Erica’s Blog

Yupp, hubby’s getting an iPod Nano, the one that holds 4Gb of music — around 1,000 songs.  They’re going for about $250, and he’s getting one for FREE.  Yupp, free.

Art Levinson, the CEO of the company hubby works for, is on the board of directors of Apple Computer.  About two hours after Steve Jobs unveiled the iPod Nano to the world, Art sent out an email to the whole company letting them know that b/c this year has gone so well:

1. Everyone would get the week between Christmas and New Year’s off.
2. Everyone would get an iPod Nano.

Now, this may not sound like a big deal, giving each employee an iPod Nano, if you think it’s a small company, but it’s not.  Not at all.  They have 8,000 employees.  8,000 x $250 = Oh, my goodness!

Actually, what’s way cooler than that is that the company gave $1.5million to the Red Cross for Hurricane Katrina relief and said that they would match employees’ donations up to $500 each.  This is on top of their regular yearly matching up to $500 of charitable contributions.  Very cool.  Imagine if every one of the 8,000 employees found a way to give $500 and the company matched it.  That’s $8,000,000!  Now THAT’S cool!  Of course, not everyone will donate, and not everyone will donate the full $500, but still it comes out to quite a chunk of change for the company.  Pretty cool for a company whose whole purpose in existing is to “meet unmet medical needs”. 

Just checked my email and found two sad messages:

1. Our friend Joe’s mom Anne up in Oregon died on Thursday afternoon.  Thankfully, Joe, Billie, and the kids had arrived in the wee hours of Thursday morning, so they got to spend time with her before she died.
2. Noelle’s grandma died on Saturday morning.  Grandma had lived with Noelle for several years until she got to the point where she needed to be in a facility with constant medical care.

Shoot!  Shoot!  Shoot! 

Hugs and special prayers out to the Hurley family and the Martinez family (sorry, Noelle; I don’t know your maiden name!).

OK, as long as I was having a really emotional afternoon, Big Mike emailed out pictures of the twins.  Of course.  ;->   I don’t think he’s ever happened to send them on a day when I was doing well, only when I was doing badly (as if he could possibly know).  Ironic, though.

So, as long as I’m being so psycho today, I might as well post the pictures.  They are, after all, cute kids.  I still don’t know how to tell which one is which b/c I don’t see them often, and almost every time I’ve seen them has been when I’ve just come from the cemetery, so I’m not terribly eager at that time to really look hard at them.

I’ve been told that’s Michael in the second picture, being held by Diane.  The photo was named “matthew” when I got it in email, but Adri corrected me.  Mike must have been in “sleep-deprived new parent” mode when he named the photo.  ;->  No idea about the other pictures.

All self-centered emotions aside, I really do like that first picture.  I first met hubby’s family 11 years ago, and I tell ya — 11 years ago, no one would have imagined a picture like that.  Heck, four years ago, no one would have.  So, it’s really, really special to see how much Big Mike has taken to being a dad.  I’d say that his bum knee that kept him off work for six months was probably one of those “God things”, eh?

Yupp, that’s me today — Psycho Emotion Woman From Hell.  It got worse as the day/evening went on.

I started out so-so, but then by the time church came around, I was starting to go down.  Actually, I was tempted just to hide in the ladies’ room, but my pride kept me from doing that b/c Grandma Ruthie was with us, and that would have been an embarrassing thing with her there. 

The sermon was out of 2 Samuel about acknowleding God.  Sounds fine, but then we got to chapter 12 and the story about David and his sinfully-conceived son’s death:

  ¹⁵ After Nathan had gone home, the LORD struck the child that Uriah’s wife had borne to David, and he became ill. ¹⁶ David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and went into his house and spent the nights lying on the ground. ¹⁷ The elders of his household stood beside him to get him up from the ground, but he refused, and he would not eat any food with them.

    ¹⁸ On the seventh day the child died. David’s servants were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they thought, “While the child was still living, we spoke to David but he would not listen to us. How can we tell him the child is dead? He may do something desperate.”

    ¹⁹ David noticed that his servants were whispering among themselves and he realized the child was dead. “Is the child dead?” he asked.
      ”Yes,” they replied, “he is dead.”

    ²⁰ Then David got up from the ground. After he had washed, put on lotions and changed his clothes, he went into the house of the LORD and worshiped. Then he went to his own house, and at his request they served him food, and he ate.

    ²¹ His servants asked him, “Why are you acting this way? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but now that the child is dead, you get up and eat!”

    ²² He answered, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, ‘Who knows? The LORD may be gracious to me and let the child live.’ ²³ But now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.” (NIV)

See, we had this read at Paul’s memorial service.  I, of course, started crying when Ray got close to this part of the story, and pretty much didn’t even hear the next ten or fifteen minutes of the sermon.

Late this afternoon, hubby went to go hit some golf balls with MarkyMark.  While he was gone, I lost it and became “Monster Mommy”, yelling at the girls, etc.  I hit that point where even normal happy-kid noise was just too much for me.  All I really wanted to do was either 1) climb into bed and stay there, 2) jump mouth-first into a vat of jamocha almond fudge ice cream, or 3) be in a SILENT place and knit my little heart out.  [Hmmm...maybe it doesn't help that I'm making baby hats for the soon-to-be baby Kai Joseph.]  Later, after hubby came back, I wasn’t much better, but Thing One and I did make up.  The girls were pretty emotional, too, and hubby jokingly said he was going to leave to go golf some more and would be back in a few hours, but I told him that if he did that, I might end up burning down the house while he was gone….

Oh, and I did eat a plate full of nachos.  Not the worst thing in the world, but not needed, either, especially after lunch at Mel’s Drive-In.  I also had two bowls of my latest favorite cereal.  (I will likely regret this later b/c it has 10 grams of fiber per serviing.)

Why was I like this?  Dunno.  OK, well, it probably doesn’t help that I ran out of “happy pills” a couple of days ago and can’t get any on the weekend when my doctor is out of the office.  I was OK at first, but it probably just finally caught up to me.  As I mentioned a moment ago, it might not help that I’ve been making hats for Baby Kai.  Kai is the soon-to-be-born son of my friend Eddie from college and his wife Michelle.  They have two daughters 7 and 4 just like we do, and they’re having a son.  Just a bit too similar, eh?  Eddie grew up in Oakland (raised by his grandma b/c his mother died of cancer very young) and went to Cal, so he roots for all our teams — Cal Bears, Oakland A’s, and Oakland Raiders.  Sooo, so far, there’s a green & yellow hat, a grey (silver) and black hat, plus a random blue hat.  I just have to make a blue and yellow (gold) one, and we’ll be set.  Maybe this is making me sadder, maybe it’s helping; I don’t know.

Hubby’s great.  He came up to me in the kitchen, hugged me, and said, “I love you - all four of you.”  It took me a minute.  I thought he meant to joke that I was so psycho I had four personalities (hey, we did just watch “The Three Faces of Eve”), but then I realized he meant all four of us crazy females — me, Thing One, Thing Two, and Jenna.

There were a couple of encouraging things that happened today.  As I sat at church, starting to go downhill, Shannon turned around, took one look at me, and mouthed “Are you OK?”  It’s nice when people are clued in and can tell.  After service, Grandma Elsie slipped the girls each a $5 bill as she often does, but first she asked, “Are you going to see your son soon?” and gave me $5 to buy flowers the next time we go to the cemetery. 

        The close-up is going inside her thank-you notes.  I like the big one b/c it shows the balloons Grandma Ruthie bought for the party.

  Yes, she read this book in one sitting.  She really loves this series of books and reads them over & over again.

  We all had fun with this toy today, drawing pictures of how we felt, of each other, helping Thing Two with her letters.