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(Lee McKusick on May 5, 2008 7:35 PM) Very interesting; I'd have loved to hear the talk to go along with it. I especially like the whole timeline idea; very cool to see where it's come from (ahh, nostalgia...) and what's emerging.

(kellyinkansas on May 7, 2008 10:47 AM) Thanks, Liz!

[S]ome people will one day try to convince you that what I’ve done here is some sort of sickening betrayal of your childhood, and what those people fail to recognize is that I am doing the exact opposite. This is the glorification of your childhood, and even more than that this is a community of women coming together to make each other feel less alone. You are a part of this movement, you and all of the other kids whose mothers are sitting at home right now writing tirelessly about their experiences as mothers, the love and frustration and madness of it all. And I think one day you will look at all of this and pump your fist in the air.

Read the whole thing.

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(kgs on May 3, 2008 8:03 PM) The reality is we don't know another person's family unless we're in it day by day. (Out of over two hundred posts... only a couple were critical? And these people were labeled the "haters"?) Not saying any more about that... but lived through it.

(Liz Lawley on May 4, 2008 8:42 AM) The criticism came from elsewhere, I believe, not so much from commenters on her site. If you do a Google News search on "Heather Armstrong", you'll see some of what she's responding to. She talks about the hate mail she gets in this WSJ piece.

Today they moved grandma to the rehab floor of the nursing home associated with her assisted living facility. They’re not terribly optimistic about her being able to go back to the assisted living facility, but we’re going to hold onto her room there for another month just in case she proves them wrong (it wouldn’t be the first time she’s surprised us). The nursing home (sorry, “skilled nursing facility”) is considered one of the best in the area, but it still depresses me terribly every time I walk through the door.

Tomorrow, at least, I have no classes to teach, and few meetings to attend. There will be time to sleep a little later, take the dog for the long walks she’s been missing this week, and maybe even eat some healthy food. I feel better just thinking about it.

(And mom, if you’re reading this, you’re an angel. What I’ve done this week is nothing compared to what you’ve been doing. Grandma’s so lucky to have you.)

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Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

—Robert Frost

I probably could have posted this a few days earlier; the daffodils bloomed on my birthday (Wednesday), and they brighten my mood every time I look at them.

I'm enjoying the weather all the more because I spend so much time every day walking the dog--and letting her romp in the backyard. She can be a handful sometimes, but mostly she's delightful.

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(kellyinkansas on Apr 23, 2008 12:19 PM) Happy Birthday, Liz!

Title: Ludocapitalism – A few ways of making real money from a virtual economy, and what they mean
Time: 7:30pm
Location: RIT College of LIberal Arts auditorium (06-A205).

Julian is smart and funny and provocative, and the talk promises to be wonderful—please join us!

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Today I read a horrifying NY Times article about a young man being bullied in an Arkansas school district, and I couldn’t help but wonder why these parents continue to send their child to that school. To make a point? At what cost?

To homeschool a young child requires privilege—enough money and resources to be able to serve as both parent and teacher, enough patience and social support to be able to manage your kids 24 hours a day without public school teachers to take them off your hands for 8 hours a day.

But to homeschool a teenager requires far less of that privilege. I hope that Billy Wolfe’s parents can find a better solution for their son than sending back into that horrific environment day after day.

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(Hockey Librarian on Mar 25, 2008 9:38 AM) Good luck with that big change! I was home schooled from 8th grade on, I've seen the benefits first hand. Lane is very lucky to have parents willing to take this task on.

(W. Ian Blanton on Mar 25, 2008 11:37 AM) Articles like that are one of my responses when people ask "But what about socialization?" when they ask me about our decision to Homeschool. Anyways, Welcome aboard the homeschooling "bus", and I hope it works well for Lane!

(sesgaia on May 1, 2008 10:26 PM) wow, I get the part about not having to "watch" teenagers 24 hours a day like you would a young child, but you are still both parent and teacher. In my experience of working with, and raising teens, the challenges they face are enormous because of the arenas they deal with: cultural, political, sexual, identity, career, college, and on and on. I'm not saying homeschooling is a bad idea. My sister homeschools her six kids. I am saying don't underestimate how intense it is to raise teenagers who are trying to find themselves, who fall in love, who are tested by our culture, never mind teaching them calculus, political theory, chemistry....

(Liz Lawley on May 2, 2008 12:08 AM) I think that intensity is there whether your kids are spending 8 hours a day in a formal school environment or not. The difference is that now he (and we) have a lot more say about the social and educational contexts he's in.

But rather than feeling overwhelmed, at the moment I’m feeling quite happy. Almost everything is going reasonably well, and I feel as though I’m functioning at a better and more engaged level than I have in a long time.

Some of it is that I’ve managed to find a solid cohort of talented and energetic colleagues—both in the game design & development program and in my lab—whose enthusiasm and competence help to motivate me. Some of it is that the days are getting longer, which always lifts my spirits and energy level. Some of it is probably because I took a real, honest-to-goodness vacation over spring break. But whatever the magical mix is, I’m happy to have it.

The downside of having so much engaging and motivating me is that I’m completely and totally exhausted. Mentally and physically. What with getting up with the dog before 7am on a regular basis and taking her for walks, lifting weights and doing cardio with Weez at the gym, and putting a significant amount of energy and thought into classes, the lab, and Lane’s homeschooling…well, I’m definitely feeling like tomorrow needs to be a rest and recuperation day.

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(Adam Backstrom on Mar 22, 2008 3:13 PM) I hope you blog about the homeschooling some time. My partner and I were just talking about it again today. (She was homeschooled after middle school, and it was a great experience that we hope to pass on to our own child.) Enjoy your rest. Sounds like you've earned it.

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Does this ring a bell with anyone? I was discussing my memory of the story with Lane the other day, and he’d really like to read it. Unfortunately, I’ve had no luck finding it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

—

Ten minutes after I posted this, I found the story. It’s called The Secret Sense.

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I put a full trip report up on the Cruise Critic website, but short version is that Norwegian Cruise Line’s “freestyle cruising,” which allows you to eat whenever you’d like, was absolutely perfect for our family. The kids had a degree of freedom on the ship that we simply couldn’t give them on most land-based vacations, and we not only survived but thrived on a week of no Internet and almost no TV.

Coming back was not particularly fun, since most of the Rochester flights out of JFK were canceled on Saturday due to weather. We managed to get flights on JetBlue’s last flight out, which was delayed until 1:30am, and didn’t get back to our house until 5am on Sunday morning. Still, even with that, we’re all still in excellent post-holiday spirits.

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I will not have internet or phone access while away. (w00t)

See you in a week…

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(Lee McKusick on Mar 1, 2008 2:17 AM) Probably won't see this until you come back, but have fun and have a nice trip. Enjoy the non-snow! *looks out the window at the snowstorm and wishes HE was somewhere warm and sunny...*

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, given how this trip has progressed thus far. But still, it’s no fun to be sitting under a sign proclaiming JetBlue’s superb customer service when I’m facing up to another five hours sitting in JFK.

I was supposed to be home last night, but when I woke up at Elizabeth’s house on Saturday morning it was to a text message from Gerald telling me my noon flight from SFO to JFK was delayed. When I checked with JetBlue, they said it was going to get in too late for me to catch the last connecting flight to Rochester, so they offered to rebook me on Sunday. (Thank goodness I was staying with a close friend and didn’t have to deal with paying for another night in a hotel…) Then they hung up on me. (Accidentally, but still…) I called back, and spent over 30 minutes on the phone with them while the agent tried to get a supervisor to override whatever was keeping her from getting me on the only non-redeye flight out of the SF area on Sunday with seats available—a 9am Oakland departure, arriving at JFK at 5:25. Too late to catch the 5:35 Rochester flight, but plenty of time for the 8:25. The only problem was the 8:25 was already full, and they don’t do standby over the phone…only at the customer service desk (more on that in a minute). So they booked me on the 10:55pm flight, which meant a 5.5 hour layover in JFK (not as bad as the 10 hours on the way out, of course, but bad enough).

Amazingly, my flight out of Oakland left on time, and arrived early. Early enough, in fact, for me to make the 5:35 flight. So I called JetBlue from the plane, explained the situation, and they told me there were still plenty of seats on the flight, and to just run to the gate as soon as I arrived. I ran (and it was a long trip, including YET ANOTHER shuttle bus), and got to the gate before they closed. I was exultant! Until the gate agent said he had five seats and twelve people on standby and that if I wanted to get on the standby list I’d have to go BACK to the customer service center at the other end of the terminal and then come back. W. T. F. ?!

Since it was clear he wasn’t going to help me at all, I went back to the service center, where they put me on the standby list for the 8:25 flight. I’m #4 on the standby list right now, so the odds seem good (though not guaranteed by any means). Given my luck thus far on this trip, I’m pretty much assuming that the best I can hope for is the 10:55 flight, which gets me in after midnight.

(Did I mention that I finally broke down in tears at the service center desk? Probably had something to do with not having had food in eight hours. Time to eat now, I think.)

I really, really, want to go home.

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(Lee McKusick on Feb 24, 2008 7:41 PM) Sounds like a story for the Consumerist... Hope you have a good flight back at least!

(jclarey on Feb 29, 2008 7:27 PM) I had an uneventful [which equates to good I guess] travel experience just yesterday. The shuttles were on time. The power cord was reachable from my seat at the gate while I waited. Funny how 'uneventful' can be viewed as OK. While waiting to board my final flight home to Syracuse, a man was going absolutely insane with rage at a US Airways attendant. When he finally walked away in disgust she yelled at him, "you don't know what you're talking about." It was on. Unfortunately, I had to leave before it was over so I never saw how it all played out. He probably had a situation like yours where one thing after another goes wrong. Hope your flight home sucked less.

On top of that, my head cold is turning into a chest cold.

And I left my computer power adapter at Stanford, so I’m typing this on the last of my battery power.

That means this morning will require going to the Apple store for a power adapter and finding an urgent care doctor to look at these welts and help me find a way to get rid of them.

My only hope at this point is that I’m getting every bit of bad travel karma out this week so that the cruise will go off without a hitch. :(

—
Update, 4:06pm PT

So I went to the urgent care doctor this morning (a place called Downtown Medical, aka “Fast Doc San Francisco”). After a very cursory exam, the doctor told me I had scabies, and gave me three prescriptions—the prednisone dose-pack I’d been hoping for, a stronger antihistamine, and a scabie-specific lotion. I did some quick research on scabies and was totally unconvinced that was what I had, so I filled the first two and not the third, and left a message for my wonderful primary care doctor in Rochester.

I started the prednisone and the antihistamine right away, and crashed in my hotel room with my newly-purchased MacBook Pro power adapter and my drugs.

A few minutes ago, my doctor called me back, and I gave her the full story. When I got to the part about the doctor here diagnosing scabies she actually shrieked in outrage. The symptoms I’d described to her didn’t match scabies at all, and on top of that it takes 4-6 weeks to develop scabies, and scabies basically never occurs in places as cold as Rochester in the winter.

Her suspicion is that this is actually a reaction to the penicillin I took for my strep throat, not an insect issue at all. She’s not ruling out the bedbug possibility, but given how many welts I have, she thinks it’s extremely unlikely that’s what caused the problem. Her advice was to stay the course with the prednisone and antihistamine, and come see her Monday if I haven’t improved.

It doesn’t make me itch any less to hear her assessment, of course, but it still makes me feel a whole helluva lot better. The psychological ickiness of either bedbugs or scabies was really awful on top of the overall miserable symptoms.

Tonight I’ll treat myself to a room service dinner, and try to get caught up on the sleep I didn’t get last night due to the itchiness. Tomorrow maybe things will return to some semblance of normalcy…

Many thanks to all the folks who sent encouraging wishes via email and private tweets. They were very much appreciated. It’s hard to be sick when you’re away from home, and having so many people offer assistance if needed really made me feel less alone.

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(Adam Backstrom on Feb 20, 2008 10:58 AM) Ouch... At least you can check out any time you like.

(mikepop on Feb 20, 2008 1:11 PM) Not to mention, you have to de-bedbug all your clothes and luggage before getting home.

(kgs on Feb 20, 2008 7:59 PM) Liz, I had an "itch" in Palo Alto several years ago and the doctor immediately diagnosed scabies and then got snotty when I expressed skepticism. She of course was wrong. YOU may not feel better about the diagnosis, but I bet the Hotel California does. ;-) of course, now I'm wondering where you are staying, ahem...

(Liz Lawley on Feb 20, 2008 8:17 PM) Heh. I'm now in the Westin St Francis in SF, where I've put all the clothes I wore in Palo Alto into a sealed plastic bag, and have been carefully inspecting the bedding each night before getting into bed :)

(Jane McGonigal on Feb 21, 2008 2:28 PM) oh noes!! i can't quite follow the train of updates here -- is it actually bed bugs? or allergic reaction? i had a terrible bed bug experience in spain this summer, about 100 bites, and the experience really was as miserable as you describe, it makes it so hard to think, right? i think it produces adrenaline too, so you exhaust your body utterly. i hope you are feeling better soon, and maybe i will see you tomorrow if you are up for it? xo jane

(Liz Lawley on Feb 21, 2008 8:18 PM) At this point I'm not 100% sure whether it was the penicillin or bedbugs or a combination of both. Without going back and inspecting the hotel I was in, it's not fair for me to point a finger at this point. And my doctor's pretty sure it was the penicillin. Either way, I'm just hugely grateful that I no longer want to claw my skin off my body :D

(Katie on Feb 22, 2008 9:00 AM) Your doctor called you in San Francisco????????????!!!!!!!

(Liz Lawley on Feb 23, 2008 3:39 AM) Yes, my doctor called me in SF. :) My doctor is wonderful.

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(Elsie on Feb 19, 2008 6:03 AM) Sadly I can't from experience (cut my own hair, haha), but I would check Yelp and see what reviews say.