KattyWilly

I follow a bunch of PhotoBlogs Today Myla Kent posted a photo of Kissing trees
. Yesterday was a
rather blustery day here. As I
was driving, to or from, the rink, or school or work, can’t remember
which, I noticed some trees flailing in the wind. I wished I had a
video camera as the trees were waving their arms frantically as if they
were trying to tell me something of great immediate importance. I
almost had flashbacks to the most frightening memories of my childhood,
those horrid, hateful, terrifying apple throwing trees from The Wizard
of Oz.

On the third anniversary
of Cindy’s death Julie and I were talking about how such great loss
affects our calendars.  Cindy died in the spring of 2002.  I
have found that in the months before the anniversary date I begin to
feel down.  I usually don’t figure out why until a few weeks
before that date.

I was thinking this year about how our wedding anniversary was always
one of our most emotional holidays.  It made me think, and Julie
reminded me of how our calendars change.  The anniversary that now
seems to hold the most emotional power is the anniversary of the day
she died.  We suffered a sudden, traumatic and violent loss. 
I was struggling to take care of my daughters who were injured in the
accident while also dealing with the sudden loss.  It is not a
time that I want to remember.  It is the most horrific day in my
life.  I wonder if it is different for those who have lost their
loved one after a long illness.  Do the circumstances of the loss
change the way people feel about that date?

Our wedding anniversary is now a day just like any other on the
calendar.  It falls around Father’s Day so I spend the time trying
to figure out what I should do to help the girls do something for me.

One of the hardest holidays for me to deal with has been
Christmas.  Christmas was Cindy’s favorite time of year.  She
has so many decorations and loved to shop for new things every year
during the after Christmas sales.  We would have a neighborhood
Christmas party at our house with food, friends and caroling.  The
first two years I tried my best to keep everything the same.  Or
as normal as I possible could.  It was very hard, emotionally and
physically.  There’s just me know and there aren’t enough hours in
the day sometimes.  I think that is one of the reasons I was
looking forward to, and dreading out trip to Europe this past
Christmas.  Cindy and I wanted to go back to Czech with our
friends and wanted the girls to go with us.  I was excited for the
opportunity to celebrate the holidays with our friends and family and
to experience the Czech holiday traditions.  I was also terrified
by the thought that I was doing a terrible thing by changing one of the
constants in our lives, Christmas.

It ended up being both an exciting and amazing time spent with friends
and family experiencing new and old traditions, as well as a time to
remember the Christmas’ we had and miss so desperately.  So my
challenge, along with all the other challenges of being a single parent
of two teen girls, is to try and figure out a way to turn these days
that bring such sorrow into days that we can celebrate again. 
Find a way to turn out thoughts of sadness and loss into happy
memories.  I think that some time may have to pass to allow the
sadness to fade and the happy memories to fight their way back into our hearts, minds and calendars.

So I was over at Mark Cuban’s blog today reading about the death of the CD.
I agree with Mark that things are moving to a place where people don’t
want to buy CD’s so they can then rip them to MP3 files on a computer
and then turn around copy them to a MP3 player. But I also would
like to avoid the whole owning part of the process. When it comes
down to it all I really want to do is listen to some music. It’s
not all that important to me that I own it, and these days you never
really own it you are just given permission to listen to it on 5 or
fewer computers, or a portable player that supports the appropriate DRM
standards.

Recently I’ve started building my own radio schedule. I’ve been trying out RadioTime
which is a software and service that allows me to schedule recording of
Internet streaming audio to MP3 files. I have also set up some
subscriptions to a variety of Podcasts using iPodder.
RadioTime turns on early in the morning and records the morning show
from Radio Orion in the Czech Republic, as well as the first hour of
the morning show on the local community radio station 88.5 WMNF. Then it records Morning Becomes Eclectic from KCRW in Santa Monica.

Each morning I download a variety of podcasts and recorded radio broadcasts to my portable MP3 player and I have plenty of audio entertainment for my day.

Back to Mark Cuban, I sent Mark a note describing the Streaming
Internet Receiver concept, assuming my email would get sucked into the
black hole of unsolicited mail that Mark must receive, but instead he
sent me a reply, like 15 minutes later! He had the same concerns
I get from everyone I mention this to. Streams aren’t reliable,
the sound quality sucks, you can’t get them everywhere. Yes
I know streams aren’t the best but they keep getting better, and once
we get high speed broadband wireless service going everywhere I predict
they will be good enough to make my dream of a portable wireless enabled
media device that can access audio and video from the Inkernets possible and people
will start to understand.

So what shows up in my Kratochwill PubSub search tonight but this old item where I talked about the Streaming Internet Receiver with Jim from Whole Wheat Radio. I keep hoping that if I keep talking about this that someday it will actually happen.

I knew I posted those closeup photos yesterday for some reason.  I was just anticipating the X-Bonus quote form today’s word of the day.

“I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what
it may, — light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.
-John Constable, painter (1776-1837)”

We Miss You.
Cindy 1957 – 2002

We went to see the Marshalls U.S. Figure Skating Challenge at the
Forum.  I took the little Canon and watched one of the pro photo
journalists work with his array of high end digital SLRs.  It
really made me wish that I had one.  I did the best I could with
the camera I had and posted some photos over here.

Today was the day for the Florida Bandmaster’s Association Middle
School Music Performance Assessment. Chelsey’s school participated and
they sounded great.  I’ve tried to post a couple of clips over at OurMedia. They haven’t appeared yet but are supposed to show up withing 24 hours.  I’ll chack again tomorrow and see if they show up.

Today
was also a beautiful day to spend outdoors.  I was out back on the
deck most of the afternoon pressure washing all the dirt and crud off
the deck.  I noticed that the Iris in the pond is blooming again.

Watching a little of the NCAA basketball tonight.  Could it be an all Big Ten final? OsKee Wow Wow!

“The choices you make in your life, your work, your neighborhood, your partner have an enormous effect on your child.”

Halley is talking about Sacred Trust. 
I was just thinking about this the other day.  I was thinking
about the fact that we trust the safety of our children to others on a
daily basis.  We drop them off at school and trust the teachers
and staff at their school to watch and take care of them with the same
level of care that we would.  When they go on a field trip we
trust the bus driver and the caperones to watch over our
children.  Every day we give over our children into the trust of
others, and trust that they will care for them the same as we would.