Aurora Borealis

Since I was in the hospital, I’ve been having Communion brought to me every week.  The first week at home it was a staff member from the parish who happens to live a street over from us.  It sounded like she would be the regular one coming, except for the second week, when she was going to be out of town.  The woman who filled in that week, MC as opposed to the original MM, has come now the following 2 weeks.  It’s good.  She is able to come earlier.  I think she goes to the 8:45 Mass like we do, so she typically gets here shortly after Mr. Tldz and Agent Murphy get home from church.  (MM apparently has a rather large and more distant route, so she came in the afternoon, as her last stop on the way home.)  MC is a bit younger, and last week she brought her 2 younger daughters.  This week all 3 girls came.  They do the readings.  It’s nice.  As they were getting ready to leave, MC casually asked if Agent Murphy would be starting preschool at All Saints this year.  I said probably not because we’re considering homeschooling.  She said they homeschool and have from the beginning.  I said this was good to know.  And she volunteered that if we go that route, she has a lot of stuff she could give us.  Hooray — it’s good to start lining up some potential resources for that adventure!

While we were having dinner tonight (Italian beef sandwiches from one of the St. Monica’s Circle women — moms group at church), one of our neighbors came by — the mom and her 13-ish-year-old daughter.  They live behind our across-the-street neighbors, and we met them when the across-the-street folks hosted an Easter egg hunt.  They said they’d heard I was on bedrest, so they came by with a rotisserie chicken and fruit — apples, oranges, strawberries, and cherries.  I thought they would have heard our situation from the across the street neighbors, but they said they were at the pool today and heard about it from a neighbor who lives a couple blocks from us who goes to our church and who brought us dinner last week.  (She also happens to be the wife of our at-large city councilman.)  Isn’t that nice?  Nothing that neighborly would have happened in our old neighborhood.  In part it may be because when I moved in there and for a number of years I was single and out of the house most of the time — working, MBA program, volunteering.  But I just don’t think that neighborhood ever felt quite that neighborly.  This is nice.

Aunty N. took Agent Murphy to speech therapy yesterday, his first time since May 3 — the day before this bedrest saga started.  His therapist says the break may have done him good, because he did really well.  We went back to an hour-long session instead of two 30-minute sessions.  He got a good 45 minutes in.  Miss L. says we should work particularly on the S sound, the W sound, and the H sound this week.  (We’re supposed to pinch his nose when working on S, because apparently yesterday he was trying to inhale instead of exhaling to make the sound.)  He just recently got a kittens book that he likes — it’s just pictures of a bunch of different kittens with their names.  And there are a lot of S sounds in the names, so that will help.

Today Mr. Tldz offered Agent Murphy a choice of animal crackers or gold fish for a snack.  The Agent indicated goldfish.  Mr. Tldz said “fish” a few times, and then Agent Murphy said it once.  Mr. Tldz said he heard all the sounds.  So the little guy is definitely on board with trying more.

As for the potty…  My plan had been to make a pretty intense effort at toilet training in May-July to see where we’d get by the time Garbanzo arrives.  Well, obviously that plan has changed, since I can’t really be chasing after the Agent and cleaning up accidents these days.  So we’re continuing with a low-key approach.  We still have his step-up potty seat in his bathroom, and he likes to sit on it.  He sits on it after bathtime every night, and a few times Mr. Tldz has been pretty sure that Agent Murphy has peed in the toilet.  And this morning the babysitter reported that the Agent indicated a desire to sit on the toilet, and then he peed!  Hooray, big boy!  Hopefully if we can just keep going at this level, once we get settled in with Garbanzo Bean at home finalizing potty training will come relatively quickly.

So the company that was in such a big hurry to hire has decided not to bring Mr. Tldz in for an interview after all.  (Not a big loss, as he already had concerns about whether the job was really a good fit for him.)  Unfortunately, the company he interviewed with last week has selected someone else.  Mr. Tldz was feeling rather discouraged there for a bit.  I pointed out that we’d been a little anxious about how to handle these early leads because there are some others out there that look more promising career-wise; and I told him that I’d prayed we’d know the right thing to do if we had to make a choice between an offer from one of these and pursuing something else.  So, I said, now it’s easy to know what to do.  Apparently neither of these is the job he’s meant to have.  Then a little bit ago he got scheduled for a phone interview with AT&T on Monday, and there’s still the Google technical phone interview the following Monday; so he’s feeling a little better now.

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?

I saw the perinatologist today for an ultrasound.  The placenta may have shifted slightly, but, in the words of the sonographer, a “sliver” is still covering the cervix.  I’ll have another ultrasound with them in two weeks to check the position of the placenta, and if it hasn’t cleared the cervix (they don’t seem hopeful of that) we’ll proceed with a scheduled C-section. 

Everything looks good with the baby.  Garbanzo is measuring at 4 pounds 12 ounces and 3 days ahead of my original due date.  The sonographer noted that Garbanzo has long legs.  (Agent Murphy used to stretch out his legs and show off on his ultrasounds.)  Amniotic fluid level and blood flow through the umbilical cord are good.  As the doc put it, “Everything with the baby is beautiful.”

When I see my OB next week, I need to talk with him about whether I should get another round of steroids (2 shots on 2 successive days) for lung maturation.  I had a round May 4-5 when I was in the hospital.  The perinatologist doesn’t really think I need another round this soon, and apparently the steroids don’t do any good after 34 weeks, so the latest I could get them is next Thursday-Friday.  Part of me wonders why we wouldn’t just do another round since it isn’t effective after 34 weeks, but if the lungs don’t show up as mature after that, we can’t go back in time and do the steroids.  Anyway, we’ll see what my doc says.

Then, during the 36th week, I’ll see the perinatologist for an amniocentesis the day before my OB wants to do the C-section.  This tests the baby’s lung maturity.  Apparently they really try to do the procedures just a day apart.  I asked why, as opposed to doing the delivery 2 or 3 days later.  The perinatologist told me it’s a legal thing, because if they have evidence of lung maturity, don’t deliver the baby right away, and then something happens, they’ll be held accountable — “Why didn’t you just deliver the baby?”  Gee, we don’t have any problem with medicine being driven by fear of litigation, do we?  Good grief.

In other news, we were glad to learn that Google wants to proceed with Mr. Tldz as a candidate.  Unfortunately, the earliest they could schedule him for an in-depth technical phone interview is the 14th.  Meanwhile, other applications just grind along.  No news on any yet.  As best as we could learn from MARTA (our state representative was able to rouse a pretty quick response from them) the position we’re expecting to hear back on this week will still be accessible under the current service modification proposal.

So pretty early in this job search, Mr. Tldz was contacted by a Google recruiter. Turns out he was seeking to fill a position outside of the Atlanta area, but he sent Mr. Tldz over to another recruiter who is filling Atlanta positions.  In the meantime, I contacted a friend from the IHM Moms group whose husband, B. works for Google.  (We had dinner at their house a little over a year ago, and Mr. Tldz and B. swapped a lot of unix jokes while C. and I just shook our heads.  So it was clear that B. has a similar technical background to Mr. Tldz’s, though it was also clear he’s now in some sort of managerial role, though we weren’t sure exactly what he does.)  I asked C. to forward Mr. Tldz’s resume to B. in case he was aware of any openings at Google or elsewhere, since he seemed to move in the right technical circles for that.  She said she was happy to do so.

Yesterday Mr. Tldz had a technical phone screening with the Google recruiter.  Near the end of it, the recruiter asked if Mr. Tldz knows anyone who works for Google.  Mr. Tldz gave B.’s name.  The recruiter stopped short and said, “Oh.  He’s the head of the Atlanta office.”  Oh.  Who knew?  The recruiter asked what the connection is and Mr. Tldz explained that they used to go to the same church, and he was quick to add that while he knows this fellow, they don’t  know each other well.

The recruiter also asked if Mr. Tldz has any other leads going.  When he said he does, he noted that the recruiter seemed to “get” that they might have to step up their process if they’re interested in Mr. Tldz.

Mr. Tldz got an e-mail from a recruiter last night.  He talked to him today about the job (located near the Lindbergh MARTA station, so that should be pretty accesible) and the recruiter wanted to meet him.  So thanks to Uncle R. and our neighbor across the street for driving Mr. Tldz up to the recruiter’s office in Alpharetta and watching Agent Murphy for a couple of hours, respectively.  (And the Agent came home with a bag full of fun hand-me-down toys!)  At one point in the interview, the recruiter said, “Not to be insensitive, but how do you do these things?”  So Mr. Tldz said, “Do you want to see a demo?” and pulled out the laptop and got busy.  The recruiter was won over.

The recruiter indicated that this company has been looking for several weeks and is getting anxious to have someone start — as in, if they had their way, someone would start next week.  So we’ll see how this plays out.

We sat on the front porch for a while this afternoon and watched the heavy rain come down.  Then Agent Murphy got to play with some toys from the special shelf, on top of his bookcase.  Tonight he played with Rufus, the stuffed red wolf (He was a table decoration at the wedding of Mr. Tldz’s groomsman.), and Hildegard, the stuffed German Shorthaired Pointer that we got because that’s The Dog’s breed and Hildegard looks a lot like The Dog.  Rufus and Hildegard seem to be pretty cozy with each other.

Agent Murphy kept pointing between Hildegard and The Dog and saying, “Yeah” or “Uh huh.”  Point to Hildegard’s head, point to The Dog’s head.  Point to Hildegard’s back, point to The Dog’s back.  Point to Hildegard’s ear, point to The Dog’s ear…  I wonder how long the likeness will keep him fascinated? It was cute.

And we read and re-read lots of books today.  Lately the Curious George board books have been very popular, but today we were quite into Once Upon a Potty until Mommy said I needed a break from pee-pee and poo-poo.  Row, Row, Row Your Boat was big today, too.  The Agent has been more willing to make and immitate sounds lately.  He says “Row row,” though it usually sounds more like “Woe woe.”  And he’s adding to his animal sounds — his standard “Aarrr” for a dinosaur, and now he has an impressive lion’s roar, and he barks like a dog and AT his dog, and he’s trying to quack like a duck, which sounds like “Kak kak.”

Mr. Tldz feels like his interview today went pretty well.  They say they’ll have interviewed all the candidates by Tuesday or Wednesday next week, so he should hear something after that.  Meanwhile, he has applied/is applying for 4 other positions.  Five positions in the first week of a job search — not bad.  So we’ll hope something good comes of one of these or another that’s right around the corner.

Got my appointment with the perinatologist set for next week.  That makes 3 doctor appointments in June for which I’ll need rides.

Our freezer arrived Monday night, so we’re starting to use that.  And I’ve lined up a babysitter for the 2 days in June that A. is out of town.