...on the other hand...

I ended off my last blog post on Sunday with a chipper thing about surprises I like. Today's blog entry is a not-so-happy one.

It starts with happy news, of course. Today marks the third year since Joan, in a weird fit or something, decided that she'd actually spend the rest of her life with me. The fact that I've been blessed with this for three years makes the rest of my life worthwhile. Lucas' addition to the family over fourteen months ago amplifies this.

The event has been overshadowed, however, by some bad news. (Indeed the event almost passed me by unnoticed.) Yesterday Lucas was at the hospital to check into something that worried Joan and her mother. It turns out I should have been worried too.

Lucas' slow development in walking is not because of normal variance in children picking up the skill. He has been diagnosed as having something called "Central Coordination Disturbance". This seems, on my digging, to be a code phrase for "Cerebral Palsy". Specifically, it seems, that the version of CP in question is "Spastic Diplegia". Caught early enough there is treatment for it that can bring it under control and give him a semblance of a normal life in terms of walking, etc. He'll never be graceful or nimble (no world-famous athlete or dancer here), but if the treatment works he'll at least be able to look somewhat normal while walking or possibly even running.

Of course treatment is open-ended and expensive (and, naturally, not at all guaranteed to be effective). How expensive? Savings-account draining expensive. The minimum cost is 4000RMB for a twenty-day course of treatment. I make 4700RMB per month. Do the math and you see bank accounts draining to zero in no time at all. (Thankfully I married someone who is good at saving or there wouldn't be a savings account to even start draining!)

This is the final nail in the coffin of my teaching. I was getting tired of dealing with the spoiled brats of China's wealthy, self-proclaimed elites already. Now I have an added incentive to leave: teaching just doesn't pay enough. It's time to go back into software for real.

Anybody who knows a friend who knows a friend who knows someone who's looking for a seasoned software developer, please feel free to pass on my email address (ttmrichter@gmail.com), my GoogleTalk address (ttmrichter@gmail.com) or my YIM address (michael_richter_1966). I'm in the market again.

One Year Ago Today...

One year ago today the unfathomable occurred. A lovely, young, vivacious, otherwise-intelligent Chinese girl by the name of 王琼 (Joan Wang) consented to marry a cynical, cranky Canadian. Friends and relatives of said Canadian flew in from Canada unable to believe, without seeing it with their own eyes, that their Michael Richter was actually getting married.

One year ago today they saw it all. I really had no choice, in the end. Once I met Joan in 九江, it was pretty much inevitable that I would fall in love with her and seek to marry her. Joan, however, had a choice and, in an incredible event that warped both time and space in its significance, nonetheless chose me. Not a day has gone by without my wondering what I did to deserve such a perfect girl. My end conclusion was that I must have done something truly spectacular in a past life, because nothing in this life can explain what happened.

One year ago today this lovely girl and I both had to adjust. I had to adjust to a life spent, now, with someone else. I had to learn to give more and take less. I had to learn how to be a good husband and a decent person. I had to learn how to stop having money flow from my hands like water from a faucet. It was hard learning it all -- I still haven't accomplished it completely -- but worth every minute and every hard lesson. For her part Joan had less to learn. What she mostly had to learn -- or at least exercise -- was forgiveness as a cranky man set in his ways painfully adjusted to a newer, better life.

One year ago today 王琼 changed my life forever for the better.

One year ago today.