A life is time / They teach you growing up

I'm a bit of a wreck today. I've been putting in extra work hours (in addition to my regular eight-to-five) doing some freelance work and have been staying up late working on the project. I'm hoping to be able to divulge some details later because it's quite the neat little project, but that will have to wait for another blog. I don't know if it's the exhaustion from too much compy work and not enough sleep or what, but I've been in an odd emotional place for the past couple of days.

My mind keeps drifting and thinking about divergent realities.

In particular, realities that may have diverged in the summer of 2009.

When I received the call that Erin was trapped at a hospital in Bogotá, Colombia, the first thought that came to my head was "I need to go there and be with her. I need to get her through this and home safely." She had already undergone so much, having gotten progressively ill in a foreign land over the course of couple of weeks. Even after I arrived at the Clinica de Marley in Bogotá and we were finally reunited, it was an incredibly difficult ordeal. The days following the diagnosos of her complicated Pneumonia - a condition with a 40% mortality rate - were emotionally arduous. She slipped in and out of lucidity during those couple of days after I arrived. Her body was devastatingly weak, and her mind was beginning to succumb to the weight of her condition. When we were told that there was a chance she wouldn't make it out of Bogotá alive, she was too weary to respond emotionally. It took all of her focus just to be somewhat present at the moment. I'm glad of that, in a way. I was a broken mess, but perhaps it was something of a good thing that she didn't have to shoulder that emotional burden.

The scenario is my own personal Schrodinger's Box. More frequently than I'd like, I find myself thinking about what might have been if I hadn't flown out. What if I had chosen to delay my departure? would Erin have made it? Did I collapse the wave funtion by making the choice that I did? Or is there another Jay in a parallel universe who is, at this moment, living a reality in which Erin was untimely ripped from his life? I can't stand the thought. Every time I consider the possibility, gravity intensifies. I feel my heart being pulled to the ground and my knees buckling. When I'm alone and the thought creeps up on me, I need to pause to collect myself. The idea of living without Erin is unbearable. When I'm with her and the thought slips in, the sight of her face brings a comfort I'd not ever known until we were reunited in September after she'd spent a month recovering with her parents in Western Massachusetts.

There's a crushing loneliness that overtakes me when the idea really sinks in. The possibility of what could've happened makes my heart sieze.

When I look at Erin, and when I see her beginning to show, a small portion deep inside of me says a little prayer of thanks that she's still here by my side. When I think about our child - right now no bigger than an olive - growing inside her, a little voice in my head gives a proclamation of gratitude that we're together and have not missed the opportunity to have a child with each other.

I feel blessed to no end when I wake up beside Erin or share a meal together or curl up on the couch to watch a video. I feel a bit melancholy, too, that maybe there's a world out there without her, and on that world is a hopelessly sad Jay.

And the morning light was breaking / Slowly moving across the bed

So...

I've been a dad-to-be for about 9 weeks now. I've seen our first ultrasound.

Erin is beginning to show, her appetite is steadily growing in breadth and quanitity, and one topic has begun to regularly resurface in conversation: baby names.

Of course, at this point it's not yet possible to tell the gender of our child (bones are just now beginning to form according thebump.com), so we've been considering both boy's names, girl's names, and some gender neutral fare. Every trip to Barnes & Noble or Borders is incomplete without swinging by the parenting section to look at baby name books.

It's a bit of a tough matter though, since Erin and I want our child's name to be meaningful one and not too common. It's easier to rule out names than it is to zero in on our favorites, so here's a list of names we will most likely not be naming our child (in no particular order):

• Super Street Fighter IV
• Fender Telecaster
• Hybrid
• Samus Aran
• Princess Peach
• Awesome
• Mario Kart
• Stuart Murdoch (Erin just doesn't like the name Stuart)
• Boss Reverb
• Alien Ressurection
• Spot 2
• Crow (the superhero or the robot)
• Shigeru Miyamoto

Link and Zelda have not yet been eliminated from the list.

Good morning starshine / The earth says hello / You twinkle above us / We twinkle below

I won't soon forget July of 2009. It feels like I aged more in a month than I had in the past few years. To be completely honest, I'm not really sure how to start this blog. How about a few words about my surroundings at this point in time?

• It's a lovely Saturday afternoon here in Irvine, CA. The common just outside Erin's and my block of student housing is basking in a warm, welcoming sun. While Augusts in Southern California can be scorchingly intolerable, there's no sign of that today.
• My copy of Belle and Sebastian's "The Life Pursuit" is skipping in the CD player. Drat. It's either been subject one too many plays or it's time for me to invest in a new CD player. Then again, maybe it's time to skip the CD player altogether, go 100% digital, and set up a music-streaming system. Hmmm, decisions, decisions...
  
• Every chair I own is currently resting upside-down on another piece of furniture. Spot has come down with a horribly bad case of fleas, so the exterminators came into the apartment yesterday to treat our carpet. I'm actually standing at my kitchen counter typing this since our home office is currently unavailable for use.
• I seem to be missing every tenth letter or so as I type. The weariness and stress of recent times started catching up to me about two weeks ago, and now I think that said weariness is finally making its way to my hands. I wonder if the San Miguel beer at 2:30 in the afternoon has something to do with it.
  

Okay, enough piddly, little details...

I've established this blog for a two reasons, the most immediate being that I want to document as much of the past month as I can before the details fade from memory. The first few entries will be for those of you who are interested in learning more about what Erin and I had gone through since the 7th of July. I've received a goodly amount of emails and Facebook messages/comments asking for details. I figure a blog entry (or two) is as good a way as any to get those details to interested parties.

My more over-arching reason for starting this blog is to keep a better account of my days. I actually maintained a blog on MySpace for a little while, but stopped updating it a few years ago when MySpace became to cumbersome to keep up. Downs and ups and all things considered, I can say that I enjoy my life very, very, VERY much. The days have been good to me for the most part, and I know that someday - when faces and events begin to slip from memory - I'll appreciate having something to remind me of a life lovingly lived.