We took my youngest in for his shots today.  The poor kid needed to get five of them.  He was really calm as the nurses readied his first two shots, but once they stuck him, he started crying and mildly trying to get away.  My wife held him without any help, but he did tense up his legs (which makes shots more painful) when the last three were given, making him scream out.

I was impressed at the efficiency of the nurses; the actual shots only took a minute even with them stopping to try to soothe him.  Of the five, his reaction was not the most violent or the loudest, or even the calmest (the award for which goes to Katrina who mostly just glared at the doctor who administered her shots).  I remember getting my shots, one in particular that made my arm harden like a rock for several days.

As a parent, its hard to watch my children in pain, even if I know that it's for their benefit.  It has not gotten easier.  It's hard to explain to someone (a child, in particular) that the pain he was going through today would help benefit him in the long run.

There's a metaphor in there somewhere . . . 

The song is running through my head and I only really know that one phrase from it.  Truthfully, I didn't have a bad day, but it will not go down in history as one of my better ones.  In the book that I've been reading about creating an electronic presence for myself, the author suggests that you shouldn't write a blog post on a day when you are angry.  People don't like angry (even if the popularity of the Hulk suggests otherwise).

I have found that the author is probably correct.  Usually, when I talk about something that is bothering me or something bad that happened to me, the person to whom I was complaining gives an example of something even worse that happened to them.  It becomes a reciprocating cycle of one-downsmanship.  

As hard as it is, I usually find that the only thing that gets me out of the funk of a bad day is being positive and counting my blessings.  If I focus on how bad the situation is or on revenge (and I can be pretty creative when it comes to revenge), I just end up feeling worse.  If I find the silver lining, it's as though a heavy stone has been lifted from my brow and I can think more clearly.  This isn't about a false positivism; for this to work, I need to find something truly good in the situation or in my life and celebrate it (not ironically).

Now, demons will still try to bring those bad thoughts to mind.  I find that the only way to consistently keep them back is to recognize who benefits from my misery: it isn't my kids or my friends, not my co-workers or my spouse,  and it certainly isn't me.  Thus the only true revenge is leaving that misery behind.  I certainly don't want to support the devil that benefits from my misfortune.

Life is good and my blessings are many.  My state of mind is my own to control.

When my wife first introduced the idea of natural family planning to me, I thought that it was a terrible idea.  Quite frankly, I already thought that we were not having enough sex, and the main idea that I took away from this method was that it meant that there would be even fewer days where sex would be a possibility.  Worse, it seemed that the days we were specifically supposed to avoid were the days when my wife would be the most interested.  Somehow, not only was I supposed to have self-control, but I was supposed to help her with hers.  That had the markings of disaster all over it.

Yet we decided to try it anyway.  While there was a mild financial incentive for doing so, the main motivator was what we had discovered about most of the types of birth control available.  The largest concern was that most of the birth control methods available were actually forms of abortion, a practice which goes not just the teachings of the Church, but both of our personal sets of beliefs.  While the manufacturers of these products claim that their birth control process has nothing to do with abortion, the truth is that many of them work by destroying fertilized eggs (the start of human life).  Many of those that don't, such as the ones that keep a woman's eggs from releasing, cause long term problems with the woman's overall health and well-being.

Even the "safe" birth control products have significant side-effects.  While there has been a movement against vaccines due to rises in autism and ADHD, few people have publicized a stronger correlation (no causation proven yet) between those conditions in children and their mothers' use of pharmaceutical contraception.  Even the side-effects listed for these medications can be quite extreme.  All of this for a product that is not a hundred percent reliable even when followed correctly.  There is always a chance that an egg can get fertilized in the short release window and somehow survive to implant in the uterus (although this can often lead to birth defects).  Pharmaceutical companies are interested in profits, not women's health.  

Natural family planning, on the other hand, does not add pharmaceutical substances to a woman's body and thus avoids damaging the woman's body.  As this method relies on women knowing and understanding their ovulation cycle, it is 100% effective when followed.  It also helps a couple discuss the sexual activities more as men are now more invested, and interested, in the woman's cycle.  It requires the couple to work together rather than just keep the entire burden on the woman.

In our case, it led to better sex.  It turns out that one of the side effects of the type of birth control my wife had been using was a decreased libido, so we actually started having sex more often in a given cycle despite the smaller time frame.  We also were more open with each other when talking about sex since we were working together.  Now, this is not to say that everything has been perfect since we started using the system, but it certainly has been better.

Dealing with my grandmother's writings yesterday reminded me of why I despise the tobacco industry (and, by extension, the growing marijuana movement).  I blame them for the deaths of both of my grandparents.

My grandfather passed away when my father was a teenager.  According to my father, my grandfather smoked a couple of packs a day.  At the time, it was not only the norm, it was encouraged.  Doctors recommended that their patients smoke as a way to relieve stress.  While other factors no doubt played a role, I place the blame for my grandfather's sudden and deadly heart attack directly on his smoking, which we now know is not only linked to heart disease, but that tobacco companies knew of the link even while promoting cigarettes as a healthy choice.

My grandmother started smoking when she was twelve.  While I remember seeing her smoke when I was younger, as we got older she smoked in front of us less and less frequently.  Her smoking affected her lungs.  Although she outlived my grandfather by about four decades, her greatly diminished health was directly tied to her smoking habit.  She said that she would have quit sooner (or have never started) had she known how miserable her health would become.

While I have held to a vow of not using any mentally affecting drug  as I do not want to become reliant on an outside source for my internal feelings, I do not think that I would have ever taken up smoking.  My grandparents' deaths illustrate two of the most common dooms that await people who choose to smoke: an early death that deprives your loved ones of having you around, and a longer life where you spend decades struggling for breath.

Don't smoke.

My mother gave me a letter that she was sending and wanted me to proofread.  The contents of the letter were about my Grandma Marks and some of the events that happened to her through her life.  She was a remarkable woman.  I have been finding it difficult to believe that it has been nearly twelve years since she passed away.  

When I was still taking courses for my bachelor's degree, I expressed the desire to write about my grandmother's life.  My professor recommended that I start interviewing her soon, but it was (like too many of my ideas) something that kept getting pushed back until later.  I do not have many true regrets in my life, but that is certainly one of them.

I wanted to share just a few facts from her life (some which I did not know until today):
1. The first time she arrived in America (1922 when she was four), she and her family was turned back because they only had one visa for the family and her mother was too pregnant to make the trip.  She remembered scolding her baby brother in his crib for making her leave America.

2. She survived one of the ten most deadly tornadoes in history.  She didn't understand why the other girls "were screaming because is couldn't do any good".

3. She often suffered from pneumonia (even before starting to smoke at the age of 12).  Her mother used "upside-down shot glasses and just-blown-out matches" on her chest to create vacuums to suck out the infection, a practice she referred to as "voodoo."

4. She worked at Al Capone's Coliseum, but left after rejecting "propositions".

5. She lived, for a time, with prostitutes.

6. She left her first husband when she was pregnant with my uncle Norman and had difficulties with childcare and housing that her mother (who tried to get her to have an abortion) would not help with.

7. She was hired for (and often quickly fired from) several jobs in which she had no experience, but claimed that she did.

8. She met my grandfather in a crowded bar that neither of them wanted to go to.  It was love at first sight, and they married despite his family's disapproval.

9. Her lung problems continued throughout her life.  In the 1950's a doctor suggested that one of them be removed, a procedure that she decided against.  Thus she was surprised (and quite angry at God) when Paul, my grandfather, suddenly passed away in 1961, from which point she raised her four boys on her own.

10. On her last day, my uncle asked what he could do for her.  She wanted to dance, so he lifted her so her feet were on his and they "danced" in her room while she hummed a tune.

She was an amazing, courageous, and strong-willed woman.  I wish I had written her story.

A true benefit of my job is that we get paid sick days.  Granted, considering the number of illnesses that are brought in by the numerous students that we see in our classes (not to mention the hallways) everyday, we probably need every sick day that we can get.

Still, I hate using them, and not just because I might need them later when a more severe ailment attacks me.  I hate using them because they usually cause more work for me than they avoid.  Between writing lesson plans for substitutes who might not know anything about the subject or grade level, getting caught up on emails, student work while I was gone, presentation building, worksheet and test creation as well as copying that I can't get done at home, and the numerous housekeeping details that we have to attend to every day, week, and month, each day missed just piles on paperwork.

The two days I missed (and I really had to miss) last week have really loaded me down.  To make things worse, this is the last week for seniors (so I need their senior exams ready to go as well as all of their work graded--some of which was turned in while I was gone) and all of the data teams are to present their multicultural lessons (which my students are doing Wednesday and Thursday) at the extended staff meeting at the end of the week.

That, and I'm still fighting this bug.  It's a good thing that I love my job.

I'm afraid of my heart.  I was in 4th grade, I think, when our school put on a healthy heart program that encouraged us to eat properly and exercise (spell "aerobic") in order to keep our hearts healthy.  Like the talking tooth mascot for proper dental hygiene, this mascot was a heart in Tom Selleck gym shorts.  While that image alone should be enough to terrify me, it was something said during one of these visits that really caused me concern.

Our hearts can only beat a billion times.  Now that I can conceptualize a billion better, this is not as horrifying of a statistic as it was when I was ten.  The presenter was trying to emphasize the need for people to have healthy hearts which don't need to beat as often, keeping a lower pulse when active or at rest.   For me, it was like someone had put a countdown over my head.  I could feel every beat of my heart and I even panicked that when I tried to slow it down, it only seemed to speed up.

My grandfather died of a heart attack at a relatively young age--one of the reasons I will never smoke a cigarette.  I knew that it was a constant concern of my father, who had been fatherless since the age of thirteen.  As I have gotten older, it has become more of a concern for me as well.  When I was told that I couldn't give blood because my blood pressure was too high ... well ..., my blood pressure got higher.

Last night, having just finished a rather exhilarating match of Starcraft, I lay in bed unable to sleep due to the pounding of my heart.  Again, attempts to slow it only seemed to make it beat faster.  I could hear the presenter warn about a billion beats being our heart's upper limit.  I thought about the medications that they put people on for high blood pressure and the medications they then put people on to counteract the first set of medicine's side affects.

I need to listen to my heart.  I need to get healthier.  

While my intention is to write everyday, yesterday I cut the blog short due to how tired I was feeling.  Today, I know why.  The cold which seems to have struck nearly everyone around me got to me this morning.  I woke up with a sore spot on the back of my throat.  Knowing everyone else's experience, I took a Zicam (which has proven effective for me) before going to work.

As the day wore on, my throat got worse and worse to the point that I couldn't raise my voice to my students (it turns out slapping a clipboard on a table catching people's attention).  I went to Trevor's last concert (the Northwest Junior High Spring Collage Concert) and found myself with the sniffles.  Two hours later, my snot has turned to pea-soup color and consistency.

I now have the full-blown sinus headache and plan on heading to bed right when I finish this post.  Tomorrow is a light day at school for me, but my AP students have their test so I want to be there in case there are any hiccups (and to hear the accounts of their experiences).

I hate feeling sick in the spring or summer.  I hope I'm more energetic tomorrow for Katrina's birthday.

Various sources that I have seen recommend that most adults need to receive seven to nine hours of sleep.  Anything less than that can reduce memory, increase stress, and lead to numerous health complications.  If I'm lucky, I get six.

It has not always been this way.  During my freshman year in college, I would try to go to bed between nine and ten even if I didn't have an early morning class.  Often this would even mean leaving a game or some other activity that my friends were doing.  Janelle often teased me that I would go to bed so soon.  Come to think of it, she doesn't like it when I go to bed before ten even now.

I remember reading an article at the time that talked about powerful and famous people who would only get about four hours of sleep a night.  Our newly elected President Clinton was one of them; Margaret Thatcher was another.  I remember thinking that so little sleep would kill me.  Now I understand it a little better.

Time is slipping away from me.  On days that I teach evening classes at Baker (which this semester is on Mondays and Tuesdays), I wake up around 5 am, go to Lincoln to teach, get back home around 4:30, leave for Baker around 5:30, get home again around 10:00 (this semester has been a bit earlier here), do something to decompile (usually a 45 minute show), write my blog (a new addition), get ready for the next day (lunch and pre-chosen clothes), and get to bed around eleven.  Considering that I'm often doubling up (my decompiling often goes hand-in-hand with grading), there really aren't places for me to cut, except sleep.  Even days without Baker are often filled to the brim with one thing or another.

I know that this is affecting me.  I can feel my memory slipping away.  I've gotten shakier lately, and my right eye likes to start twitching on its own.  I am often tired and run down, making my temper flair when even the slightest extra task is asked of me.  I know that this is taking years off of my life, but I don't see another way around it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get to bed.