The end of an era
Way back when I first joined Dragonmount I created a character belovedly named Matalina. Today marks the end of an era, she is dead. Matalina has been through so many transitions and so many different things I figured now was a good time to end it, she would never have made it to Tarmon Gaidon anyway, I never intended her to.
I have archived the end of my favorite character in a massive novel size document: Murder in the Yards. The story takes Matalina, now Cari Namere back to Tar Valon and saves her family with the ultimate sacrifice. I did not write this alone, there was many many many participants and I'd like to thank all of them for participating in this rp, it was awesome even though it was VERY long.
Fall is so nice
Fall is such a nice time of year. It's the beginning of so many things to do. First we had the Craft Fair, which we usually only go for the kettle corn, shaved ice and the inflatable bouncers for the girls. Shea picks up a new rock here and there and we might see something that the girls like, but as with most things it the food we go for.
Then it's the County Fair. This year was fun. We age some really good gumbo and then the girls went on the rides. First up was the bumblee bees that go up and down and round and round. Kathleen rode those. Then on to the ferris wheel. Kathleen rode with her Daddy. She loved it. She could see everything and tried to stand up and look over the side. I'm glad I wasn't watching.
Then we went to the merry-go-round where Daddy rode with the girls, both girls got on and Samantha didn't even scream. That was her start to the rides. We then rode the slide, Kathleen went down by herself and Samantha and I went down together. Kathleen had to scoot the rest of the way down the slide she just didn't get far enough on the flat part for her liking. Then they rode the little trucks that go round in circle. I was impressed this year, Sammi actually rode the rides.
Next on our fall activities is of course Halloween. I really hope it doesn't rain tonight as tonight is the city's Trunk or Treat. The kids get to go trick or treating on del mas (I think that's the roads name). They block it off and people set up cars and booths and the kids trick or treat from there. Quick and easy and safe way to get candy.
Tomorrow we will do some house to house, mostly going up to Mam and Pawpaw's house and maybe a few other houses in the area that want to see the girls.
After that is Thanksgiving, the Wilkerson Family Christmas and then Christmas. Fall is the start to my favorite and depressing time of year. I very much miss being home at this time of the year. But it gets better the older the girls get and the more things I can do with them. This year I hope to have them help make Christmas decoration, as I am once again going with paper decorations so that I don't lose or ruin the ones I have, besides if the girls play with them it won't be so bad. Paper chains, maybe some snowmen, and some poinsettias and some candy canes. If I get ambitious I might try to find a craft book for that. I know I had one from one of my Sister In Laws when she was giving her son's old grown out of toys away. I put it up so the girls couldn't get it and I know they found it. Now to find it again lol. It had some neat crafts in it.
I didn’t get to say good-bye
Last night I made the mistake of watching Marley and Me. Excellent movie, but not something I really needed to watch, at least not this time in my life lol. I spend the last half of the movie trying to keep the girls from seeing me crying. Thankfully they were watching Monsters vs Aliens in their bedroom most of that time.
I did come to a realization of whey losing Diamond is so difficult for me though, I didn't get to say good bye. I didn't get to tell her I love her. Shea said it would have torn me up, but I'm not sure this is any better. I miss my puppy. The only other dog's passing that hit me this hard was when Gypsy left us. I was 14 years old and I literally grew up with her from the time my parents brought me home from the hosiptal till then. She was a puppy when I was a baby. It was difficult for me.
I miss all our other dogs, but these two are the hardest ones.
I want another dog just not sure when we will get one. We have alot of research and alot of money we have to save up just to get a puppy. Right now we have alot of bills to get through so it's not top of the list. So many things to do before that.
Ultrasound good, but…
I started calling on Monday and I played the waiting game until around 5pm. The doctor took a look and the report was normal. So that looks good, but it still doesn't resolve the fact that I'm still in pain.
So in a few weeks I hope to make an appointment with my normal doctor and explain things to him and see where it goes. It still bothers me, and I'm still taking aleve, but at least it's not anything serious yet.
Still waiting
I'm still waiting. I called the doctor around 9:30ish this morning. Got the typical response, name, birtdate, doctor. We'll call you back.
1:00ish I called again and got the doctor's been in and out and probably hasn't taken a look yet. So, we wait. I worry that I'm taking too much Aleve because the pain gets to be too much particularly at bed time.
I will have to call again to morrow I doubt I'm gonna get a call with in the next hour or so. This is what happened last time I had a test I needed to get results. I called and called and called and took a week or more to get a call back. I just want to know what's going on.
Mediawiki vs WordPress
I love WordPress. I like Mediawiki but it has it's downsides, most importantly is the update process. Because I don't have command line access to my server updating mediawiki is a royal pain in the butt. Basically it requires me to reinstall the wiki through the install process and then return the localsettings back to the way there were before hand. While not overly complicated it does make updating mediawiki more complicated than I like. It also provides one very big draw back for me, transferring sites must be done via a database dump and that doesn't always work so well for me when I have to reupload the sql dump. Not something that isn't a problem with other softwares but putting things into retrospec WordPress makes it so much easier.
But WordPress doesn't make for a good wiki by itself. Linking pages is annoying as you have to type in the url code, and if a page doesn't exist it'll just go no where. In comes the plugins. Such an awesome thing is the invention of plugins. I can modify my wordpress to make the wiki links in one easy step similar to mediawiki thanks to Wiki Page Links. I also found a plugin for foot notes (FD Footnotes) that doesn't interfer with the wiki pages.
With these two plugins I can now make wordpress a decent wiki like documentation system. The one thing that I like about mediawiki that I've yet to get on wordpress is the table of contents jumps for pages. But that really isn't something that is overly important as I can do that in code anyway. But right now I've got a good start to making my world building project public in wordpress. yay!
No Hold the Phone
Well ultra sound didn't prompt the ultrasound tech to go get the doctor immediately or anything like that. That's a upside, but now I play the waiting game. No news on what's going on, why it hurts. Hopefully I'll get a report sooner rather than later and not have to wait for the dr appt in 3 weeks or so. Here's to hoping.
Potty Training
I think it finally clicked with Kathleen!
We still have accidents but for the past week, more often than not Kathleen goes in the potty no matter what. We still go through a ton of panties cause she tends to take then off each bathroom trip, but that's something we can work on later. It's just become habit AND she also tends to wait till the last minute and wets them a little bit. But we are doing wonderfully well with the potty and I'm so happy.
I would really like to give her a big reward for that, but what I want to do I don't want to think is all hers. I am really longing for a puppy. Not that it can't wait cause it's going to have to until we can afford to pay the bills for the beginning vet bills and the puppy fees and all. I'm thinking we'll probably get one around Christmas/Tax time, but we'll see.
We still have many conversations with Kathleen about Diamond. None seem to be overly sad. Yes, she misses her but its more along the lines of I miss Diamond, but she's up in the sky. We talk alot about the stars and Diamond. I know she'll have to deal with death sometime, someday, but at the tender of 3 I don't think is the proper time to do that.
Sammi hasn't cared one way or the other about Diamond. I don't think she really understood her not coming home, but she doesn't even mention her when she sees pictures, just says dog and barks lol. No name associated with her so I guess that's a good transition for her.
I've discussed a puppy with Kathleen and asked her if she wanted to help with the puppy, feed it and teach it to go potty outside and stuff, she seems to be for it, so we'll see. I feel for the puppy cause it's going to get overloved I'm sure.
I think we both agree that a black lab might be our next best bet, but we'll see.