CR so far (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

CR is doing worse slightly, so they have upped the steroids and the doctor approved him for 6 months homebound schooling. They have some theories as to what it is, and think it might be a medicine they need to put him on (and forgot), or it might be a severe mold issue. They took a lot of blood out of him for testing allergen counts as well as deep allergy testing purposes (they can't do a skin reaction on him because of the steroids). He is going to have a CT scan for his lungs instead of just his head. Now we just have to convince the school to agree to home schooling, and we're set as far as that goes. I suspect CR will lose his job which he only had for a few weeks, but oh well. :(

He is going to move into my den. The cleaning of my den is going very badly. I had so much packed in here, that it's unfolding in mess like unwadding a tight ball of paper in the fact it covers more space with the same amount of stuff. I have generated 5 bags of trash, packed several storage bins, and it still looks like I have done very little. It's really depressing.

Lastly, an apology might be in order. Sorry, patches023, but I was late getting home and I abruptly left you while rushing for the train. It sounded like you ran into someone saying goodbye to me, and a nasty exchange ensued between him and you. I hope that wasn't your voice, and it was some other woman's, but if I caused you to run into that guy, I deeply apologize. I also apologize for sort of ending our conversation in mid sentence when I realized that I needed to be on that train. I am scatterbrained on the Metro, ask mysticpaws. It was nice seeing you, though! Posted in: asthma , cr , hospital , medical , mess , metro , room

Massive cleanup (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

Teenager's rooms are like toxic waste dumps. Dear sweet god. I found an entire loveseat and two end tables in there! A new hole in the drywall... and sadly some mold and mildew due to an air conditioner that was leaking. That couldn't have been helping his asthma, which I why I was cleaning it the first place. I have cleaned about 80% of it now, and hope to have the rest cleaned by tonight. What a mess! I tried everything short of child abuse to get that kid to clean his room, but it was like pushing rope.

Sadly, me complaining about it HIGHLY hypocritical. My room, at that age, was in a terrible state of affairs. As a kid, I was asked to clean my room frequently, which I did with the usual "make it visually clean," with lots of junk pushed under furniture or stacked in the closet. Thinking of my mental state at the time, and why I did this, I think could be broken down into the following thought process:

1. I did not understand WHY my room should be cleaned.
2. I did not want to spend time doing this when I could be doing other things.
3. I had to clean the rest of the house all the time, and my room was my vacation from that.
4. I always knew where everything was, anyway. The system sort of worked like "what I can reach I need, everything else under a pile or tossed aside."
5. Putting things away was often inconvenient. When I washed my clothes, for instance, they could stay in hampers. Folding them and putting them away was time consuming.
6. I had low self confidence and didn't care how I appeared to others.
7. My parents nagging me led me to subconsciously resist because I didn't like them very much, and had no desire to please them.

These things ended when I moved into my own room at the FanTek house. While my room was never "clean and neat," it never got as bad as it got back home. Then, people saw my room, and I gave a damn. Pride in my appearance and things just came on its own, when I was ready.

So, to my readers, please help me round out my perception of rooms.

1. Was your room usually messy or clean as a little kid?
2. Was your room usually messy or clean as a teen?
3. Did your parents make you clean you room at those ages? If so, what was the motivation/threat/bribe?
4. How do you/will you approach this with your kids? Obviously, if you never plan to have kids, you don't need to answer. Posted in: cr , mess , room

Productive weekend (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

My arthritis is killing me, especially my arms, wrists, and hands. My sinuses are agchk! I am also so cold for some reason.

But this weekend I got a lot done. In order to avoid paying taxes I don't owe, I had to find my old e-Trade paperwork, which I did find, so I'll probably give them a call this week to yell at them. But in the process, I shredded almost five 13 gallon trash bags worth of paperwork. In addition to some old bills I had, I had a lot of catalogs, convention materials, and printouts of various projects I had at work. When I left AOL, I sort of did this whole paperwork dump to a box that contained work reviews, network diagrams, project charts, expense reports and the like. I went from 5 boxes down to one and a half. It felt good.

I also cleaned out a hallway closet somewhat. One of the reasons I clean is that when others clean for me, the "out of sight, out of mind" mentality seems to predominate. Thus, I had a hallway closet that was little more than a trash heap. I am not kidding: I ran into broken yogurt containers, pizza boxes, broken bottles, plastic cups, old busted shoes, crushed boxes, almost a dozen plastic soda bottles ranging from 16oz to 2 liter, and residue from a Hollywood-themed party I had in 2004. There was also a motley collection of old video game systems that date back to the NES and Sega 64 (none of them work, I am sure, but I boxed them anyway). That closet generated 2 bags of trash on its own.

I also straightened out the utility room in our house. I had made quite a mess upgrading our home network to GB LAN and re-installing my SETI array, and so I cleaned that up, and the result you see to the right. There's still a bunch of crap to throw away, but now it's not all on the floor anymore :).

The rest of the night, I played Dungeon Keeper 2. I hadn't played that in a long while, and I saw on a board how to play it on XP (when I upgraded to XP a few years ago, it wouldn't play, which made me very sad) with a patch. I really love that game. That and Quake 2 are games I have never found a decent replacement to. Overlord looks a lot like DK2, as far as gameplay, and Serious Sam kinda replaced Quake 2 for me, but not really.

Of course, I still haven't found a decent replacement to M.U.L.E. either, so I am stuck in the past :)

1280 x 1024 Posted in: closet , dungeon keeper , games , housework , mess , seti