life story, where's annie?, what's current

My new abridged life story:

I was born and still think of myself as an Idahoan.
I grew up on a farm. Or a few farms, actually.
I lived with my grandparents during the transition period between childhood and adulthood.
This means that I was first madly in love when I was a child.
I went to college and graduated in four years and never changed my major from mathematics after declaring it my freshman year. Upon graduating, though, I moved to Japan and taught English.
But in between graduation and moving to Japan I got married!
After living in Japan for a year, I lived in Portland, Oregon, and worked teaching English as a second language, and as a math instructor at a vocational college, and a few other jobs.
I have had more jobs in my life than I have had girlfriends, but fewer than the number of half-birthdays. Unless, well, it depends on what you mean by jobs. And girlfriends, maybe.
In Oregon is where I got divorced.
Then I hitch-hiked across the country. I was restless.
Then I started graduate school in Louisiana, studying mathematics some more.
In 2004 I finished with that, not finishing what I set out to do. I had started with the buying, selling, fixing-up, and renting of real estate. The renting of which I am still involved with.While I grew up, I moved around a lot, relocating mostly in Louisiana, where I met Bonnie. We are still moving a lot.
In 2005 Bonnie became such a part of my life that it was impossible to extricate myself from her grasp, and we tied a wedding knot.
And had one little boy. And another.
We moved to Korea and back. We got busy with some real estate projects, but didn't get as far along with them as we had planned.
We did get to bear a little baby girl!
And, less than 6 months later, we moved to Houston for a teaching opportunity there.
Soon after, we realized we are an IBD family.

Two years ago, I was talking about getting some dirt and a garden on a rooftop in Korea. This year I am head of a gardening club at our school. Today we had our first meeting, talking about what we will do with the garden space we've been alotted.

What else? Well here's a funny story. Only because it has a good ending. When I came out of the Reptile House at the zoo on Friday, Bonnie asked, "Where's Annie?" Because, of course, I had entered the place with three kids, and only come out with two. Of course I about-faced and returned to the spot where, a few minutes earlier, I had put Annie down to get eye-level with the leucistic alligator. She was still checking it out. In fact, I think each of them had moved about the same amount in the preceding minutes. Meanwhile I had done a quick tour of some snakes with the two older siblings. Luckily I have Bonnie to remind me that when I do family roll call, I should count three little button noses and not just two.

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We've been going through another flare-up with Isaac recently. It's somewhat of a tough time in the Becker house. On one hand, everything is fine. We stay active and the kids are all doing fine, even Isaac. Except that he hasn't recuperated well enough yet from his bad bowel movement bouts from last week. What does that mean? It means that instead of one medication three times a day, plus two other amino acid pills and two other probiotic pills he takes each day, he will take those things except a larger dose of medication, plus another medication every other day, plus another pill, plus steroids again. So we're talking over ten teaspoons of meds and five and a half pills a day, except that some of the probiotics we can mix with drinks. Then there are vitamins and B complex tablets we like to give from time to time, and I don't even want to get into the preparation of soy-free meals and snacks, which is Bonnie's new hobby. We are eating pretty well though. We're wanting to try a new sort of diet which works with a lot of IBD patients. Which is sort of funny, because we are just getting into a sort of vegan groove, and this new diet is not at all vegan. We are sort of flummoxed about all the new prescribed meds, and sort of on the fence about sliding up the scale of drasticness, but also want Isaac's bowels to shape up before too much scarring or other damage occurs.

If you really want the current troydanielbecker, this is it. A lot of IBD talk.

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Also current: My new responsibilities as assistant director of the language school where I teach are being tested this week, as the director is out of the country for a few days and I am in charge, and I found out yesterday and one of our teachers is also out for the week due to bereavement, which I also found out yesterday.

a new pastime

We got a Nintendo Wii. I was just watching "Bonnie" get hit in the head with soccer cleats, ha ha. Earlier "we" were speeding down mountain slopes, and pedaling our bikes. Orry and I "went for a run" earlier. Am I worried a little that this is replacing good old fashioned real activity? Yes. Now she just fell from an urban tightrope. But there is no question our activity level is increasing, so I'll just take that for now, and later we'll be able to arrange our lives better for real recreation.

It was a busy week for me. We administered a midterm on Tuesday which took a lot of time in preparation and follow-up. Last Saturday I spent much of the day in teacher training courses, so it has seemed like a long stretch. Hopefully next week I can relax more to make up for it. I keep getting more and more duties at the school where I work. Which is great--I hope the pay adjusts to make up for it sooner rather than later!

As for idle time nowadays, I do read up quite a bit about Inflammatory Bowel Disease and people's experiences. Today I was thinking about trying to assemble a mass study/survey in order to try and sift patterns out of thousands of Crohn's and colitis patients. Nowadays with information technology, it seems feasible that a layman could do something like this with the help of the Internet and forms. Yet it seems like a broad comprehensive study done carefully could help make great progress in untangling the mysteries of IBD. (All of you faithful readers already know about our IBDinourhome blog.).

Bonnie's got the place looking pretty good. We still have some boxes to unpack, and some stuff out in the way, but it's feeling really homey. Our family room, where most of our time is spent, connects to our dining area and has a window into the kitchen. It is a nice space, with 12 foot ceilings and now new venetian blinds on big windows along one whole wall. But the best part of it is when it's filled with five giggling Beckers, enjoying our life together.

If you want to see a bunch of aerial photography, just visit here and scroll down, looking for photos you like the best, or juxtapositions you appreciate.