melog-20130421.log

i'm exhausted from helping my wife with a short paper and running errands all day. my niece is also spending the night, my wife let my daughter sleep in our bed and my son crashed in the living room. i feel a bit displaced in my own home.

i took my son to the eye doctor today. she told me that he has intermittent extropia which basically means my son's eyes function independently of each other and as a result, he sometimes doesn't get to enjoy the stereoscopic experience. in other words, he doesn't see 3-D very well. i don't mean just at the movie theater-- i'm also mean with everyday living. no wonder he stumbles around more than i'd like. he has issues with depth perception.

you'd hardly know it, but sometimes he does have the moments where he seems accident prone. now  i know why. so, when he put on the 3-D glasses at the doctor's office and couldn't see the pop up images, i began to really wonder what was going on. now i know.

the doctor told me to look into visual therapy, but stated that we don't even have anybody who practices that in our state, otherwise she'd refer me to one.

i saw on where a few studies have been done expressing that people with this condition are three times more likely than the average person to have mental illness by young adulthood. wow . . . that made me feel warm and fuzzy. mom already deals with clinical depression . . . at first glance it looks like the cards are really stacked against my boy. he's all of a sudden taken up the desire to become good at basketball. i'm short . . . his momma's short . . . he's got hardly any depth perception . . .

yet, you know what? i can't stop believing that he'll be ok. he still bought a new basketball today after hearing the doctor tell him that he'll have trouble with sports. he seems to really have found a way to adapt to his condition. so, maybe it won't be too much of an issue.

but now i understand why he tripped and fell a lot in soccer.

anyhow . . . i won't discourage him. if he really loves the sport of basketball like he claims he does of late, depth perception will simply be another problem that he'll learn to work around.

time to take a hot shower and find some corner of the house to sleep in. i took a training class last week, so i've got a lot of work waiting on me. yeah . . . and i gotta do server patches later today, too.

boy, i'll be glad when things slow down.

melog-20110312.log

My dear wife had to go to the hospital at the beginning of this week. Her depression went too deep and her anxiety levels too high.

She stayed under doctor's care for five days. She's home now taking back her rightful place on the living room couch. She seems like herself again, yet somehow different.

Taking her to the emergency room was difficult; but, I had to hold it together for all of us.

But hours later-- when I finally got alone, I almost vomited from the nervousness I felt-- knowing that my wife barely had the presence of mind to refrain from committing suicide.

I learned a lot that day. I learned that I'm strong, but not that strong. I learned that I'm a really good dad. But, I'm not a very good single dad. The kids may favor my parenting style over their mom's, but they will come unglued if they go too long without my wife's mothering.

I learned that I love my wife-- more than I could ever have realized or articulated before she checked into the hospital. She completes our family and we need her even though we survived while she was away for nearly a week in the hospital.

She did not hurt herself, but she visited a counselor at my suggestion. She confessed to her counselor that she didn't think she could make it much longer and already had a plan in place to end her life.

I never saw so much anguish on a person's face before with my own two eyes and in the flesh. How unnerving it is to see such a look upon the face of your spouse!

I dreaded the thought of planning her funeral and trying to explain to the family what all went wrong in her life-- explaining to the kids why momma won't be coming home any more.

I simply felt sick; I'm surprised that I didn't crack.

And worse, I wondered if maybe taking her to the hospital was only like giving a terminally ill person painful treatments that will never truly bring healing. I didn't want to participate in prolonging her suffering if suicide was inevitable because of her mental anguish.

But, as many loved ones respond-- I just couldn't let her go that easily and I took her to the hospital.

I said above that she's herself again, but somehow different. She's different in that she seems like she's learned something new about herself. She's had a wealth of experiences during her five days of treatment. She has a new plan for living now. A plan to live and fight back against her depression and anxiety.

And I support her every step of the way.

A good friend of mine pointed out at the beginning of the week that we made the right decision by not giving in and going to the hospital. I can see that now; She was absolutely correct.

Perhaps euthanasia has a place in this world, but not when there is legitimate hope for recovery from whatever diseases ail you.

If you or a loved one is dealing with depression, take it very, very seriously; Get help. If you're already managing depression, don't give up. Explore. You just may find the new life you're looking for while traveling down the long road of treatment and recovery.

melog-20110227.log

As far as exercise goes, I've started week nine. I had trouble putting my best effort into my cardio today because of personal matters that I will express below. I feel like I'm reaching a mile stone, nonetheless, and I'm proud of myself for keeping up.

I aggravated a muscle in my back which I had pulled a few years ago. Seems like an injured muscle in the back never gets 100% better. Not sure what's going on with that, but I hear that from many people who have injured their backs in the past.

So, when I do my weight lifting in the morning, I'll have to skip my back exercises. The pain is not excruciating like when I first pulled the muscle. But the pain is just enough to let me know I had better take it easy.

My distraction from my exercising today is due to a conversation I had with my wife before I went to work-out. She took our daughter to visit an old daycare playmate of hers. Their family is quite affluent and quite frankly, make us look like po' folk. But not only that, they seem to have all their ducks in a row, so to speak, and their life of success, money, and world travel from now until retirement already seems planned out and achievable.

So my wife asks me if we even have plans for the next two years.

I do . . . but they are not as vast or ambitious. Nor will my plans likely satisfy her query. So, I evaded the question a bit.

She also expressed tons of self doubt and voiced that she is now feeling depressed.

(no-- real depression. not the "play" stuff)

So, I was distracted when I went to exercise. The work-out did clear my mind a bit, but at the same time, the effort I try to put into my cardio was certainly diminished.

I contemplated what makes someone happy. Is there a difference between happiness and contentment? Why do some people seem happy in nearly any circumstance or in the face of any adversity, and others crumble when the appear that all is well for them.

Well, some of the answer lies in biology and personal history. A person who has been abused for any length of time can become biologically hard-wired for sadness and depression. That is partly why inflicting trauma on someone is such a horrendous act. More harm is done than what occurs in the act itself, but a residual damage is constantly inflicted long after the traumatic event has physically ceased.

Such a crime, these things are. And such a shame that too often, the offenders go unpunished while the victim is left without any sense of vindication whatsoever.


I am tempted to say that happiness alludes so many people because they simply have the wrong perspective. Contentment comes to those who are happy about life, not necessarily happy about the events in one's life.

While that thought may have a kernel of truth, such a statement is much too simplistic.

I feel inadequate when my wife becomes depressed. But, after nine years of parenthood and 13 years of marriage I have learned that you cannot make other people truly happy. You can support them, encourage them, and make them feel better. You can help them over hurdles, help them change their lives, and be a shoulder to cry upon during dark times. And these are noble things for sure.

But to grant happiness is not a power or possession that anyone has to give. One must find his or her own way to happiness. And I fear, too many look in all the wrong places for it.