Aurora Borealis

We are overjoyed to welcome Mrs. Tldz home as of yesterday. A most wonderful Father’s Day present. Both the Dog and the Agent showed their approval.

This afternoon, I accepted an offer of employment for a new opportunity to begin June 28. I am relieved and excited to begin the new assignment. I got a call later in the afternoon from one of my new co-workers, asking about what I would need to have set up in terms of software. I gave him the list and explained the various options and how to choose among them.

In other news, the Cadette and Mrs. Tldz are both doing well. The cadette continues to learn valueable life skills in the NICU and we are very proud of her progress. Mrs. Tldz, for her part is making great strides in recovering from her operations. Her spirits seemed quite good as I left her to come home this evening. The Agent stopped in for a visit with Auntie N. just before his speech therapy appointment. N tells us he did quite well and is still saying some of the new words he practiced in the therapy appointment. He was pretty clearly missing mommy and daddy today.

Mrs. Tldz gave birth today by c-section to our baby girl Cardinal Cadette. We went back and forth on whether she is Cadette Cardinal or Cardinal Cadette. But we are sure about the rank of cadette and the fittingness of the cardinal. The cardinal is the state bird of my home state and cardinals of the Catholic church wear red robes. Our cardinal came to us through blood, so things that are red seem rather appropriate.

To all of you who have prayed and helped us out through this adventure, we offer our most humble thanks. We could not have done it without you.

In other news, I have a follow up phone interview tomorrow. This interview is with the hiring manager, who is on vacation in India. Apparently I passed muster with the technical team. That’s good news. I’ve still got lots of other leads going, including a phone interview that I had this morning that went well enough that they want me to come in for an in person interview.

We appreciate your prayers on my behalf as I look for a new opportunity. I’m also very thankful to those of you who have given me rides to job interviews and those of you who have watched the Agent for me while I did various job hunting things.

At about four o’clock this morning, Mrs. Tldz woke up and reported that she was bleeding. As per standing instructions from the ob, we called 911 and she has been taken to the hospital. I am here at the house to watch Agent Murphy and to catch up on some chores we had not quite gotten to in preparation for Garbanzo’s arrival.

At this time, I do not know if Mrs. Tldz will be delivered of a child or kept at the hospital for monitoring until our scheduled date of 6/29. In either case, I do know that she will not come home until there is a child born.

All, please pray for her health and the health of Garbanzo Bean.

Some people have commented that it seems like we have quite a cloud hanging over us, given the bedrest situation and Mr. Tldz’s unemployment.  I guess that’s true, but maybe there really always is a silver lining. 

 For one thing,  having to lay around and not do much has meant that I have finally finished Agent Murphy’s baby book (with the exception of 3rd-5th birthdays and first schooling type stuff) — something I haven’t been able to accomplish in the past year and a half or more.  Hooray — just in time to start on another one!  (I’ve now set myself up a file for keeping notes for the various entries in Garbanzo Bean’s book, so perhaps I can be a bit more organized with it.) 

Another thing is that we’ve gotten to know people at our church and in our neighborhood who we probalby wouldn’t have met, or wouldn’t have met or gotten to know as well as soon.  Okay, so this really isn’t the way I would have chosen to make new friends; but we’ll take what good we can get.

Speaking of getting to know people at church…  Mr. Tldz picked up our copy of the new parish directory today after Mass.  It looks really nice, and a chunk of the parishioners do have their pictures in it, so it will help to be able to put names with faces, and to have contact info for folks all in one place.

Mr. Tldz and S. had good luck knocking out all the errands on the list (with the exception of a haircut for Mr. Tldz, but we already have someone lined up to take him for that tomorrow morning) last night after going to the MARTA hearing.  I’m impressed, as they didn’t leave the MARTA thing until almost 6:00 and the store they went to for the baby furniture closed at 7:00; but they got there, looked at the options and made a purchase.

They got a great deal, too.  A set (crib, changing table, tall chest of drawers) for half off, apparently because the color (amber) is being discontinued.  Hurrah!  From the store handout, it looks to be a very attractive color.  The way Garnbanzo’s room is painted, white furniture would probably have “matched” a little better;  but, truth be told, my preference really is for warm wood, especially for a set that we’ll hopefully be able to pass down.  (Unlike Agent Murphy’s set — that’ll teach us to try to buy at the low end of the price spectrum.)  This morning I scheduled the delivery for early afternoon tomorrow.  I can’t wait to see it!

Then they went to BRU and got all the stuff I was looking for there.  The thing they struggled with was a neutral baby outfit for photo at the hospital and/or coming home.  From what Mr. Tldz described, what they settled on was the best option.  But to me it looks to lean heavily to the boy side, and since I’ve recently started feeling pretty strongly that this Garbanzo is a girl (after going months with no sense at all of the gender) I may try to poke around on line to see if I can find another option.  But I do recall from looking myself before that truly neutral items are pretty tough to find.  There’s tons of girl stuff, a little bit of boy stuff, and “neutral” stuff that does lean a little more masculine — I guess to make up for the discrepancy between girl and boy stuff.

This morning, very early (to her credit), our substitute babysitter called in sick.  She was supposed to work 8-noon, and then again this afternoon from 4-8.  She apparently woke up in the middle of the night with some strange and worrisome chest pains.  She was going to the ER to be checked out, and she said she hoped to be able to come in the afternoon and would let us know around mid-day.  Fortunately, Mr. Tldz didn’t have anything formal scheduled for the morning, but he did have follow-up calls, e-mails, etc. to do. 

I called J^3 from our old parish.  A couple of weeks ago, Mrs. J. had called and volunteered that she could watch Agent Murphy during the day if we needed that.  She is regularly keeping her grandson during the week in the summer.  He’s only 5 months older than the Agent and she said she’d really like to find a playmate for him.  So lucky for us, she was able to take Agent Murphy on short notice, although her schedule was a little strange today.  She picked him up around 9:30 or 10:00 and brought him back around 1:00, which gave Mr. Tldz time to do the job search things he needed to do.  J^3 called this evening to report that Agent Murphy was very easy to take care of and they like him and they think he likes them.  He’s not always easy for Mommy, so it’s good to know he’ll behave better for others.

Fortunately the babysitter is okay and she was able to come for the afternoon.  We don’t usually need that, but the community exchange on the MARTA route modifications was today.  S. took Mr. Tldz to that, and since we were able to line up an actual babysitter we worked up a list of some other errands they might run if the MARTA thing didn’t take too long.  They’re still not back yet, so hopefully they’re having some success getting miscellaneous baby gear we need and picking out baby furniture.

Okay, I haven’t seen video of the controversial play, but everything I’ve read and heard says the runner was clearly out at first base by like a step and a half.  If it was that obvious, why wasn’t the call appealed to another umpire with a different angle on the play?  Am I missing something?

Agent Murphy spent the morning with a friend from the pro-life committee at our former parish.  Originally, they were going to go to Stone Mountain so R. could do her normal walking routine and then stop by the playground.  But given the rain, they changed their plans.  We’re not sure exactly where all he went.  There was talk of the library and maybe a stop at Chick-fil-A.  We have received a report that he attended daily Mass at our old parish, where he was warmly greeted by some of our friends.  And he came home with two balloons.  He does love balloons!

This afternoon Mr. Tldz and Agent Murphy went with one of the brother Knights to run a few errands.  The other day Mr. Tldz went with a former co-worker and purchased a laptop.  We decided that’s an investment we needed to make given the impending return of his work laptop and since our desktop is upstairs and Mr. Tldz’s office is downstairs.  So a laptop will allow him to have some concentrated job search periods in his office free from distractions by the Agent.  And during past job searches Will’s found it useful to take a laptop with him on interviews.  That way, if someone is skeptical about if/how he can do something, he can just pull out the laptop and demonstrate rather than having to try to explain.  

Well, the docking station he purchased with the laptop turned out to be not compatible with his laptop, so the docking station had to be returned.  And since he was able to find a laptop he likes for much less than we anticipated, we decided to go ahead and purchase a chest freezer.  The more we thought about it, the more we realized it would add value in terms of our grocery budget and food preparation.  So that purchase was made today and the freezer will be delivered on Monday.