KattyWilly

Halley talks about something
that I think about quite frequently.  With me the question was
posed “do you think things would be different if Cindy were still
here?”  I know that is a silly question, obviously had she not
died things would be totally different.  The girls would still
have mother and I wouldn’t be a widower.  Yes things would be
different.  But the question that runs around my brain at 3:00am
is would Cindy have responded to this crisis or that differently. 
For me the most bothersome thought is that if she were here my girls
would have someone to be there with them on the school field trips, a
room mom that was actually their mom.  Someone to go to with those
private personal issues that no girl would ever want to talk to her dad
about.

So in an attempt to be more like Cindy was for them I have to grapple
with the regular thoughts of whether it is possible for me to work even
fewer hours to be ‘there’ more for the girls and still be able to pay
the bills, to keep a roof over their heads.

As I sit here ‘tethered’ to my PC, or even ‘untethered’ with my laptop
within the range of my Wi-Fi access point, I am listening to WholeWheatRadio which Doc hooked me up with and reading an interesting item on the Web written by one of the folks from WholeWheatRadio about one of my dreams, a wireless Internet receiver.
One of the things I like about the Internet and streaming media is the
ability to listen to Radio stations from all over the world. I
tend to listen to ‘stations‘ from the old country the Czech Republic and small ‘stations‘ from around the US.

I am looking forward to a time when the mega corporate entities no
longer control what we can hear and see and we are able choose what we
want when we want where we want. It seems to me we just need
Wi-Fi like coverage on par with cell phone coverage and we will have
what we need for this to happen. With broadband wireless coverage
“everywhere” we will be able to stream Internet content so we won’t
have to go through the akward process of downloading all kinds of data
and storing it on PCs or portable devices. Leave the massive
amounts of data spread out across the Internet and just stream it to my
portable device on demand.

Another concert night. Photos here.

It’s Friday night, home alone.  Watched The Fisher King again.

Lindsey is off to the football game with her friend, and Chelsey is off
to the neighbor’s watching Survivor. I’m home alone folding laundry.

There is nothing like hearing your daughter laughing in the other
room.  Not a chuckle or one of those little girlie giggles, but a
hearty belly laugh.  Makes you think that they can be happy and
content.

Concert night in the middle of the week.

The girls are finally back in school today. They were off the last
two days because the school system still had many schools without
power, and no power means no air conditioning which means no
learning. There were also concerns about dangerous conditions on
some of the roads and the hazard that would present to the school buses.

The number of missed days is adding up. It is going to be
difficult to make them all up. There is fear among the parents
that they will try to shorten the holiday vacation. We have big
plans for that whole time and have invested in airline tickets that
would be difficult to change. It sounds like the school system is
worried about meeting the state rules for the number of days students
are ‘required’ to be in school.

Jeb has already been talking about the possibility of altering the FCAT
schedules. It seems that the ‘fine’ test is the most important
thing in our children’s education these days.

It’s morning and things have calmed down.  I think we had more
weather with Jeanne than we did with Frances.  Still only one big
tree limb down from the swamp Maple and lots and lots of Oak tree
debris out front.  Two big trees went down in the neighborhood but
like in Frances they luckily didn’t land on any houses.  We still
have power, it went out a few times but came back real quick each time.

I was more resigned this time around.  It was more like, go ahead
and do whatever you’re going to do, rather than fear that something was
going to happen.

Jeanne is heading our way.  It’s getting windy and we’ve had some
really big gusts.  They are reporting 50 m.p.h gusts in this area
on the local news.