Attack of the Red Velvet cake

I was writing about growing older, being in pain and being too well acquainted with my doctors. I suddenly felt really down about it and then remembered the remains of a piece of red velvet cake in the kitchen. There is nothing like sugar to make me feel better. At least that was the idea.

It was really a pitiful piece of cake. My daughter-in-law brought it home to me on Christmas Eve. It was squashed and dried out. I actually picked around on the plate and found the moist bits and a little frosting. I did throw some of it away. Maybe that was because the plate was the same color as the cake and I just missed it. I’m glad it tasted good going down because I am paying for it at the rate of 20 minutes of misery for every second of pleasure.

I am sitting here with sweat pouring down my face and feel like I might barf. I had a gastric bypass back in 1998. I lost over 100 pounds and am grateful for it every day. The misery I am feeling is called ‘dumping’ and it is one of the things that make the bypass work. Oh sure I can’t eat as much as I could before and there is less time for my body to absorb anything. The thing that really makes the bypass work is the punishment that is inflicted when I overeat or eat the wrong things.

I grew up Catholic and it seemed like they were trying to teach us to be good, but all we were learning was how to avoid punishment for bad behavior. The bypass feels like that. I’m supposed to learn what it feels like to be full rather than hitting that point when the food just comes back up. None of the literature about bypasses I read warned about lactose intolerance. I love half and half in my coffee. Sometimes I end up with gas, but it’s unpredictable. My doctor said sometimes it goes away. He didn’t say that I would be lactose intolerant on Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Sunday, but only during the second and fourth weeks of the month. For a real double whammy, I will insanely eat ice cream; gas from the dairy and dumping from the sugar. I also have trouble with rice and spaghetti now. If the rice is in soup, I can eat it and if I cut up my spaghetti into half inch pieces like my mother did for me when I was four, I can eat it.

The thought suddenly went through my head that maybe we all need a mother to control our eating, but my mother used to make me eat everything on my plate. She apologized to me repeatedly over the past 30 years of her life. I guess I am one of the people who just need to have the punishment of the bypass. I’ll just blame it on the nuns in the Catholic school.

Me and the technology revolution

I was awakened yesterday morning by my cell phone crying out for recharging. I just took it off the charger the day before. I couldn’t get enough signal to call home and tell someone to remove my dog’s coat, so the phone wasn’t really used. I think I need a new battery. Since I was already awake, I got up to watch my favorite morning show Good Morning America. They had a segment on viral videos that got me thinking about technology.

I sort of fell into the technology arena as a career; it was actually a desire to avoid PE class that got me into what was call Data Processing in 1970. I had moved to a new town and they had vocational training available in high school. I had observed some of my brother’s experiments into weird science, so I thought maybe the Electricity/Electronics class would be for me. The Vo-Ed guidance counselor convinced me to go into Data Processing instead.

I didn’t realize that the school’s technology was just behind the times. It was all donated equipment, so they didn’t have a computer. I did at least learn to operate a keypunch (does anyone remember cards?), sorters, interpreters, collators, calculating punch machines, reproducers and tabulating machines. They were all geared to manipulating punched cards and hopefully create meaningful reports from them. It was sort of fun playing with all of those wires we had to plug into thick plastic boards. We were also given classes in accounting and I learned I had a knack for putting numbers in little boxes.

Still not really having a goal in mind, I applied to college with Data Processing as my major. It wasn’t until I started my classes that I discovered that it was computer programming. Luckily it fell in line with putting numbers in little boxes, so I did well. I was fortunate to get a programming job shortly after graduation and so began my career. I never thought that my high school training would be of any use, but I was the only person who even recognized the dusty old machines in the storage room and so became the on-site expert for punched card applications.

I think a lot of my success was due to the fact that I was always like a kid on Christmas when presented with new technology. I still marvel at the fact that the laptop I am using right now has more memory and computing power than some of the mainframe computers I worked on in the 70’s. I do confess that I was very skeptical about personal computers when they first appeared. I thought of them as glorified video games. My brother-in-law had introduced my then husband to Super Pong and my hubby had to have one right away. Of course I was the only opponent available to him, so I got hooked into playing almost every day. He seemed to enjoy trouncing me just a little too much, so I developed a real dislike of video games that required aiming and shooting. When Atari introduced its first home computer, my ex wanted one. I did not want a computer in my home because it was too much like bringing work home. I also figured it was just to give my husband a newer, bigger video game console. The day I found a personal accounting program for the Atari, I started to see the home computer in a new light. Unfortunately my husband got the Atari in the divorce, so it was a little while before I had a computer at home again.

I didn’t really expect the microprocessors to stick around. At one job we had created an Accounts Receivable system on a mini-computer to replace one that ran on a mainframe. We converted one branch to the new system and noticed some performance problems. It was taking almost as long to process one branch on the mini as it did to process the entire company on the mainframe. We still had 37 branches to convert to the new system. So we set up a test using 10 branches. The results were laughable. My project leader was really into statistical analysis and had a ball working up the projections. At 75% conversion, it would take 24 hours to process the accounts. At 100% the projected processing time was 48 hours. I had done some research into the operating system of the mini and found that our time problem was related to the alternate inquiry paths that the analyst who designed the new systems had used liberally. Every time one account was updated, all of the account records had to be updated to preserve the alternate paths. Surprisingly the answer was to create a separate file for each branch.

The IBM personal computers started appearing in my office in 1985, but they were used only by management. They seemed limited to word processing and spreadsheets. Having worked with batch processing applications for years, I still didn’t see why people were so thrilled with Lotus 1-2-3. I figured the admin folks were just glad to see the old Wang word processors go away and force all of us technical types to do our own documentation. I did like the flowcharting program. It was much more fun to use than a pencil and a plastic template.

The business analysts kept throwing around the term “automated platform”. I was working for a bank and it turned out that ‘platform’ referred to any function performed a branch by anyone but a teller. This was where they were going to first utilize the PC’s. I had been working on loan applications and the first to use the PC’s would be Customer Information. CIS had just been an application we fed with loan information. I didn’t realize how important it was in the bank’s relationship with the customer until the big re-vamp of CIS started. The automated platform was going to be a byproduct of the CIS project. It just seemed to take forever to get off the ground.

The first real value I saw of the PC’s use in business applications was when my team started reworking of our loan calculator. We were fortunate to have a business analyst who was a math whiz. He had also learned Lotus, so he had set up Lotus applications that the programmers could use to test the new mainframe version of the loan calculator. By the time I retired from the bank the automated platform was a reality. We had tied networks of PC’s in the branches to the mainframe. Account setup was performed in the branch by the personal bankers. The customer’s existing relationship to the bank was available to the network from the CIS system on the mainframe. Personal and address information was retrieved and could be updated while the customer was present. The PC specialists had worked out a method to distribute software updates to the networks over the T1 lines rather than having someone go out to each branch. We were creating loan documents on blank paper at the PC using stored boilerplates and data retrieved from the mainframes.

In 1988 my sister’s husband got an Apple II GS as part of a bonus from his employer. I ended up buying one for myself because my sister kept calling me with questions that I had no way to answer. I had never touched an Apple computer. I still didn’t want the computer to become a way to work at home so I was glad it was an Apple. I didn’t think it could communicate with an IBM operating system. I bought a 300 baud modem (wow!). Soon I was connected to GEnie (America Online didn't support Apple then) and discovered a bunch of games and applications for the Apple. There were bulletin boards where other Apple users that knew more than me were available to help me out. In fact that was where I learned I was wrong about being able to communicate with an IBM mainframe. Soon I had the appropriate software, was set up on the bank’s security system and now I could manage most of my middle of the night trouble calls from home. The only problem with it was having to logoff the computer to call the mainframe operators at the office. I do not miss dial-up. When several of us had computers at home and were handling trouble calls with them, I convinced my manager to get us a cell phone. It weighed about 5 pounds and had to be carried with a shoulder strap. I also had purchased a PC clone personal computer. It had a 100 MHz processor and 100 mg hard drive. Now I was in the fast lane! That was about 1990.

The personal technology boom started just about then. Cell phones got smaller, personal computers got faster and larger memory, and hard drives got larger capacities. I have upgraded or replaced my computer about 6 times. Megabytes gave way to gigabytes, which will give way to terabytes soon. Communications speeds took off like a rocket. I was a member of a very small group when I bought that 300 baud modem. Now I find it difficult to get through a day without using the Internet and on a cable modem of course. I have become one of Time Magazine’s Persons of the Year! I use VoIP telephone, so no more long distance charges. Cell phones not only allow us to speak to each other, now we text message; take pictures and video then send them to our friends; listen to music downloaded from the Internet and can check our email. Soldiers in Iraq are able to record events and post them on the Internet. We are truly able to communicate around the globe and it is all due to personal computers, cell phones and the Internet.

My grandmother lived through the advent of airplanes all the way up to the space shuttle. My mother never learned to use an ATM. She felt the people of a certain age just could not learn to live with all of this new technology. I vigorously disagree. I feel like I have experienced 200 times the technological advances she was exposed to. I still have a time to experience more. Where will tomorrow take us?

Who am I?

My name is Marta. From what I have been told, my name came from a woman my father dated. The story is that my sister 'Z' got her name the same way. I tell people I moved to the Atlanta area because it helps folks to get my name right. The transit system's name is Metropolitan Atlanta Regional Transit Authority. What a shock when I arrived in Atlanta for the first time in 1977 and every bus carried my name.

I am a middle-aged woman who is depressed and frustrated. Big deal you say, the grocery stores are full of them. I know that and it doesn't make me feel any better, in fact it makes me more frustrated.

Would anyone care about what I might publish in this blog? I don't know. I don't think I care if anyone is interested. I have tried talk therapy several times. It makes me feel better and then something happens that makes me feel crummy again. I guess that's the way it's supposed to work, but it would be nice to go to bed every night without wondering whether tomorrow will be better than today. I'm on Prozac too and it bothers me that I can feel so depressed when I am taking an antidepressant. Maybe I am expecting too much of the meds. Back to the question about blogging: I guess this is a place for me to get my thoughts out of my head and maybe get some feedback, even if that feedback is from me when I read my stuff.

I retired on disability in 1994. I blew out a disk in my back, had surgery, had complications and now live with chronic back pain. I used to be a systems analyst with a bank. It was a 20 year career that I enjoyed. I was good at it and actually loved the crisis's that would occur. It was early in the days of telecommuting. I not even sure I had heard the word "telecommuting" then. We could do emergency support through a dial-up connection. It was a life saver for me since I became a single mother when my son was 2 and would have to get my son out of bed to accompany me to the office at 3 a.m. It could be taxing to simultaneously deal with a major software problem and a toddler with a fascination with the restrooms at my office.

I tried returning to work in the office after almost a year of recovery and physical therapy. It just didn't work. I could not sit for more than 15 minutes in my office chair. (I think I tried 8 different chairs to find one that was comfortable. I even had one moved from the building I was working in before I injured my back.) Driving was dangerous because my right leg would go numb at times. I tried working 6:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. to avoid heavy traffic. The less I had to use the brake, the better. Anyone familiar with the Atlanta area knows that traffic problems can and do occur anytime of the day, any day of the week. I suggested the possibility of my working from home since I was absent from the office a lot due to my fear of driving and my pain level. I was actually working at home on those days when I didn't go to the office. It worked well for me. I could work for 15 to 20 minutes, then lie down for a while or move to my recliner to give my back a rest. I would get a full day's worth of work done by breaking up into chunks over a 24 hour period. My manager was not pleased; she was the type that needed to see faces in the office. It was not enough that I finished projects on time or early. When I broached the idea of formalizing my working from home, I was told that the "bank" would not open itself to the possible security exposure and that there was concern over their possible liability for any physical harm I might suffer while working. I put "bank" in quotes because I don't know who really made those decisions.

My trial return-to-work period lasted from October 1995 to December 1995. I was really sad on my last day at the office. It took months for me to get used to the fact that I was not going to my job everyday. It's boring being at home when you aren't used to it. My son was 10 by then, so he was pretty independent. My sister had moved in with me to help out and she pretty much took over my life. (There will be much, much more to cover on her.) I was seeing a pain management specialist and he put me on the Prozac. I still see the same specialist 12 years later. I'm on a bunch of medication. It helps as long as I don't over-exert myself. When I do and the pain becomes more intense, I get epidural injections of corticosteroids. I really hate those injections. I am squeamish about having someone put a long needle in my back. I have never seen one of the needles and never want to because I'm afraid I will freak out and not be able to tolerate getting an epidural when I really need one. I must have someone available to drive me to the doctor's office when I get the injections. The medicine causes hot flashes and I have to take it very easy for a couple of days.

Today was one of my bad days. I have been trying to come up with an outlet for my frustrations and suddenly the word "blog" appeared in front of my face. I guess I will pour out my stuff here. I tried writing a journal, but I have arthritis in my hands and writing is painful. (As if back pain weren't enough!) I could keep a journal on my own computer, but then it would not feel like the sharing that happens when you sit with a therapist. I could go back to my therapist, but it feels too soon to go back to her.

To the anyone that happens to find my blog, welcome. I'm not sure I will allow comments. I have had a couple of incidents in my life recently where I have taken comments and criticism too much to heart and it has caused me some really bad moments. I plan to pour my heart out here. I've lived through some stuff that some may not consider appropriate for publication. I don't plan to name names or give vivid and accurate descriptions. I want to be able to document how it has affected me. Who knows, maybe it will help someone else. I won't make it all about my problems and what is bothering me, I also want to document the things that make me happy and makes me laugh.

We'll see how this goes. I just wanted to start by introducing myself. There is lots more, but I figure this is like the part where you start with a therapist by telling them what is bothering you.