From Wit’s End

Running Errands: Meeting a contractor at the house, A dentist or doctor appointment, or dropping something off for repair somewhere in town. About once every one or two months.

Out to lunch: Either Stevie B’s Pizza, China Buffet or a local Mexican Restaurant (under duress from manager) with my associates, or No Name Deli downtown with one or two guys from church. About once every two or three weeks.

Allergy Shot: Leave at 11:45am, go downtown, read a few pages of Entertainment Weekly, get stuck once in each arm, stop at Andy & Ellie’s to pick up Jack, drop Jack off at home with Rachel, get back to work around 12:45pm. About once every ten days.

Rachel at the Pool: Rachel leaves to go swimming at the gym around 12:00pm. I leave work at 12:30pm, pick up Jack from Andy & Ellie’s, come home with Jack and have some lunch. Rachel comes home with wet hair and smelling of chlorine, and I go back to work, arriving at about 1:30pm. About once a week.

Staying in: Sandwich, cookies, chips and applesauce, with a healthy sprinkling of internet browsing and blogging. Two or three times a week.

Pollen,

Sweat,

Pinestraw, &

Static

You know how I know? He can directly imitate his Mommy and Daddy when they say “Abba” (“Abba” translated means “Daddy”) He’s also uttering other consonants like “ga”, “da”, etc., but “Abba” is the first sound that he can imitate from us.

…and things have been very busy. Hopefully I can make time to fill the last two months during the upcoming holiday weekend.

…for some serious down-time.

Posting has been sparse this week because we are preparing to go on vacation next week. Posting will go from skimpy to non-existent next week because we are going to be “all at sea”. See you at the next port!

Jack-Jack will wait for his parents to get back.

Well, it looks like Rachel and Jack got the cold that I got over about a week ago. And Jack just started teething, too, which is making feeding him interesting. He’s hungry, but it probably hurts to swallow sometimes, so things go pretty slowly about half the time, with much wailing and gnashing of … um … gums. We’ll make it, I guess.

To counter-balance the bad news, I’ll put up some pictures and a video or two this week, barring any paranoically-foreseen circumstances. (I’m feeling slightly better about things, having put away a certain amount of provisions against hardship. Whatever happens, I’ll definitely feel better on the 23rd, I’m pretty sure. Yeeesh.)

Not only has TulipGirl flattered me by tagging me for one of them “meme” things, but she’s even said it could be interesting. This is my first meme tag, so I hope I don’t disappoint:

1. One book that changed your life:
   
   

   “Lost in the Cosmos” by Walker Percy.

   Sunken in a depression induced by my life circumstances not meeting my expectations about five or six years ago, I found this book on a shelf and devoured it in record time. God used it to snap me out of my funk, change my attitude and outlook on life, and turn me in the right direction.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once:
   
   This one is tied between

   The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (and the Hobbit) by J.R.R. Tolkien
   
   - & -
   
   The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis.

   Which is not only multiple books, but multiple series of books, completely blowing away the intent of this question, I guess. I have ended up reading these two series about once every five to seven years.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island:
   

   The Bible

   …of course. Along with pencil and notepad for verse categorization, I hope. I suppose seven colors of highlighters would be too much to ask…

4. One book that made you laugh:
   
   My sense of humor is pretty sensitive, so I laugh at a lot of things in books — some of which aren’t intended to be funny, perhaps — but I have to answer this question with another series:

   The Complete Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz.

   Fifty years worth of classic humor.

5. One book that made you cry:
   
   I’m not very sure about this one, because usually it takes music to make me cry. Hmm… Maybe

   “The Path of Loneliness” by Elizabeth Elliot.

   …but that was a long time ago.

6. One book that you wish had been written:
   

   “Where Abraham Kuyper’s Holland Went Wrong and Why.”

   Have you seen Amsterdam lately?? By many accounts it used to be much much better. To be fair, I haven’t gone looking for a book on such a subject, so it may exist. If it does, I’d be interested in reading it.

   Oh, I just thought of another one:

   “BLACKOUT: Power Hates a Vacuum”

   A Tom-Clancy-type thriller that would explore the geo-political consequences of an EMP bomb going off over North America.

7. One book you wish had never been written:
   

   “The Red Badge of Courage” by Stephen Crane.

   A more BORING book was never written, in my experience. Thankfully, I was being homeschooled when I had occasion to read it, so I was able to talk my way out of finishing it.

8. One book you’re currently reading:
   

   Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson.

   Stephenson, starting with “Cryptonomicon” and continuing with the three-volume “Baroque Cycle”, has deftly merged two of my favorite genres, making a kind of “historical science fiction” that I can really get into.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:
   

   “Total Truth” by Nancy Pearcey & Philip Johnson.

   I’ve heard a lot about this book, and it definitely sounds like my cup of tea, but it hasn’t risen to the top of my book pile yet. Maybe this fall…

10. Now tag five people:
    • Manila Drive (either Andy and/or Ellie)
    • Curiosita (Sister-Bekah-in-Law)
    • Godward Posture (Dave’s a busy, busy man, but he may respond.)
    • Rednow (my Brother Dave, also pretty busy)
    • Slowmath (my Brother Tom)

P.S.– Answers to questions that weren’t asked:

I’m a big, big fan of the Inklings of Oxford. I got to mention two above (Lewis & Tolkien), but here are the others:

• Dorothy Sayers
• G.K. Chesterton, &
• Charles Williams.

All of their stuff is all good, all the time. Also check out a few of their most direct literary predecessors:

• George MacDonald
• T.S. Eliot

[It may be too soon to say this, but I think I may have the seed of a book or two in my head which could possibly be a literary descendant of the Oxford Inklings, as well as a philosophical descendant of Abraham Kuyper. Indeed, that is one of the reasons that this website exists. It could be a while yet, but I think it's in here somewhere....]

I got some kind of chest cold last weekend, and it’s been with me all week long. Heartburn, a sore throat, and a wicked cough were on tap for me this week. And it set off my asthma pretty badly, too. So I was “addicted” to Albuterol and Advair all week. And the propellant in the Albuterol gives me headaches when I take it all the time. And I’ve only been getting 6-7 hours of sleep every night.

I went to the Young Men’s Bible Study held at the church by Dr. Ferguson and Duff James on Tuesday morning, and since it was for young men, I brought Jack. They’re going to be skimming through Proverbs, and the first one this past Tuesday was pretty good. It was supposed to end at 7:45, but it went a little long.

So i was running a little late to “Aunt Ellie’s” house to drop off Jack, and I got pulled over and given a ticket for going 38mph in a 25mph zone. She gave me a break and made it out for just a little more than half the maximum (Probably because I had Jack and was trying to get him to Ellie’s) But I was pretty late for work.

Speaking of work, someone from our team is moving on to another job in about a week, and I’m taking over most of his duties after he leaves. So in my aforementioned condition I had to try to absorb a lot of information this week with only limited success.

All this, and Mercy has been relieving herself on the livingroom rug all week, probably out of jealousy of Jack.

So yeah, it has been a hard week. But today is being particularly nice to me to make up for it. I’m feeling a little bit like I’ve turned the corner on my cold — I think the Zinc lozenges I bought on Thursday evening helped in that respect. And it’s raining softly outside, so I don’t have to mow the lawn until later. And Rachel made muffins with blackberry filling and fried eggs for breakfast. And my music is playing, and it looks like I might have time today to buy a new pair of slacks, and/or try the video capture box I bought a few weeks ago, and/or continue to catalog my coin collection.

It may be going crazy out there, and the world may or may not be about to irrevokably change, but there’s a cool breeze blowing outside in the middle of August in South Carolina, and that’s a miracle. And if one miracle can happen, why not another? And if miracles can happen, then Love exists. And if Love exists, then everything is going to be all right eventually.

I have some pictures that I should put up, both of Jack’s baptism and Grandmother McCune’s surprise 80th birthday party. But there are only so many lucid, non-working hours in a day. I’ll get to ‘em. Your patience is appreciated.

UPDATE: They’re up, here and here.

…Jack either wore himself out yesterday, or that last “double-feeding” last night filled him up really well, or both, because he slept all the way through the night last night for the second time. Huzzah.

Nik (Rachel’s brother and Jack’s uncle) is staying with us this week. For the second year, he’s staying with one of his sisters here in Columbia so that he can attend VBS at our church. So Jack will have a companion, and Rachel will have a little assistant for the week, at least for the afternoons.

Well, I’m not quite as bad as James Lileks is (click here and scroll down about halfway to see what I mean), but I do have a certain neurosis about preserving my own personal history on digital media. This is why I blog. Before I blogged, I had a newsletter. While I was was porting old blog entries over to this space, I decided to see if I couldn’t put my old newsletters here too, even if only as scanned JPG files. So I took an inventory of the old hard copies, and I found good news and what I thought was bad news. The good news was that I had translated three of my old newsletters (1996, 1997, and 1998) into HTML already and backed them up on CD. The bad news was that I couldn’t find a single copy of one of my other newsletters in the office (this is not a big surprise, considering the current state of our office), and I thought that it was totally lost. This seriously bummed me out.

A few nights ago, I couldn’t get to sleep, despite the weariness caused by Jack’s infliction of a new sleep pattern on us. I got back up and looked more carefully through the filing cabinet one more time. Bingo!! I have them all now, so watch for the links at the bottom of the sidebar of this page to go live one at a time over the next few weeks. And if you happen to be a former Kindergarten teacher who just recently found an old student on the internet, you can now catch up on the last ten years of my life one page at a time, if you’d like.

UPDATE 06/07/06: 1999 Newsletter is up. Four down and four to go.

UPDATE 06/08/06: The 2000 newsletters are up, both for Winter and for Summer. Two more down and two to go.

UPDATE 06/09/06: The 2001 Newsletter is up. This one is in HTML format, instead of just JPEG [Ideally, I'd like to put all the newsletters in HTML format, but I'll have to finish that little project up another time]. The 2002 Newsletter is actually up in HTML format also, but since it was the transition to my presence on the web, I have to fix the links in it before I make the link to it live. So only one more little piece of personal history to go, and then I can get back to posting present things…

UPDATE 06/10/06: There, the 2002 newsletter is posted and properly linked into the pertinent blog posts. Now we’re all filled in from 1996 to 2001. From 2002 to the present will happen a little more gradually, I think, since those archive links are already live, and you can go see them whenever you like already. Enjoy.

Me mum took this one with her spiffy cellphone. Thus the “neo”.

Rachel has been put under general anaesthesia (I think I spelled that right) even as I type this for surgery to drain and pack the aforementioned hematoma. Lord willing , all will go well and she will be out and recovered in about two hours. Pray on, fellow saints, in Jesus’ name.

I put my plaid shirt back on over my t-shirt so that I could have some things in its pocket close to my heart: Rachel’s three rings, one for our courtship, one for our engagement, and one for our marriage; Rachel’s glasses, and the two polaroid pictures taken by the nurse of my son Jack.

Jack is seven pounds, six ounces, and he is on a precautionary regimen of antibiotics, because apparently he had a low white blood cell count.

Rachel is recovering, and it will be a slow process. My amazing wife has come out of the ordeal of birth with flying colors emotionally. A cooler character during contractions would be hard to find. She blew out hundreds of “candles”, and hardly made a sound but what was completely understandable under the circumstances. I told her, “Tom Cruise would be proud of you,” and she smiled and rolled her eyes.

Physically, however, it is going to take her a while to recover. My adrenalin-addled brain all of a sudden can’t remember the complex terms, but I do remember the acronym H.E.L.L.P., the last two letters of which stand for “Low Platelets”, and that it has something to do with a weird slight malfunction of the liver that the nurse told me is treated with the birthing process, sleep, and magnesium sulfate. And yet I still can’t remember the name (anyway I probably couldn’t spell it even if I knew it). My mom and/or my father-in-law probably know exactly what I’m describing, and should feel free to leave a comment to that effect on this post if they wish.

Between that and a hematoma, she has lost a good bit of blood. Her pulse is fast and her blood pressure is low, but even in a few hours since I noticed that, they both have improved a little bit. So she isn’t out of the woods yet, but she has a map, a compass and a sherpa guide of a very good doctor. It may take time (possibly as much as a week? Who knows…), but I will have my whole family back safe at home again, Lord willing.

I have palpably felt your prayers fill the room and strengthen all of us.

…And I got to watch just about a half hour ago as the nurse gave Jack his first bath ever. And as he warmed back up on his warming table in the Special Care Nursery, I got to talk with him and sing him to sleep. Oh Heavenly Father, what have I done to deserve such gifts??

The doctor consented by phone to give her a drug for pain relief about an hour ago, along with some anti-nausea medication. But she still isn’t comfortable in pretty much any position for long, especially lying down, in which she would have the greatest chance of getting some sleep. The interaction between her changing positions frequently and one of the medications she has taken is making her stomach want to move in the wrong way, but she doesn’t have anything left in there to lose. The most comfortable position she has found is with her knees on a pillow on the floor and her head on the bed. This is the position in which they found her mostly asleep before they decided to mess with her.

Please, Lord, give the medical professionals wisdom so that Rachel can get some kind of rest and relief. Please destroy the infection in Jesus’ name.

UPDATE: 3:30am – Things have finally settled down a bit. Rachel is lying down more often than not, and it seems like we’ll both be getting some sleep.

5:10am – Rachel wakes up and calls the nurse, saying that she is having some discharge. The nurses check her out and take some fluid for analysis. They also take her temperature: 98.2!!! It could be that the fever has finally broken! She has been hovering around 99-100deg F, even with countermeasures in place, but I think things are finally getting better. Rachel’s average temperature is usually about 97.5 deg F, so she is still a little warm by her standards, but I think the prayer-enhanced medicine is finally having an effect! Praise the Lord!!

…because Blogger is blocked by LMC‘s wireless network proxy, and my personal blog is on Blogger, I can’t post the current momentous events going on in our family any other way than by posting it here. So watch this space for updates about the arrival of our son Jack.

UPDATE: If you are just joining us, click here to find out how we got to the hospital.

[I'm sure afterwards I'll move what ever posts I write to the proper place, and then I will probably figure out how to get my personal blog the heck off of blogger. A word of advice: when you figure out that you want to start blogging, you may start out using blogger, but once you get into it and start getting serious about blogging, you will find Blogger to be inadequate to your needs. When that time comes, get into WordPress. It is an eminently superior Content Management System (a.k.a. blogging tool), and you will not regret moving to it at all. I'm done ranting.]

Anyway, stay tuned…

The doctor said this morning that he wanted Rachel to be without a fever for 24 hours before he lets her out of the hospital. She got another dose of antibiotics by IV early this morning, so it’s going to be at least another 24 hours. Please continue to pray for Rachel and little Jack who is still waiting to be born.

Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity postulates that as one approaches a black hole, time slows down. I haven’t personally experienced such a phenomenon with a black hole, but I am (and I presume Rachel is also) experiencing it regarding the arrival of our firstborn son. It seems like the closer we get to whatever day that Jack will come into our world, the slower time is going. It’s not an unpleasant sensation, but it is a strange one. I am anticipating with great relish the moment that Jack is in Rachel’s arms for the first time, wide awake and content, and the flow of time will come to an absolute halt.

We will bask in that moment.

…likely after that, the Space-Time continuum will snap back to normalcy and time will clip along at a normal pace, perhaps even faster than before…

…but I am looking forward to that moment when our world will stop turning … it may only be a moment, but for me that moment will last an infinite amount of time.

With little Jack on the way, Rachel has decided that she would like to have an outlet here. So it is with great pleasure that I welcome my lovely and gracious to this space! With “J-day” quickly approaching, we will probably both have more to say From Wit’s End. Here are some things that she wrote about last year that never quite got published:

• June 28th, 2005: Here it goes…
• June 28th, 2005: Terraces.
• July 4th, 2005: Jungle.

Last night, I had a very vivid dream about a family whose websites I know pretty well, but whom I have never actually met.

Tulipgirl & Discoshaman and their kids came over to visit. I looked out the window to see them walking around out in the field and garden in front of the house (Note: the house in this dream was nothing like my real house). I’m looking forward to meeting them. I have a big family gathering going on at the house, but I go out and meet them anyway. They suggest that we go out to lunch, and I agree, hoping that I can get back in time for dinner at my house.

We go to a very nice restaurant in a very nice hotel. Our table is near the edge of a big room with a high ceiling and there are many other big round tables in the room, all with people at them having elegant dinners. We are also having a nice dinner and a nice conversation. All the time we have been talking, I have been trying to catch their real names when they happen to use them in conversation, but whenever they do use their real names, they mumble them so that I can’t really make it out. Some time during this dinner conversation, it occurs to me to turn around to see what is behind me: a very elegant parlor type room that is brightly lit and completely open to the grand dining room. Sometime during dinner, Tulipgirl gets up and says she has to leave. Then it’s time for dessert. Dessert is deep-fried whole almonds, each wrapped in locks differently-colored hair — there are blond ones, brunette ones, and red-haired ones. I carefully take the almonds out of the locks of hair to eat them.

After dessert, Discoshaman tells the kids its time to go. I ask him if I can catch a ride back to house, and he says, sure. We go out to the parking lot and he uses a remote control on his keys to start the engine of a huge, clean, very-modern-looking dump truck. I get to ride in the back. After I’ve climbed in, my cell phone goes off for just a second or two, and then stops. I read the text on the screen which states that I am out of range to receive a signal, but all I have to do is go 6 blocks north to get a signal. I try to call to Disco in the cabin to tell him this…

…and then I wake up. That was a weird dream, but it was pretty cool.

My parents were here today, and getting caught in the crossfire of the conversation between my dad and my contractor/good friend, I realized that I’m going to need to be less involved in my church. They were talking about the necessity of being able to keep one’s promises, in the following order:

1. to God
2. to your family (spouse first, then children)
3. to your church
4. to your employer
5. to your government

While they were talking, I realized that with my son on the way, my priorities were going to have to shift. But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted them to and the more that I was glad that they were going to shift. Recently, I have been very involved in various activities in and for my church. One week, Rachel noticed that I had something church-related for almost every day of that particular week–

• Sunday: Choir for both morning and evening services
• Monday: Meeting for breakfast with a friend/mentor who is a deacon at my church.
• Tuesday: Small group Bible study in the evening with my wife.
• Wednesday: Choir practice for morning choir
• Thursday: Tutoring of underprivileged children, arranged by the church.
• Friday: Early Morning Men’s Bible Study

Weeks like this one, and the past month of ushering and choiring at the same church service, have been fun and great and glorious and all, but things will be changing, and I think that I want them to. Talking with my folks about it at dinner tonight, I finally put a word to this feeling of being too busy: I’m homesick. I realized that I have likely been confusing priority #1 and priority #3 above, and that needs to be fixed. I want to be at home, darn it, and not go out so darn much, even if it is in service to the church. This is like due to the convergence of at least two things: A nifty new kitchen and den and the novelty thereof, a little one on the way and the nesting instinct therefrom, and the fact that there are a few rooms in my house, both virtual and real, that are disaster areas and desperately need attention.

So yeah, something’s going to give, at least if I have anything to say about it, which I do. Here’s to Home Sweet Home, and the happy operation thereof.

My parents also were staying in town this past weekend, though they stayed on post and then with family friends when they first arrived on Thursday. Rachel’s folks left on Sunday afternoon, and my folks moved into our guest room tonight and will stay until Tuesday morning.

My parents are the fourth straight set of guests here at Wit’s End in the span of about 15 days. It started two weeks ago, with a missionary care specialist from OMS International, and then a week ago, there was a missionary couple dedicated to missionary pastoral care from OM (Operation Mobilization). Then Rachel’s parents, brother & sister for Friday and Saturday nights, and then my folks for Sunday and Monday nights. It has been great fun, but after so much activity, it’s good to have the promise of a quiet house this week.