Today was special?
It’s hard to imagine that anything else happened today other than the inauguration. As I am sure was the case in other businesses, the computer systems at CDC were running particularly slowly, presumably attibutable to all the people in the building streaming the video of the festivities. It is not often that people are able they were “there” to see such an historic event. Whether you voted for him or not, there is something special about seeing the first African American sworn in as the 44th president of the United States.
On the other hand, it’s also a sobering time when even my younger son is aware of the risks that President Obama faces. On a ride back from scouts last night, my younger son talked about what might happen if Obama lives through his first term in office. It turns out our school system taped the inauguration, to be shown at 2p this afternoon. Why? Because there was concern that there might be an assassination attempt (and the school wanted to be able to prevent exposing the kids to such images if they occur). It makes me sad that an 11 year old has to deal with the realities that there are people who would do such things.
On a positive note, my nausea seems to have disappated and my appetite has come back. I hope this is not a sign of how long it’s going to take me to recover from treatments moving forward. As my friend Debra would say, though, now is not a time to worry about what may be. Actually, she’d say something like, “Don’t borrow worry from tomorrow” but that’s more profound than I feel at the moment.
Which brings me to the next installment of “Members of the Hamburger Familiy.” Let me introduce my older son.
Of the picture to the left, what bothers me most is not that he looks so serious, but that you can easily see the growth of hair along his jaw line. If I took the photograph straight on, you’d similarly see what looks like dirt on his upper lip. I have enough difficulty dealing with him being a teenager; I’m no where near ready for him to be an adolescent (even though he is already in middle school).
I included the picture on the right to give you a better sense of what my older son REALLY is like. For those of you not in the know, the device in his hand is a Nintendo DS Lite, which may as well be the Holy Grail, if one were to judge based on how often it is in his hands (I think he was also watching ‘Dirty Jobs’ on the TV at the same time).
That might seem like a lot of stimulation, but my son has Asperger’s syndrome (high functioning autism) and his social / emotional development is delayed (he’s 13 and has more in common with our 5 year old daughter than our younger, 11 year old son). Thus, in many ways, the DS is a security object (like a security blanket, but with more circuitry). When we can convince him to put the DS down, he goes to karate (he is also a red belt) and attends weekly scout meetings.
Despite his delay, though, my older son has a incredible wit and sense of humor and is very bright. No one ever taught him how to do multiplication, but when he was in preschool, we pulled into a restaurant that had a sign that said it was open 24 hours a day / 7 days a week and before we could finish parking, my older son announced that the restaurant was open 168 hours / week. When in elementary school, he once told his teacher it was raining puppies and kittens when it was just drizzling out. But he is generally very literal. When he was younger, if we told him we would be home in two minutes, he’d count the seconds and would get upset if we got home before or after 120 seconds. As a result, we’d have to either take an extra lap around the neighborhood or drive really slowly down the street to avoid a tantrum. He is better now, but it has been an interesting journey watching his development.
More tomorrow.
Merle
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