Saturday. Mom calls – her usual weekend phone call. Because of older sis’s problems with her first pregnancy, the doctors are checking her nearly every day now. Any hint of high blood pressure and she’s to be admitted and induced, but until then, she’s okay. She’s due Wednesday. I make sure, for probably the fiftieth time, that she and older sis have my cell phone number, just in case.

When my nephew Aaron was born. I was working on a project in South Dakota – performance tuning for the application at Gateway computers; working in a warehouse painted like a Holstein cow. I found it amusing that in these tin cans in which we worked, certain hallways had been designated tornado-save zones, as if somehow this part of the building was any safer than any other part for having the roof peeled off, much like the lid of a sardine can. Several times that summer the sirens went off and we all dutifully trooped out to the ‘tornado-safe’ hallways and stood there for indeterminate periods of time.

I and my coworker had rented apartments, and I’d only set up local phone service, since I made all my long distance calls on the calling card anyway. I sat by the phone after my mom called to let me know she’d finally gone into labor. I was on the phone with my dad (and I don’t remember where they’d shipped him that month but he wasn’t in town either) and he got paged, and we knew it was them, telling us the baby had come. He had to hang up to call them back and I sat at the little table in this mostly-bare apartment, huddled in a chair by the phone, waiting for him to call me back and tell me how everything was. They had never found out what sex the baby was, and so when I finally called, too impatient to wait for my dad to call me back, my brother-in-law teased me by telling me weight, length, everything else but what it was.

Tuesday night. Mom is over for a fitting for the wedding dress and notes that older sis’s blood pressure was a bit high but so far she’s okay. It’s going better this time – she hasn’t had to be hospitalized and we’re all crossing our fingers that nothing happens this time – that she doesn’t have to be induced, that Nathan decides he’ll come out normally, that this pregnancy will be just fine.

When older sis was nearly full term with Aaron, her blood pressure shot up so high the doctors were worried. She was hospitalized, and had to stay on her side for several days. Despite their best attempts to induce, Aaron just didn’t seem to want to come out. Older sis later joked about the diet she was given – clear liquids. She’s developed an amused aversion to orange jello as a result. They fed her that a lot in the hospital.

This time, it is liver proteins – something about them in her urine, something about an adverse reaction to magnesium treatments. I’m not clear on the details except that the situation was serious enough to warrant hospitalization, and once again, inducing labor. Even after Nathan arrived, small (6 pounds) but perfectly healthy this morning, she must remain in the hospital til at least this weekend because of the liver condition. The doctors are warning her about any future pregnancies – there will be no discussion; she simply gets a set time and then a c-section. They are not willing to let it reach this stage again. We’d all hoped that Aaron was a fluke; Nathan proved it wasn’t.

I haven’t seen him yet, nor will I til this blasted sinus infection has reached a more tolerable level. And I’m feeling a little guilty because this time, I never found out how long, how much he weighed; all the little details you’re supposed to ask. But I didn’t really care so much about all of that – I can find that out later, and it’s just numbers anyway. All I care about is that older sis will be okay.

And of course, that Nathan – my new little nephew – is finally here.

I’ve taken Richard to the hospital before for his asthma, so the fact that we spent the wee hours of Sunday morning in the emergency room was not that big a deal. This time the room was blissfully free of beeps and hisses; the only sound the steady noise of the thing he was breathing into, and the angry cry of an infant down the hall. The baby cried almost constantly for the better part of an hour while we were there. I’m not sure quite when it stopped, only that at one point, as I was drifting off to sleep, huddled on a stool next to Richard’s bed, I woke up and realized that the crying had stopped.

The doctor who saw him acted as if he had more important things to do, asking questions and then making it obvious he wasn’t even paying attention to the answers because he would ask the same questions again. There are certain questions one asks an asthmatic when he shows up in your emergency room. I’ve only been once before and even I know that now. This man didn’t ask most of them – he seemed more concerned with scribbling something on his chart and then breezing out. I was angry, but because Richard had at least been given the breathing treatments he’d received before, it didn’t seem worth chasing the man down and discussing his distinct lack of bedside manner.

Sunday’s bout seemed to have been a slow buildup that began with a low-grade fever on Thursday, and ended, finally, with us rushing to the hospital again Monday night. He spent Monday working from home, and by the time I called on my way home from work, he was coughing into the phone and sounded as if he’d just finished a ten mile sprint. I held my breath and waited, not very patiently, until he finally agreed that perhaps he ought to go to the hospital after all, at which point I murmured something to the effect of ‘it’s about time’, and off we went.

And this time he didn’t come home with me. Several hours of breathing treatments and a chest x-ray later, they decided that he needed to stay there.

I think if this had been the first time I’d had to deal with this side of his asthma, I’d probably be much less calm about it. It’s nothing to be taken lightly and I was more than a little worried, but I know that it’s treatable; that his condition is maintainable and that he’ll be fine, and that despite his dislike of being in hospitals, that sometimes that’s going to be the best place for him to be. That doesn’t make it any easier for either of us, but beyond getting him quickly to a hospital, there’s not much more I can do.

To make things even more fun, after I left him at the hospital last night, my nose decided that it wanted to join in the excitement, and I promptly developed what seems to be my body’s ailment of choice these days – yet another sinus infection. I toughed it out at work as long as I could today, but finally left early, since being unable to breathe puts a damper on my energy level. We were quite the pair in his hospital room tonight; him coughing and wheezing, me blowing my nose and muttering unkind things about my sinuses as we poured over the house plans, unwilling to let something like hospitalization get in the way of deciding once and for all where the computers would live. (don’t laugh – it makes a difference in the number and placement of electrical outlets and phone jacks in the room).

Saturday was Bethy’s birthday, so we headed down to Berkeley to meet up with a small crowd, go to a bar, eat lunch, and have amusing and loud debates on politics (hard to debate when everyone agrees that Bush is useless, but we *did* try, really we did), catch up on PernMUSH gossip, and generally have fun. Getting there was a bit hectic, however, because for whatever reason, I thought we had to be there by 1pm, and considering that it takes over an hour to get there, and by the time we left our house it was less than an hour til 1pm, I was a bit worried we’d miss the group before they headed out. Amusingly enough, however, even though we actually did make it by 1pm (we just won’t mention how fast Jennifer was driving to accomplish *that* little feat), it turned out we had the time wrong all along and so we were early. Sigh. Ah well.

The reason we ended up late is because we swung by the house, only intending to be there just long enough to take our requisite weekly pictures. But while we were there, we were cornered by the air conditioning guy, who wanted to make sure that he was putting the vents everywhere we wanted, and by the way, we might want to think about upgrading the energy efficiency of the air conditioning unit. And then as we were heading for the car, eyeing our watches and realizing just how late we really were, the roofers waved us down. Did we want woven or valley metal, they asked us.

I should point out that Richard and I are begining to perfect the blank stare and the slack-jawed ‘huh?’. Luckily, the roofer who asked us recognized the look, took pity on us, and pointed out the difference on some neighboring roofs. We mumbled out a choice, and then dashed out of there before anyone else asked any questions that we hadn’t a clue how to answer.

Sunday we went back to the house, this time to do a walk-through and determine placement of light switches and electrical outlets, and this time we decided to take along someone to help. We enlisted my mom to come with us because even though we had a rather vague idea of what we needed to do, we figured that it would help to have someone who’s lived in enough houses to have gotten a feel for what would be nice to have. While Richard drew little room pictures on a pad of paper, we wandered the house and pointed to walls – put an outlet there, and there, and one here, and what about there?

A contractor scrambled down from the attic where he’d been installing air conditioning ducts, and asked about fans. Did we want the normal ones or the more expensive, quiet ones? Did we have any thoughts on the placement of the fan grills themselves?

I think Richard and I really need to simply tattoo “First Time Home Owners – Proceed With Caution” on our foreheads. That would make life so much easier. Really it would.

The builder wanted to meet with us because of the fireplace issue in the master bedroom. Call me silly, but I’ve been dithering about this now for the past few weeks – should we or shouldn’t we, and all the while Richard has patiently waited for me to come to the same conclusion he came to much earlier on. After finally making up my mind to do it, we discovered that we had *just* managed to squeak this one in.

The builder has this expression that we’re beginning to recognize. It’s sort of a half-smile, full of tolerant amusement, as he tells us that we’ve passed our window of opportunity, or in other words, what was once a $50 change will now cost hundreds of dollars, and do we really want it *that* badly?

I made the decision this week to take half-days on Fridays to deal with house things like this. He needed us to be there, on site, to show us some things, and we really can’t do that at night. So I drove straight from work to the house this afternoon, where Richard met us, and we put the fireplace issue to rest.

He’s got little red lines drawn all over the floor now. There’s where the fireplace will go – in the corner in the master bedroom and it’s perfect – exactly what we wanted. There’s the lines where our sinks and bathtub will be in the master bathroom, and we needed to make a decision on the length of the sink today because he had to worry about all the plumbing.

In the kitchen, red boxes marked where the refrigerator would stand, where the oven will be, where the sink sits. And then blue lines drawn onto the floor indicated cupboards. I’m not a slouch when it comes to imagination, but I’ll admit that it’s not the easiest thing in the world to look at a blue line on the floor and extrapolate that into cupboards on the walls, five feet up. The whole cupboard and cabinet issue is looming closer now and can I just admit here that that particular decision is *not* one I’m looking forward to? I haven’t been looking forward to it ever since he asked me, in the very beginning, back when the house was just plans on paper, what sort of wood I preferred for the kitchen. Um….huh?

He’d dropped off a sheet full of composite roof samples. For a bit of fun and giggles, take a two-inch by four-inch chunk of composite and then attempt to guess how it will look on an entire roof. For our house in particular, this is more important because, as you can see here, the roof is rather prominent. We pondered the terra cotta red, and Richard was rather taken with one that had an odd shade of bluish green, but in the end, we decided to go with nicely generic slate gray. The biggest reason for this inability to decide on roof color is simply that we haven’t managed to make up our minds what color the house will be, period. Luckily, we’ve got a month or so more before that becomes an issue.

As we wandered the house staring at little red lines, the roofers arrived. Apparently no one told them quite how steep the roof was. One of them asked our builder if he could have built it any uglier. Heh. I’ll admit I do have sympathy. I wouldn’t want to be climbing around on that roof either!

They’ve installed most of the windows now, there are piles of siding outside, and the sheet rock was to be delivered later in the day. He started to detail out the schedule for the next few weeks – putting up all the siding, tiling the roof, installing the fireplaces, setting up the air conditioning and heating vents. Things are continuing just as quickly as before, I suppose, but at this stage we have to be involved a lot more often than before. More decisions I’m not even sure how to make. Gulp.

A few weeks ago, I finally accepted that I just wasn’t being very good at keeping my paper journal anymore. I’ve been rather sporatic about it all the years I’ve had one (since early college, I think), and there’ve been times when months would go by between entries. I’d gotten better in the past few years – mainly because sitting in the airport is a really convenient place to write, and I’ve done an awful lot of that as a consultant.

But lately it’s been getting to me, not having anywhere or any way to do an occasional brain dump. So a few weeks ago, I found a program that allows me to keep a daily journal on my PC, and started in.

It’s amazing how much of a relief it has been to finally have this in place. I may not be able to use it while sitting in airport lounges, but there’s finally an outlet. With everything that’s been going on lately, I’ve needed this far more than I realized.

************

It happened again – the ‘congrats to one person for the entire project’s success’ speech. This time it was at the mandatory dinner Tuesday night, during which one of the consulting higher-ups reported that he and his little team of manager croonies were there to find a solution to the project, submit it to the customer, and by virtue of doing this, save the day. The fact that they know next to nothing about the history of the project, as well as the fact that the customer already knows the solution but seems simply unable to come to a decision, appear to mean little to him.

A week ago, I was still raw enough to have been upset by the whole speech. But while I admittedly wasn’t exactly thrilled about what they were saying, the whole thing didn’t faze me so much this time. I’m not sure if I was simply prepared for it, or it if just doesn’t matter as much to me any more. I’ve got bigger issues to deal with these days than whether a few of my fellow Big Fishians do something completely rash. They’ll learn the hard way, same as the rest of us.

My niece turns one tomorrow (and we just won’t talk about what a shock it is that an entire year could have passed already!), so naturally we bought her a dump truck full of Duplos. Neither of us cared whether it was a ‘girl’ toy or a ‘boy’ toy; it just looked really fun and the pieces were all big enough so she couldn’t eat them.

We flew up to Seattle to deliver the dump truck in person. It wasn’t wrapped, so getting it up there was a bit interesting. The Duplos were in a net bag in the bed of the dump truck, so when I laid it on its side, they spilled out in a little amoeba lump and the whole thing got stuck in the security pass through. Then it didn’t fit in the overhead bin, but luckily the plane was nearly empty, so the flight attendant allowed us to simply belt it into one of the seats. Of course there were the requisite comments about how we were getting a truck for a little girl, suggestions that they put the truck in the aisle as the plane took off, teasing about loading it up with peanuts and giving it a push down the aisle for a ‘self-serve’ approach to flying. Despite all that, the truck made it to Fiona in one piece, and she seemed quite happy to get it. It was full of things that made a satisfying ‘clump!’ when she took them out and dropped them onto the floor. She could gnaw on them without any danger of swallowing or hurting herself. And she quickly learned that some adults will gladly build Duplo towers for her to whack over with glee.

My sister had a birthday lunch for her on Sunday (both she and Bil-2 completely forgot that it was Super Bowl Sunday, and quite frankly, so did Richard and I). Her in-laws and Bil-2’s brother and his family came over, filling the house with the noise of three well-behaved but incredibly energetic little boys, and a whole host of adults who were more than happy to make buffoons of themselves just to get a certain little girl to smile. As it was her first birthday, Fiona was given a chocolate cupcake smeared liberally with frosting. She mushed the frosting a bit, having fun with that texture, but once she was given a bit of the cake itself, there was no stopping her. By the time she was done, she’d managed to smear the chocolate goo all over her face, hands, the tray of the high chair, and (much to my delight), her hair as well.

The trip this weekend was a lot of fun, and not just because I got to see my niece coated in chocolate. This weekend, my sister and I took the opportunity to teach Richard something that he will have to know if he is to be a true member of our family.

The game is based loosely on solitaire, in that you play the cards red/black down in front of you, yet build on the aces as well. However, the numbers are a bit different, and when you’ve got sixteen aces laying on the table to build upon from four players, it can get more than a bit confusing.

I don’t know where the game came from, or why it’s called ‘Nerts’, or who taught it to my parents. But as far back as we can remember, my parents have played it, and the game is always the same – a wild and crazy frenzy of people tossing cards and trying to be the first to get rid of the base pile. How many cards you get into the center is just as crucial as being the first to finish, which means if one of the players has long nails, things could get ugly. And yet it always degrades into laughter and teasing, especially to whoever manages to lose. Back when we were kids, my little sister was the one who tended to lose, usually to me. From their conversations, it appears that she regularly trounces her husband. Despite the teasing Richard received the first game we played, he managed to hold his own in game two.

Just a short entry for tonight. Since we will be out of town this weekend and unable to go take the requisite weekly picture of the house, we went out tonight. We walked around with a flashlight, mapping out lighting plans for the upstairs. It seems like every time we go out there, something else comes up that we should really think about, so it’s nice when we can actually get ahead of the game.

As we climbed the stairs we were greeted by a rather fluffy black and white cat. He seemed rather nonchalant about the fact that he was trespassing (although I’m sure he didn’t see it that way). The entire time we were there, he meandered slowly around the upper floor, rubbing against the beams and occasionally coming over to weave around our ankles and remind us that he was there and we really should bend down and pet him.

I know the dangers if he decides to spray somewhere, just as I also know that there is no way we can keep him (or any of his feline friends) away from our house while it’s still unfinished. And actually, I really don’t mind. Somehow it’s almost comforting to know that our house – such as it is right now – has been given the feline stamp of approval. He thought it seemed like a lovely spot to hang out.

Our house is cat-approved. How much better can it get than that?

***************

As you can see, I finally got motivated to redesign this site. I’m not artistic by any stretch of the imagination, so this was put together with help from my oh-so-patient fiance. Regardless of his (greatly appreciated) assistance, doing this sort of thing is forcing me (kicking and screaming, I might add) to learn how to make my own graphics (although I found the background online, and have referenced accordingly), and I’m also having to learn just a little bit more HTML every time I try to do this. Give me another ten years and I might actually be able to do this completely by myself. Maybe. I think.

I get such pleasure from making people’s lives difficult. Okay, it’s not quite what it sounds like – I’m not deliberately cruel and heartless. What I’m doing, however, is forcing people to accept responsibility and understand the full ramifications of what they’re requesting. I merrily escalated a request from one of the other development teams to a number of people who would have been impacted by this change because the person who submitted the change didn’t even want to listen or care about what would happen if we’d simply done as he asked. Once he finally realized that I was actually serious when I said I would not approve the changes he was requesting, because of the impact it would have on everyone else, there was suddenly a breakthrough. I got at least two his group to admit and accept the issue and to deal with it in a more rational manner. It was victory, and these days on this project, I take any victory I can get, no matter how small or petty.

The skies broke open this afternoon. A few of us clustered by the glass doors and watched the rain pound the parking lot, offering good-natured teasing to those poor souls who had to go outside to their cars in that kind of weather. People used to leaving early lingered by the doors, or went back to their desks in defeat, unwilling to brave the deluge, hoping it would calm down. It subsided a bit by the time I left, although the threat of a little water doesn’t bother me too much these days. My hair style is pretty much of the ‘comb it and go’ variety, so it’s not like I’m worried about looking like a drowned rat. I simply scrambled into my car, laughing, and then turned the heat on high.

It felt strange to come home this evening and have nothing to do. The past two days I didn’t drag myself into the house til after 10pm, so exhausted that I pretty much went through the mail and then crawled into bed. The cats have had to content themselves with stomping on me in my sleep, but even that doesn’t completely wake me on days like those have been.

The reason for my late nights these past two days were two meetings – but what a contrast between them. Tuesday night was an SPCA board meeting, which are too often unorganized and emotional. Everything must be discussed to death, and there are times I feel as if I’m reining in hyperactive children to get them to finish a discussion and make a decision before haring off on the next tangent. Despite all of this, though, it’s been better – far better – than I’d expected when I came back. Things are calmer and clearer now than when I left over a year ago, and while I may not necessarily ever look forward to the meetings with excitement, at least I no longer dread them.

In contrast, the meeting I attended last night was calm and ordered. Each committee made its report, and I dutifully took notes, as I hold the same position on both boards. I had to ask a few process checks – simply to familiarize myself with them because this was my first time at this particular meeting. But there was never a feeling of tension or anger. I didn’t feel as if anyone was trying to advance their own political agenda. I was tired when it was over, but that was merely because of the late hour and the too-long day beforehand, not because I was emotionally drained from the meeting itself. It’s a refreshing change. Too bad this one is only six times per year, and the other is so much more often.

Our builder called to make sure we were okay with a slight upgrade in price on the master bathroom marble accessories. A few hundred dollars more? No problem. We may end up nickelng and diming ourselves to death here, but it seems like such a small and inconsequential amount, really. It makes such a difference when you *have* money than when you don’t. I don’t even blink an eye at this sort of thing anymore, except in retrospect, when I look at what I just agreed to and have a brief moment of amazement. I wonder if I’ll ever get used to that feeling.

He also wanted to get the placement of the bathtub valves, a question which we can gleefully add to the list of ‘Things I Never Dreamed I’d Have To Decide’. Did we want them so that you’d see them when you walked into the bathroom, or did we want them hidden on the other side? Uh….huh? As usual, he offered a suggestion, and as usual, Richard and I agreed. I think we amuse him, both of us so clueless about what we’re doing. Heck, neither of us has even owned a house before and here we are, required to make decisions about where the bathtub faucet should go.

On the down side, he did mention that they’re having delays getting the roof sheeted because of the wind. The steepness of our roof strikes again. Wince. I thought all I had to worry about was the rain – never considered the impact of the wind. If we can just get past the roof and the walls, then it doesn’t matter how nasty the weather is. It’s just getting *past* it that seems to be the problem. I don’t suppose it’s too much to hope for, for the weather to just play nice for two weeks. Is that really too much to ask?

So much for his insistence that he wants to mend the rifts between party lines. President “If I Only Had A Brain” Bush has shown his true colors. Apparently the fact that thousands and thousands of women around the world will lose access to the only affordable health care they might have doesn’t matter a bit to him. He’s got his own agenda, and it’s very anti-choice. I suppose the only positive here is that this blatant act means he’s at least willing to take a stand on something. If his first action while in office is any indication of how things will progress for the next four years, the man who replaces him will have an incredible amount of damage to clean up. Our only consolation, I suppose, is that he’ll only have four years, and if we’re incredibly lucky, there’ll be an increase in the number of Democrats come 2002 in retaliation. I have to believe that the American public can’t possibly be so stupid as to elect him to another term. Of course, I’ve been wrong before, but hell, I’ve got to have at least *some* optimism to cling to, right?

And speaking of stupidity, I caved in to my mindless curiosity and watched Temptation Island. I suppose I could lie and say that it was simply because I was tired and there was nothing else on, but the truth is that I actually checked to see what time it was on, and deliberately turned on the TV for the express purpose of watching this show and no other.

The fact that the commercials before and during were all for things like gun and fishing shows and monster truck rallies should have clued me in immediately as to what sort of audience they were aiming for. Hint – this show is *not* marketed to the testosterone deprived. The second fact that should have clued me in was the fact that all the women on the show apparently are required to wear bikinis, and skimpy ones at that.

So I’ll freely admit to stupidity on my part for watching it. But I really have to wonder about the even more glaring stupidity of the four couples who volunteered to be on it in the first place. They agree to go to an island and surround themselves with singles whose only purpose there is to make them be unfaithful. That in itself indicates a lapse of good judgment, but I can forgive them that much because hey, it was a free vacation and the location seemed beautiful. But the sheer stupidity kicked in when you see them kissing the singles, fondling the singles, and generally doing all sorts of things guaranteed to make their respective partners want to either find the nearest knife and connect blade to genitals, or else curl up in a corner, weeping uncontrollably, because they were being filmed. The whole time! And they knew it!

I mean, come on. Regardless of how little you may value your relationship, and how willing you may be to test that whole monogamy thing, most people have the brains to realize that discretion needs to come into play at *some* point. Or, once again, am I simply giving too much credit here?

I don’t often play these silly political games, but there are times when there is no other option. At work, our team and one other came to a decision that is beneficial to both of us. It would mean a few changes to our processes, and some rough spots to iron out, but the benefits of better communication and more efficient work far outweigh the little issues that still remain to be dealt with. We made this decision Thursday, when a rather nasty and glaring error brought the whole thing to a head, and suddenly we were all coming to the same decision, and instead of pointing fingers, we were cooperating, smiling, eagerly planning how to make this work for all of us.

Until, that is, one particular person who, unfortunately, manages that other team, decided that it didn’t matter to him that the rest of us wanted this – he didn’t see the point. This is not the first time he’s literally pulled the rug out from under us, and when of his team members came to me in frustration, my brain suddenly begin to click. As he watched, grinning, I fired off a bubbly happy email to all those who’d been in that meeting yesterday, as well as a few higher-ups in a number of different development teams, gushing all over about how excited we all were to be making this change, how we were all preparing whatever we had to do to make it happen, etc. In other words, I manipulated, shamelessly, with my oh-so-innocent email. If this man had really wanted to press the issue after that, he would have had to explain to all those other people why he was refusing what the rest of us so obviously wanted. I used his own politics against him, and he caved.

I did it for my own selfish reasons – I don’t like this man and probably never will (although the good news is that I’m among the majority there). But I also did it for both development teams because I believe wholeheartedly that what we’re planning is in the best interests of all of us – and it was rather refreshing to get the thumbs up and the secret grins from those under he whom I manipulated, who knew exactly what I’d accomplished for them.

The surprise was receiving an email from an old friend whom I’d lost contact with too many years before. He was the best friend of the guy I’d been dating at the time, and when that boy left to go to medical school, the friend and I hung out. He introduced me to music I hadn’t ever pondered listening to before. The one and only time I ever smoked pot was with him – when I discovered that it didn’t do a darn thing for me and, much like alcohol (which simply puts me to sleep) – I really didn’t see what could possibly be the big thrill. He was in the middle of a rough time in his life and I knew enough to understand that I couldn’t fix it for him, but I could at least be there to listen. I watched him struggle and worried endlessly about him, and when we lost touch, I thought about him often, wondering how he was doing, hoping he’d made his way past all his demons, and even went so far as to search for him occasionally, but never with any luck.

It was wonderful to hear from him after all this time; not only to know that he’s still out there, but to learn how happy he is in his life now. He’s married and a father, and from the sounds of it, quite the doting husband and daddy too. The emails we’ve exchanged back and forth today were full of little tidbits, catching up on all the years we’d missed. Hearing from him again was an unexpected bonus, and I hope that this time we manage to keep in contact and not drift apart.