Journal Entry: March 12, 2009

Tomorrow’s my anniversary. I will have been married for…well, basically forever. Who’s counting?

On Tuesday night, T– picked up pizza and D– came over to share it with us. I spent the whole evening working on fileserver stuff. D– worked on a laptop, trying to replace a bad harddrive, and he hung around late working on the rebuild.

AB had a rough night. She kept waking up crying (just bawling), and I would go in there to check on her and she didn’t seem terribly shaken up (she’d come sit in my lap, back straight, and just sort of stare at the wall in front of her), but she was inconsolable. I’d try hugging her for a while, and then eventually put her back in bed and give her a pacifier, which always shut her up.

It was weird. I really wanted to figure out what was making her cry, but I couldn’t find any indication. Once she had the pacifier she would fall asleep, though, and stay that way for fifteen minutes or half an hour before she started crying again.

I finally went to bed around midnight, and I’m sure T– got up to take care of her at least a couple more times during the night. When I got up for work on Wednesday, AB was already awake and she followed me around the kitchen while I got ready, but there was no real indication she’d had a bad night.

Odd.

After work last night, I got home to find my little sister there with her two girls. We decided to go to Ole for dinner (a recent favorite of mine), and D– and my sister’s husband joined us there. Near the end of dinner, when we were all mostly done, AB got down from her chair and started dancing around. I asked her to get back in her chair until we were all finished, and instead she ran for it.

I don’t like to chase her when she does that, because then it’s just a game. But she ducked around a corner in a busy restaurant and I sure didn’t want to let her out of my sight. So I followed her, casually as I could, and guided her back around in a big loop until she headed back to the table.

Unfortunately, T– missed her opportunity to grab her, and instead of going back to her place at the table, AB darted past it and into the restaurant’s kitchen. I was only a step behind her at that point and I used my most authoritative voice to tell her to, “Get back here!” But, yeah, that’s not so effective.

So instead I had to make a sprint into a busy restaurant kitchen and scoop my little girl up before she could get hurt. I felt sick for half an hour afterward.

After dinner T– and my sister took the kids to church, and D– and my brother-in-law came back to the house. I think we may have bored Jeff, but D– and I just did what we normally do. I turned on something stupid on the TV, and I worked on my laptop while D– read something on his iPhone. Probably terrible hosting on my part, but I was still thinking of all the horrible things that could have happened to AB.

T– got home and we watched Flight of the Conchords before D– left, then T– and I watched How I Met Your Mother and Rules of Engagement before going to bed relatively early. For the first time in a while, I got a good night’s sleep.

Today at work, I noticed something. I’ve got about ten friends and family members who I sometimes chat with through Google Mail, and when things get slow at work I’m very much in the habit of opening up GMail to check on their status indicators, see if anyone’s around for some idle chit chat.

Today at one point I did that, and saw that half of those people were online, but labeled as Do Not Disturb. And I know that most of them, these days, just leave that setting on by default. Two more use invisible mode to just flag themselves as Offline all the time. Yesterday I had a two-hour conversation with someone, and the whole time the bottom of my chat panel said, “[Name] is offline. They’ll receive your chat next time they log on.” The Do Not Disturb message says in angry red, “[Name] is busy. You may be interrupting.” I get to stare at that the whole time I’m talking with them.

I don’t know. If I were in a better mood, it probably would have been a little ego boost knowing that so many people who put up “Do Not Disturb” signs are still willing to chat with me — or at least a practical recognition that those status indicators are really for the world at large. Something about today, though, it just struck me as lonely. I wish there more green dots around.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

2 Replies to “Journal Entry: March 12, 2009”

  1. Sorry I wasn’t around to gchat today! I have not excuse. Loneliness is annoying because no matter how true or false it is, your heart and mind just can’t get the facts. Just remember that there are lots of people who love you and the loneliness will pass.

    Happy Anniversary. Love you.

  2. Well I just changed mine back to available from busy. I just hadn’t thought about it till now. I’m really not on here much anymore anyway… It’s not you, I promise! :-p
    Oh, and babies are weird with their sleep. Don’t worry about AB. She’s probably growing!

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