Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes

This year I missed singing "Ring Out, Wild Bells" at church. It's one of those songs that you've really only got one shot to sing each year, so you might as well do it. If you miss it once, you've got to wait a whole year longer. (Related sadness: there is but one week a year where we sing Easter hymns at church, and the hymnal has 3. "He is Risen" and "Christ the Lord is Risen Today" always get picked over "That Easter Morn" which I appreciate because it is musically unique in the hymnal.)

So, I went to look up the song to fill that void in my life. The lyrics were written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson and it turns out there are another 4 stanzas that are excluded from the hymn in the book. A few of them probably wouldn't fit as well into the song, but that doesn't mean they should be forgotten entirely. So, I present the entire piece for your consideration:

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

The Blogs are dying in the night

Looking through the list of blogs that I follow, I see that about half of them haven't been updated in recent memory. I haven't blogged as much as I did a year or two ago, but some people seem to have stopped entirely. I suppose Facebook is partly to blame for this, as it allows people to similarly update the world on their lives, but it's a poor replacement in my opinion. I'm not anti-Facebook or anything. If you want to tell the world that you made cookies today, I suppose it's an excellent method for doing so. (side note: I find it interesting that apparently we all believe that every single one of our friends (and by "friends" I mean anyone we've ever met) are interested in every little thing we say or do. "I'm waiting in line at the library." or "I'm facebooking from my phone." (yes, a "friend" of mine felt the need to tells us all that he was enjoying facebooking from his phone.))

Anyway, I don't see people using facebook to convey substantive ideas about things. No paragraph long stories, explanations, or anything. Text messaging taught us that anything worth saying should be able to fit into 160 characters. Twitter says we should be able to do it in 140. Facebook gives you about 250 characters before it truncates your status, essentially telling you "we all want to hear about your every thought, provided you thought can fit in this little tiny box." Up to this point, this blog post is already over 1400 characters long. That's 10 full length tweets, or almost 6 facebook status updates. So, it's a new year, add a resolution to your list to not only exercize your body, but also your brain. Don't let the brevity police restrict you any longer and go blog something.

Away

Neither Shannon nor I have blogged for a while. Clearly you've all been wondering why. Well, any extended absence on our part is usually indicative of one of a few events: vacation, holidays or sickness. In this case, all three.

Vacation/Holiday: It was Christmas! And a New Year! We spent about 10 days in SLC skipping all over the valley. It can be a bit annoying as everyone lives close enough that we can see everyone, but far enough that we still spend a lot of time driving. It's about 30 minutes from her parents to my parents. But we had a good Christmas. Julia started missing home, as she only spent about 10 days in the month of December at home. But we're back now. We also got a Wii for Christmas, but then left the controllers in SLC. So, if anyone wants to look at a Wii, come on over. The controllers will be making the trip down here in another 10 days or so. It's not like we have any extra time for recreation anyway . . . .

Sickness: Yeah, Shannon is still sick. But it seems to be getting better, and it's not as bad as last time. So far she's only had 2 IVs. Here's the chart:

Pink

I don't know how it happened, but Julia is a pink girl. Now, despite rumors I've heard to the contrary, I have nothing against pink. I did make comments before Julia was born that we didn't need to overload her in pink. We don't need 50 pink outfits, a pink crib, pink sheets, 11 pink blankets and a sign for her room that says "Julia's Pink Kingdom".

But, Julia loves pink anyway. If we let her pick anything, she's pretty much guaranteed to pick the pink option. Pink bowl for breakfast, pink shirt, pink blanket, pink pajamas, pink toys. She's just a pink girl, I suppose.

Now, this still doesn't mean that we need to overload her with pink stuff. In 6 months, her favorite color could be orange.

Diapers

Tonight getting ready for bed:

Clark: Are there any poops in your diaper?

Julia: Nope. Just a wet diaper. No wipes.

Chart

We are in absolutely no position to be promising any sort of regular updating at all, but various people have been interested in a current puking chart. So, here it is.

The mayhem is staying at fairly reasonable levels, though Shannon still doesn't feel well. Julia is doing admirably with 2 parents that have both been battling their own issues. I am nearly better these days, except for the cough that shows up around bed time.

You'll note that this post has been tagged "Baby #2" because we still haven't come up with a name for it yet.

Terror

They say that you should do something every day that terrifies you. I'm now set for about a week. Tonight I was the musical entertainment at the ward Christmas party. It was supposed to be me and Shannon, but as she is both sick and in SLC, I did it by myself. I've been sick for the last 2 weeks, and while I am generally recovered, I still have a cough, and my voice starts to disappear each night at about 8pm.

But, I did it. I played one song on the piano AND SANG, then did Mele Kalikimaka on the ukulele, and then lead everyone in the 12 Days of Christmas. I'm not sure I've ever sung a solo in front of a group bigger than about 5, let alone two numbers, on two different instruments. It wasn't perfect, there will be no calls from any recording studios, but I made it through alright. There's even video of it, but I don't think I need to see it any time soon. In fact, I don't think anyone needs to see it. Ever.

Puking Chart

Apparently my promise of a graphical accounting of Shannon's queasiness was a big hit. So here it is.


A "puke" is defined as any trip to the toilet (or other puke receptacle as available) in which heaving is accomplished, without regard to the presence of actual vomitus. After successive "pukes" throughout a single day, they tend to degenerate into dry heaves, but are tallied for this chart anyway. This is not a count of heaving events, which would be at least equal to, but in fact much greater than the number of pukes; heaving events generally occur 2 to 5 times per puke.

Analysis:
Hyperemesis gravidarum is certainly a complicated issue and a full study of all related factors will not be done at this time. It would require much more data than is being collected with regards to diet, hydration therapy, weight, time of day, etc. One interesting fact is this: the embryo hates St. George. The red boxes below enclose days that Shannon has been in SLC.

Since the 20th of November, Shannon pukes 5.6 times per day on days that she is not in SLC, and only 0.2 times per day on days that she is in SLC.

Announcement

Here is the big announcement. Everyone head for the edge of your seats . . . .

Last Thursday, Shannon and Julia packed up their things and moved up to Shannon's parents house in SLC for a little while.

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

This is because Shannon had been puking her guts out, because she is pregnant! (I hope you weren't too close to the edge of your seat!) Yeah, I know that probably borders on distasteful, but you just don't get an opportunity to throw something out there like that very often. If I were really tricksy I would have let that sentence up there just hang out by itself for a day or two before explaining.

Anyway, for those of you who remember, Shannon and pregnancy don't quite get along. (Question of the week comes from my dad: Do other species get morning sickness?) Last time she threw up a gazillion times, got many IVs and lost 15 pounds. This time she also had to deal with a sick husband and a child. It wasn't working well, so she's in SLC at her parents. She'll be back on the 12th probably. And probably her mom will stay down here a few days after that. We're playing things by ear here. She's doing reasonably well up there, and I'm bored down here. Its even worse that I'm sick, because I can't get out and do much, so I just sit at home by myself and sniffle. Anyway, back to the topic at hand: babies!

Baby #2 should arrive in mid July. We haven't given it a fetus-name yet. Feel free to offer one up. If last time is any indicator, Shannon has another 2 months of unpleasantness to go through before things normalize. But, on the upside, this time we've got graphs! Yes, we're tracking the vomitous activities, doctors appointments, medications and other key indicators so I can really quantify for people Shannon's discomfort. Then I don't have to use phrases like "she threw up a gazillion times" and can instead reliably say that she found herself bent over the toilet 18 times in a 36 hours period from Monday at midnight to Tuesday at noon last week.

Ok, I think that covers it. Don't worry, we still have lots of time to discuss puking yet.

Absenteeism

Neither Shannon nor I have blogged much at all lately. Usually this is ascribable to either traveling or illness. In our case, it is both.

We went to SLC for Thanksgiving, and got to see all the Grandmas (ours and Julia's). That's not always an easy thing to do, as they live in Salt Lake City, South Salt Lake, Taylorsville, South Jordan and Sandy. Among the highlights were:

- Turkey

- Not working

- BYU beating Utah. (My very brief comments on that game: this is 3 out of 4 close games where BYU has beaten Utah. I thought Utah was supposed to be the team that came up big in the important moments. On Halls comments: a small percentage of fans on both sides are absolute jerks. Let's not try to deny they exist, or pretend that it is easy to turn the other cheek when they do get in your face. It would be nice if Max had done a better job of ignoring them, but he didn't. But just because he made some stupid and unfair comments doesn't mean that all of us should go join that small percentage of jerky fans.)

After the vacationing was over, we decided to start the illness phase of our non-communication. I started Sunday on the drive home, Shannon shortly after, and Julia on Wednesday (I think). I am still fighting through the cold that will not die. I don't have a fever. If anything my temperature is abnormally low. So, I don't think I have the pig virus. But whatever I have has made the rounds from my head (as achiness), into my throat (as soreness), to my whole body, back to my throat (as an inability to speak) and back to my head (as every imaginable sinus issue all at once). I like to think that as it has made the rounds, it's got to be just about ready to leave my body. For the last 24 hours it has been doing its darnedest to escape via my nose, taking every last mucus membrane with it.

Finally, I would like to announce a big announcement. But, the announcement deserves it's own blog post. So, like all good bloggers do, I'm telling you that I'm going to tell you something, and then make you wait. Unlike the other bloggers though, I'm not going to string you out for days or weeks. It'll be up in 18 hours or less. (For those of you who know (or think you know) the secret, you can hold onto that little treasure of knowledge for another day.)