November 19. I couldn’t fly to the moon if only because I couldn’t manage to sleep at the right times and my gastrointestinal tract would revolt so much that I wouldn’t be good for anything. Kind of like these weekends in Sweden that I just barely get through.
November 18. How my son docks with the ISS, how he controls the six degrees of freedom and performs angular arithmetic in his head, amazes me, delights me and worries me. How do I do him justice at this distance. Who am I to take the distance as a justification for not doing him justice.
November 17. J’s wheelchair was lost on the very first flight segment and her suitcase came off the belt fully wrecked. Slept a few hours before picking up the kids for dinner. Lots of laughs. The wheelchair was delivered to our place around eight, luckily it’s in one piece.
November 16. Artemis launch at just before two. We are both so nerdy that we can’t avoid being gripped. We fly to the moon to do science. An explanation that doesn’t even reach half a sentence far. We don’t even know why we’re going to the moon.
This time J took her electric, self-propelled wheelchair with her. For the first time in years, she is no longer dependent on airport workers to push her around and treat her like a thing. She has a joystick and can go wherever she wants. She weeps with happiness.
November 15. Sickness averted. Sweden tomorrow. Although we should try to get as much sleep as possible, we are watching the countdown to Artemis I on NASA TV because I frivolously promised my son I would follow it live and take some screenshots.
November 14. Tired. I can’t pack the days as full as I’d like.
November 13. Unfortunately, still quite the chasms. – Our Mean Time To Resolution (MTTR) is getting better and better, but that doesn’t make the clashes any less scary.
November 12. Sound of rain in autumn, when the drops fall on dry leaves lying on the ground. There are several layers of such leaves, and each leaf, curled by drying, sounds like a membrane of crumpled wrapping paper.
November 11, Newburgh. Dinner in the diner. Watched Queer Eye Germany.
November 10. Eight hill repeats. At six in the evening, in the dark, it’s as much rush hour on the waterfront as it is on the parkway next to it, only it’s bikes whizzing by with varying degrees of illumination. I’m afraid of the hill repeats, of the limit to which they take me. Tonight I must have been more scared than usual, because my heartbeat barely ever got above 150. Careful not to run over the spots that are too thickly covered with leaves, because slippery.