KattyWilly

Chelsey and I were up most of the night Monday night. Chelsey is
sick, sniffling, sneezing, stuffy head etc. I had to go pick her up
Monday after she finished her FCAT testing. She came home and fell
asleep. She slept for a few hours. Then when bed time came along she
couldn’t sleep. A combination of cold medicine, afternoon nap, and
anxiety about more FCAT testing the next day prevented her from sleeping.
She would come into my room ever hour or so saying she can’t get to
sleep.

Finally around 1:30 am I went to her room and did the only thing I
could think to do, I sat by her bed quietly and waited for her to go
to sleep. As I sat there quietly not sleeping, I remembered all those
times when the girls were babies and I would sit on the floor next to
the crib waiting for them to go to sleep. Listening to them cry
themselves to sleep was just too painful.

So here is sit today in that wonderful half conscious state of the new
parent that only spent a very short time sleeping the night before.

Home early today as Chelsey isn’t feeling well.  Sounds like she
has some sort of cold or allergies or something.  This is the
dreaded FCAT week too.  She was able to last through the FCAT and
almost made it through one class afterwards.  I’m hoping for tons
of rest and healing today so we can make it through the FCAT tomorrow
too.

I just realized that I’m almost a podcaster.  In the past I’ve posted a couple of ‘soundscene’ – like sound files of the girls flute playing.  And one of the sounds of downtown St. Pete.  I don’t really qualify as I haven’t set up Radio to do enclosures to automate the downloading process for programs like iPodder.

I was listening to Adam Curry’s latest Daily Source Code where he did a
little SoundScene of his morning getting his daughter off to
school.  It was very familiar to me and almost inspired me to try
my own hand at a SoundScene.  I would need a little more equipment
to do that though.  I don’t have any way to record other than
sitting at the computer.

A while back I pointed to a story a mom had written about her young
child and I described it as such a wonderful gift.  I was going
through some old documents on the computer tonight and found a letter
Cindy had written to her cousin.  It is a little gift.

In this post Julie talks about lives being like intersecting circles.
It made me go look for an item I once posted that talked about a conversation I had with a
friend where she described life as a complex web of threads that
connected us to others and what happens to them when one of them dies (and of course I can’t find it to link to).

I keep seeing that web of connections to the friends that Cindy and I
had. Many of those friends were people Cindy worked with over the
years. There were many threads that traveled great distances. 
Those threads ran through Cindy to me. When Cindy died those threads
pulled so many of those friends back to me in the days and weeks after
the accident. And then those threads sort of floated away, like the
strings on helium filled balloons let loose from my hands. A huge part
of the web that Cindy had attached to our lives is gone.

The girls and I are building new webs to new friends, and strengthening
some of the old webs. But Cindy was such a good web builder, it will
take a longtime before I will ever be able to recreate the many
connections we had.

I just saw this flash of light outside the window. I looked to
try and figure out what it was. Couldn’t figure it out. Until…

The thunder arrived. It’s the first thunderstorm for a long time.

Chelsey had her solo flute assessment this past weekend.  She
played well and the just gave her a Superior which is the highest
rating.  All those lessons and all that practice pays off.  I
recorded the testing on the digicam but haven’t figured out how to get
it on the web yet.  Instead Chelsey palyed a piece for me tonight
which I recorded and put up on the web as an MP3 file.  You can get it here.

I was listening to Nascar on the radio and they were talking about the sponsor Nextel and the merger with Sprint and the new opportunities for delivering streaming audio to cell phones and the other commentator says “like podcasting”. I don’t think I could ever have imagined that I’d hear podcasting mentioned on Nascar radio broadcasts. Yikes!

I wonder if this is some sort of Hanzi Smatter Soup 🙂

This year is the first time I felt the “Valentines Day Sucks”
emotions. I’ve heard others talk about it in the past and didn’t
really understand why. This year is the first time I felt
down when when everyone asked why I wasn’t wearing red to celebrate.