Irony, face the future: Absolutely zero government influence/regulation applies to conceiving a child - one only needs certain organs functional and certain conditions extant within them - Attempt to assist with rearing a child when one isn't part of the conception team, and, all-of-a-sudden, WHOOSH! Governmental paperwork adding up to at least an acre of former rainforest, red-tape, not less than 4 different sets of bureaucrats - they *claim* it's all "for the best interest of the child" - that being the case, why do so many severe child abuse and death by abuse cases come out of the foster system? I'm qualified to raise kids - one son and two step-sons, all productive members of society, my input did not turn them into sociopathic felons, so: I'm imagining somewhere within that foster parent system, there is a child who wants nothing more than to know they're worth the effort to get past all that and help them negotiate the remainder of their childhood safely.

She's gone. Peacefully, in her sleep, she left. She's beyond all pain and suffering, regardless of exactly what state of existence her energy might find itself in.

My angel is still in hospital, still in holding pattern - done with radiation, she can have no more - lymphedema in both legs, sitting up on the edge of the bed is the major accomplishment of the day, standing, let alone walking, COMPLETELY out of the picture for the immediate future - kidney and liver numbers not getting worse, not getting better, transfusions every couple of days - she is so much braver than I imagine myself to be - were I faced with all of this, I'd be heading for the exit...
More as it develops.

Mr. Brown has written a worthy successor to "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels & Demons": Once again, Professor Langdon is the only one who can save the world from those who've manipulated symbols, this time heavily involving the Masons and the Institute for Noetic Science - the scary parts revolve around the idea that, although improbable, these events do not feel entirely impossible - the twists and turns pull the reader right along, and the research leaves the reader several leads to follow up on.
(Side note: The Masons and Sir Isaac Newton both consider(ed) 33 a most significant number - read the book to learn more about their reasons)
9.5 out of 10, mostly due to feeling rushed past some interesting stuff in the interest of book length and/or pacing issues - I read the thing in a single night.

Wife is in hospital, where she's been most of the previous month: what they thought was a micro-bleed deep in her leg was/is a mass - there are others, 2 on her liver, one in a private place, others...
Can't do more chemo (they had planned 1 per week, started last Thursday) until liver function evens out - Kermit's song notwithstanding, if you contract jaundice, some of you turns green.
She's getting the leg mass radiated daily weekdays, still weaker than a newborn kitten...
ON THE PLUS SIDE: her mind is MUCH clearer, they seem to have resolved the blood calcium/electrolytes/bladder infection/medication issues that made her somewhat paranoid and extremely disoriented - mentally, she's ~85%
When you feel like you're hitting the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on...

After 2 weeks between hospital and skilled nursing facility, she's coming home tomorrow - new rails and seat for her tub, walker and wheelchair, the dread blue parking placard, right leg twice the size and 1/4 - 1/10 the strength of the left and on enough morphine and oxycodone to keep me comatose, but:

She's coming home tomorrow.

Hell, later today as of now.

Once she's home, we'll both sleep better (translated - I'll be able to sleep instead of just pass out for 4-5 hours per night), hopefully the leg will improve faster here at home and she'll be able to get up and out and back into her (and our) regularly-scheduled life.

Update, doing my best not to rant or whine, just the facts and a couple opinions.

          She's had unilateral lymphoedema in her rt. leg for a couple months - started with a swollen foot, now it's reached her thigh, it changed her gait about 2 months ago, which brought pain to the knee (patello-femoral pain syndrome - long term meaning "knee ouch"), pain which has since worsened to the point that it's multiple percocet by day, morphine (still oral, yay for small favors) at night.

          She recently had her bilateral j-stents replaced, her kidneys came back into normal range, then they gave her an IV-contrast CT scan - bring out the buckets, her system HATES that contrast. We got the preliminary results by phone yesterday: "irregularities" in her pelvis, liver and chest - all lymph nodes scanned are enlarged.

          If it weren't for the knee, she'd be *feeling* okay - no gross symptoms yet.

          She's been fighting this crap off and on (mostly on) for 6 and a half years.

          Her oncologist has her on a trial of Faslodex (fulvestrant), hoping to see her OCA count come down and everything else shrink back to healthy.

          If I can bring any good at all out of this it's the following:

          Ladies, demand that your Dr. add the OCA-125 test to your blood tests at exam time - it's how we discovered her disease so early - men, do the same on behalf of the ladies you care about.

          Cancer *can* be fought - make sure any health-care providers are on the same page as far as attitude, or change them until the ones you have are (we went through 3, all *very* intelligent clinicians/ all more interested in statistics than bedside manner).

          Nobody guarantees us more than today. We joke about
          "What would you do if an earth-killing meteor was detected, and you only had x minutes?"
          "Probably try for one last bout of wild-monkey love - of course, my luck, the meteor would skip off the atmosphere, and I'd go to jail for lewd public behavior..."

Some of us, when we say "for better or for worse", truly mean it.

Tomorrow marks the 14th anniversary of our wedding.

What is the best crop to grow specifically for vegetable oil, looking for yield per acre? Soybeans, sunflowers, peanuts,...?

We've had a conversation with her oncologist, a *very* good Dr., awesome combination of clinical education and bedside manner - he's including us in the plan to the extents allowed by law and sense - trouble is, the treatment option cupboard is looking mighty bare, we're down to one. last. option.
No suspense, if there is only one straw, we're gonna clutch at it, maybe build a house out of it and stand guard against wolves with a shotgun.

Well, I've calmed down some: after a visit to an ER on the 9th, resulting in the discovery of 3 clots around her lungs, an overnight hospital stay, and a massive/rapidly-applied course of blood thinners, we brought her home - 4 days of sub-cutaneous levidox (sp?) injections left bruises that would've had her in a shelter and me in jail had anyone seen them w/o the real explanation.
Fast forward to Monday last (7/20), when she went in for a routine day-surgery, the replacement (bilateral) of her ureteral double-ended "J" stents - the actual procedure went perfectly smoothly, but when they tried to bring her out of anesthesia, her blood O2 wouldn't stabilize, so they put her back under, re-entubed her, and left her sedated for 19 hours until they could get a lung specialist and some tests back - they stopped the oxygen, but left the tube in for an hour, then removed the trach tube and put her on a nasal oxygen feed, then removed that all the while very carefully watching her O2 levels...
Badness: when my mother passed, before my out-of state family could get in to say good-bye, she spent 4 days on life support - machine breathing for her by way of a trach-tube, tongue relaxed, tip protruding slightly - fast-forward to Mon night, when that was almost exactly the same picture/sight I had of my wife, before they told me I probably shouldn't wake her due to the tube...
Terror comes in many forms, I might've slept 2 nightmare hours Mon. night.
We jumped through all the hoops they set up to get her released, we've been home since Tuesday (yesterday) afternoon, now all we've got left is a CT scan (Friday, if her kidneys are up to the IV contrast) and a visit with her oncologist on Tuesday next to discuss new treatment options - the oral she is on was, they think, what caused the clots.
So, how's everyone *else's* month gone?

Okay, so, life is scripted, by some invisible infinite all-knowing cruel RAT BASTARD. My wife has been holding endometrial cancer at bay for the last year by means of Megesterol (sp?): a medication that simultaneously blocks estrogen uptake, increases appetite (since countered by Paxil, but not until she'd added 50 pounds to an already-overweight frame), and *may* (they told us in the fine print) cause blood clots. After an episode of sever shortness of breath on Wednesday last, we went to her Dr. on Thursday - they tested her O2 while walking 100 feet, then told us we were going to the local ER for immediate tests - sure enough, 3 clots in her lungs. Anybody ever try to sleep in a hospital waiting room chair? Next to a spouse in critical condition?
Small favors, they were able to get her onto a self-injectable blood thinner along with a coumadin regimen, so we can treat her at home.
How she copes? A truly devoted, but alas all-too-human, husband as coach - where do I go when *I* need coaching? Certainly *not* church, as I've seen what happens to those their god loves - thrown out of gardens for eating fruit, surrendered to Satan to be tested as a reward for being most faithful servant, hung on a cross to die by way of a father's love for his son...
Not co-workers - they have trouble coping with such mundanities as getting hours cut or which responsibilities are whose...
We're all gonna die - What happens after, who knows. Can anybody, anybody at all, tell me what kind of infinite moron, with the power to cause all of this to be, create such a fucking mess so that (supposedly his favorite) creations had no hope of using the one gift he gave them (logical thought) to understand anything like rules? Some kind of feedback system that actually worked, where jerks like me get our comeuppances and angels like her do NOT suffer BULLSHIT like what she's going through?
I'll be lucky to have her another year - probably less, the way things look right now - the chemotherapies they've tried don't work, and to boot, any treatments she's had before, chemo or radiation, would cause such further damage to whatever organs they affect that they're inadvisable.
I am residing in a body that stands 6 foot 9 inches tall and weighs 305 pounds - I have an IQ that measures well above 140 - I am not awesomely fit nor strong, but strong enough for my size - I have read most major religions' core teachings, and in the face of a microscopic invader in my wife's body I. am. powerless?
You, you infinite creator/director/producer/scriptwriter/ROTTEN PIECE OF SHIT, if you exist at all, you're FIRED!!!
Burn yourself in the hells you've supposedly created, unless you give my wife back her health. right the FUCK now.
How pathetic am I? I got nowhere else to go.

It's not *really* "news", it's Jon Stewart, but I found his recent interview with this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Schiff

Interesting, and somewhat terrifying.

http://www.nlp-times.com/2009/06/07/updating-your-mental-software-the-world-is-flat-30/

No lie - are *you* ready?

Despite personal economics, my wife and I said the hell with it and got tickets (11th row center-aisle +1 & +2) to see Carlos Mencia live (At Close Range Tour) - I had some misgivings, as he is not kind to people of size: It was the best entertainment investment I've ever made. The man is hilarious! And, he has a serious work ethic - he hit stage at about 8:45, when he started his encore, it was 11:15 or so, and he kept working, stayed until all of us who wanted souvenir signed T-Shirts and photos with him could get them - we got a second one for our youngest, who ships to Afghanistan soon (Airborne!), and he said some kind words about conflict intensity and relative troop safety when he was there doin' shows for the troops.
          AND! Classless me, I took the one shot I've had to talk face to face with someone of that caliber in the TV industry and asked him point blank "Wanna buy a game show?" Rather than scoff or laugh in my face or some other dismissal (as my much more proper wife was dragging me away), he trusted me with an email address to open negotiations!
IMNSHO, the man showed true class and work ethic by the amount of performance time he delivered for the ticket investment, demonstrating much of why he is as successful as he is, and I would heartily recommend seeing his show if he's in a town you can get to to do so.
(Keep your fingers crossed for me on the game show thing: It could be a life-changer!)

http://greenbuildingelements.com/2009/02/26/12-year-old-makes-homeless-shelter-from-trash/