Some of the trees are already in bloom. I love walking into their area of influence at night - I don't actually stop and smell the flowers, but I maybe slow down a little bit. I think the fact that January is so warm is fooling the plants. That said, I think I'll go read for awhile.

cds listened to while smelling the flowers: Kecak - the Choral Drama of Singapadu Village, Areski et Brigitte Fontaine "je ne connais pas cet homme", Nightwish "Angels Fall First", Kodo "Kaiki", Keuhkot "Ruskea Aikakirja", and Nurse With Wound "An Awkward Pause"

now: Fern Knight - Mp3 from forthcoming release

I met Big Bird today. Sort of. Okay, so it wasn't really Big Bird. It was Caroll Spinney, who spends much of his life hiding inside Big Bird. When he's not hiding inside Big Bird, he's in that trash can underneath Oscar the Grouch. When he's not doing either of these things, he's walking around museums. Today he was at our museum. He told me to "keep up the good work." I told him the same thing. What was I doing to inspire such a comment from such an esteemed individual? I had mixed together Elmer's glue with Ivory Snow soap and added water, and was dipping the resulting stretchy, rubbery strands of no-longer-sticky glue in white paint and painting pictures with them. Oh yeah, I was also helping some kids thoroughly decimate a couple of cans of shaving cream. ...and I get paid for this!

I figured out that on the days when I go to both jobs I drive a total of 115 miles.

cds I listened to while driving 115 miles: Ulver "Lycantropen Themes", My Dying Bride "The Light at the End of the World", Nightwish "Sleeping Sun", Louisa John-Krol "Alexandria", Vera Bila & Kale "Kale Kalore", Giya Kancheli "Caris Mere", and Keuhkot "Mita Otat Mukaan Muistoksi Sivistyksesta"

now: Custer LaRue "The Demon Lover"

testing... onetwothree. Okay, it works again...

At exactly 1:11 this morning my odometer clicked over to 222222. I drive a lot. At the time, I was drinking a Basil Seed Drink with honey. It is interesting indeed how each individual basil seed is coated with a gelatinous substance. Yummy.

cds I listened to while drinking my drink: Radio Tarifa "Cruzando el Rio", In Slaughter Natives & Deutsch Nepal "Mort aux Vaches", Misia "Paixoes Diagonais", and My Dying Bride "Like Gods of the Sun"

The only good thing about the Stuporbowl is that it keeps all of the idiots off the streets for an afternoon. The worst thing about the Stuporbowl is that all of those idiots come spilling out into the street as soon as the game is over. I heard on the news that a bunch of the aforementioned people showed their great refinement and compassion by trashing a good part of Oakland. It may be a bit elitist to say this, but one can often gauge the worth of a particular type of entertainment by observing the actions of its fans. You don't see people pouring out of the opera house and overturning police cars. You don't see people leaving the symphony and breaking out all of the windows at the nearest McDonald's. You hardly ever see people rampaging out of a play and venting their passions on public property. People don't do doughnuts in intersections after an invigorating day at the museum. People don't even do this sort of stuff after heavy metal shows. And it doesn't seem to matter what team wins. I knew, even before I turned on the radio, that there would be reports of rioting in the streets. Now don't get me wrong, there are things worth rioting over, but a bunch of overpaid guys running around on field with a turd-shaped ball is not one of them. If these people like this game so much, why don't they use up some of their excess energy by actually PLAYING it! What is the big deal about watching other people play it and getting so worked up that you have to go break things afterward? The announcer on the radio mentioned that 400 police officers were needed to watch the streets in Oakland after the game... and that wasn't enough. I wonder how many other crimes were committed while the cops were watching the morons who thought it would be cool to hoot and holler and break things in the streets. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, they also apparently started a lot of fires. And people wonder why I think organized sports are so stupid. That said, I realize that not everybody who likes watching games is a moron. It's just that the morons are louder and more visible than the more responsible fans. And there are so many of them. And boy are they dumb. Some of them may even make that ignoramus in the White House seem semi-intelligent. Rant over.

In other news, the python tried to eat my hand today. I must be getting slow, because this is the second time in less than a month that he has latched onto me. Oh well, at least I no longer have anything venomous.

cds I listened to while grumbling about the senseless stupidity of certain people: My Dying Bride "The Angel and the Dark River/Live at the Dynamo", In Slaughter Natives "Sacrosancts Bleed" and "Purgate My Stain", Ratos De Porao "Feijoada Acidente?", Lake of Tears "The Neonai", and Radio Tarifa "Temporal" ...and I didn't even feel like wrecking anything after I listened to these!!

now: Heavenly Voices vol.2

Tonight all of the police were in one place - right in the middle of my route. They were walking in the road, leaning against their cars, and shining their flashlights everywhere. I don't know who they were looking for, and knew better than to ask. I'm pretty sure it was the driver of the car that sat perpendicular to the lanes in the middle of the road. It looked burned, but I'm not sure... This meant, of course, that if I had the desire to do so, I could break all sorts of laws elsewhere on my route with impunity. It's good to know where all of the cops are. I wish it happened more often.
Yesterday a man in a trailer park yelled and ran after me. I let him run a bit before stopping to see what he wanted. He just wanted to tell me that he didn't take the paper. I had been delivering one to his address, but it was somebody else's name on the label. That makes this the second time this had happened recently. The other time the person just called in and said that the name was fictitious and that the paper was jamming their gate. I'm glad it was jamming their damn gate because their house is really ostentatious - it even has those stupid lion statues on either side of the front walk. And their gate - it's across their driveway! What? Don't they trust their neighbors? I think I'm getting all of these fake subscriptions because somebody somewhere is looking at a really old list of people who used to take the paper and just signing them up again. This would explain why I'm delivering a paper with "Hilton" on the label to the Four Points Sheraton hotel. Somebody is picking that one up though. ...probably the janitor.

Oh, and we heard from medi-cal. Our total bill for Jen's hospital stay is a whopping.... $0.00000. I guess that means we're poor.

cds I listened to while trying to decide which laws to break: In Slaughter Natives "Enter Now the World", My Dying Bride "Turn Loose the Swans", Lake of Tears "A Crimson Cosmos", Mellow Candle "Swaddling Songs", and Radio Tarifa "Rumba Argelina"

now: Heavenly Voices vol.1 compilation

So, what does a toad look like under a microscope? Imagine a green mountain range, with little black spots on top of each of the mountains, and you've pretty much got it. The things I do at work to keep myself amused...

The damn plumber didn't show up today, so we're still down one toilet and a garbage disposal. The house is clean though. Sort of.

cds I listened to while wondering what my job would look like under a microscope: Sibeba "Hijas Del Sol", In Gowan Ring "The Glinting Spade" and "Compendium 1994-2000", Hijas del Sol "Kotto" (Sibeba under their original name...), In My Rosary "Those Silent Years" and "Under the Mask of Stone", and In Slaughter Natives "s/t"

now: Mychael Danna "The Sweet Hereafter" soundtrack

Last night, the forecasters didn't mention rain, and it rained. Tonight, they predicted rain, and it didn't. Instead, we got a night that was a bit foggy around the edges, but not foggy enough to be really interesting.

We managed to get the house looking pretty good today in preparation for calling the landlord to come fix one of our toilets. I even moved all of the arthropods into our bedroom, since the landlord doesn't know they reside here. Most landlords would be understandably upset upon finding out about a tenant's pet cockroaches. I probably wouldn't even get a chance to explain the difference between my cockroaches and the ones who live under refrigerators and eat questionable things found in the vicinity of the bathroom. I also, in all likelihood, would not get a chance to explain that the large scorpion is not dangerous. That's why they're all back in the bedroom with me.
Outside, the various bulbs are coming up along the walkway. There's even some grass starting to grow in the backyard.

cds I listened to while waiting for the rain that never came: B'eirth's Pscikadilik Psyrkuz II "Further Adventures of Wile and Wilder", Tony Wakeford "La Croix", Kirile Loo "Lullabies for Husbands", Libana "Fire Within", and Elliot Goldenthal "Frida" soundtrack (w/ Lila Downs!)

Now: Montserrat Figueras/La Capella Reial de Catalunya/Jordi Savall "El Cant de la Sibil-la 1"

I got surprised by a sudden rain storm tonight. I don't recall the forcasters mentioning it. Then again, they're wrong most of the time anyway. As I was driving around in the wetness, I passed by the same sign I pass by every night: Stop For Pedestrian. Does this mean, I thought to myself, that I get to choose which one to stop for? If I successfully stop for one pedestrian, am I then supposed to not stop for any subsequent pedestrians? It's a good thing it's the middle of the night and there are never any pedestrians around. Maybe I should just bring along a magic marker or some spray paint and make the damn sign plural.

At the museum today I was playing a selection of cds from around the world, as I usually do when I'm in the Early Childhood Center, when a woman asked, "what is this noise?" I knew from the start that she was going to be negative person. I told her it was throat singing, and explained what it was. It didn't seem to impress her much. She then asked, as if she could stump me, "what is the educational value of this?" I looked her in the eye and, since I could see that she didn't really want information, gave her the one word answer: "multiculturalism". You can't argue with multiculturalism. Especially on Martin Luther King day. She left soon afterwards.
I used to deal with people like this all of the time when I worked in a bookstore. Why don't people just come right out and say they don't like something? I would respect that a lot more than all of this beating around the bush. People used to ask what the music was just so they could complain about it. If you don't like something, why do you care what it is? And why are people so quick to shut down to new kinds of music? Okay, only a few people who come to the museum have a problem with the music - usually people really like it, and even write down the artist(s) so they can go buy the cds. I guess it takes all kinds...

cds I listened to when nobody was around to complain about them: Tarantula Hawk "s/t", Hooo "Veil Static", Kirile Loo "Saatus", Sol Invictus "In Europa" (the second half of this contains live songs from a concert I saw the first time I went to France - so I was actually "In Europa". ha ha), and Mariza "Fado em mim"

now: Montserrat Figueras "The Voice of Emotion"

It's foggy outside.

HEY GEORGE! WHAT WOULD MARTIN DO???

cds I listened to in the fog: Ratos De Porao "Guerra Civil Canibal", L'Orchestre Noir "11", My Dying Bride "As the Flower Withers", and Vladimir Vissotski "Le Vol Arrete"

now: Great Voices of Fado - Vol.2

I stayed up late last night enjoying the fact that this computer is now equipped with speakers, which Jen got me for Christmas. She also got me a cd burner and an Mp3 player, which aren't hooked up yet. This is going to give me all sorts of new ways to obsess over music. Now I get to pop around to various web sights and listen as well as look. I'll try to restrain myself somewhat. I do, after all, have a small bit of music on cd. I even have a few records... and some tapes. I'm just another Luddite pushed out into the glaring light of the future. I hope I don't go blind.

cds I listened to while wishing I had sunglasses: Mary Throwing Stones "Gerta", Puri-do "The Perpetua Reel...", Irr.App.(Ext.) "Their Little Bones, Becoming Sharp, Find Repose but Fail to Avoid Worrying A Breach In the Ghostly Skin the Which Separates that Above From That Below (This Being the Last and Final Seal) and Whereupon All Light Evacuates the Furnace. Several Consequences Ensue", Nurse With Wound/Aranos "Santoor Lena Bicycle", My Dying Bride "Symphonaire Infernus et Spera Empyrium", "The Thrash of Naked Limbs", and "I Am the Bloody Earth", and Inna and the Farlanders "The Dream of Endless Nights" (and endless cd titles...)

now: In Gowan Ring "The Twin Trees"

It is actually starting to feel like january now.

I got my W-2 form from the museum today, and noticed that for some reason the amount of my annual wages deducted for federal income tax was... wait for it... $1.41. Nothing has changed since last year. Has there been some sort of mistake? I've got to change my withholdings anyway, since I'm married now. Of course, if they withhold any less, they'll have to actually give me extra money. I think, also, that this will be the first year where I will have made less than the previous one. I hate taxes. Nobody ever spends the money on the things I want them to spend it on. I hate the thought of any of my money helping fund the current gung-ho bullshit let's-bomb-people-in-other-countries-because-my-daddy-missed-the-head-honcho-when-he-was-president. I keep hearing about troops being sent overseas. How many people will die? and for what exactly? Don't hand me those lines about peace and freedom. I don't believe them. Our freedoms are being compromised, and war doesn't lead to peace. War only leads to more war. Look at all of the other conflicts in the world today. Some of them have been going on for a really long time now. Peace and freedom indeed. More like money and revenge. This governmental nepotism and arrogance is going to kill a lot of people over the next few years - perhaps even more than it has killed already. Okay, rant over. For now.

cds I listened to while wishing I was in charge of spending the government's money: Lauren Hoffman "Megiddo", Ilgi "Speleju Dancoju", Hoelderlin "Live Traumstadt" and "Hoelderlins Traum", and Muzsikas "The Prisoner's Song"

now: Rustavi Choir "Alilo - Ancient Georgian Chorales"

It was cooler tonight, with a waxing moon. It still doesn't feel like january though.

We're determined to get through all of the things on our "to do" list. We've already marked off a few. The yard and the garage still remain in chaos though. The yard is obscured by bits of the local palm trees and a spongy carpet of pine needles, not to mention the two halves of our Christmas tree and pieces of the fence separating our yard from the neighbor's. And of course there are the ever-present toys, which stand out like neon punctuation in the stream-of-consciousness novel of our yard. The garage is worse. It is where, for the past year, we have dumped everything that doesn't fit in the house. It is where two towering bookcases await, and where an immense plexiglass terrarium begs to be filled with toads or tortoises or whatever else we finally decide to populate it with. It is where all of the little red lava rocks (and attendant dirt) reside in torn plastic and paper bags, because we have no idea what to do with them. Maybe we should just put them all back out front. It's just that they looked kind of ugly there. Maybe I'll find an S.U.V. with an unlocked door so I can fill it with rocks and dirt (I have all sorts of evil ideas that I will never actually act upon, but its fun to think about them...). The garage is also where an unstable mountain of cardboard rests, waiting its turn to be recycled. It is where a lot of things will probably remain untouched until we move.

Goodnight.

cds I listened to while putting on an extra jacket: High Tide "Precious Cargo", Robyn Hitchcock "Perspex Island" and "I Often Dream of Trains", Motorhead "Overnight Sensation" and "We Are Motorhead", and Joe Hisaishi "Princess Mononoke - Symphonic Suite"

now: La Reverdie "Bestiarium"

The night was warm again, and overcast. That strange, indefinable smell is still in the air. Maybe it's the winds of change, although it evokes a sense of nostalgia.

I went with Jen and the kids to the chiropractor today. I even let her talk me into giving me a free exam, although I'm not sure when I will ever have time to go back three times a week like she wants me to. I'm of two minds about going anyway. I love the whole concept of natural healing. I've always believed that our minds are primarily responsible for healing. Pharmaceuticals can be risky, and sometimes even worse (just look at what happened to Jen over the holidays...). Why pay others to fix you when your own mind can do the job just as well, or better? That said, I tend to run screaming from anything that smacks of New Age (does that make me a new ageist?). The chiropractor had a fighting fish in her office. Named Zen. I told her that Zen was a strange name for a fighting fish. She said that he was a peaceful warrior. Of course, this is only because he was alone in his bowl. I'm going back for another visit (my back is actually not in the best of shape...) and we'll see how things progress. I haven't made up my mind yet...

Sophie spilled water all over the nice floor in the waiting room.

cds I listened to while being warm in january: Shirley Collins "Within Sound" disc four, Neurosis "Through Silver in Blood", Marta Sebestyen "Kismet", and Howard Shore "Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers" soundtrack

now: Michael Nyman "Prospero's Books" soundtrack

There's a smell in the air - part rain and part something indefinable. It reminds me of when I was young; when the seasons took their time. Jen and I watched a perfect sunset today, without ever noticing the sun. The clouds, some far away and some appearing to be quite close, produced a layered effect that was quite beautiful. They were more yellow than they were orange or red.

We went to a childbirth class on saturday (very early on saturday, I might add) taught by our midwife, Veronika. I think it was the first time I've seen a video of a child being born. Very interesting. I can't wait to participate in the real thing. I hope all goes well.

Matt and I went and saw Rabbit-Proof Fence this weekend, and later Jen and I watched Where the Green Ants Dream. These films would make a great double-feature, as they both cover the same territory, both literally and otherwise. Both deal with the injustices heaped upon Australian Aborigines. The former is based on true story about three half-caste Aborigine girls who run away from a school (whose aim is to strip them of their culture and replace it with that of the "dominant" race) and walk home (a mere 1,200 miles). This bullshit attempt at genocide went on until 1970! The latter focuses more on the complete lack of cultural understanding between Aborigines and the other people who came much later and decided that they wanted to take over and tell everybody else what to do.

cds I listened to while enjoying (for once) the way the air smelled: Neurosis "Enemy of the Sun", High Tide "The Flood" and "A Fierce Nature", Shirley Collins "Within Sound" disc 3, and Motorhead "Sacrifice"

now: "Constellation - Music Until Now" compilation

It rained today/night, and the streets are gleaming. The cloud cover kept the temperatures at an agreeable level.

At the museum, with nothing much to do, I found myself examining my pocket change under a microscope. Old Honest Abe appeared to be under attack from some sort of giant amoeba. He also sported scars from past battles - perhaps from tussling with other common items found in one's pockets (string or nothing?). I think I'm going to start washing my hands more often. I'm appalled at the state of our coins. Then I got to realizing that some of the coins in front of me had been on Earth longer than I have. It makes me think about all of the hands they've passed through, and all of the hands yet to come. There's a story in there somewhere...

cds I listened to while getting slightly wet: High Tide "Sea Shanties/High Tide", Shirley Collins "Within Sound" disc two, Motorhead "Bastards" (...and yet it has a song on it that brings tears to my eyes...), Ratos De Porao "Carniceria Tropical", and Neurosis "Souls at Zero"

now: In Gowan Ring "Hazel Steps through a Weathered Home" (one of 2002's best)

The other day I was playing my mouth harp at the museum when a woman asked me what it was called. I told her that it was a mouth harp, or mouth organ, or a jew's harp, depending on who you asked. I had grown up hearing it referred to as a jew's harp. This perturbed a Hasidic Jewish guy sitting across the room. He said it was a derogatory term, and proceeded to compare it to other similar terms. Being curious, and hoping to learn something new, I asked him if he knew the origin of the term, and why it was considered offensive. He launched into a rather garbled explanation about poor people and gypsies. Apparently it is an instrument that was used by people who couldn't afford anything better. I'm still not clear on why that makes the term offensive, unless you find poor people or gypsies offensive. I do know, however, that to refer to being ripped off as being "gypped" is offensive because it lumps all gypsies together as being dishonest. I found out later, while talking to my coworkers, that this is not common knowledge either. Then again, one of my fellow museum employees thought the Jewish man was Amish.
Today, the husband of the lady who brought us new improved sand (not carcinogenic) for our sand table showed me his chipped tooth - he had cracked it with a mouth harp at the tender age of seven. These darn instruments are all sorts of trouble. ...fun to play though. ...and it's amazing how many people have never seen one.

Tonight was a bit warmer than last night, and there was a slight sprinkling of rain. Jen is feeling better. This makes me happy.

cds I listened to while trying not to offend anybody: Kristin Hersh "A Cleaner Light", "Murder, Misery, and then Goodnight", and "Like You", Ratos De Porao "Descanse Em Paz", Shirley Collins "Within Sound" disc one, Motorhead "1916", High Tide "Interesting Times", and Sol Invictus "In A Garden Green"

now: Michael Nyman "Six Days Six Nights" soundtrack

I wonder if the person who placed the "no stopping any time" sign less than two feet in front of a stoplight had a chuckle. I noticed it today, right around the corner from home, and it struck me as amusing.

Everybody else is asleep right now, which hopefully means that Jen is feeling okay. I think I'll go have a shower now. Goodnight.

cds I listened to while working while you were all asleep: D. Braxton Harris "Deep Dark Black" (I bought this in a record store in Austin and the guy behind the counter did a double take and told me that he hoped I liked it - it turned out he was none other than D. Braxton Harris himself), Kristin Hersh "Strings", Motorhead "Another Perfect Day" and "No Remorse", Bukkene Bruse "The Loveliest Rose", and Loretta Lynch "demo"

now: Michael Nyman "Time Will Pronounce"

I have $26.76 in my pocket. I'm not usually sure how much money I have at any given time, so I checked. I think it's time to start keeping closer tabs on where all of this damn money goes. It should be interesting.

Can obsession be a good thing? Take Wilson Bentley (the subject of "Snowflake Bentley" - the book currently featured at the museum, and the basis for a lot of the projects I will be facilitating during the following months...). At an early age, he became obsessed with snowflakes. It was he who discovered that no two were alike. He spent his life photographing them, and left behind a legacy of beauty and knowledge. In my mind, there is no question that Bentley was obsessed with his work, which seemed trivial to those around him. He died of pneumonia after walking through the snow doing what he loved. Maybe obsession is only a good thing for those on the outside of the equation. Maybe not.

We're having problems getting online at home for the moment, so I'm writing this from work. Jen's still not feeling well. She had a day or so where she felt pretty good, but the nausea keeps coming back. She's visited a chiropractor and gone back to have more blood drawn (part of ongoing monitoring to make sure none of the scary symptoms recur). We took the kids along for the ride, and Sophie delighted in charging up and down the hospital corridors. Much to her delight, I picked her up and ran with her for awhile, hoping that the sight of a running man with a baby under his arm wouldn't get me jumped by security. After all, there are signs in all of the maternity rooms directing new mothers to be careful who they hand off their newborn children to.

Maybe tomorrow will be a better day. Oh well, to work, to work.

The night is relatively warm, and somewhere a little fingernail of moon shines down. I brought Jen home on friday, but she is still nauseous a good part of the time. At least she is home. I think of all of the people who are stuck in the hospital. Some will spend the rest of their lives in one. I wonder what happened to the wife of the man I met outside the emergency room last week. He said she was pregnant and bleeding a lot, in addition to being diabetic. He was also asking for spare change so he could get something to eat. The cynic in me wondered if he had realized that people hanging around emergency rooms were likely to be in a more tender emotional state than people hanging around, say, a McDonald's. Maybe it was a scam. Probably not. At any rate, I gave him ninety-five cents and, after thinking for a moment, a couple of avocados and some pita bread. He seemed really happy about the avocados. I wish him and his wife well. I wish my wife would get well. It's hard to think of other things - they seem trivial somehow - when a loved one is ill.

I took the kids to the museum on saturday, which turned out to be the busiest I've seen the place in ages. I had forgotten about the Three Kings celebration, which is a big hispanic cultural event that draws hundreds of extra visitors to the museum. Sophie fell asleep in the car and I carried her around that way for about a half an hour until she woke up. I managed to not lose any of the kids in the crowds, thanks in part to the fact that we spent about half the time there in the back room hanging out with Lisa, who, along with Lexy, has developed a game called Stuck-to-the-Wall, which involves (you guessed it) getting stuck to the wall. Sophie tromped around and created mayhem. Then we went out and played on the lawn. Sophie loved watching the planes fly over (the museum is right under the flight path for planes landing at San Jose International airport). Nathan got kissed on the cheek by a girl and, predictably enough, hated it. Lexy got upset when the girls He and Nate were playing with didn't want to play 20 questions. Sophie ran around in circles and laughed.

cds I listened to while realizing that 2003 is really just an arbitrary number on a calendar: Marta Sebestyen "Apocrypha", Hagalaz' Runedance "On Wings of Rapture" and "Urd - That Which Was", Ale Moller "The Horse and the Crane", S:t Jacobs Chamber Choir w/Lena Willemark & Bo Hansson "Andetag", and Iva Bittova, Nederlands Blazers Ensemble "Dance of the Vampires"

Now: Marta Sebestyen "Muzsikas"

What good can come out of our experience? Maybe the next time a pregnant woman with similar symptoms ends up at this hospital, the staff will remember us and not be so puzzled. Maybe we'll end up saving a future resident of this planet from arriving before his or her appointed time.

Jen is still in the hospital, feeling queasy. I stopped by twice today - the first time she was asleep in a darkened (for once) room. I watched her sleep for a moment or two and quietly left. I'm glad she is getting some sleep. Speaking of sleep, I'm going to go do just that. It's been a long day.

Were into the second hour of the new year now. The little ones are sleeping restlessly in the next room. Jen is in the hospital, and has been since Christmas morning. I really started to worry on Christmas eve, when she drifted off into delerium while wrapping presents. At this point, she could barely talk because of her sore throat, and was starting to write strange things on the little Christmas labels before sticking them on presents. She insisted that she was all right as I helped her into our bed. She fell asleep immediately, and I kept an eye on her as her brother Jason and I finished wrapping and distributing presents as best we could.

The kids had a great time unwrapping their gifts in the morning. Jen was throwing up again, despite having nothing in her stomach. I took her to the emergency room, leaving the kids in the care of Jason and Cindy, Jen's mother (both of whom have been absolutely invaluable over the last few days). Once there, we were put in a room and seen relatively quickly. They nurses took some blood and ran some tests. We waited. The next thing we knew, a worried looking young doctor was telling us that Jen's platelet count was low and that they might have to induce labor. We were stunned. The baby isn't due to be born until April 15th. Here we were on Christmas day suddenly facing the prospect of forcing our girl out of the womb into a world that she wouldn't be prepared for for another three and a half months. They told us that they suspected Jen had a condition called HELLP syndrome, which is a form of pre eclamcia (sp?). Essentially, Jen's body was thought to be reacting against the pregnancy in a way that would lead to continued depletion of platelets and red blood cells (caused by constriction of her blood vessels), liver damage (possibly leading to rupture, we found out later), kidney damage, elevated blood pressure, and more. A doctor explained to us what to expect in an infant born this prematurely, and although she did her best to stress the positive side, a grim picture was painted. Babies born at 24 weeks have paper thin skulls, and are very susceptible to cranial bleeding. This bleeding can lead to a rather daunting number of physical difficulties, such as cerebal palsy, blindness, deafness, to mention a few
We ended up in another room, and they actually started the induction. Jen started having regular contractions, which she couldn't feel because of the muscle relaxants she was on. I called Veronika, our midwife, and she showed up about a half an hour later. The wait began. I called Jason and asked if he could bring a camera, which he did at about one in the morning. As horrible as things were, we still wanted to get pictures of the birth. The contractions continued. I fell asleep on the floor under some blankets. Veronika fell asleep in a chair. Nurses continued to extract blood at regular intervals to get new readings.
At some point, Jen summed it up very poignantly. Referring to our baby, she said, "she's so little. So perfect. So oblivious." Our baby, Harper, was on the verge of being introduced to an uncertain fate. She would undoubtedly have special needs. She would spend the first several months (at least) of her life in an incubator, assuming she survived at all. It felt like we were betraying her. It sounded like we had no choice. The only way to cure HELLP is to induce labor. Once the baby is born, the problem is solved. If the syndrome goes unchecked, it will kill the mother. A nurse told us that the only woman who had ever died in childbirth at this hospital had had HELLP. Her liver had ruptured.
Then the news came that subsequent blood tests showed platelet counts rising, and liver function improving slightly. This puzzled the doctors. HELLP doesn't get better without delivery. Doctors started conferring with each other. Second opinions were sought. I believe there may have been some arguments. Finally, a doctor, like an angel of mercy, came into the room and informed us that they were stopping the induction. We both wept with relief.
Over the following days, as Jen continued to improve, Cindy organized work shifts so that the other kids would be watched. She stayed overnight so I could stay with Jen, and so I could work. The kids are holding up surprisingly well, and I am learning first hand what Jen's day to day life is like (getting the kids to bed, comforting them in the night, and getting them up in the morning... oops, I mean them getting me up in the morning). I don't normally do this because of my strange work schedule. Cindy has been sleeping on the couch on the nights that I work, and Jason and Jen's half-sister Ashley have been helping out with morning duties, as has Karen. Karen, her husband Chris, and their daughters were here on friday (?) and then again on (minus Chris) monday.
It now looks like all of this mess has been caused by a reaction to the over the counter pain medication Aleve. They're keeping her in the hospital until everything is completely back to normal. Currently all of the counts are good, but she has a headache and a queasy stomach. We hope she comes home soon.

More to follow...