Baby Freedom Is Coming. Just Not Yet

Soon, any day now, Baby Freedom will paddle down the birth canal inside Ellie and present us with our third grandchild. Her due date was March 31, but you can never tell with first pregnancies if they will culminate on the appointed date.

You may be wondering why I referred to our soon-to-be granddaughter as Baby Freedom. Count back nine months and you will note conception most probably occurred over the Fourth of July holiday.

Moreover, revealing her dual heritage, Baby Freedom will pop out before or during Passover, the holiday that celebrates the release of the Hebrews from bondage in Egypt, their exodus and formation as a united people.

Whatever Ellie and Donny choose to name her, she will always symbolize freedom to Gilda and me. It will be tough not using her nickname of the last half year, Freddy.

Medical Update: Nothing new to report on the kidney stone front. No pain. No sign it has passed.

Meanwhile, it appears that rather than pain from a TMJ disorder I have a nerve problem in a bottom molar, tooth #30 for you would-be dentists. Seeing a specialist Thursday morning. Either a root canal or an extraction replaced by an implant looks to be in my future. In the interim, as Gilda can attest, I am not suffering in silence. Whimpering abounds. 

Solar Update: Four days into our solar panel project we have saved a whopping $5. I know. It doesn't sound like a lot. But we are only expecting to save about $1,000 a year which is about $2.75 a day. Given the mostly overcast weather of the last few days we might not be too far off from projections. We could make it up when it is truly sunny out.

Birthdays Can Be a Pain, But Spring Is in the Air

When I woke up on my 35th birthday I was more than a little distressed to experience pain in my right hip, a pain I had never felt before. The pain vanished the next day. Being no stranger to pain of unknown origin, and being a hypochondriac of some repute as defined by friends and family, I took my temporary condition in stride. The pain in my hip has not returned.

Now, 31 years to the day later, I awoke last Friday not with pain in my hip but with a sharp pain in my lower right back, along the waistline, a pain I have suffered through before but not lately. Gilda has told me it’s arthritis, that stretching exercises would ameliorate much of the agony. Do I listen to her? Not exactly. 

It’s not that I’m a glutton for pain. It’s not that I don’t trust her. It’s just … I’m lazy. I hate exercising, and I suffer the consequences. The pain has persisted over the weekend, with occasional respite. 

I wasn’t the only object feeling my age Friday. Reluctantly, I finally had to jettison the Macbook I received when working on Chain Store Age and purchased when I retired. Seems a mid-2007 operating system, even upgraded to the maximum, isn’t compatible with today's real and future tech world. 

Reality came crashing down on me when I tried to load a disk of TurboTax. My upgraded system reached its limit at OS X. v10.6.8. TurboTax required at least 10.7.5. So my birthday present to myself was a new MacBook Air. Of course, the MacBook Air doesn’t have a disk slot, so I have to buy a stand alone disk drive, but isn’t that par for the course, any time you change hardware? You’re always forced to buy more than you expected.

I’m getting used to the new laptop but one major problem is I can’t seem to connect it to the HP printer. This is why I dislike new technologies. There’s always something that doesn’t work right. I’m not a happy camper.

Spring Is in the Air: Take heart all who have had enough of winter. The first harbingers of spring have appeared. No, I am not referring to red-breasted robins. Rather, I have spotted and quickly disposed of two silver fish, no doubt on separate expeditionary missions for their subterranean colony. It is just a matter of time, and melting snow, before we see lawns again.

As for melting snow, it is dropping in chunks from our highest roof to the level below. 

In case you’re wondering, we still haven’t gone live with solar panel electricity. The city has approved the installation. We’re waiting for ConEd to sign off to flip the switch.

In case you’re further wondering, when it snows the panels get covered just like ordinary roof shingle. Light snow doesn’t impact production but heavy accumulations probably will. But snow clears away from the panels sooner and tends to clean the panels, making them more efficient. Also, snow on the ground reflects sunlight, giving them more solar exposure. 

Of course, that’s all conjecture and prayer. I can’t wait to go live and find out (though I’d be content to wait until next winter to test the snow thesis).