to go to Asian plaza (Cleveland's version of Chinatown, it is nearly as sad as DC's Asian block). Every place to no avail. When they do have a lock shaped pendant it often in the shape of a heart with a key and I don't think that is good representation for what we what to do with the pendant, and they look cheesy.

If they make pendants in the shapes of martini glasses, high heeled shoes and cell phones why can't someone sell lock shaped pendants.

I got gmail YAY!

2004-09-04T23:57:00.000-04:00

After months of waiting. I got my very own Gmail account. Thanks to a friend of Lissa, Tim Joy.

Gmail screen shot

Again to Lissa and Tim thank you very much.

Well, I could not get garvin@gmail.com. So I had had to use a different configuration of my name for my email address so I used garviny as my user name and in retrospect I probably should have used ghyeung, which I think sounds more dignified.

Oh well, maybe I'll change the account names when I get some invites.

Cute/ Not Cute

2004-08-30T00:48:00.000-04:00

Cute or not cute?

I bought these monkey candleholders a few weeks ago from Target. They were on clearance so I thought I should get them because Ahmie has been so infatuated with monkey stuff. When I bought them home she looked at me with a mixed look. She looked at me like I brought home a beautifully arranged bouquet of dead rotting roses. She liked the gesture but was not sure if she really liked the candle holders. She said the monkeys looked kinda scary; especially when tea light candles are placed atop each candle holder then it will look like the monkey's head is on fire.

So I leave it up to you, are they cute or not cute, please comment.

Awww look at the wee bairn

2004-08-30T00:01:00.000-04:00

Well during this past week Liam became 3 months old this Thursday. He has really grown and have changed in these (short/long) months. Choose one, both are real to me. It has been 3 short months and have seen him change so quickly. Equally valid, I can't believe that it has only been 3 months seeing him grow and change. It has felt like a short lifetime.

In 3 month's time Liam went from:

This

Liam at 1 day old

To This

Liam at 3 months 3 days old

As you can see he has changed very much in the 3 month's time. He has gotten much longer and heavier (at least 16 lbs probablly pushing 17).

I really cannot believe that Liam is 3 months old. Time has gone by it seems, very slowly. The past life of Ahmie and Garvin seems so far away, even the life of pregnant Ahmie and Garvin seems well a whole "lifetime" away. It seems so long ago that we had that hell first week dealing with Liam's Jaundice. The move seems so long ago even tho we have lived in the house on Tate for less then 2 months. I think time must seem slower because time slows when I am with the baby.

I think life will speed up again as Liam grows, but I think I'll take it slow while I can.

LicenSURE Fun

2004-08-23T23:38:00.000-04:00

Well Tuesday's fortune cookie did not prove to be prophetic after all. Really it just turned out to be a note wrapped around a stale cookie. I heard from the vice principle of the school that I interviewed on Thursday. He was really good and kept in contact with me throughout the week. But I was passed on because I did not hold an Ohio teaching license. I sensed some lament in his voice probably because I was a superior candidate but I just did not have the credentials to teach at that time.

A note about licensure, many states have interstate agreements with other states to uphold a valid teacher licenses from other states. The idea of this is so that teachers may move more freely from state to state. Originally I became a teacher in 1999 out of pure luck.

After I graduated from Case Western Reserve University I had originally intended to move to Virginia because Ahmie wanted to go to Gallaudet University in Washington DC to pursue graduate studies relating to Advocacy for the Deaf community. I had originally wanted to pursue research positions at the NIH in Bethesda Maryland. However I had landed on the wrong side of the river and too far from both DC and Bethesda. Ahmie was temping at the time and I was working at a company called Mediatech. I was working in the manual labor filling cell growing fluids in sterile conditions, and other warehouse work. Ahmie heard from a coworker that the school systems around Northern Virginia were desperate for teachers. So I gave it a go. I did not get much of a chance to finish my application until early mid August of 99. However I was interview right away and was hired to teach at Douglass School a week before school started. I was given a provisional license and then I had 3 years to get the education coursework to lead up to a full license. Suffice to say I did that.

Anyway...

Two weeks earlier I had received a letter from the state saying that I could not qualify for a teaching license because I did not have Student Teaching experience. I talked to the teaching licensure rep about the fact that I had 5 years of successful teaching experience. She said sorry, but you need teaching experience and that they don't waive that requirement.

That knocked me out of loop for a week. HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO GET STUDENT TEACHING EXPERIENCE WHEN I WAS A REAL TEACHER FOR 5 YEARS AT THE SAME SCHOOL AND I GOT TENURE TOO. I resigned to myself that I would not be able to teach this year as a full time teacher. Because I was sure that I could be licensed somehow, and that this rejection for student teaching was a mistake. Then the following week I had the Interview. So on last Friday I took a day off work to call the state and heard in more detail that I was still not qualified to get a full teaching license because I did not have student teaching experience. I was however able to convince them to give me the name of a supervisor. So this mooring I called.

All weekend long I was dreading making this phone call.

So this morning I called the Center of Certification/Licensure
And spoke with a supervisor and she reassured me that I could possibly get a teaching license as long as my education course work was sufficient. That since I have taught under a full license the student teaching requirement should be waived. She told me to resend the licensee application attention to her, and she said that she would evaluate the application.

I was somewhat relived because it would have been impossible to be a student teacher and work with Northeast Care Center in my current capacity. Because student teaching was basically 5 months of unpaid teaching. All that time I would be at school for most of the work day and cannot work. If I need to take a few education classes to shore up my knowledge to align to Ohio's standards then that would be possible because I can take a few classes and still work full time. But of course the ideal circumstance is that I get my full license.

Let's hope for the best.

Chinese Lunch

2004-08-17T14:58:00.000-04:00

I found out that a can sprayed out lubricant was what was the cause of the strange odor in my car. Unfortunately my lunch Cup o noodles were also in the trunk. I took one of the cup of noodles out of the car today and tried to eat it. The odor of the lubricant seeped into the Cup o noodles. So without anything else to eat I went and got lunch. Not wanting fast food take out, naturally I got some Chinese food. The lunch was mediocre at best.

The highlight of my lunch was a stale fortune cookie.

With integrity and consistency your credits are piling up.

Pondering upon that, I remembered the interview for Mid Park High School yesterday.

They asked this question:

What do you think is the most important traits you look for in a teacher?

I answered enthusiasm and consistency. Naturally I elaborated more during the interview.

I hope that this is a portent of good things to come.

Where do I live again?

2004-08-01T00:22:00.000-04:00

We went around the east side of town this afternoon; we went to Microcenter, then to Half Price Books. Surprisingly we spent under 10$ there. Then we drove down towards Cleveland to Little Italy to visit Valentino's. This was a restaurant where I worked in the kitchen for a year and a half during college. I made a very good friend in Bill Lee who also worked there as the Pizza maker. He still works there and it was nice to see him again. It was the first time he saw Liam (he is one of the many people named William for whom he is named after).

It had been a busy night for him. With the athletes of the International Children's Games housed at the dorms at CWRU down the street. He was bogged down with orders for 25 pizzas and other kitchen orders when the restaurant opened for the night. It was nice to be back at Valentino's the familiar smell of dough sauce and the finished pizza. Anyway Bill treated us to dinner. We (as always) ordered a White Artichoke pizza, and their signature Hot Valentino sub. We tried to enjoy our dinner on the patio they have but the weather conspired against us.

It's weird while I was out and about today I keep getting a feeling that I'm seeing these stores but Think I am in Virginia. I'm like hey there is a Marc's (local discount store chain) I did not know they have ones in Virginia.
It is weird. I haven't moved back a whole month and it seems I am integrating and settling in Cleveland. But I guess we step back and regress in time abit.

I think this is something interesting about the human mind. In a universe that flows in one direction our minds can travel back to anytime in our memories. Like the smell of a familiar sent can bring back fond memories. We can immerse ourselves in or memories and catch up with the past in an instant. Sometimes the boundaries between now and yesterday blur and that is a strange feeling.

Blurring between the present and the past is weird enough I don't think I can comprehend blurring with the future.

Visitor from out of town

2004-07-31T00:02:00.000-04:00

I spent 10 hours at work today. I did not normally mind being at work late. However I was mildly annoyed because our friend Sabrina was coming in from West Virginia. Since the group home that I work at has a policy that the residents are not to be left just alone with employees that are under 18 years of age, I had to stay while Brianne who is above 18 years of age was out taking a resident to visit her sister.

It was not really a problem but she forgot to give meds to the resident's sister and had to go back to deliver the meds. So it ended up to be past 8:30 before she returned. After which I stayed for a few minutes and then went home.

Sadly the resident's sister live around East Cleveland, which for those of you unfamiliar with Cleveland think poor minority neighborhood. The girls who work at the group home that took the resident to her sisters are suburban, white and female. I was somewhat annoyed by the story of their brush with the poor people and poor neighborhood, that they regaled to the other young girls working at the group home. Then again I grew up in the wrong side of the track so poor minority neighborhoods don't really bother me. Certainly I don't like to live in the "ghetto" as she put it. They are just people too. But I guess they don't have much in that aspect of life experience. Ahh to be young and ignorant.

Anyway...

It is really nice to see Sabrina again. She moved to West Virginia about 2 weeks after Liam was born. I am really happy to see her. She had Liam withdrawal so she wanted to visit last week but she was busy helping her friend Jaime give birth to her son Jacob Thomas last Friday. I hope we have some fun and have a chance to be together as friends.

Here is to a relatively dry (fingers crossed) and fun weekend.

POSITIVELY fun

2004-07-30T01:05:00.000-04:00

I was injected with the PPD (purified protein deriveritive) TB test on Tuesday, I had the injection site examined and it looked like this

Suffice to say the nurse who read my red result sent me to the Urgent Care to get an X-ray to rule out active Tubercolosis.

I don't think I have Active TB but I am concerned that I may have Inactive TB.

Well I hope to find out more tomorrow

I am a working man again

2004-07-27T01:38:00.000-04:00

After 6 wonderful weeks of being with Liam full time at home, I got a job! However I did not get a teaching position (yet). When I first moved into town about July 6 or so I got a call from NorthEast Care Center. I had previously applied for a manager in training position, but was not selected for the interview. I interviewed later that week, I was fully expecting the interview was for a Direct care position. However from the start of the interview I sensed that I was not interviewing for the lower position.
Like anyone who has tact, I pretended I knew what was going on until it was made very apparent to me that I was actually interviewing for the Manager in Training position. After which I interviewed very well, and got the position. (yay!)
So for the past 2 weeks I have been training to fill paper work and generating reports! Ummm.
Why do I suddenly have an urge to watch Office Space?
Anyway it's good to have a job eventho I am taking a massive pay cut. I need insurance for Ahmie and Liam. It's good to actually earn some money again. The job is challenging. It's good to have a backup when the largest school system in the area lays off 1400 teachers.

I never do anything easy.

Banking Fun

2004-07-27T01:03:00.000-04:00

Well since the move we needed to set up a bank account so we can deposit checks and stuff. Before the move Ahmie wanted us to use her old credit union I did not think too much of it at the time. So 2 weeks ago we re-opened her bank account (she had an inactive account there). Several things I did not like, 1. they did not give us a checking account right away, 2. they don't actually give money at the bank which was really annoying, 3. there was only one location. So Wednesday of last week we found out that we cannot have a checking account because our credit isn't good enough.

So promptly we decided to get a bank account from a bank that could be found everywhere, from supermarkets, K marts and actual bank branches. I was kinda livid over the fact that the credit union we used initially was so bad, I always thought that credit unions gave better service. But I guess not all of them do.

Suffice to say I'm much happier at the new bank.

Good news from old friends

2004-07-27T00:34:00.000-04:00

I called our my old friend Chris Frenz. I have know him from way back from Boy Scouting. He has been one of my old friends who I have been able to keep in touch with through the years. Ahmie and I wanted to ask him and his wife Thao if they could be Godparents for Liam. We were planning to ask them to come to Cleveland to be part of Liam's dedication ceremony. Chris has kept track online with what has been going on with my life. But he had news himself.

Chris told me that he and Thao are expecting and that she is 6 months pregnant.

After the salutary congratulations, Chris and I (mostly I) talked about fatherhood, the excitement, the paternal instinct.

I'm happy that Liam will have a (year of the) monkey cousin!

I am back

2004-07-11T00:47:00.000-04:00

Between baby, tutoring, and moving, I have been kept very busy for the last past 2+ weeks.
I will endevor to share the cheers, and jeers that has happened over the past weeks of absence.

I have some photos to post of the new house but not of the move, more about that later.

A story of the last visit to a close friend, with pictures.

Some stories of farewell, and generiosity.

Some stories of tears,

and some stories of anger.

Oh what weeks have it been!

Which of the Endless do you think you most personify?

2004-06-17T00:29:00.000-04:00

On the drive back from Cleveland (We talk a lot during long drives). I asked Ahmie which of the Endless from Neil Gaiman's Sandman series did she think most personifies her.

She said incredulously, Death (Because I knew the answer before I asked her and she went to prom as death). She explains that because of her indominatable spirit and sense of joy with life and the world.

I asked her, "Which one most personifies me?"

She said Destruction, because he chooses not to fit into the predefined role for him. Which I think is valid. I don't fit the mold for the typical Chinese American man.
Although I thought Dream most personified me. She said that he is way too moopy.

So here is my open question to you (my readers) which of the endless most personify you and why?

The Lost part 1

2004-06-16T23:46:00.000-04:00

On our way back from Cleveland, Ahmie and I talked about our loves lost. This gave me an idea. I think I will make a missing friends section, and hope out of touch friends will see this and will get in touch.

The first person on this list is our friend Possum.

Possum

She really is more of Ahmie's friend, but both of us have grown very fond of her and miss her very much.

Ahmie got to know Possum during high school with her literature magazine. Possum did not finish high school, she dropped out. Eventually several years later she did get her GED, and started going to Art School. However Possum never seemed to be able to finish anything she started aside from the GED though (she is so intelligent the GED was no challenge). I don't want to go into too much detail because there is much that I think is too personal to delve into.

Have you ever had a friend that for some reason really loved and you can't really put a finger on it? Possum is the personification of that type of friend. She really is greater then the sum of all of her parts. Her eyes are so big and round, the curve of her nose, the shape of her lips, each individually may not be the most beautiful by it self but all together creates a very stunning face.

Much like her face and physical beauty, she is also a beautiful person in the inside also. Her internal beauty has a haunting sadness to it. I do not know anyone who has lived more than she has. She dropped out; she traveled across the country, been homeless, has seen the best in people, and suffered from the worst of people. She can spin a tale full of beauty about the life experiences. She sees the world differently from most people, she truly believes in the best of people. This despite experiencing the worst from some people. There is a wild innocence about her, as if she really is a fairy in the real world.

In fact Ahmie and I tried to give her a chance to make a break from her old friends and surroundings. After a year of Art school in Pittsburgh, she dropped out much to the chagrin of her mother. Ahmie and I asked her to come live with us in Virginia. We laid some ground rules. Possum got a job right away.

Her current plan at the time was to become a Stylist and was planning to go to school in DC so she can work for Vidal Sassoon. Her immediate goal was to make enough money to purchase a car. She had a friend that promised to get her a VW bug for 800$. Once Possum made enough money she went back to Cleveland and gave to her friend the money. Not surprisingly, she did not get the aforementioned car.

Granted we had talked to her about this "deal." We tried our best to dissuade her from going through with this. But, she wanted to go through with it even though every bone of our bodies said she was going to get screwed.

She in so many ways is like a fairy, but mainly the real world and her world never really fully fit. She has gone about her life getting into dangerous situations, overdosing on drugs, being homeless, being stranded in the middle of nowhere. She can tell such magical tales about her life and tragedies. However the stories that she spins are neither sad nor depressing, there always lays a sense of beauty amidst the bad. Her innocence / naiveté can be infuriating because she does not seem to learn from what had happened to her. She sadly repeats similar mistakes.

She reminds me of Delirium of the endless. Possum has the same feral innocence that she has. Possum, much like Delirium must have suffered some tragedy to make her that way. Unfortunately Possum also have a strange ability of attracting like minded people (people who take drugs) where ever she goes.

When she was staying with us in Ashburn, she would often take long night walks. In fact I gave her one of my flashlights so she could be seen in the dark. For some reason she had gotten to meet some people through walking around at night and at work. These new friends were people who used drugs (mostly marijuana). Towards the end of the summer she had gone to live with these friends of hers. Eventually she returned to Cleveland, because she missed her friends in Cleveland.

In the final analysis Ahmie and I failed to do what we had set out to do, which was to give Possum a clean break. We sacrificed some of our privacy to have her live with us. She did abide by our house rules. However by the end of our summer together she had returned to her old patterns.

Friendships are much like the seasons of the year; true friends never break apart but rather go through cycles; Fall and Winter of distance and silence, Spring of blossoming and renewal, and Summer of heat and passion. No matter the distance, true friends never drift clean apart. Like a well loved and read book, true friendship could be picked up at anytime and continued.

So for friends! Let's spin around for another round!

Recap of Cleveland Trip

2004-06-16T20:07:00.000-04:00

We finally left for Cleveland Thursday afternoon at about 5 pm; we got stuck in the Rout 15 traffic around Leesburg. Aside from Liam waking and screaming we stopped 3 times and we did not arrive at our mother in law's house until early Friday morning. Even with the early morning introduction I think Cindy (Ahmie's mom) instantly fell in love. We stayed awake talking for an hour or two more. I don't think I got to sleep until about 4-5 in the morning.

For this Cleveland trip we had 3 items in our itinerary.

1. Show Liam to family especially Cindy and Henry
2. Get a job
3. Get a place to live
4. Get a local phone

Friday

Friday started in a flurry of activity. I woke up and started calling school systems about open teacher positions. Most districts had finished hiring but I kept calling, I think I got two positions to follow up on.

Marvin (my younger brother) traveled from New York to see us in Cleveland. He originally intended to stay with us for a while but he got work as construction help from a long time friend. So his plan was to visit and leave Sunday morning. He arrived at the Greyhound Station at 2:30 in the afternoon. I was dropping off an application so Ahmie and I did not get to pick him up until about an hour later.

Greyhound stations tend be in parts of cities that have seen better days. On the same token many stations I have had the pleasure of stopping by also have seen better days, The Cleveland station was no exception. I walked in and my brother saw me and walked towards me. The first thing I noticed was his shorter hair, about 2-3 inches long and standing up, although hair styling products did not play a role in his hair. His hair reminded me of adult Gohan from Dragonball Z.

We walked into the light rain and stowed his bags into the trunk of the car. Marvin sat in the back seat and had a great view of Liam. Marvin marveled at how small Liam was. We drove around areas where we might want to live when we move back to Cleveland, mostly in the Old Brooklyn area (a working class area in Cleveland although all of Cleveland is working class neighborhoods).

We drove around for a while and got to see a bit of the Old Brooklyn area. We noticed some homes for rent. Including the "murder house", where a few weeks ago I think the exboyfriend stabbed to death the fiancé of the person who lived in the duplex.
Later that evening I looked online on cleveland.com to look for homes for rent.

Saturday

Saturday all of us groggily woke up and took our sweet time to get started. Ahmie started calling some of the properties that I and her mother highlighted. In fact we looked at one of the properties that day. A nice turn of the century Duplex, when I saw it I fell in love with it.

Later that afternoon we (Marvin, Ahmie, Liam and I) went to visit Ahmie's Father Henry. Ahmie's father remarried after divorcing Cindy when Ahmie was about two. Henry instantly fell in love with Liam much did Cindy and Marvin. He was wonderful and held him for a long time. Her half brother Matt was home and saw the baby but was not as interested. Henry's wife Carolyn saw the baby too but was not as enthused. However I think more of that was due to medical issues this week. We knew that Ahmie's Aunt, and Uncle and two of her cousins would barge in at any time, some how they knew we were visiting. Fortunately they were late and Henry had an opportunity to sit with Liam for a good half hour.

Sunday

We went to West Shore UU Church in the morning and Cindy drove Marvin to the bus station. I really thought Marvin had bonded with Liam, as little as he would like to admit it. Saturday night Marvin of his own volition went to Liam and looked at him and touched him. He also helped out alot when Liam was very fussy. He did more then I had expected him to do, which was wonderful.

We looked at one apartment in Old Brooklyn and later that evening I called several other classified ads.

Monday

We rested mostly on Monday. I started by following up the two teaching positions and another position.
Keep fingers crossed

Tuesday

This was by far the busiest day of the trip. Started the day with follow up phone calls to the school districts I sent letters to. Later Cindy and We went to Best Buy to set up a new cell phone account. It was great We got phones for all three of us and not only was it cheep but after the rebates we will get 200+ Dollars back over rebates that will make the phones free. Not to mention they will reimburse the first month's bill. That was great.

I dropped off my resume in North Olmstead; I hope something will come of all of my applications. We looked at several other properties. But we in the end choose the "murder house."

That house is great, granted the obvious problem. for 550$ a month we have a 2 bedroom 1 bath with kitchen, living room and a dining room, Most of the basement for storage with washer and drier, and a garage space. A good price for 1 unit in a duplex. We are close to the highway so it does not matter as much where I work. Well one major hurdle managed, we have a place to move to with space for all of Ahmie & My stuff.

Well 3 of 4 off the check list one to go.

Visit to Cleveland

2004-06-10T01:17:00.001-04:00

Ahmie Liam and I will be going to Cleveland today and I will probably not update while I am out of town. However I will take some time to write everyday to record the memory.

So Wednesday night Ahmie called her Mom Cindy to arrange preparations for our visit. We will be staying at her apartment. Ahmie got to talking with her mom and her mom started to talk about concerns that her sister Janet has about our moving back.

Janet was concerned that Ahmie, Liam and I will live in Cindy's apartment and mooch off of her and that neither of us will get jobs and so on and on.

People on Ahmie's mother side of the family have not said things to our faces of their concerns about us. They don't have the guts. If Janet had expressed her concerns about us moving back to Cleveland she would get a facefull of knuckle sandwich.

That is so insulting. Ahmie's maternal grandfather shared the same sentiments, at Christmas time, but we can excuse that because he is (well) old and have not had a good track record of being kind, thoughtful or insightful.

I have been working hard to get my teaching certification in Ohio. I have already spent hundreds of dollars getting testing to get my certification. I did well in all of them. I know my responsibility, because I have to provide for my family. Fortunately I will have some money to tide us through for a few months. But I plan to look for and get a teaching position right away. In fact I will call the school districts again and try to arrange for a walk thought or an interview.

God I am so mad. Although I can understand that her precious (ahem) talented son has been unemployed since mid April. He has not been interested in getting a job and is mooching off of her.

For all of this I say boo hoo. Kick his ass to the curb, because he is 22 and can fend for himself. Time to fly or die.

Liam Update

2004-06-10T00:23:00.001-04:00

Well Liam is 2 weeks old as of yesterday. After the flurry of action during the first week of life, we are settling into life as parents, we are in the firsts stage of development with Liam. He is going through his first growth spurt right now. He is a hungry fellow, and feeds well and regularly.

We went to the Pediatrician yesterday for his two week check up and he had surpassed his birth weight by 5 ozs. He now weighs 8lbs 10ozs. His head is 14 and 1/4 inches. He is 22 inches long (I think this may be due to difference in measurement and not all actual growth. The Pediatrician thinks Liam is growing fine since he has regained his birth weight (and more) feeding and is filling his diaper well and often.

Speaking of diapers Ahmie and I are in the habit of praising his bodily movements. I think this will fade. Since we don't (interrupted to feed Liam some bottled breast milk) have to be super vigilant about Liam's inputs and outputs anymore because the doctor is not concerned about Liam's Jaundice. We can now enjoy this regular and mandatory requirement of early parenting.

Liam Update

2004-06-10T00:23:00.000-04:00

Well Liam is 2 weeks old as of yesterday. After the flurry of action during the first week of life, we are settling into life as parents, we are in the firsts stage of development with Liam. He is going through his first growth spurt right now. He is a hungry fellow, and feeds well and regularily.

We went to the Pediaterician yesterday for his two week check up and he had surpassed his birth weight by 5 ozs. He now weighs 8lbs 10ozs. His head is 14 and 1/4 inches. He is 22 inches long (I think this may be due to difference in measurement and not all actual growth. The Pediaterician thinks Liam is growing fine since he has regained his birth weight (and more) feeding and is filling his diaper well and often.

Speakng of diapers Ahmie and I are in the habit of praising his bodily movements. I think this will fade. Since we don't (interrupted to feed Liam some bottled breast milk)have to be super vigilient about Liam's imputs and outputs anymore because the doctor is not concerned about Liam's Jaundice. We can now enjoy this regular and mandatory requiremnet of early parenting.

2004-06-02T23:14:00.000-04:00

Views from L' hotel de la Reston Hospital

2004-06-02T23:11:00.000-04:00

Liam in the Chamber

2004-06-02T23:10:00.000-04:00

Phototherapy mask

Like father like son

2004-05-31T11:06:00.000-04:00

Apparently I also had Jaundice as a baby. My mom called this morning and told Ahmie that I was Jaundiced as a baby and had to use the Phototherpy lamps to clear up the Jaundice.

So I think Liam will be all right after all

It isn't easy being yellow

2004-05-31T01:39:00.000-04:00

We went to church this morning and showed Liam to the congregants. Everyone commented on his hair and his good looks and how he has a resemblance to me. We made a few stops before we returned home. At about 5 pm we got a call from our Family doctor Dr. Kugler, telling us the results of Liam's Bilirubin levels. Which I think was 18 (probably 18mg/dL). She recommended that we go to the ER at Reston Hospital right away. Ahmie was in the middle of photographing Liam with her labor pants as a back drop. We did not get to the hospital until about 6:30PM

When we got the call I got numb hearing that we need to go to Reston hospital really shocked me. Really anything that we needed to do we would have done. We just hope that Liam would be healthy and I think that simply any parent would also be concerned if they found out that their child needed to go to the ER right away. I packed the Diaper bag and got things ready, while Ahmie fed Liam. This delayed us a bit.

On the ride over, (Ahmie was driving) Ahmie was tearing and was afraid that something might be terribly wrong with Liam. Her eyes narrowed and tears grew and welled in her eyes. I held her hands and said to her that it was only jaundice and that lots of babies get it and it should not be a problem.

In my mind I was really concerned, Ahmie had dreams while she was pregnant and in none of the dreams did it involve a boy child. She always dreamt of girl children. I was at some base level concerned that Liam might be really sick and I can't even write the next line in my train of thought.

We soon arrived at Reston Hospital to see our relatives already beat us there. Our Uncle Dan, her daughter Kerri with her infant daughter Ella, and her oldest daughter Kristy and her S.O. Tony (Mr. Nice Pants uhh… a story for a later day).

The next section reads like a list so bare with me.
5/30/04 6:54 pm
Admitted to Reston ER
Got a call @ 5ish from Dr. Kugler about Liam's bilirubin levels.

5/30/04 7:07 pm
Er pediatrician Dr. Lozano meets with us check vitals
Normal exam check fine
Told that Liam was at high risk for jaundice because of the following factors, mom O+ blood type, Asian heritage, breast fed.
Dr. Lozano ordered the following blood tests bilirubin level/blood count/ type (coombs test)

5/30/04 7:49 pm
Waiting for the blood draw
Kristy came in to talk w/ us

5/30/04 7:53 pm
The guy was a real wiz at drawing blood. Even though with each drop collected it pained my soul. That little bit one drop at a time. Liam was really good I kissed him and gave him my pinky to suck on to calm him.

5/30/04 8:07 pm
Ordeal over went out and asked Ahmie to come back in. Ahmie came in and fed Liam and we stayed and waited for the results in the ER room.

The tests took over one hour to process we watched some TV in the ER room, Dr. Lozano came in and talked with us and explained to us the test results, normal blood levels, O+ blood type and a Bilirubin level of 17.5 mg/dL. She diagnosed Liam with Jaundice. She said that this is a step in the right direction because the level did not get any higher but since the 1 test was from another lab then she wanted another blood test tomorrow to verify that the levels are dropping and or stable. Dr Lozano talked with us and gave us some level of reassurance that things are fairly OK. We left at about 10:30 after checking out and pre registering for tomorrow's blood test.

It isn't easy being yellow.

Saturday Bloody Saturday

2004-05-31T01:36:00.000-04:00

Saturday:
We were expecting our friend Melissa also another one of Liam's godmothers, to stop by and visit. I spent most of the morning tidying up since we have not had much of an opportunity to tidy up from all the pre-labor waiting. We caught up on some laundry.

At 3 we had a home health nurse come visit. This was provided for by the HMO because of the early release. Everything was fine Liam had lost a few ounces he weighed in at 7lbs 12oz. All was fine except that she noticed that Liam was very yellow and wanted to collect a blood sample to test for his bilirubin levels.

That was a painful experience to behold it took 2 heel sticks to collect enough blood to do the test. Liam's heels got very bloody, from the massaging of the heel and collection of little drops of blood squeezed from the heel. It pained me to see Liam subjected to such a procedure. I held fast and held him to help the Nurse complete the test quickly. In the end literally both of Liam's heels were covered in a sticky film of drying blood.

Liam calmed down so well after that he must have some saint in him.

First Full Day Home

2004-05-31T01:33:00.000-04:00

Friday Ahmie finally started producing breast milk, which really satisfied Liam. This allowed us to go to the follow up appointment with Dr. Kugler of NOVA medical group. Two issues of concern, splotches on Liam's skin and the whites of his eyes being yellow tinged. We did spend a good deal of time in the waiting room of her office. When we did meet with her she seemed cordial and talked with us for a great deal. We found out that the skin splotches were most likely Erythema Toxicum.

After the Doctor's appointment, we went to North Street to fill out the enrolment forms for Liam to enroll in our HMO. We stopped by the Science Supervisor's office to show off little Liam. After this we made a few stops and then returned home.

Wednesday night and Thursday

2004-05-29T01:20:00.000-04:00

After all the birth all of us (Ahmie, Emily, Liam, Sabrina, and I) stayed mostly in the post partum room and talked and looked after the baby. I was the first to take Liam out of the Post partum room, for his sponge bath. I was the first one to make little Liam cry. Washing his hair (Where did all that hair come from? Both Ahmie and I did not have much hair at birth.) and wiping off the vernix. Liam cried mightily when I was wiping him with a warm wet washcloths. I walked dejectedly back to the post partum room saying to Ahmie.

"I'm a bad daddy. I made Liam cry."

Later that afternoon Kerri (Ahmie's cousin) came over to visit and brought a very cute picture frame with a stork holding a picture frame with it's mouth, and a bag of chocolates. At about 6ish Sabrina and Emily left, I think after about 6 days of being with us they were ready to take a respite from us. Kerri stayed for till about 7:30PM (could not tell because the clock in the room was broken). Liam was sleeping very well. (found out that Ahmie was given Tylenol 3 w/codeine, when she only asked for regular Tylenol, Ahmie was most upset) Apparently the codeine also affected Liam. Which explains why he was so quiet and did not nurse all afternoon.

Wednesday Night was really tough. Liam began to wake and feed frequently. Ahmie was uncomfortable in the Hospital bed. The convertible couch was as hard as a brick to sleep on. Overall we slept terribly Wednesday night.

Thursday

We managed to sleep 2 hours or so Wednesday night. Liam could not be released until he had a PKU test and an Auditory test. Since there were an abundance of babies born there was a long wait for the auditory test, we did not test until about noon, and that took almost an hour and a half to do because Liam was very active and fussy and kept knocking the testing equipment off of him. Although we did have a wonderful conversation with the audio tech Rebecca, who is a Harry Potter(head). After the audio test was over, I took Liam for his Vitamin K shot and PKU screen. Liam liked neither.

Finally we were cleared to leave at about 2:30PM. It took me about half an hour to pack up the car and we left the Birthing Inn at about 3ish. I took longer to pack the car since it rained.

Later that afternoon Keri brought her daughter Ella and her sister Katherine over to visit and it was nice to have guests at home although the apartment was messy. They stayed for about an hour.

Thursday night
Was a repeat of Wednesday night very little sleep. Liam kept waking and wanting to be fed.

Thank goodness Ahmie started expressing milk instead of colostrum.

After the Birth

2004-05-29T00:54:00.000-04:00

Ahmie and Little Liam

Right after birthing, we brought the baby directly to Ahmie's Brest to feed the newborn. This happened so quickly we did not know for about half a minute if we should call the baby Liam or Juliana. The honor of cutting the cord was bestowed to Liam's Godmother Sabrina. For the first 10 to 15 minutes Ahmie held Liam while the nurses were busy cleaning up and organizing the Delivery room.

Liam measured

After about 10 minutes or so the nurses took Liam and measured him.

Sabrina and Liam

After the measurements Liam was swaddled and Sabrina was first to hold the newly born Liam, then me.

Ahmie, Liam, and Garvin

I brought Liam back to Ahmie for some bonding time.

Emily and Liam

After this Liam was passed around to Emily who also labor sat Ahmie along with Sabrina. The nurse were attending to Ahmie when this picture was taken.

After the nurses had finished taking initial care of Ahmie I wheeled her to room 168 which was the post partum room for Ahmie. This was where Ahmie, Liam and I were to spend the next day of our lives.

Sabrina, Emily and Liam
Another cute picture of Liam with Sabrina and Emily.

Birth and all the details

2004-05-29T00:07:00.000-04:00

So we called our friends Emily and Sabrina Wednesday Morning at about 6 AM, and told them that Ahmie's water broke. They rushed to our apartment. By that time Ahmie's contractions were distraction and we were keeping time, contractions were 3-5 minutes apart. All of us arrived at the Birthing Inn at about 7:30AM and was admitted into a delivery room. Where we unpacked and Ahmie got into her "labor pants".

By this time Ahmie was in a good deal of discomfort. Not really from the labor contractions but rather her SI joints. The baby's head was pressing against her S1 and S2 spinal disks and causing a good deal of pain level of 6-8 on a scale of 10. We used an exercise ball to help her position herself to a less painful position. All of this we were waiting for our mid wife and waiting for admittance forms, which came in as a trickle. The compounding problem was there were several births this morning, so the delivery area was very busy. Ahmie spent a good deal of time in the tub to help ease some of her back pain. I spent much time pressing against her tailbone to help ease her pain.

We saw our midwife Wendy several times that morning. But she had to catch up with some patients and such so it was not until about 10 did she really get and stayed with us for Ahmie's labor. At that time slowed down and everything got really fuzzy. She measured Ahmie's Cervix and it was 8 cm dilated, after 5 contractions 9 cm dilated. Not soon after she started the urge to push. The mid wife reconfigured the hospital bed to act as a birthing stool to encourage a better birthing posture (sitting up) as opposed to the "traditional" lay down on back position. Within about an hour and a half Liam was born.
Our birth wish list included that I was to catch the baby as it came out of Ahmie. However after the head was pushed out < 30 minutes. The rest of the baby's body POPPED out in the very next push. Ahmie said later that during the pushing stage she felt that Liam was also pushing with his feet to help himself out of Ahmie's womb.

As you remember Liam was born 11:46 AM, The reason for most of Ahmie's discomfort was that the baby was positioned in what is called back labor. Back Labor is when the baby's back is aligned with the Mother's back thus causing more pressure on the spine of the mother. Ahmie said during her pregnancy that if the baby was causing back labor the baby would be born grounded (yes, Liam your mommy is strict) from toys. His saving grace, born before lunch (I have audio of this and will post here in the future).

All in all it was an impressive labor, not too short and not too long everything started right away after the Midwife arrived to be with Ahmie full time. It was a drug free labor and delivery, mostly painless except her injured spinal disks.

More Details next.

A watched baby never boils (that's it I think)...

2004-05-28T22:36:00.000-04:00

As noted earlier, Ahmie really started laboring early Wednesday morning. To tell the whole story, we need to wind back the clock.

As you may have read earlier our friends Sabrina and Emily have been labor sitting with Ahmie since Friday afternoon. Because Ahmie felt her first regular contractions since Friday morning. Pretty much nothing happened that weekend. Monday was our regular checkup appointment with the midwife office. That day we walked around the mall and other stuff to help set off heavier labor. Feeling that all the walking on Monday was for naught Ahmie decided that she should stay home and laugh it up to help induce labor. So Tuesday we stayed at home all of us watching comedies. By the end of Tuesday night We decided that the baby may be staying in Ahmie for several more days and that the best thing would be to for Sabrina and Emily to return to their lives and wait for Ahmie's water to break, before rushing back to her side. Since there is really a 24 hour countdown that gets started after the breaking of the water. We said our goodbyes and hugged each other and I walked them down to Sabrina's car.

I returned upstairs and went to bed thinking what we were going to do Wednesday. Cleaning up some since the apartment got alittle messy with Emily and Sabrina staying in the living room. I went to sleep thinking about watching the copy of the Tick that I copied from a friend. I think you know about what happened on Wednesday.

Well all the best laid plans of mice and men...

The New About Me Photo

2004-05-27T22:40:00.000-04:00

Garvin Yeung 05/26/2004

This is a picture of me with Liam about 30 minutes after birth.

William Zhuo Ming Yeung

2004-05-27T22:38:00.000-04:00

William Zhuo Ming Yeung

A bouncing baby boy (why do people describe babies as bouncing, when you should never drop one). Born on May 26, 2004 at 11:46 AM at the Birthing In at Loudoun Hospital. William (Liam) at birth weighed at 8lbs 5oz (Yes! My foot was spared stomping. My wife said if the baby weighed more than 9lbs she would stomp on my foot). Liam at birth was 19.5 inches long.

The full details are to follow, because I need sleep.

An Interesting Development

2004-05-26T04:10:00.000-04:00

Ahmie woke me up at 3:40 telling me that her water has broken. Called midwives and was told that she (and I) should get some sleep and then go to the Birthing Inn.

More to come, I will go back to bed, maybe the last 4 hours of sleep before being a father.

The Baby is not here yet.

2004-05-24T12:43:00.000-04:00

We just came back from the Midwife's office this morning, Ahmie is 90% effaced and 3.5 centimeters dilated. We (Sabrina, Emily and I) spent much time with Ahmie all weekend, waiting for labor to come. Because it has been so very hot we have stayed indoors for most of the weekend, although on Saturday we did go to the Wal-Mart late in the evening to do some walking so Ahmie can help get the baby to come along some. On Sunday we went to various health food/ vitamin stores to get homeopathic medicines on the suggestion of the midwife to help get the labor going. We spent several hours over at De and Emily's house for a traditional sit down dinner of Arby's roast beef sandwiches. Then Sabrina and Emily both returned to our apartment and stayed overnight again to be with Ahmie.

I have to take a minute to say how much I appreciate everything that Emily and Sabrina have done for both of us this past weekend. Both of them have been very wonderful and helpful to Ahmie and me. Sabrina has been very helpful by driving us around (eventhough gas has been really expensive), Emily has been helpful providing advise from her own experience.

Both has been very helpful and have sacrificed much to be there for us. Both have sacrificed good sleep to be with us, because they are both sleeping in the living room, Emily on the couch and Sabrina has been sleeping on the floor. Emily has spent much of the weekend to be with us while her husband De has been taking care of her daughter Cora. Sabrina has sacrificed much of her valuable time to be with us, she is moving to Morgantown, WV. In a few weeks and although she had most of her stuff moved already, but there are always one thousand and one little details that has to be taken care of.

I know that they are very much loved and hope they know the depths of our appreciation and thanks.

T-minus ??? to baby

2004-05-22T11:45:00.000-04:00

Since about 9 this morning Ahmie has been having regular contractions under 10 minutes apart ( 5-7 minutes time in between). The contractions have been lasting long, up to about 1.5 minutes long. Suprisingly she is not experiencing much pain (fingers crossed). Maybe the Monchhichi will be here within 24 hours. Maybe the next post I will be a father.

Heres to a good labor.

It's open season for Pandas in Washington DC.

2004-05-22T01:13:00.000-04:00

Finally the Washington Post has posted an interactive map of the locations of all 150 Panda sculptures that will make up the DC Pandamania. I tried to capture all 200 of the Party Animals during the summer of 2002, but came about 10 short.

This year I will shoot them all..., with my camera of course!

The baby is still not here yet

2004-05-21T15:17:00.000-04:00

Well the baby is still not here yet, although Ahmie thought she had a real contraction this morning which whipped a flurry of cleaning and our living room and kitchen are for the most part very clean and clutter free. Whereas the living room was cluttered with packing boxes and stuff to be packed.

Our lives are in a sort of holding pattern waiting for the monchhichi to be born. We are waiting patiently, not like we have a option. I think we should have indicators floating over our heads like people in the Sims. That way we can always know the progress on our tasks. So At least I can gauge how long will it be before Ahmie will really starting labor. Then we can plan accordingly.

'Tho I think it would take the surprise of it all, and I really can't think of many things that are really surprises anymore.

5 days to due date baby not here yet

2004-05-20T23:20:00.000-04:00

I am currently on paternity leave from work because I had actually turned in my resignation 2 weeks ago. Fortunately I have accumulated enough leave so I have enough time to take sick leave as paternity leave without any loss in pay. This gives me an opportunity to spend time with my wife and the baby once it is born.

It is strange waiting for our baby to be born. I mean my wife and I have waited 9 months and it has been a wonder, seeing my wife's belly grow, hearing the baby's heartbeats, feeling the baby's kicks. Now I am standing at the cusp into fatherhood not totally sure how I feel. I am happy to be taking a rest from work and spending time with my wife. I know very soon my time will not be wholly my own anymore. I hear from many of my co-workers that have children say that children are lots of work..., but they are worth it. Every time I hear that I think of Wanda Sykes comic routine about children.

Granted I know what I am getting myself into, I am aware of the responsibility that I have pledged myself to, and as a man of 27 years of age I think I am up to that responsibility. Hey I started teaching straight out of college at 22 at a alternative education high school, I think I can take care of an raise one child. I even can do diapers. But I can imagine the worries that I will feel as a parent. I look forward to finger painted pictures and coloring book pages colored with crayons (eventho I loathe crayons the bastard of all art supplies anyway...), colors all over the place not within the lines. I look forward to the first steps, the first words, the goo face.

Ahmie is sewing "birthing pants" basically pants without the middle seam and overlapping paneling? I think. She thinks that this way the Midwife can have access to her crotch for exams during labor without having to wear a hospital gown, so she can wear something that has a semblance to real clothes. She exclaims every time the thread breaks on the sewing machine and I run in to the room thinking something has happened. So as you can see I am very eager to meet my monchhichi.

Oh now it's 4 days and counting.

Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't I?

2004-05-19T11:19:00.000-04:00

To paraphrase the Cranberries. Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?

I have always wanted to start a blog, having a friend who devotes time everyday to write what is on his mind have pushed me over to do one of my own.

I think this will be an outlet for my memories for the Future, Past and Present. I hope to keep here thoughts that I don't want to forget. The fine details of events that becomes obscured as time passes by.

I do this because I think sometimes my brain is made of cheesecloth and not gray matter.

2004-05-19T00:34:00.000-04:00

So it begins, and in turn something ends. I am standing at the cusp between young manhood and young fatherhood. No longer will I be just responsible for myself and my wife, but soon also a new innocent newborn child. My wife and I are not sure if the child is a boy or a girl. Whatever gender my child is I know that I will love this child.
I don't know if this is psychological or biological. I can imagine that there must be a combination of both, otherwise I don't think we could have come as far as have. If we had no prolonged period of growth and learning, and started our lives running, fending off for ourselves.
I love this child and I don't know why. Certainties not because with each child comes a lifetime of commitment and care. Is it because my wife gave our growing child a cute nick name? The nick name of our child is monchhichi, our child is going to be born in the year of the monkey. I don't think that would be the reason, although I love to say the nickname as I speak into my wife's burgeoning belly, anticipating a response from our child. It sure is not because I know that I have no control over what the child does when he/she gets older, and I have to hope that they know and have the strength to do what is right.
I think it must be something more primal. I think it has to do with being part of the human fabric as it has woven itself over the past 20+ millennia. I know, that with this child, some of my genes will be out there. Also I will have someone who I can show my values and morals to and hope that will be spread to the future. I hope that there will be a future where my child and his/her children and their children can live happily and remember me by pouring down wine in honor of me. I think having children allows us more time on that human fabric then we were allotted. Because future generations will remember their ancestors.
I think as long as you are remembered or thought of you still have a place in the fabric. Your thread in the weave of the human fabric is not cut until the last person who remembers you breathes their last breath.

Enough digression.

This love for our child is so hard to explain. There are so many reasons that conspire to make this bond of love. Emotional or biological, there is no clear cut side where I think could explain, this unconditional love with something that I have yet to see directly with my own two eyes.

I think this is the closest thing to faith that this atheist has ever believed.