Anything Said

I have watched the 3:00 AM Insanity Workout infomercial about 25 times. I have it memorized. Do not for one moment doubt me.

2011-01-27T10:27:00.006-05:00

Briefly breaking blog silence to scream at you about sleep.

The baby, Newt, still won't sleep more than a couple of hours in a stretch. Like, ever. We are up every night. We are incoherent zombie freakpeople every day. We could teach a seminar course on comparative sleep training methods. It would be called "Here Are All The Things That Work for Other People." It would include all the old faves: good old Elizabeth Pantley, with her mothereffing "Pantley Pull Off" that sounds more like some kind of Catholic family planning method than a sleep training trick. The unfortunately named "Sleepeasy solution," which delivers neither sleep, ease, nor solutions.

We shh'd and patted with the Baby Whisperer. We went in and out of the bedroom like a couple of indecisive tools with Dr. Ferber. We even, in spite of ourselves, put the baby in our bed and pretended that we didn't get the idea from Dr. Sears. The only thing we refuse to try is letting the baby scream in his crib until he pukes.

Hey! Which, incidentally, is the only thing that has ever helped or will ever help babies learn to sleep, according to the women at my work who start every day by asking "So. Sleeping through the night yet, hon?" and then clucking bemusedly when I answer. Cause, see, if you're not willing to let your baby wail all night in a puddle of his own vomit, then you don't really want to sleep, now do you?

The baby is healthy. The baby is eating fine. The baby does not have reflux. The baby is happy and crawling and developing just fine. Coincidentally, the husband and I are also crawling. For the husband, this is more of a problem, since he has to deliver coherent lectures to entitled college students every day. I just have to show anime DVDs to 15-year-old boys. If I go down to the basement bathroom for an early morning cry, then crush and snort a handful of coffee beans, I can usually manage to at least stay upright for a significant portion of the day.

Please don't leave me advice. If you leave me advice, I will just die. I can't hear any more advice. I don't KNOW if he's really hungry at night or just looking for attention. Sometimes he drains the bottle; sometimes he chews it and then drops a load in his PJs. I don't KNOW if he needs it to be darker, lighter, warmer, colder. Believe me when I say there is NO pattern to this madness.

I love this baby. They just don't make them any cuter than this baby.

And if this baby doesn't start sleeping soon, his mama's going to sew herself a dress made from the torn pages of "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" and wear it to sell imaginary produce on the corner.

Like Ross and Rachel... *

2010-12-20T10:46:00.002-05:00

... I think this blog and I might be on a break.

It's been five years since I started writing here, and for five years this space has pretty much served two purposes: 1) to keep me writing, and 2) to give me community. Lately, though, I'm hardly writing, and the posts that I do belch out onto the screen are hardly conversation-starters. I don't look forward to blogging because I know I'm just phoning it in, and that just feels dishonest and lame.

I have this new job, and I love it. Like, really, really love it. I'm there from 8 to 5 every day, which is long but awesome, and then I come home and wrangle my nutjob children, which is also awesome. And then I'm up all night every night with the baby, which is less awesome but still ok. And in between all this activity are about a million bloggable stories -- funny things the kids do and say, criminal activity perpetrated by library patrons, small town back-ass-wardness -- but by the time I find fifteen minutes to sit down and write, sweet God on a stick, rehashing is the official LAST thing I feel up to doing.

So. I know it's all the rage these days to take a blog hiatus. I don't know if that's what this is. But I do know that I don't want to dread what used to be a beloved hobby, so I'm going to try and figure out a way to use this space that fits a little better. If I have something worth saying tomorrow, I'll say it. But otherwise, I'll just blog-stalk all of you guys until I find my own voice again.

* See? Even my pop culture references are tired.

That's...another way to go

2010-12-12T21:40:00.003-05:00

On the weekends, we like to listen to a children's radio program broadcast from Emerson College in Boston. The show is called "The Playground," and the husband and I have enjoyed it for years, since long before we had children. They play all kinds of music, from fun, folky kids' artists to tunes from classic Disney movies, from Weird Al to old cartoon theme songs. They even rock random crap like the Hampster Dance, and that "Fish Heads" song from Dr. Demento.

This afternoon we had the show on as we were going about our Sunday business. Cletus and I were hanging out in the dining room while the husband walked His Royal Teethingness around the living room in endless circles. All of a sudden my ears perked up at the sound of Queen -- as in, Freddie Mercury's Queen -- coming from the radio.

Now, playing music not traditionally thought of as belonging to the children's canon is nothing new on The Playground. The DJs will often throw in some Bob Marley or some Beatles or something else relatively benign and child-friendly that somebody's parents, sick to death of Muppets and Sponge Bob, called up and requested. A number of Queen tracks could fall quite comfortably within this category. Like, say, "You're My Best Friend." Or even "We Are The Champions."

The song they played today was "Don't Stop Me Now:"

Go ahead. Take a listen. You'll remember this one; it's a classic. It moves quickly, though, so you may not recall all the words. Pay close attention. It clips along, all catchy and fun, and you'll probably find yourself humming, maybe even chiming in with a few remembered lyrics, singing them out loud to your head-bopping preschooler until, like my husband, you stop.

And, also like my husband, you furrow your brow, walk over to where your spouse is sitting, lower your voice so your four-year-old can't hear, and ask "Did he just say 'I'm a sex machine ready to reload'?"

While hiding from this blog, I've been enjoying:

2010-12-06T19:22:00.002-05:00

1. YA dystopian fiction, read on my new Kindle.

I got a Kindle for my birthday, friends. I'm making out with it as we speak. The first e-book I purchased to grace its screen happens to be the very book that is pretty much changing my life right now, an insane YA novel called The Knife of Never Letting Go. There's a talking dog and a world where you can hear everyone's thoughts and I totally blew off all of my lunchtime errands today because I actually physically couldn't stop reading.

2. "Breaking Bad" on DVD

When the babies are in bed, the husband and I like to watch DVDs about drugs and murder. We finished "The Wire" ages ago and we're all caught up on "Weeds," so now we're working our way through "Breaking Bad," which is about a high school chemistry teacher who gets lung cancer and decides to cook meth. It is not quite as awesome as the former two shows, but still enjoyable in that so-uncomfortable-it-makes-you-cringe way.

3. Movies! Like, in the theater!

Over Thanksgiving, we visited my parents in Indiana and took advantage of the free babysitting to go on a date that involved dinner and a double feature at the dollar theater. We saw "Easy A" and "The Town," both of which were fabulous. "Easy A" stars Emma Stone, who is A) the redhead from "Superbad," and B) my new Hollywood girlfriend. She replaces Rachel McAdams, who I fictionally dated strictly on account of her fresh-faced gorgeousness, overlooking things like "The Notebook" and "Red Eye." But now Emma and I are in love, so I don't even have to try to justify "Morning Glory."

4. Awesome children's music

Speaking of new relationships, Cletus the Former Fetus has fallen deeply in love with Laurie Berkner. Laurie, for those of you who don't spend your weekends rocking Nick Jr., heads up a trio of musicians called, aptly, The Laurie Berkner Band. They play ridiculously catchy tunes about animals and numbers and letters and body parts. Our entire family is OBSESSED. We have a DVD and most of the CDs and we have them on constant rotation. The husband and I have done significant googling to learn personal details about the band members (newish member Adam is sadly inferior to former bassist Brian, who is also Laurie's husband but left the band so that they could keep their private and professional lives separate, and now he's pursuing a master's degree in psychology. i mean... whatever, i totally don't care.)

Here's my current fave (beware the earworm):

Did you see Brian's badass dance moves? LOVE.

Here's another favorite. This one makes me want to hug a puppy or something. The husband is singing along right now.

On the drive to my parents' place for Thanksgiving, we discovered the XM Radio Station "Kids Place Live," which was so much more entertaining than anything else we heard on the trip. There was a Top Ten Countdown (a countdown! of childrens' music!) and a call-in show where the DJ invited children to call the station with their Thanksgiving plans and then confused them by joking around about, like, how they should hide something gross in their grandparents' mashed potatoes. The kid on the phone would be all "um... i don't know..." and the DJ would be all "YES. DO IT. It will be FUNNY" and then you could hear the kid's parent muffled in the background and then the line would just go silent. Awesome.

Anyway, we heard all kinds of great independent children's music on this station and have been googling and downloading ever since. I really love entertainers that know how to reach children, sincerely and respectfully, without pandering or selling a tie-in product. This is one of the tracks we've been rocking the most since last week:

Get in shape, girl

2010-12-02T09:53:00.003-05:00

Hi again.

Pathology came back from Surgery #2 yesterday, and finally it was good news. Not a single bit of cancer crawling around in there! I have to go back for the ovarian cancer blood test every three months for the next couple of years, but hopefully that will be smooth sailing. I would even settle for just smooth-ISH sailing.

Our household had acquired some kind of snot-nosed plague which, coupled with the fact that one of us is actively sprouting teeth, means that everyone tosses around coughing instead of sleeping. I am not at my most patient when it comes to open-ended kiddie ailments. I like to have some kind of idea about when my life is likely to improve. To that end, I am an unabashed advocate of my twin friends: Infant Ibuprofin and Children's Benadryl. When I am without a fresh bottle of one or the other, I get a little twitchy.

For myself, I've been tossing back glassfuls of vile EmergenC, wrapping up my throat at bedtime, washing my hands and whining.

My birthday was this past Sunday, and for a gift I requested a copy of the "30-Day Shred" DVD. This year has kicked the shit out of my body, and between Newt's birth, two abdominal surgeries, and the 6-week no-exercise policy that followed each one, I'm ending the year looking just about as pregnant as I did at the start of it. I feel heavy and frumpy and haggard. Technically I have another month before I'm supposed to do any abdominal exercises, but I've heard such great things about this workout that I can't wait to start.

Yesterday at work, I was trying to help a patron figure out how to transfer songs from a CD onto her weird off-brand MP3 player. Nothing we tried seemed to work; her device kept crashing our computers and I was ready to tell her it was a no-go, and then the patron saw our new reference librarian -- a peppy 26-year-old -- come in to the building to start her shift. The patron exclaimed, "Hey, have that young one come over and help me -- she'll know how to do it!"

Nothing says "Woman! Get back in shape and buy some new clothes and maybe wash your hair once in awhile!" like being a 34-year-old who is lumped together with the techno-challenged, embroidered-Santa-sweater-wearing, 60-and-over masses that surround her.

Done, for realsies, oh please make it so

2010-11-19T10:43:00.002-05:00

Thanks for the interweb love! I'm home from the hospital, considerably more sliced than I had anticipated but so ridiculously glad to have the surgery behind me. I had naively assumed that this procedure would be of the "one or two wee l'il cuts deep down in your belly button" variety, but alas, the powers that be had their hearts set on something a bit more "giant robot machine with multiple arms that will cut you up five times across the center of your abdomen." So. My days of hitting up the reference desk in my halter top are apparently over. At least they were good while they lasted.

Recovering now, back to work tomorrow. As you do.

I'll be back later to demand answers from all my nurse friends about the fable of "Yes It Is Imperative That We Wake You Up at 4:00 AM to Draw Blood, Then Again at 4:25 to Take Your Vitals, and Then Again at 5:00 To Announce That We Are Giving You A Fresh Glass of Water."

The shizz

2010-11-13T23:23:00.002-05:00

7:25 PM: Ahhhh, life! Is there anything better than listening to your two children fussing upstairs while you go downstairs to purposely give yourself diarrhea?

7:30 PM: I carefully measure out 8 ounces of Golytely and toss it back like so much cheap beer. Let's get this party started. Only 112 ounces to go!

7:31 PM: Golytely tastes like salted puke. The lemon flavoring packet was filled with lies and false promises. I swish my mouth out with soda between glasses and wait ten minutes for the next dose.

8:15 PM: This isn't so bad! Yes, the medicine is disgusting, but so far I only feel mild discomfort and a bit of stomach gurgling. Let's settle in and watch some classic Buffy.

8:30 PM: As I down my seventh dose, my mother-in-law -- mercifully and gloriously in town to help out with the children -- cuts herself a slice of delicious shepherd's cheese and makes audible sounds of pleasure while munching it. Upon remembering my plight, she immediately feels badly and claims that her "mmmmm" had in actuality been a "Hmm!" of surprise as a bit of cheese fell to the floor. I inform her that she has just assured herself a mention on the blog for the first time in its storied six-year history.

8:45 PM: Wow. Still nothing coming out the other e--

8:46 PM: Oh my.

8:50 PM: I appreciate that I have invested in high-quality moisturizing handsoap and soft toilet paper.

9:15 PM: It is difficult to enjoy an episode of Buffy when it is broken up into 3-minute portions.

9:25 PM: There is no way in hell I am finishing that bottle. There is, like, an OCEAN of it left. I long for actual salted puke. Actual salted puke would be an improvement on this facsimile.

9:45 PM: I wish I had thought to put better magazines in the bathroom for the occasion. An old Bust, the husband's National Geographic, and a Hanna Andersson catalog. These are not enough to take my mind off the fear that I am turning our septic system into a toxic wasteland.

9:47 PM: This is like peeing out of the other side.

10:10 PM: Ok, one more glass.

10:20 PM: A quandary: there are at least 3 more glasses' worth in the bottle, but if I ingest one more drop the angels will throw down their halos and cry.

10:21 PM: I take one more for the team. The team, of course, being me, my remaining ovary, and Buffy.

10: 22 PM: FIN. And now, to starve myself until surgery for no logical reason other than my doctor requires it of all her patients, regardless of the procedure. Because why provide kind, gentle, and individualized care when you can just make everyone shit their brains out and then deny them food for 24 hours?

See you all in a few, hopefully with tiny scars, minimal discomfort, and a serious cheeseburger in my hand.

I laughed when the pharmacist handed it over. Except he wasn't joking.

2010-11-11T11:46:00.004-05:00

Last night I picked up my prescription for Saturday night's pre-surgical bowel cleanse:

In case your first reaction was not immediate visceral horror, here's a side-by-side size comparison shot:

Can I be frank? The instructions packet contains the following passage:

"Drink 8 ounces of this medicine every 10 minutes until the stool is watery and clear, or until the medicine is gone. At least 3 liters is usually required."

There will be live-blogging.

Things Netflix-on-demand could do to be a better boyfriend

2010-11-09T22:31:00.003-05:00

1. All seasons of the following: Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, Felicity, Little House on the Prairie, Kids Incorporated, and that Nickelodeon Canadian teen soap opera from the 80s called Fifteen.

2. Six Feet Under, which I've always wanted to watch but haven't because I can't commit to all those DVDs.

3. Lifetime movies STREAMING ON DEMAND, people. Organized into channels by actress. Like, there would be a Kellie Martin Queue, and a Markie Post Queue, and a Tracey Gold Queue.

4. Yule Log.

Reasons that Netflix-on-demand is my boyfriend

2010-11-09T22:22:00.003-05:00

1. All seasons of the following: Buffy, Angel, Veronica Mars, Friday Night Lights, The Office, and Parks and Recreation.

2. Season 1 of Rock of Love with Bret Michaels.

3. Almost all seasons of the L-word, so I no longer have to search YouTube using alternate spellings to find videos of the woman from Flashdance having sex with the woman from Children of a Lesser God.

4. This.

And then I used a rainbow to strangle a kitty

2010-11-07T20:49:00.002-05:00

This afternoon, the husband was off running errands and playing soccer and I was home alone with the kids. Newt, whose current naptime-and-nocturnal routine involves an invigorating 90 minutes of rocking, swaying, and cuddling for every 35 minutes of sleep, had just dozed off in my arms after a particularly hard-fought battle. Cletus the Former Fetus was putzing around in the dining room with a craft project, cutting something and gluing something and coloring something else, seeming utterly content to entertain herself. Until, of course, the very moment Newt's eyes closed. And then she freaked out.

Suddenly, she needed to fingerpaint. It was imperative that she fingerpaint immediately. If her fingertips were not dipped into paints that very moment she would likely slip into a coma and die, twice. (Please bear in mind that this is a child who has not fingerpainted in, like, PRETTY MUCH HER WHOLE LIFE, as in the set of fingerpaints she owns was purchased as a gift for her first birthday and has since sat on a shelf collecting about an inch of dust. She is now four.)

Obviously, I couldn't meet this particular need, and I told her as much. Which caused her to march herself right up to the rocking chair Newt and I were occupying, stamping her feet and yelling. Which caused the baby's eyes to pop open. Which caused me to lose. my. shit.

I snapped at her. "You woke up the baby!" I shouted. "You need to get out of here right now!"

Her little face crumbled and she ran out of the room sobbing. I could hear her crying in her playroom for probably a good five minutes. I didn't go to her; the baby was awake and wailing, I was exhausted and so, so completely pissed off -- like, my whole body was just bubbling with rage. So I sat there, simmering, bouncing Newt and glaring into space. Things quieted down in the other room. I turned on the TV.

And then a few minutes later Cletus came around the corner, opening up the French doors with one hand while balancing a a little tray on the other. The tray held a slice of pretend cake and a plastic cup. Cletus put the tray down in front of me on the coffee table, smiled at me with big eyes. "I made you some cake and a cup of coffee, mommy," she said. Then she turned around and ran back out of the room, looking back over her shoulder at me just before rounding the corner to the kitchen.

And then I died a thousand deaths, right there in the rocking chair, holding the baby in my lap.

So I don't forget

2010-11-04T21:11:00.002-05:00

When I staggered home from work tonight at 8:00, Cletus the Former Fetus was dressed in pink pajamas covered with drawings of clouds. Her teeth were brushed and her feet were bare. She was sitting on the couch with her dad, reading a story. She ran over to greet me and to give me a card she had made for me. The card was just a folded piece of white construction paper made colorful with rubber stamps. "Look, this one says 'love,'" she pointed. "And this one is a heart. Do you know why I put hearts on your card, mama?" I said I didn't know. I said "Because you like hearts?" And she shook her head, no. I said "Because you like me?" And she smiled so big and bright it would make your heart flipflop and roll over and die, and she said "No mama! Because I wanted to make it sweet!"

Daily? No. Let's strive for weekly.

2010-11-03T19:41:00.002-05:00

Every year, NaBloPoMo seems like such a great goal. Such a great, completely inaccessible goal. There's no way I'm even going to try. I will attempt to at least kick some of the dust around, though. I really miss blogging, and having something to say.

I've been falling into bed around nine o'clock these days, leaving the hall light on and rolling around fitfully. It's like I'm trying not to let my body gets its hopes up about the possibility of a solid block of sleep. If I snuggle in, get warm, get comfy, let the room get dark and quiet, then the inevitable crackle of Protesting Boy over the baby monitor will come as that much more of a jarring heartbreak. Keeping one toe in the waters of wakefulness helps me stay sane, somehow. When I'm already expecting it, the midnight trip to the rocking chair is a little bit easier.

Oh,I'm tired of sounding like a broken record at work. It's got to be a pain in the ass to hear me yawn and stretch, yawn and stretch, then chatter like a freak for about twenty minutes after my two cups of coffee, and then yawn and stretch and rubrubrub my eyes and lather rinse repeat. Sometimes I get way grouchy, too, and throw out bitch responses to, like, technophobic old ladies whose reluctance to make their own photocopies is mildly annoying, yes, but otherwise benign. Or, when a patron asks me if the library has a copy of "Predators" she could check out, and I say "Predators, as in the film?" and she says "No, the movie," instead of swallowing my intellectual superiority complex with a Shut Up Chaser, I sigh heavily, look up at her, and say "SO THE FILM, THEN."

I feel extra guilty every time my fatigue gets in the way at work, given that my workplace is facing a budget shortfall of an amount that looks, ohhhh, pretty much exactly the same as my annual salary. So there's that. I'm hyper-aware of needing to look like a Valuable Asset, constantly nervous about every dime I spend on programs and books for my department. Today I went out and bought paint and primer and other supplies for a project I'm working on, turning an underused display case into a gallery for student art. I snuck in the back door with my purchases so that no one would see me toting shopping bags, and then I smuggled my packages through the stacks and into the staff workroom like a thief. It's ridiculous, I know, but I'm terrified that everyone's thinking it, sitting around in the breakroom, saying "Doesn't she know there's no money?" and "She should be grateful to even be here!"

And I am. Grateful. But it's hard to walk around with your grateful face on for eight hours a day, five days a week. I'm at least trying to tone down the yawns and stretches, to be professional. To lead the old ladies to the photocopier, show them where to put their change, explain to the gentleman that a driver's license can't go through the fax machine, smile, think about how great this will all be when -- OH MY LORD -- I am rested again.

Haiku corner: Here's what we have tried.

2010-10-24T13:38:00.003-05:00

Crying it out. Co-
sleeping. Feeding on demand.
Feeding on schedule.

Solids before bed.
Cereal in the bottle.
Cereal by spoon.

Bedtime routine. Bath.
Warm room. Quiet room. Dark room.
Ambient noise. Socks.

Rocking. Wiggling.
Walking around the bedroom.
Patting and singing.

Drugs: ibuprofin,
tylenol, orajel, plus
homeopathic

crap that never works
no matter how many times
you tell me it does,

mom. Prompt care to rule
out the ear infection we
knew he didn't have.

Admission of de-
feat. Netflix on demand at
2:30 AM.

Whiskey in the slow-
cooker casserole. Whiskey
on the breakfast toast.

It's a sad state of affairs...

2010-10-12T20:35:00.002-05:00

... when the visit to the cancer center feels like a date because a) you're with your husband, b) you're not with your kids, and c) you get to pick up Starbucks on the way.

Surgery #2 is scheduled for mid-November, this time with Fancy Cancer Doctor In The City who will henceforth be referred to as She Who Cannot Be Rushed thanks to the seven lifetimes I have already spent in her waiting room. CT scan showed nothing much remarkable, other than a small random blob of something floating around in the space where my ovary used to be. Perhaps Dr. Furry left behind a calling card? Dangled a clump of silvery chest hair into the cavity and snipped it free? Whatever. Dr. Furry, you're allegedly a qualified surgeon, and I'm really happy for you and I'ma let you finish, but maybe next time you could try not using, like, salad tongs when you operate.

When I scheduled the second surgery, the office staff informed me that She Who Cannot Be Rushed asks all of her patients to do a "bowel prep" the day before their procedure. When I asked what was to be involved in said bowel prep, I was given the following three instructions:
1. Drink a prescription substance called, I kid you not, "Go Lightly."
2. Eat nothing but clear liquids.
3. DO NOT LEAVE THE HOUSE.

So there's that. Is it wrong that the first thought I had was, "well, at least I'll finally have something funny to blog about again..."?

And now I'm officially shutting up about all this. This morning I got an email telling me that a friend and former colleague is in a hospital waiting room, waiting while her fiance gets a heart transplant. Perspective. It's a bitch.

File under "Body, Continued Malfunctioning Of"

2010-09-30T09:36:00.003-05:00

So. As it turns out, the f*cking cyst was never actually a f*cking cyst; it was a f*cking tumor. Something called a borderline malignancy. Now I don't know about any of you, but I don't typically like to hover anywhere near the borderline of things labeled malignant. So you'll understand, I hope, why I have not yet mailed out invitations to the party celebrating this particular diagnosis.

Borderline tumors of the ovary, when they are truly just that and truly contained to just the ovary, are unobtrusive little fellows and almost never create any further problems once they've been removed. They can, however, come back, and they can spread, and they can (not commonly, but sometimes) turn into full-on cancer. The generally accepted treatment, as you'll see noted in the WebMD link above, is surgical removal of the tumor and/or ovary and staging/biopsies of surrounding tissue.

Hey! Guess what Dr. Furry, having assumed the grapefruit-sized mass in his hand was a benign cyst until subsequent pathology reviews completed by his peers AFTER I WAS ALREADY SEWN BACK UP came back otherwise, didn't do? If you guessed "take even half of a glance at anything other than the ovary he hacked out of my body," you win!

At my post-surgery followup exam, Dr. Furry shared this news with me as if he were informing me that the breakfast counter was out of blueberry muffins, and would I consider a lemon poppyseed instead? He was all "you probably have nothing to worry about -- just be vigilant about getting your annual exams." Naturally I went home and promptly applied for an NSF grant to fund the 24/7 internet research I was to conduct for the next solid week. The husband and I, armed with the best PDFs that a liberal arts professor's academic database subscriptions can buy, then went back in for a second appointment to ask Dr. Furry some questions, at which time Dr. Furry was all "children, please, I am a Medical Professional and you cannot surpass my knowledge with google-searching," and we were all "BAM, jerk, do you want to go over the stuff from Hopkins first or would you rather start with these 17 PubMed articles?" For half the concerns we brought up, he could offer little more than a shrug. So we got a referral to an oncologist for a second opinion.

Apparently, the approach to managing this kind of tumor is controversial. Lots of women get complete hysterectomies. Other women just get the tumor removed and hope for no recurrence. What's key, though, in determining what approach to take is doing a complete exploration of what's going on inside, taking bits of tissue from a bunch of places and testing them for signs of spread. Which Dr. Furry didn't do. Because he thought it was a benign cyst.

Fast forward to this part Tuesday, when we drove an hour to the fancy cancer center -- which I'm pretty sure is the official Saddest Place On Earth. Everyone there was very kind, but really: what a hideous, awful place. I want to cry when I think about how familiar some of those patients seemed to be with the hallways and waiting rooms. Anyway, long story short: oncologist looked horrified that I had been told simply getting my annual exam would be an acceptable approach to handling the situation. She's ordering another review of my pathology and running some other tests. Apparently Dr. Furry ruptured the tumor while operating (what - did I forget to mention that? Maybe that's because SO DID HE) which also could complicate the situation. She wants to do another surgery, this time to take all those tissue samples that Dr. Furry should've taken, as well as to remove my appendix -- which is often linked to the particular type of borderline tumor I had.

I had a CT scan this morning, one of the tests the oncologist ordered. Because apparently cancer doctors like to subject you to procedures that, you know, give you cancer. Call it job security. The dude administering the scan was young and ridiculously attractive, and I was all "awesome, so happy I haven't shaved my legs for two weeks," but then I stopped caring when I learned that Hot Radiation Doctor was also Doctor Who Thinks He Knows How To Put In An IV But Totally Doesn't And Has Tiny Testicles That Keep Him From Calling An ER Nurse Until He Has Made The Patient Suffer Through Three Failed Attempts. This bastard sucked. And of course, after failed attempt #2, I started Ugly Crying, because that's just what I do. By the time Anna the ER nurse arrived I was covered in snot and she was visibly annoyed by me and all that I stood for. But she got the IV in in about 3 seconds so I honestly wouldn't have cared if she had openly mocked me and broadcast it via webcam.

I go back to the oncologist in a couple of weeks and we have to decide whether or not to do the second surgery. After which time I had better be in for some serious spans of nothing-to-report. I know there are tons of people dealing with much worse situations than this, but a pain in the ass always seems like the HUGEST pain in the ass when it's your own ass that's pained. Put that in a Hallmark card and sell it.

Tail wagging

2010-09-23T09:02:00.003-05:00

Two days ago my boss told me that the reason I was having success establishing working relationships with the (notoriously standoffish) local schools is that I am, and I quote, "like a puppy, so eager to please." Chew on that for awhile. My first reaction was to be all "That's offensive! I'm a skilled professional and am the best at what I do!" And then I remembered that I haven't slept in four months and that there is a new coffee machine in the breakroom that makes little individual servings of fancy coffee and you can pick whatever flavor you want and it's ready in seconds -- SECONDS, I tell you -- and that one of the available flavors is hazelnut and one is a Green Mountain Coffee variety called "Dark Magic," and so I bypassed indignation and settled instead for a shrug and a "woof."

One morning last week I was putting that evening's dinner in the slow-cooker and I looked down and realized that I was actually putting it in the slow-cooker. As in, not in the stoneware insert that is meant to hold the food but in the metal heating device itself. Which has a hole in the bottom. The dinner was chili.

This morning I drove Cletus and Newt to preschool. Which would be a perfectly fine thing to do, were it not for the fact that A) Cletus doesn't go to preschool on Thursdays, and B) Newt doesn't go to preschool at all.

To be continued, I'm sure.

Sleepy stuck pig

2010-09-12T15:06:00.005-05:00

We moved Newt to his own bedroom this past week. It was becoming increasingly necessary, as the child not only refuses to sleep longer than 3-4 hour stretches at a time (on a good night) but also thrashes wildly about while snoozing, as if dreaming of the day his legs can break free forever from the tyranny of the Halo sleep-sack. The constant racket from his tossing and turning means that even when he's asleep, we're not.

Having him in his own little room at the end of the hall, however, means that one must fully awaken, put on one's glasses, and journey past the bathroom, past Cletus the Former Fetus' bedroom, and through the office to handle the middle of the night bottle/diaper extravaganza. Which happens -- did I mention? -- every 3-4 hours.

I had forgotten what a truly crazy-making phenomenon sleep deprivation can be. Fortunately, this particular brand of sleep deprivation comes with the following delectable, chewable snack:

Hey, and guess what? My one sad little leftover ovary still works! I know, because I've lost my weight in blood since Thursday. Seriously. I feel like I leave a trail of menses wherever I go, like one of those girls who used to write in to YM or Seventeen with embarrassing stories about going on a date and bleeding through their white dress onto a white couch or a white sandy beach. I always wondered: who were these crazy girls running around in white dresses like brides, too stupid to be properly vigilant about feminine hygiene, rubbing up against boys on fancy white furniture? And now I know: they were my future, except instead of a white dress I'd be wearing jeans held together with a safety pin, and instead of sucking face I'd be sucking the snot out of a baby's nose with a bulb syringe, and instead of a white couch I'd be bleeding on my hardwood floors. You're welcome.

Twelve year old boys

2010-09-03T21:10:00.002-05:00

Cletus the Former Fetus: (Carrying a canvas tote filled with alphabet blocks.) Chocolate nuts! I have chocolate nuts for sale! Who wants a chocolate nut?

Me: I'll take a nut!

Cletus: (Hands me a block.) Here you go - here's a nut for you! (Turns to her father.) Daddy, would you like one of my nuts?

The husband: Sure. I'd love one of your nuts.

A beat.

The husband: Say, Cletus -- what are you carrying those nuts in?

Cletus: (Matter-of-fact.) My sack.

Me: You're carrying your nuts in your sack?

The husband: Your chocolate nuts? Right there in that sack?

Cletus: (Extends tote forward, obliging.) Yes! In my sack! My chocolate nut-sack!

Silence.

Me and the husband: (In unison, satisfied.) Heh.

Hiding after bedtime

2010-08-31T20:37:00.003-05:00

Sorry it's all bitching and moaning over here these days. Even I'm getting a little sick of me.

If I were the type of Interweb Lady who wrote about work, I'd have more upbeat stories to tell. The library, right now, is my happy place. Although everyone around me seems to be completely burnt out, I am loving my job. Just this morning I was putting together a display of new materials in my wee little young adult section, and I looked around and saw that I was surrounded with awesome YA fiction, and I looked up and saw flyers posted for YA programs that I conceived of and planned, and I just felt so lucky to suddenly have basically the exact job I wanted when I finished grad school. To quote Claire Danes at the Emmys the other night: Like, for serious.

Right now I'm typing this post in short bursts, getting up every few minutes to forcibly put my tantruming almost-four-year-old girlchild back in her crate. I mean bed. But honestly, some nights lately, I wish crate. I'm really trying not to unload online all the details of our current struggles with Cletus the Former Fetus -- partly because as she gets older it starts to feel a bit unpleasantly squishy to do so, and partly because I want the Internet to continue to blindly adore her. But let me just assure you: we are struggling.

She's such a brilliant child. She's bright, and hilarious, and kindhearted, and open. She adores everyone she meets and thinks that the general population of the state of Illinois exists just to work on arts and crafts projects with her. She makes up her own knock-knock jokes and riddles, none of which are remotely funny ("What's yellow on the outside, white on the inside, and you peel it? A banana! LAUGH, Mommy.") and performs magic tricks that involve waving a stuffed bunny around, putting it inside of her hat, and then pulling it out again after shouting "Abracadabra!"

She also kicks and bites, tells family members that she hates them, and each night engages her parents in an epic battle of screams and tears that left my own visiting mother, a woman who has raised five children and cared for countless others at the home daycare she runs, speechless and exhausted.

It's such a mess of contradictions I've got stewing around in my heart for this girl. I want to nurture everything in her that is free and fierce and spirited and independent... but sometimes that fierceness makes me spend my evenings watching old home videos, crying for the sweet-faced babbling toddler she used to be. I feel capable of brutally clawing the face off of anyone who ever hurts her...but sometimes I have to lock myself away in a room to avoid hurting her myself.

It's hard not to take it all personally, this rough patch. Is this what parenting is, what it's going to be? This constant worry: is it too late? Have I fucked it up, now, already?

Buttercups, rainbows, and purring kittens on a string

2010-08-31T01:34:00.003-05:00

So... as if to prove some kind of point, as if to say "do not underestimate the degree to which I am a relentless asshole," my body has decided that expelling an organ wasn't quite satisfying enough; it needs to drum up some excitement by giving me insomnia. For three nights in a row. While my mother-in-law is watching my baby overnight so that I can "get some rest."

It is 1:41 AM and I could crush trucks with the force of my rage.

Slow ride. Take it easy.

2010-08-22T11:42:00.003-05:00

I was wholly unprepared for how hard this would be. My body has grown and birthed two babies without pain meds; my body is strong and capable and resilient and I don't know who is responsible for the bag of bones and dangly limbs I'm limping around in right now but it's not mine. My head still feels a bit as if it's detached -- I can't concentrate and I fall asleep sitting up (but not when I'm lying down, because that would be too easy). My scars -- two of them, a wee one inside my belly button and a three-inch cut at my bikini line -- itch and ache but don't look nearly as wretched as I had feared. I can't really bend very well or cough or laugh, but at least I can get in and out of bed without much help.

I didn't know it would be so hard to feel so out of touch. I haven't picked up or held my baby boy since Tuesday morning. Sometimes someone will set him next to me on the couch so I can chat with him, tickle his fat thighs and gnaw on his fingers, and it's all very dramatic, as if he's being dangled in front of me through the bars of my prison cell.

The handouts Dr. Furry gave me say that I should be able to do "light housework" by now. Dr. Furry is in need of some new handouts.

Survived!

2010-08-18T17:28:00.003-05:00

Home and heavily medicated and minus one misbehaving ovary. Thanks for all the good thoughts and wishes -- I felt them all keenly while wandering around inside of the giant bubble I hallucinated while coming off of the anesthesia. Good stuff, those drugs.

Sliced

2010-08-08T13:08:00.002-05:00

This is the post I've been avoiding, the one where I have to write about the main thing occupying my thoughts as of late: the fucking cyst that ate my right ovary, and the surgery I have to have a week from Monday to remove it. If you recall, the interloper was first discovered on my 20-week prenatal ultrasound. The hope was that it was pregnancy-induced and would consequently shrink after Newt was born and my hormones calmed down. A six-week postpartum internal ultrasound (aka the dildo-cam), however, confirmed that nothing had changed. So. I'm getting sliced and diced on the 17th.

The cyst is 13 centimeters large. For those of you lucky enough to be unfamiliar with the lexicon of such things, we're talking about the Empire State Building of cysts. The Mount Everest of cysts. Go big or go home, my malfunctioning lady parts seem to be saying.

Pre-op appointment with Dr. Furry is tomorrow afternoon. We won't know until the actual surgery happens whether or not I'm getting a laparoscopy or open surgery; it depends on what he finds once he starts examining the tissue. Recovery time for the former is a couple days -- for the latter, it's weeks. We have to plan for the worst, what with the newborn babe requiring care and all. My mom's coming out for the week. Work has taken me off of the schedule through the end of the month.

I know it's a pretty routine malady and an even more routine procedure, but I'm going to honest with you: I'm completely terrified.

Be that as it may

2010-07-26T11:57:00.003-05:00

I am coming to terms with the fact that everything I do right now is destined to be done half-assed. Blogging included. I am now one of those losers who posts every other week but gets pissed when there are no updates in my Google Reader on my twelfth log-in of the day.

The baby hasn't had a bath in nearly a week. Yesterday I noticed he had dirt underneath his fingernails. Rather than take him upstairs and bathe him, I opted to trim his nails and wipe his palms down with wet-wipes. A few hours later, when the child coated my favorite jeans with his patented fluorescent yellow breastmilk-formula combo Shit of Death, I seriously contemplated just blotting the stain with a kleenex and going about my business, such is my current inability to complete basic hygiene-related tasks.

The house is coated in three times the normal layer of filth. I have killed at least four different types of bugs in the past couple of weeks, all of which were found lounging on my hardwood floors, sipping tiny cocktails of accumulated grime. I have come to terms with the idea of hiring a cleaning person, but between the hospital bills for Newt's birth, June's unexpected roof replacement, and August's impending surgery to remove Cysty McOvarycakes (more on that later), we've hit a financial wall of sorts and will have to wait awhile before we can afford to hire out our cobweb removal.

The garden is overproducing and it kills me that I don't have the time or patience to make sure that nothing gets wasted. I'm trying my best to keep up. I've done zucchini bread, squash cake, about five different squash/egg/cheese/breadcrumb concoctions, zucchini quesadillas, zucchini with pesto pasta, a zucchini-bean salad, and squash soup. And the tomatoes haven't even come in yet! What will I do with eight plants' worth of tomatoes? Does anyone know how to make tomato sauce without peeling the tomatoes? Sauce seems like the logical solution to an oversupply problem, but I am not a peel-the-tomatoes kind of girl. I don't care how easy you say it is.

Anyway, the one thing I'm not doing half-assed is holding a wailing baby while I watch TV. So if anyone wants to talk about So You Think You Can Dance, Mad Men, Friday Night Lights, or -- I'm going there -- Bethenny Getting Married, just let me know.

Member of the workforce FAIL

2010-07-14T07:54:00.005-05:00

This week marks my second week at my new job. As with my first maternity leave, returning to work has been wonderful. Work stress has nothing on home stress. Work stress is like a candy-coated fantasyland. Work stress is the opposite of stress. Work stress is stress that comes with snack breaks and a paycheck. That's not stress; that's a reward for good behavior.

My first week back sailed by pretty much without incident. Until yesterday. Let me tell you about yesterday.

You've heard about the state budget shitstorm in Illinois, right? The public school district here in my town is totally broke and has made some changes in order to save money, chief among them the decision to extend winter break by several weeks in order to avoid paying for heat for school buildings. Awesome, I know. So my library has been hosting semi-regular meetings of community members and representatives of youth-serving organizations (the Y, the Boys and Girls Club, etc.) to come up with programming and childcare opportunities for families during the extended winter holiday.

The meeting was scheduled for noon yesterday, in the library's meeting room. Noon rolled around and I made my way upstairs and sat my little self down, along with three other attendees. Now this seemed like a particularly small group, but my boss (who was to lead the meeting) had mentioned to me earlier that day that she had been getting a good number of "no" RSVPs and was expecting a smaller turnout. Fine. Ok. Except that 12:10 rolled around, and my boss was nowhere in sight.

I excused myself and started searching for her around the library. I asked other staff, but no one had seen her. I called her cell phone, but there was no answer. I hiked all over the building, looked *almost* everywhere (yes, the word "almost" is key here), but came up empty. My boss had forgotten the meeting. Or worse, she had gone out for lunch and been in some kind of horrible car accident, the kind that prevents you from answering frantic cell phone calls from your employees.

The three other attendees waited almost thirty minutes before I suggested that perhaps we should disband and reschedule. I apologized profusely on my boss's behalf. I returned to the reference desk, where I found the library's assistant director. I said something along the lines of "Um, something really weird just happened. [Insert boss's name here] totally just missed our meeting." The assistant director looked shocked. "Really?" she said. "I thought I saw her going into the AV room a little while ago!"

Are you cringing? You should be cringing.

My boss had moved the meeting to another room, the tiny AV room situated off of the children's department. Which I totally didn't check. And she had hung up a sign at the bottom of the stairwell leading to the originally scheduled meeting place. Which I totally didn't see. And the meeting happened without me, as well as without the three other community VIPS that I TOTALLY SENT HOME.

When I finally burst into the AV room a half hour late like some kind of bumbling intern, papers flying out from the stack of files and assorted crap I carried clutched to my chest (I mean, seriously, I might as well have been carrying a Trapper Keeper), I found the meeting already wrapping up. There were, like, 10 people at the table, all of them smiling and/or looking benignly amused as I explained what had happened. My boss was gracious enough to make a "she has new-baby brain" joke, and everyone laughed. And then she turned to the suit-wearing man to her left and said "This is the new teen librarian I've been hoping to introduce to you," and I extended my arm and shook hands with the effing SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS. Because first impressions are everything.

This one is going to sting for awhile.

Bump in the night

2010-07-09T09:04:00.003-05:00

In the past week, I have sprayed my three-year-old's bedroom for the following perceived nighttime invaders:

Monsters
Dinosaurs
Clowns

Last night, when the polar bears threatened to break in, I thought the routine had grown a little tired.

So I set traps instead.

Can we talk openly for a minute?

2010-07-02T10:56:00.002-05:00

Good Lord, people, I am so effing tired.

In a couple of hours I will get myself back to my regularly scheduled programming of immense gratitude for my gorgeous, healthy children, but first -- just briefly -- I need to indulge in some moderate weepitude over the extent of my exhaustion. There's really not much to be said, and my sob story is brief and unremarkable: The baby, he will not sleep. That's all.

I know he'll start sleeping eventually. I've done this before; I remember. But eventually is not now, and now is when I am the walking dead.

When Cletus was born, I did a lot of open complaining about how hard it was to parent a newborn. Since then, I've learned a lot about parenting and I've heard a lot of stories about families with problems much greater than sleepless nights and colicky infants. I've had blog friends who have lost their children and a real-life friend who miscarried at 24 weeks. I try to keep perspective, given that my children were both born alive and healthy. And since Newt's birth I've been striving to focus on the miracle and filter out the madness, which in part means stifling my natural urge to bitch.

But old habits are hard to break, and I'm no good at playing the martyr. So I just need to say this once and then I'll move on:

OH MY GOD TAKE A NAP. PLEASE.

Thank you and have a lovely day.

Oh, and while you're having a lovely day, please take a look at this thought-provoking blog post about breastfeeding and its effect on equality in marriages. While I'm not saying I agree with the author on a point-by-point basis, I do think it's worth noting the sheer volume and ferocity of angry, belittling comments by mothers (and others) who are shocked -- SHOCKED, I SAY -- that someone might consider the needs and desires of the breastfeeding woman outside of her role as a mother to have value. What's that you say? A human who just spent 9+ months nurturing a fetus and then going through labor and delivery and then recovering from labor and delivery and then navigating the maze of postpartum hormones might, oh I don't know, might have a wee bit of vested interest in regaining control over her body? BRING ME THE SMELLING SALTS!

I'm glad I've been able to give Newt the benefits of breastmilk... but you'd better believe that my having to pump five times a day (including once in the middle of the night, every night) creates an imbalance of labor in my marriage. I don't understand how it couldn't. It's not a question of my husband washing an extra load of dishes in order to "do his fair share" of marital labor; we're talking about me using my body in an often uncomfortable and exhausting way, every day, multiple times a day, for months, to fulfill a vital family responsibility. To do this, I have to eat certain things, drink certain things, wear certain things, and refrain from certain things that give me pleasure. When I return to work, I'll have to use my breaks to pump milk rather than to, you know, have a break. I've chosen to do it, and this is not me complaining -- I'm just saying: there's no way for my husband to perform an equivalent job. Breastfeeding is not designed that way. It has real lifestyle and workplace limitations for women, and no amount of selfless intentions or motherly love will render them nonexistent.

I think it's so interesting that commenters have flocked to this article to argue the opposite, calling the author selfish and a bad mother and criticizing her marriage. Yes, she said a few unfortunate things in the piece (chiefly stating that it was "embarrassing" to nurse one of her children for ten months -- saying that in front of God, La Leche League, and everyone is like dangling a peanut butter-encrusted noodle in front of my dog), but what most of the commenters seem to be reacting to is the audacity of the author to claim any self-interest in the breastfeeding dyad. It's crazy, the lengths to which women will go to cut each other down. It isn't new and it doesn't surprise me, but every once in awhile it really strikes a chord.

Newt Three Ways

2010-07-01T14:31:00.003-05:00

Child disguised as that balding, jowly man who works in your office:

Not fat; just big boned:

I emerged from the womb, and all I got was a sister and this whimsical religious-themed onesie:

So bullet points it is!

2010-06-27T14:27:00.006-05:00

-- Newt, God bless him, weighed in at 12 pounds during his one-month check-up. He also stretched out an extra three inches and rocked his way right off the growth charts, just like his size-6 three-year-old sister before him. Apparently the husband and I make large kids. Who don't sleep. Cletus, as of late, has been refusing to go gentle into [any] good night, choosing instead to sit in her bed and shout "I HAVE A QUESTION" into the baby monitor ad nauseum from 8:00 until about 10:00 p.m. Upon being attended to by a parent, the child unveils a string of said "questions," most of which sound something like "My bed is keeping me awake" or "My blanket is making my head hurt" or "In the morning, can I have breakfast?" (The latter at least is actually a question, although it does give the impression that our household treats breakfast as an optional privilege.) Newt, on the other hand, is generally happy to take his repose in a variety of convenient locations -- including in a parent's arms, a baby swing, a playmat, or a bassinet -- as long as he is not expected to sleep for longer than two hours at a stretch. He would like you to know that he thinks this is a perfectly reasonable trade.

-- I go back to work part-time in a week. A week! I'm completely excited, except for the fact that I have NO IDEA how I am going to get my ass up and out the door at a predetermined time each day. I'm not even trying to plan ahead, because I just can't begin to fathom what my mornings will look like. Baby-wrangling. Breast-pumping. Dog-walking. Self-feeding. Coffee-drinking. Dressing and (dare I dream) showering. It's fully insane. I'm filled with equal parts anticipation and terror.

-- To facilitate my return to the working world, I went thrifting yesterday for business casual clothes. I had moderate luck in the arena of Short-Sleeved Sweaters You Might Expect A Librarian To Wear. And also some brown courds and slacks to add to my collection of near-identical brown courds and slacks. The highlight of my shopping excursion was a conversation I overheard while in the dressing room at Goodwill. Two women were standing just outside the door, talking about a family member who had apparently gotten into some kind of trouble with the law. One of the women asked, "Well, does he know God? Has he at least been saved?" To which the other replied, awesomely, "Yes, he repented. The little shit."

-- While our yard looks like hell on a stick right now due to a complete lack of attention on our part, the veggie garden we halfheartedly planted out back is actually thriving. We've already harvested and eaten a couple of huge, delicious zucchini, with lots more growing. There are summer squash appearing, green and red peppers starting to bloom, little green baby tomatoes showing up on plants. Even our raspberry bushes are producing fruit for the first time. Who knew that the secret to gardening rests in a complete lack of any... well, gardening?

Apropos of nothing

2010-06-22T09:31:00.003-05:00

Jen took the train in from Chicago to visit and help with the baby, and she brought along the treasure that is her collection of Felicity DVDs. We spent the whole weekend passing Newt back and forth, eating an entire Dairy Queen ice cream cake, and watching our favorite episodes (and by that I mean the majority of the series) back to back.

As such, I have nothing of substance to offer you today. I can, however, provide you with the following gift:

Top Three Felicity Scenes That Involve Ben and Felicity Making Out

3. Season 1, First Kiss.
Where it all began. Ben's hair is moderately over-shellacked, but otherwise? Perfection.

2. Season 4, Airport Scene.
Ignore the fact that no one in real life has ever actually done the whole chase-the-departing-estranged-girlfriend-to-the-airport routine, AND the fact that this is set in post-9/11 New York City and yet Ben somehow makes it all the way to Felicity's gate to meet her. When he says "You're not still going to leave, are you?" Oh no, Ben. No I am not.

1. Season 2, "It's a time machine."
The scene in question starts at the 6:10 mark. This is where I have to doubt the sanity of any and all members of Team Noel. I mean, come on. (And please note: Cletus the Former Fetus came into the room and tried to ask me a question while I was enjoying this scene, to which Jen helpfully replied "Just a minute, Cletus. Mommy needs some alone time.")

Mo money

2010-06-16T09:55:00.004-05:00

This morning I was holed away in my second floor office, hooked up to the breastpump, minding my own business, when I happened to look up and notice three men with hammers standing on the roof right outside my window. Two of them were in the process of near-frantically averting their eyes in an attempt to pretend that they had not just witnessed my nipples being stretched forth like taffy; the other was scratching his balls.

Here's the thing about roofers, apparently: they don't feel the need to announce their presence in any way other than suddenly appearing on top of your house at the buttcrack of dawn. Also, they are seldom exposed to Medela products.

Our roof sprung a leak. Or several leaks. It's hard to say, really. But the ceiling in the baby's room (of course, it had to be the baby's room) is a disaster, patching all the possible problem spots would cost more than it's worth, and so here we are, replacing the back half of the roof on our 5-million-year-old Victorian. There are nails and chunks of debris raining down outside my windows, and two shirtless men are smoking in front of my garage. Thank God our window AC units are so absurdly noisy that they muffle the sounds of pounding and scraping; the baby is napping in his swing. (Which is pretty much the only place he naps, aside from On My Lap.)

Previously, my joy over my new job was most directly related to the excitement of the new opportunity; now, I'm starting to feel some serious relief at the promise of a steady paycheck. On top of the new roof, we've started to receive bills for Newt's birth. The hospital statement for my unmedicated, non-intervention birth and subsequent 48-hour hospital stay in which I required little more attention than a fresh glass of water every couple of hours or so: $14,000 and change.

A couple of the most baffling charges on the bill include $198 for "Pharmacy," which to the best of my recollection covers 600 mg of Ibuprofin every 6 hours, 2 prenatal vitamins, and a stool softener, and a mysterious $14 for "Labor." Readers who are nurses -- any idea what this particular charge represents? Perhaps the use of the hospital gown? Or the delicious snack of ice chips on which I munched?

Postscript

2010-06-10T07:23:00.003-05:00

Yesterday's dinner was a pot roast with potatoes and carrots and gravy, cooked by a God-fearing church-going lifetime Midwesterner and mother of four.

I remain committed to the fundamental tenets of vegetarianism as a personal, political, environmental, and ethical force for change, and will redirect myself to the tofu-and-chickpea path when I'm finished lactating.

But I have to tell you: I have never been more satisfied by a single meal in my entire life. Were it legal, that pot roast and I would be registering for towels at Macy's.

Eaten out of house and boob

2010-06-08T14:39:00.005-05:00

One of the nice community traditions maintained by the college where my husband works is a meal delivery service for families with new babies. Every other day for about a month, a faculty or staff member prepares a meal for us and brings it to our house at dinnertime. We've been eating like I imagine rich people do -- multiple courses! Dessert at every meal! We've had Indian curry and Mediterranean chicken and lasagna and burritos with cilantro pesto. The fridge is full of beer and wine and pints of ice cream.

But even so, people, I canNOT seem to get enough calories to feel like a normal human being. This child -- he is draining me! He is a breastmilk fiend! He is eating, like, 35-40 ounces a day, so much that I'm barely able to pump enough to keep up with his appetite. And I'm not even feeding him on demand! I've been using pacifiers to stave him off between feedings because OH MY GOD. I feel like a milk machine. I feel like a dairy. And no matter how much I eat and drink to build up my own strength, I'm still always hungry and a little bit weak. Any suggestions for high-calorie snacks that require minimal to no preparation and that I can eat easily with one hand? Right now I'm gnawing on a wedge of parmesan like it's an ear of corn.

3:00 AM Thunderstorms

2010-06-02T04:07:00.002-05:00

The little girl who, during the light of day, can hardly stay still long enough to cram an apple slice into her pie-hole is curled up next to me under the covers as lightning and thunder fill up the bedroom windows. She's got her body carefully arranged so that at least one body part -- an arm, a toe, sometimes her whole little face -- is touching me at all times. When an especially loud thunderclap grips the house, her fingers rub steadily at her security blanket's frayed edges and she curls herself into my chest.

I've perhaps never been so tired in all my life, and still. Heaven.

My humps

2010-05-28T11:27:00.002-05:00

Ah, the womanly art of breastfeeding. It's so natural and so beautiful. At least that's what the packaging on this here box of cotton breast pads tells me. And if you don't believe it, just ask my breast pump. Or my three bottles of Lansinoh. Or my breast shells, nipple shield, bottles, freezer storage bags, Soothies gel packs, cold compresses, 600 mg Ibuprofin pills, Acidophilus capsules, and microwave steam clean bags for daily pump attachment sanitizing.

What's even more natural than breastfeeding, though, and truly, uniroincally welcome, is the ability of the second-time-around mother to actually detach and laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. I mean, sweet God. Six times a day, I retreat to what was formerly my home office -- now, apparently, serving as some kind of dairy -- and literally milk myself. I milk myself like a cow while I read all of your blogs. If I have commented on a blog post of yours during the last two weeks, I can assure you that I did so while attached to a mechanical suckling calf.

The hilarious mess about breastfeeding is that for any potential problem you might incur, the solutions proposed by lactation experts and in books and on websites are always the Official Last Thing you would ever want to do. Like for instance: have searing pain in your nipples every time you feed your baby? Why, all you need to do is FEED YOUR BABY MORE! Except now, for longer periods of time. And use a breastpump for a few minutes before and after each feeding. And then sanitize all of your breast pump parts in boiling water after each use. And then expose your nipples to the sun at least three times a day (no joke, I've got a book that actually proposes this).

Newt decimated my breasts in short order upon being born, and I did the whole lactation consultant dance again, and then when certain parts of my body began to resemble a crime scene I just said "screw this noise" and went to the pump. And there I've stayed. Newt's still able to enjoy the spoils of the magical miracle breastmilk diet, at least for as long as I keep up my supply, and I'm able to enjoy lounging around and smelling his head instead of stressing out over my inability to latch a kid onto my breasts. I'd like to hold out at least until I go back to work in July. Much of that, I figure, will depend on my ability to stay healthy and avoid the Adventures in Mastitis of yesteryear.

Anyway. Boobs.

Just to show we're still alive...

2010-05-25T14:00:00.003-05:00

Newborn with gas + 3-year-old with random high fever + freakishly high needs dog + 17-hour LOST series finale = no time for words.

Hi from baby Newt and crew!

Being an account of a Newt's escape from the Ute

2010-05-18T09:27:00.003-05:00

Here's how ready I was for this here baby to be born: last Tuesday, stuck indoors due to an onslaught of gloomy thunderstorms, I engaged in the odious activity known to senior citizens everywhere as mall-walking. Yes, friends. I tried to go the route of induction-via-Claire's Boutique. I visited Radio Shack. I strolled through Fashion Bug. I even entered and made a purchase at the Hallmark Store.

That evening, I went to see my midwife for my almost-40-week check-up. I was two centimeters dilated. I give all praise to Bath & Body Works.

Still, I was not particularly optimistic about my chances of going into labor soon thereafter. After all, I had been living under the promise of "any day now" status for weeks at that point. That's why I was taken completely by surprise when I woke up around 4:00 the next morning with noticeable, regular contractions. I stayed put in bed for about an hour, timing things, trying not to get excited, and then I made my way downstairs to distract myself with some television -- specifically a fabulous rerun of a season 2 episode of "Angel" on FX. Just as Angel and crew were about to make their triumphant return from the hell dimension Pylea (you know, as you do), I noticed that my contractions has settled into a pretty predictable pattern, about three minutes apart. I called my doula and woke my husband and generally started to get the troops rallied.

By about 7:00 I had showered and packed, my doula had arrived, and my husband, having gotten Cletus the Former Fetus off to daycare, had begun sending emails around to cancel his classes for the next couple of days. This is when things started moving curiously quickly. My contractions got faster and longer -- still manageable, but painful enough that I had to concentrate on them when they came. I went to the bathroom and Gross Stuff That Happens When You Are About to Give Birth commenced happening. I called the hospital and we hopped in the car.

We got to the hospital at 8:30 and hiked ourselves right up to Labor and Delivery on the fifth floor, bypassing the crazy fools at the registration desks because, please. Register this. The labor nurses whisked us off to our room, a surprisingly large and -- dare I say -- comfortable "suite" with a bed, pull-out couch, rocking chair, and tub. And here my memory blurs just a bit. The nurse made me sit in the rocking chair and strapped me to a machine for the hospital's mandatory thirty minutes of fetal monitoring. Because nothing says "relax and give birth, mama" like sitting still in an upright position. Luckily, the joy of small-town living prevailed, as my midwife -- unencumbered by traffic or hordes of other clients -- swooped in not ten minutes after my arrival, took one look at me, and was all "um, no. get out of that chair and open those legs."

She checked me and I had dilated to seven centimeters, so she asked if she could break my water (my response: DEAR GOD YES) and then she plunked me into the tub. Please note that as we had basically just walked in the door, said tub was empty. I climbed into about an inch of water and rocked there on my hands and knees while the following activities swirled around me: a nurse occupied my husband with such vital registration questions as "What is your wife's height and pre-pregnancy weight?"; my midwife knelt beside me and drew about fifty vials of hospital-mandated blood, then inserted an IV for my antibiotics (I was Group B strep-positive); my doula fed me ice chips with a spoon (I know, how very 1980s rom-com) and tried to coax the tub to fill faster with the power of her mind. This all took place over the course of about 15 minutes. The tub never filled. The baby threw his whole weight down into my pelvis like a truckload of adorable bricks, and I started to push.

From there, somehow I was helped over to the bed, where I would spend the next approximately 15 minutes in the worst pain I've ever felt in my life, including the sum total of all my hours birthing Cletus. Cletus, that huge, premature, first child of mine, had taken her sweet time leaving the womb. Newt, having had the benefit of three extra weeks inside of me to ostensibly plan his exit strategy, was interested in no such restraint. It only took a few pushes before he was crowning. Of that experience -- the crowning, that is -- I shall offer no more words, except to tell you that in the middle of it I actually begged my midwife to give me an episiotomy. (She declined, but did heartily mock me post-birth for asking, all "Nice birth plan, Ms. No-Episiotomies-Please...Unless This Baby Actually Tries To, You Know, Come Out Through My Vagina.")

Oh... but then. Then! Once I broke through that fresh hell, I looked down and there was a baby! Newt! Looking all fat and slimy and serene, like a little purple Buddha. The midwife put him on my chest right away and left him there for almost an hour while she stitched me up and did all that other glamorous post-birth stuff -- no weight checks, no Apgar scores, just me and the husband and Newt hanging out and loving on each other.

You guys, it was all so different this time. I don't know if it's the experience of already being a parent, or the fact that I'd already experienced childbirth once before, but when Newt came out -- he wasn't a stranger! He wasn't alien, and he wasn't scary; he was Newt, and we loved him already, and he was here! It felt so great and so liberating, to be able to feel those euphoric delivery-room feelings that I've heard other new parents talk about for years, to know that I was capable of feeling them too. When Cletus was born, the instinct to protect her was instant, but the drunken crazy love (which I have for her now in spades) had to be learned. For a long time, I worried that I was broken. Now I know that I'm not.

We stayed in the hospital for two days and two nights while we waited for Newt's bloodwork to come back clean (since my labor had progressed too quickly for my Group B strep antibiotics to take effect). The nurses were surprisingly delightful, given my previous experiences at this hospital. Sadly, their one major collective weakness seemed to be breastfeeding advice (as such, that experience has been progressing about as dismally as before -- which, whatever. Another post for another day.) -- but they were attentive and kind and respectful, for which we showed gratitude by sending our doula out for baked goods and candy to distribute at the nurses' station.

Now we're home, and my own mama is here taking care of me while I try to remember how to take care of a newborn. I'm pretty sore and tired still, and my moods fluctuate wildly. Today you're getting me in a good moment. Tomorrow, look for my treatise on Oh My God, Are You Seriously Hungry AGAIN?

But Newt is warm and adorable, and overall pretty relaxed for a creature that requires constant supervision and attention. He's impossibly soft and he smells good. Cletus colors him pictures and likes to pat his head and say "goo goo ga ga" to him as if translating messages into his language. Friends are bringing flowers and food.

Life is pretty good today.

Perhaps moved with outrage over Tuesday evening's shockingly stupid episode of LOST...

2010-05-15T13:34:00.004-05:00

... Newt is outside of the Ute as of 9:44 AM on Wednesday! Please take note of that time stamp, and then listen as I tell you that we arrived at the hospital at precisely 8:30 AM. Baby boy was so stoked to exit the womb that he shot out like a rocket. A huge, ill-fitting, obscenely painful rocket, and one that is also very very cute. Observe:

Since his birth the gentleman has been busily spending his days alternately sleeping and chomping at breasts, while his nights are reserved for howling at the moon. I'm feeling good, much more of a functional person than I was after Cletus' birth. Still pretty sore and tired, but also just generally infatuated with the new crew here in my house.

If you know me at all, you know the gory details are on their way. But for now: did you all know that little baby penises (penii?) double as home sprinkler systems? Dude.

Maternity leave, minus the maternity

2010-05-10T09:25:00.003-05:00

Oh hi.

Maternity leave starts tomorrow, but so far all I'm nursing is this here stack of DVDs. Which is not such a bad deal, as it turns out.

We're keeping our chins up. Grateful that Newt still seems to be doing just fine, floating around in his gestational condo. Trying to think of novel ways to encourage him toward Life on the Outside.

On Saturday night, we tried to rock him out. Not like in a rocking chair -- I mean, with a Wii and a plastic drum kit and a fake guitar. We figured that mastering the following eight-song set on "hard" would provide just the right combination of violent internal jostling and sweet musical awesomeness to coax him into joining us on vocals:

Dr. Feelgood, by Motley Crue
Don't Stop Believin', by Journey
Poison, by Alice Cooper
Livin' on a Prayer, by Bon Jovi
B.Y.O.B., by System of a Down
Any Way You Want It, by Journey
Everlong, by Foo Fighters
Carry On Wayward Son, by Kansas

Sadly, we had to switch the difficulty level to "medium" for the System of a Down tune, which might have been what kept the baby indignantly inside. The husband did try to make it up to him by personalizing the song's lyrics, though, changing the opening carnal scream of "WHY DO THEY ALWAYS SEND THE POOR?" to "WHY ARE YOU STILL INSIDE THE WOMB??" No response, however. Maybe he's an easy-listening kind of dude? Today I'll play him some Genesis.

Nothing to see here

2010-05-03T16:34:00.003-05:00

Still no baby.

Had some kind of acupressure foot massage last Wednesday to start things moving, but it didn't work.

Was up half of Friday night with regular contractions, but they stopped.

On Saturday, I noticed my midwife hanging out at the library while I was working the reference desk. Later that night, I ran into my doula at a children's theater production of "The Wizard of Oz." I took both of these occurrences of random physical proximity as signs. Neither were.

Please feel free to place wagers on any of the following:

1. Date and time of Newt's eventual arrival,
2. Number of library patrons seeking internet guest passes who will ask me both "When are you due?" AND "Do you have a name picked out?" while I log them onto the computer during my final two shifts before maternity leave, and
3. Number of consecutive hours I can spend walking around, squatting, and sitting backwards in a dining room chair, in the hopes of encouraging gravity and biology to get together and finalize the Evite for this party I'm hoping to host in my uterus.

The winner will receive a coupon for a free episiotomy and a fashionable capelet made entirely from delivery room mesh underpants.

Rage

2010-04-27T18:26:00.003-05:00

I am, like, 7,000 months pregnant. My back throbs, my legs ache, it hurts to sit and stand and walk and sleep and eat and breathe. My nerves are frayed and I am incredibly on edge. Which means that news like the following is almost more than I can handle:

Link to Some Serious Bullshit

Normally something like this would fill me with both anger and sorrow, and I might feel a bit hopeless and defeated, and I might even cry a little. BUT NOT TODAY. Today I am just so very pissed. Like, SO, SO, SO PISSED.

Want to know who thinks that women don't have the right to make decisions about their own bodies? Who thinks that a rape victim should be forced to view ultrasound images of the fetus that was implanted into her womb without her consent? And who thinks that doctors should be legally protected when they choose to withhold information about fetal birth defects so as to prevent the parents from terminating a pregnancy?

These guys do. Emphasis on the "guys." I look at those pictures and my blood goes cold.

No more words, just rage -for me, and my daughter, and my daughter's daughters.

Borrowed time

2010-04-23T08:11:00.003-05:00

Today I am 36 weeks and 6 days pregnant. At this exact point in my pregnancy with Cletus the Fetus, at about 7:30 AM to be precise, my water broke. Well, trickled, actually. Either way I was in labor, and Cletus was born at 37 weeks on the dot.

From here on out, Newt and I are on borrowed time.

At my prenatal appointment on Tuesday, the midwife told me that Newt is measuring about a week ahead of schedule and is starting to move pretty low. He could arrive at any time, basically, or he could hold out for another couple weeks. Methinks this weekend would be a perfect time for labor and delivery, seeing as how three of the four families we have identified as emergency "Come Watch Cletus, For I Am Crowning" contacts are out of town.

But whenever Newt decides to make his grand entrance, he can rest assured that our insurance company has given his birth their stamp of approval. What a relief to receive a letter from the warmly named "Medical Cost Management" department, informing me that my hospitalization for the condition "natural birth" was deemed "medically necessary and appropriate."

Hanging out with Cletus until then. This girl has no idea what's about to hit her. It's enough to break your heart wide open, if it weren't for my prediction (hope??) that, ultimately, she's going to find that having a sibling actually rocks pretty hard.

Still. This is our last bit of time spent living as the family we've been for the past 3+ years. I'm gonna go love that girl up something fierce.

Good fairy phones it in

2010-04-19T13:56:00.004-05:00

Anybody else find themselves reading aloud from fairy tale collections over the weekend?

So... let me just get this straight: Baby Sleeping Beauty has royalty for parents, and awesome connections such that the guests at her christening are all magical fairies. And instead of gifts, these fairies show up and make wishes over Sleeping Beauty, ensuring that she will grow up to be hot and smart and musically talented. And then somehow this one bad fairy gets through security and is all "My wish is that she will grow up, prick her finger on a spinning wheel, and die," right? Which in itself is super-random, because why not just kill her right there if that's what you're after? But whatever. So the bad fairy does her thing, and everyone is all horrified, and then the last good fairy, the only one who hasn't yet made her wish for the baby, steps up. And you're thinking, great, of course, she's going to save the day, reverse the curse, show that bad fairy the door, etc. etc. Except that the good fairy up and busts out with "Uh... my wish is that she won't die, but instead she'll fall asleep for 100 years until a prince she's never met breaks-and-enters into the palace and kisses her without her consent."

Right. Because "No spinning wheel; no death" would've been too efficient?

Methinks it's time for an upgrade to Better Fairies.

Filth, filth, filth, filth

2010-04-15T09:38:00.004-05:00

Wow - thank you so much for all the cheerleading. You have no idea how much it means to me.

Yesterday I had a contractor come out to take a look at my kitchen. This here 100-year-old house of mine has never had a dishwasher, and I've decided that such an appliance is necessary if we are to make a go at this new work/family arrangement. Sadly, our cupboards are all weirdly-sized, and installing a dishwasher would require a bunch of work and custom cabinets and wads of cash that I would rather spend on beer, wine, and sushi once I'm no longer pregnant. We're going to look into one of those portable dishwashers that you can roll around your kitchen like a utility cart. (If anyone has used one of these guys and has some brand loyalty to promote, please feel free.)

I'm also thinking of hiring a cleaning service in the fall, which fills me with equal parts anticipatory relief and, of course, The Guilt of The Liberal Arts College Grad. But, I mean, I'm not sure what else to do, seeing as how it's going to be New Baby City over here and there's going to be crap, literally and figuratively, all over the place, and I'm going to want to spend my non-work hours getting to know Newt and hanging out with my family -- and while I trust that the husband will pick up more of the slack now that we're on a more level playing field career-wise, I can't imagine that he will pick up enough of it to escape the inevitable accumulation of filth that we are just narrowly escaping currently.

My mom subscribed me to "Real Simple" magazine for Christmas, which appears to be written largely for women who are a) significantly more into beauty products, and b) significantly richer than I am. This month's issue features a cover story on "speed cleaning:" time-saving strategies for completing your most dreaded household chores. Sounds great, right? Except, the thing is (and herein lies additional rationale for paying someone to clean my house): most of these chores they list? Not even on my radar. Like, at all.

For instance, there's scouring the kitchen trash can. According to Real Simple, I'm supposed to be doing this every other month. I don't know that we've done it in a year. AT LEAST. And it's like, yeah, now that I think about it, I'm moderately repulsed by the idea that we have allowed, as the magazine gently points out, "traces of food and liquid that escape the trash bag to fester, [causing] mold, mildew, and bacteria to grow." But I've had the magazine for about a week now, and have I even approached said petri dish? Of course not. Score one for the cleaning crew.

Also, I'm supposed to clean behind and under the fridge twice a year. Friends, I have never done this task, not once. Do space and time exist under the fridge? What is a "condenser coil," and why does it merit its own Rubbermaid brush? If I've made it to 33 without ever even considering these questions, let alone knowing the answers, do I really need to start now?

And scrubbing shower tiles every other WEEK?? Is this, like, a Thing that you all are doing and I've just been completely clueless? Because I spray a shower-cleaner-spray-thingie all over my tiles after each shower, and I have scrubbed/bleached the grout a few times since we moved in, but that is about all the shower maintenance I can handle.

I know I've mentioned hiring housecleaners before on this blog and never followed through, but I'm thinking this time might be different. I haven't worked outside the home on a full-time basis in five years. FIVE!! We're talking about the pre-offspring period. The pre-dog-hair period. The pre-mommy-needs-time-to-read-blogs-and-play-Scramble-and-watch-Weeds period. If it were just me, or just me and my consenting adult husband, maybe living with a constant film of dust would be acceptable, but it seems like small children deserve to live in a house wherein they do not have regular opportunities to catch and keep fruit flies and Asian beetles as pets.*

*For my husband's opinion on this, look in the Encyclopedia of Parental Excuses, under the entry "Oh, It Builds Their Immunity."

Joy, joy, joy, joy

2010-04-13T09:48:00.003-05:00

I've got a story to tell, but can I give away the ending first?

I GOT A JOB!!!!

An actual professional position, in my field, full-time, with a salary and benefits, and responsibilities about which I am so excited I can barely sit still.

So it went like this: about a month and a half ago, the teen librarian at the public library (where I've been puttering about part-time for the past two years) up and quit, having gotten a directorship somewhere else. She told me about her imminent departure just a few days before giving her official notice, and I was immediately filled with much woe and rage. The timing! The timing was just so wretched! Didn't the universe understand that I was pregnant and about to explode with my second child?

See, if we were living in a city, or even a larger and less economically depressed rural town, I might have been able to say to myself: "Look, self. You are having a baby. This is not the right time for you to start working full-time. Keep freelancing. Hang out. There will be other jobs." But here? Oh no, friends. There are no other jobs. I have been living here for two years without a professional librarian job to be seen. When a position opens up, all the librarians within a two-hour radius circle the thing like vultures, sink their teeth in, and then refuse to let go until they are 75 years old and hobbling around the reference desk complaining about their hips.

So I moaned and whined and made myself a "Hello, My Name is Victim" sticker-badge for a couple of days, unsure about what to do. Would it just destroy our lives if I wanted to work full-time with two small children? Why couldn't this job open up a year from now? Why, why, why, ohhhhhh woe is me?

And then, one morning, I had what the husband refers to as my Target Revelation. I dropped Cletus the Former Fetus off at preschool and then drove by Target to pick up a couple of things that we needed around the house. I grabbed a cart, found my 2 or 3 items and plunked them into it, and then, for lack of anything better to do, started wheeling the aisles. And then I looked up. And looked around. And realized that I was surrounded by women -- white women, with no men or people of color in sight -- all aimlessly pushing near-empty shopping carts, most talking on their cell phones. And I was one of them. And while many of those women might cherish that quiet, childless free time to walk around and shop, I 100% did not. I wanted to be busy -- like, crazed and nonsensical busy. I wanted a to-do list five miles long. I wanted to be out of my mind with tasks. And more than anything right there in that moment, I wanted to sink down on the floor in the middle of Small Kitchen Appliances and throw a Cletus-sized fit.

From that moment on? Oh sweet Lord above, all doubt was gone. That Job Would Be Mine.

(Beloved stay-at-home parent friends of mine, please don't cut me. I think you are awesome, and most of you are so busy 24/7 that I can see your head spinning from here. The problem is that I, personally, am not. And it makes me itch.)

So I applied. Which was uncomfortable, because I already worked there, everyone knew me, and each and every staff person asked me approximately 38 times whether or not I had sent in my resume. (This led to many bedtime visions in which I ultimately did not get the job and had to return to my part-time work with my head hung low in shame and regret as my co-workers directed pity and ridicule my way. Because my glass is HALF-FULL!) And I waited. And then I interviewed. And then I waited. And then I worked an excruciating Saturday reference shift during which the library directors interviewed and paraded around two of their other final candidates for the position, both peppy go-getter types dressed in suits and carrying smart little binders filled with letters of reference from, I don't know, God probably.

And then yesterday morning the phone rang, and the caller ID revealed that it was the library calling, and I almost let the call go to voice mail because I just wanted that damn job so badly and had so completely convinced myself that there was no way that I -- eight months pregnant and toting carts full of impending-maternity-leave-and-sick-infant-days-and-daycare-schedule-conflict baggage -- would be chosen.

But I answered the phone. And they offered me the job. And I just about fell apart from all the happy.

It's a teen librarian position. I get to work the reference desk, pick out books for young adults, and plan library programs for angst-ridden sixteen-year-olds. I mean, could you die? I start about a month and a half after Newt's arrival. Friends, I am no idiot (at least, not about this). I know that transitioning to a family of four AND to a two-working-parent household is probably going to be the hardest thing we've ever done. In my perfect world, would I have more weeks to spend at home with newborn Newt? Of course. But if I were living in my perfect world, Bono would be feeding me burritos from Anna's Tacqueria while I typed this blog post in my Vermont feminist bookstore using only the power of my mind. The situation isn't perfect, and I'll probably doubt my choices, and I might lose my grip on reality from the stress of it all.

But today? Today, it's joy, joy, joy, joy.

Vote of confidence

2010-04-08T13:33:00.002-05:00

Newt in the Ute will be delivered by the one and only midwife in town, a lovely and accomplished woman who works in a joint practice with the physician who performed my D&C last year. Said physician, hereafter referred to as Dr. Furry on account of the explosion of chest hair that WILL NOT BE SILENCED by his blue v-neck scrubs, is known for having the bedside manner of a slug, and will be responsible for guiding Newt's appearance into the world should I experience any complications or require a c-section.

While I see the midwife for the majority of my prenatal care, this week I had to see Dr. Furry to talk about Newt's special ovarian twin, Gigantor the Thirteen Centimeter Cyst. While the news was encouraging (all signs point to natural childbirth still being an option), the presentation left much to be desired. A particular high point was during the measurement portion of the appointment, when Dr. Furry was poking his fingers around my abdomen and I mentioned that it was sometimes difficult for me to determine the baby's position in the womb, to which he replied with all the tenderness you might expect from a corporate executive whose primo parking spot was being threatened: "It's not your JOB to know whether the baby's head is up or down. That's why you come see US."

Uhhhhhhh, yeah. Right-o. Well then I'll just put away any pesky little concerns I might have about the identification of the miniature body part currently wedged between my ribs.

But wait! It gets better! Later that same day I had lunch with a handful of friends and acquaintances, one of whom had been under the care of Dr. Furry for the birth of her first son a few years back. Turns out that when it came time for her baby to be delivered, Dr. Furry was busy checking his email and told the nurses that he would be there when he was done "in ten or fifteen minutes." A nurse caught the baby and UNWOUND THE UMBILICAL CORD that had been near-strangling him. Dr. Furry made his appearance in time to deal with the placenta, during which time the only words of encouragement he offered to the new mother were sweet nothings like "Hold still!" and "You're making it worse!"

While I'm sure that delivering Newt under Dr. Furry's gentle guidance would ultimately yield an assortment of colorful and exciting blog posts, let's all hold hands and pray for something boring.

Important suff, like television

2010-04-07T10:58:00.002-05:00

1. I've been hooked up to a college basketball IV for the past couple of weeks, and I'm having a hard time getting off the juice. You'll forgive me, I hope, when I tell you I fully bought into Butler's "Hoosiers" narrative, nearly cried when they lost, and have since launched a comprehensive stalking campaign directed toward Brad Stevens. In good news (for me, anyway): I bested Ms. Madness by one triumphant point in the annual March Madness pool! Look for the results of our side bet coming soon to a blog near you.

2. Hark, friends, and hear me: I think that I have finally, and officially, outgrown American Idol. Last night, while babysitting a friend's sleeping kid, I watched my first full episode of the current season. And by "watched," I mean that I was so utterly and completely bored that I fell asleep about halfway through. Wherefore art thou, Kelly Clarkson? Whither Sanjaya? I think this might mean that I'm a big girl now. If it weren't for that whole I-totally-still-tivo-Make-It-Or-Break-It-on-ABCFamily thing.

3. Does anyone else feel like they would be able to relax and enjoy the last 6 episodes of Lost if only the writers and producers would send out some kind of signed, notarized document promising that the series finale will deliver an at least moderately satisfying sense of closure? Because every time they dangle some new character or obnoxious half-detail in my face, I am more prematurely pissed than I am titillated, all "Fabulous, that's fascinating, but WTF DOES IT MEAN??"

4. Treme starts this upcoming Sunday! The new David Simon show about post-Katrina New Orleans! I think I'm going to do what I have never done before, and buy the episodes on I-Tunes as they come out. Just look at this website, this cast, these pictures, and tell me you're not in.

Can't fight the crazy

2010-04-05T10:08:00.003-05:00

Daycare was closed for Good Friday, so Cletus and I had a "Mommy and Me" day that turned out to be pretty sublime. We slept late and read stories and ate breakfast on the floor, went shopping for groceries and spring clothes (the child is now a size six. SIX!), spent nearly two hours outside in the near-rain drawing on the driveway with chalk. When it started sprinkling, we went inside and sat together in the rocking chair and watched the Food Network for a special treat.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be a normal person, one who is capable of experiencing a joyful day without torturing herself later that night with endless, crippling worries for no good reason.

I imagine it's pretty simple: you have fun with your kid, you put your kid to bed, you go to bed yourself feeling happy and satisfied because, honestly, your life kind of rocks. For me, it's different. The wires get crossed somewhere, the messages get all mixed up, my brain tells my body "Alert! You're relaxed and unarmed against danger! Alert!" And so I check on my sleeping daughter, sprawled out all trusting and vulnerable across a pile of blankets and stuffed animals, and I close her bedroom door, and I put myself to bed, and I let the wheels start turning. And once those wheels get to turning, I'll be damned if it doesn't take every single trick I learned in therapy just to get them to shut the hell up.

You can't protect her from anything, the wheels squeak. You're selfish and mean and you don't know how to take care of people, and you just had a great day that you didn't deserve. Something bad is going to happen. Make sure you realize how good today was, because something bad is going to happen and you might not have more days like this one. What are you going to do when Cletus gets hurt? How are you going to take care of two children? How are you going to keep two children safe? Don't you know that kids get hurt? Don't you know that babies die?

Seriously. These are the thoughts that go through my head. They're amplified by pregnancy, yes, but they're certainly not limited to months when I'm toting the unborn. I picture my children in the hospital. I imagine my husband leaving for work and never coming back. On my worst nights, I find it impossible to believe that my son will be born breathing. "Why not you?" I think. "These things happen to other people all the time. Your life has been easy as pie so far. Why someone else? Why not you?"

My awesome therapist back in Chicago taught me some self-talk scripts that I use to pull myself out from the messed-up crap in my head, things like "This isn't real; this is OCD. These things aren't actually happening to me or to my family. I can choose to stop thinking about this shit." It helps, mostly. But usually by then, the damage has been done. I remember reading somewhere that when a person imagines or worries about a traumatic event, that person's body actually experiences the the negative effects of that trauma as if it had truly occurred. So when I sit beside Cletus' hospital bed in my mind, having failed to protect her from some imagined source of peril, my body feels the stress acutely enough to manifest physical symptoms. I'm sweating, or my heart's going nutso, or I'm about 3,000 miles from being able to sleep.

In other words, my brain is a little broken, and sometimes I worry that it's breaking the rest of me, too.

Therapy was just so, so helpful for me in dealing with this while I was in Chicago, and I keep thinking about finding some help here in College Town, but this place is just so damn small and everyone knows everyone and, you know, I like my shrink time to be like my scandalous message board comments: anonymous. Maybe I should try to find someone out of town. Or try happy pills again, although they didn't seem to make much of an impact last time around and I'm not crazy about messing around with the brain chemistry. I mean, the wires are already all crossed and tangled as it is; let's not end up with some kind of Boy Scout knot or, like, Cat's Cradle or something in there.

Meh. I know it's not as bad or dramatic as all that. It's just that sometimes I get a little pissed at my head for what seem like self-imposed wounds -- like I'm fighting against myself for no good reason, and neither side is winning, but mother of God could we both use a good night's sleep.

Last night's dream

2010-03-30T13:55:00.003-05:00

Rob Lowe was running for public office, and I was travelling with him on the campaign trail as one of his girlfriends (he had two: me, and a highschool classmate of mine named Krista). One night, Rob and I were having dinner together, poolside at some resort, and he leaned in tenderly to tell me about how for awhile, back in the 80s, he used to drink so much that his legs would swell to twice their normal size, and he could never palpate the layers of bloat enough to find a suitable vein into which he could inject drugs. Naturally, I found this charming, and asked coquettishly if he could show me pictures. Rob was touched. "You really want to see them?" he asked. I nodded and batted my eyelashes. He ran off, returning minutes later with a packet of papers fresh from the photocopier, each bearing a collection of photos showing him looking young and surly and balancing on a pair of comically obese legs.

Later in the dream, Krista and I attended a campaign event honoring Rob. We flanked him on either side. At some point during the event, I looked over and saw that Krista and Rob were holding hands. I was devastated and fled the auditorium. As I was putting on my coat in the lobby to go... somewhere...a kind looking woman in a business suit came up to me and said, "It's ok, honey. What are you doing with old Fat Legs anyway?"

Freakish daytime postscript: This afternoon, guess who sent me a message on Facebook? Highschool classmate Krista, with whom I have not had contact in ages. Hey universe: WTF?

Politics of denial

2010-03-29T12:55:00.002-05:00

Poor Cletus the Former Fetus is denied access to a number of creature comforts that her little peers seem to enjoy on a regular basis. There is our "No TV During The Week" policy, which was set forth in an attempt to curb the child's slack-jawed obsession with the talking box. Now she gets a video or a tivo'd episode of Dora during her rest time on the weekends, along with some early morning PBS Kids if mommy and daddy want to sleep in on Sunday. Which they usually do. Ok, always do.

Candy and sweets, while not forbidden by any means, are also doled out in limited supply. Cletus hasn't taken to chocolate, considers an apple to be a pretty awesome treat, and loses her shit if you dangle some fruit leather in her general direction. (I can brag about this, see, because the rest of her eating habits are so heinous: the child eschews anything involving seasonings or sauce, basically living off of scrambled eggs, plain pasta, and bread.)

Sometimes I wonder if denying things like junk food and television do more harm than good. Like last week, when Cletus was home with a sore throat and fever and, as such, got to lay on the couch all day in front of an orgy of "Max and Ruby," only to wake up the next day and FULLY fake being sick in order to sneak another day of contraband TV. I didn't know that three-year-olds were even capable of pulling a Ferris Bueller like that, but she was all "Mommmmmmmmy, I feel yucky all oooooooooover" one second and then "I think I need to watch three episodes of Dora" the next, and wouldn't you know that the minute I caught on and offered her a pile of books and a barf bucket she suddenly proclaimed herself healed?

But then we have days like yesterday, when I feel like maybe we aren't doing everything wrong after all. We took Cletus to an Easter egg hunt at a nearby church, where scores of children were set loose to trample one another down the long halls and holy corridors of the Lord's house in search of plastic eggs distributed and hidden by a talking pagan rabbit. Some of these kids were clearly feral, crashing and lunging around the building to fill their bushel-sized baskets. In the room specifically designated for the 3-5 year old set, eggs were not so much hidden as they were placed in colorful clumps upon chairs and under tables, and some children scooped up whole piles into their arms, leaving not a hint of pastel behind.

But Cletus... man, I love that kid. She squealed her way around that room, found herself a grand total of about six eggs, and could not have been more thrilled with her wee little haul. The hunt itself took a grand total of about three minutes; afterwards, we all retreated to the Fellowship Hall to have refreshments and examine the loot. Cletus' eggs yielded a couple of pieces of candy and some stickers. She was super psyched. Sitting across from us at our table was a little boy whose basket was filled to the brim; he was ripping through his eggs one by one, making piles of candy and tiny toys and casting the empty shells aside to his mother, who was frantically (and honestly, pretty freaking hilariously) trying to coax the halves back together again.

I kept looking over at Cletus, worried that she might get upset once she noticed how few eggs she had in comparison to most of the other children. But dude, that child just kept oohing and aahing over her tiny pile of treats. And then I noticed that the other kids were scarfing snacks, so I hit up the refreshment table and brought back a plate of cookies and a cup of punch for the Former Fetus, and damn if that kid didn't kill me dead by lighting up with the biggest grin, sipping at her drink as if she'd never tasted anything more delicious, as if she were Laura Ingalls having her first hit of lemonade at Nellie Oleson's birthday party, and joyfully exclaiming "Mommy! I love this juice!!"

Swoon!

People, tomorrow she might (read: will) be back to barring her daycare playmates from access to tea parties (true story) or peeing on the carpet and blaming it on the dog (yes. happened.), but let me just revel for a moment in this Shining Moment of Cletus Awesomeness and entertain the thought, just briefly, that my parenting decisions might have been in some way involved.

Playing Boggle

2010-03-23T12:59:00.003-05:00

In case I haven't mentioned it, I'm pregnant. Increasingly so, in fact. Pregnancy as a physical state brings with it an assortment of aligned trends to which many women who have experienced the miracle of reproduction firsthand can relate. For instance: a complicated relationship with food. Some women are too sick to eat, some women can't eat enough, some women get weird cravings, some women get gestational diabetes and have to eat nothing but plain chicken breasts and carrot sticks. Whatever the food issue might be, most pregnant women have one, and the shared experience brings them comfort.

There's another shared experience that pregnant women seem to revel in, and that experience is a particular enjoyment of the very activity that rendered them pregnant in the first place. In the hopes of avoiding a multitude of Google hits from porn-seekers and weirdos with pregnancy fetishes, I'm going to refer to that activity as playing Boggle.

This may well mortify my husband, particularly because both of my sisters-in-law are regular readers of this blog, but I quite enjoy playing Boggle. In general. When I am not sustaining a fetus. However, pregnancy literature, blogs, and message boards seem to suggest that playing Boggle while pregnant is an exercise in ecstasy second only to spiritual enlightenment or, if God's not your thing, a backyard fort made entirely of ice cream. "I can't play Boggle enough," you hear. "Once I got through my first trimester, I have been playing the best Boggle of my entire life!"

Nothing makes you feel more freakish than being a big fatso pregnant lady who's bucking the Boggle trend, especially when it means you are denying your beloved partner access to the Boggle he so delights in playing. But friends, this has been a central truth of all of my two-and-one-third pregnancies: when I am with child, there are few things that appeal to me less than playing Boggle. I feel like crap, I'm exhausted non-stop, every part of me is uncomfortable, and there is no way in HELL that I am achieving a 7-letter-word. And also? The whole thing just weirds me out. Maybe other women have less active fetuses than I do, but Newt in the Ute is pretty much on the go 24/7. Playing Boggle right now is like playing Boggle while a little creature sits between you and your partner, periodically hiccuping or tapping you on the shoulder to make a point. And then what's more strange -- pretending not to notice that there's a third party in the room, or affectionately laughing about it, all "Awww, Newt..." while you continue to play Boggle AS IF YOUR KID WERE NOT SITTING RIGHT THERE?

I don't know, man. I hesitate to share all this, since my fear is that you're all out there, pregnant as a pause and coming off of a 3-hour Boggle bender. But there's got to be someone else out there who is pregnant-Boggle-averse, or at least ambivalent, to let me know that I am not alone.

Feel free to comment anonymously. Or to lie.

Your challenge, should you dare to accept it:

2010-03-17T11:24:00.002-05:00

Do not, under any circumstances, laugh when you overhear your three-year-old trying out the following string of silly words while getting dressed for her Catholic preschool:

"Fee fee dee dee do do dum. Doodle pee pop pom pom pimp. Pimp. Pimp. PIMPY PIMP PIMP. PIMP PIMPY PIMP PIMP PIMPY PIMP PIMP!"

Special skills

2010-03-15T13:48:00.003-05:00

Look: I don't know a lot of the stuff that I am probably supposed to know as a 33-year-old woman with very expensive undergraduate and graduate degrees. Like, say, basic geography. One of my greatest fears when playing Trivial Pursuit is that I will be asked a question about major bodies of water, because then I have to admit that I can barely identify oceans, let alone significant rivers and lakes, on a map. I promise you that I could not complete the math section of the GRE if I were to attempt it today. My husband teaches genetics to college students and I -- well, I can draw a cute little double helix and that's about it.

My brain is mostly filled up with reading and writing and dismantling the patriarchy, and the parts that aren't? The parts that are supposed to be filled up with calculus and basic crap about the solar system? Are filled with movie quotes, song lyrics, and random pop culture trivia that even pop culture itself has forgotten.

Back when we were living in Boston, one of our main circles of friends would regularly spend entire evenings taking part in a rudimentary guessing contest we called "The Music Game." The game consisted of eating pizza, drinking beer, and scrolling through the genre-specific music channels on digital television. One player was in charge of selecting a channel and shouting out the category, while all other players hid their eyes and tried to be the first to identify the artist and song being featured.

Most players had a certain specialty. My husband, for instance, generally excelled at Classic Rock and anything featuring 80s new wave. Another friend never missed a disco reference. My specialties, I am not in any way ashamed to tell you, were Arena Rock (especially when it featured monster ballads, which I adore) and Soft Hits. That's right, baby -- Soft Hits. Not to be confused with Slow Jams, which is an entirely different thing. I'm talking about Lionel Ritchie, early Mariah Carey, duets between Peter Cetera and Cher: Soft Hits.

I listened to a lot of Soft Hits growing up, to the extent that much of my earliest ideas of romance were formed around Air Supply lyrics. Still to this day -- although my musical tastes have for the most part matured -- I continue to advise my husband in the proper construction of my heart's truest and deepest desire: a "Three In a Row" radio dedication on David Allan Boucher's Bedtime Magic, which I still secretly listen to sometimes on my internet radio more than five years after leaving Boston. I suggest creative and meaningful line-ups that I would enjoy: for instance, pairing Styx's "Lady" with Kenny Rogers' delectable morsel by the same name, and following both with "Three Times a Lady" by the Commodores for good measure.

Anyway, my point (and honestly, it's not really much of a point) in telling you all this is so that you will understand the moment of triumph I experienced a few days ago in the car. As I think I've mentioned before, our new vehicle is equipped with XM Radio, a set-up that allows the husband and I (during the few instances when we are both in the car) to compete anew in fierce Music Game battles. XM Radio, much to my delight, features a channel simply titled "Love." It's like Soft Hits, except without the Kenny G. I would venture to guess that I am familiar with about 98% of the songs played on "Love." Which is why it was no surprise when I pummeled the husband by correctly guessing both "I'll Never Get Over You (Getting Over Me)" by Expose AND "Love is on the Way" by Saigon Kick.

But who, I ask you, could have possibly guessed that I was capable of positively identifying "You Got it All" by The Jets at the striking of THE VERY FIRST CASIO KEYBOARD CHORD?

Me, that's who. Don't hate; congratulate.

Press release

2010-03-09T12:26:00.003-05:00

Melinda and Family are pleased to announce the launching of their newest collaborative venture: The Good Choices Jar. Already awarded Dr. Sears' coveted Seal of Disapproval, the Good Choices Jar offers busy moms and dads the flexibility and domestic bliss that only unfettered bribery can provide.

Its design is simple and elegant, making it the perfect compliment to a favorite side table without detracting from the clean lines of the dog piss stain that lies on the carpet beneath it. A glass jar, filled not with marbles (because marbles are apparently archaic and Target employees will openly mock you when you ask where you might find some) but with those colored glass gems that some women like to put in vases in lieu of living things (Target employees know exactly where those are).

For parents, using the Good Choices Jar is as simple as 1-2-3. One: when your child makes a Good Choice, make an exuberant show of placing a gem into the jar. Two: when your child makes a Bad Choice, mournfully take a gem out. And three: when your child acquires a predetermined number of gems in her or his Good Choices Jar, make haste to the local toy store and Buy Your Child's Love.

The guidelines for determining qualifying Good and Bad Choices will vary by household, of course, but some possible examples to use include the following:

Good Choices:

- Rising at 6:30 for preschool without perpetrating physical or emotional abuse toward the parent in charge of supervising the morning routine

- Eating a nutritious breakfast

- Saying "please" and "thank you" without first being prompted

- Gently petting the dog

- Agreeing to wear socks

Bad Choices:

- Calling mom a "pee poop fart"

- Striking either parental unit with a toy mop

- Removing one's nighttime pull-up and proceeding to sit pantsless in the middle of the room, loudly demanding "a glass of milk" over the baby monitor, long after bedtime has passed

- Constructing a play-dough dog bone, feeding said bone to the dog, and then dragging the dog into the bathroom by her tail

- Ruthlessly destroying another child's perfectly good tea party, in the manner of a Real Housewife of New Jersey

Gems can be awarded and taken away as liberally and as inconsistently as parents see fit; indeed, the Good Choices Jar promises to be most effective when co-parents experience a complete communication breakdown fueled by a combination of pregnancy- and work-related stress and, as a result, end up with one parent stingily dropping gems one by one into the jar while the other parent removes whole handfuls in a desperate post-dinner rage.

The Good Choices Jar comes complete with an implementation guide, a sheet of stickers (for personalizing!), and a veterinarian/pediatrician voucher for the inevitable "dog eats a shitload of gems when child throws glass jar against the fridge during a tantrum and breaks it into shards, which she then steps on" incident.

Breakfast cocktail

2010-03-04T10:06:00.002-05:00

Is there anything worse than starting the day off by fighting with your three-year-old -- the child who has gone to bed every night for the past week screaming and writhing over some perceived injustice and who this morning refused to utter anything but commands, who kicked you and scratched you because she didn't want to put on shoes, who repeatedly asked the question "Is it the weekend? Is it the weekend? Is it the weekend?" until you thought you might slip into a vegetative state, and at whom you finally shouted so loudly that even the dog looked startled -- and then driving her silently to daycare, where she breaks into a giant smile, tears off her coat and hat, and runs into the open and loving arms of a teacher she has known for a sum total of two months?

People, I do not know what kind of reinforcements I am going to need to survive this, the fourth year of Cletus' life.

Wilting where I'm planted

2010-03-02T15:01:00.002-05:00

Two of my favorite friends here in town have just announced that they will be moving away this summer. One of them is a woman with whom I've been somewhat close since I came to town; she lives about five houses away, we swap free babysitting, our families shared Thanksgiving dinner. The other, along with her husband, is a mainstay of our social "circle" (really more of a semi-circle at this point. a bit of squiggly line, if you will). Both have kids Cletus' age, kids she's grown up with for the past two years and considers to be BFFs. It sucks.

I've been feeling impossibly lonely and cooped up lately. I know I'm a broken record with the moaning and the sobbing and the pregnancy hormones and the cold-weather-bitching. But sorry; it's where I am. I'm restless and antagonistic toward this town right now. I'm sick of the rightwing nut-jobs. I'm sick of the fact that another faceless Chinese "food" buffet is coming to town (we've already got 2, plus 2 other Chinese takeout places) and will most likely succeed, even though there are still next to no interesting, independent vegetarian-friendly eateries. Here, in a college town, full of baby hippies!

Last night at work, I struck up a random conversation with a library patron while I was helping her find some books. The patron was a woman who looked to be in her fifties, pleasant, talkative, worked in construction and was still wearing her big puffy work overalls. Somehow we ended up talking about Barbara Walters (the patron hated her voice - said it was like fingernails on a blackboard), and I disclosed how I used to Tivo "The View" because of my secret belief that Rosie O'Donnell is my best friend, and how I immediately stopped watching when Rosie got the boot. And then the patron, just chatting casually as if we were talking about the unpleasantness of snowstorms or the adorableness of puppies or any other generally-agreed-upon matter, said "Yeah, I thought Rosie was ok, except when she kept pushing all that gay stuff at us."

And it was just like whoooosh. I just felt myself deflate. And I found the patron her books, and I went back to the reference desk, and I sat there getting more and more pissed off. It's like, I feel compelled somehow to walk around this place and keep my own personal values and morals private (or to qualify them with some kind of words of warning, along the lines of "here comes my scary anti-hate agenda") out of respect for the fact that a bunch of people who have never set foot outside this town would be offended by them, and yet this woman feels so sure that I will share her point of view that she puts her homophobia right out there without a second thought, assumes that I will feel the same way because she's so damn used to everyone around her feeling the same way.

Yeah, I know: be the change you want to see in the world. I'll start doing that tomorrow. But right now I'm still pissed and grouchy and wishing for a big liberal community to scoop me up in its righteous healing arms, carry me gently to a feminist bookstore selling vegan baked goods, rub my achy back while reading aloud to me from The Nation.

Mammaries

2010-02-26T12:03:00.003-05:00

This morning, apropos of nothing, Cletus the Former Fetus pulled up her pajama top and poked at her nipples, her face a study in Great Concern. I watched her from across the room as she peered at both sides of her chest, first the left and then the right. She pulled her shirt back down and looked up at me with serious eyes. "Mommy," she said, "I don't want two boobs."

Dude.

I went over to the bed where she was perched and sat down next to her. "That's ok, sweetie," I tried to assure her. "You don't have to worry about that for a long time. You'll have boobs some day, but right now you just have nipples."

She lifted her top again and examined, as if to make sure nothing had changed. And then her eyes got sad. "But I don't want two BIG boobs," she almost whispered, starting to tear up.

Could you die? She's three years old and hating her breasts before they even appear on the scene. Does feminine angst know no bounds? Oh friends, and then she started weeping for real, big fat sobs when I told her the score, that all ladies grow a pair eventually, and that some are big and some are small and all sizes are equally nice, and that some mommies use their set to feed babies, and that I think mine are just super-great, and that besides, little girls didn't need to worry about stuff like this and hey -- isn't that a Dora the Explorer book over there in that corner? Let's go read it right-the-hell-now.

The child cried for a solid couple of minutes while I held her hand and tried to convince her that boobs were not the end of the world. Eventually she cheered ever-so-slightly when I started listing the names of the other girls at daycare and expounding upon the racks said children would eventually grow. Cletus, staying issue-driven, wondered whether her friends' breasts would be "big"? I told her that they were likely to be variably sized, and I think I drew some kind of bogus parallel along the lines of "just like how M. has blond hair and K. has red hair and you have brown hair! Everyone's body is different and special!" I don't know. She seemed to subscribe somewhat to the propaganda.

I'm laughing now, but man. Seeing my tiny girl crying about her breasts before she's old enough to be out of her nighttime Pampers? I think something inside me just broke a little bit.

Cold and pregnant

2010-02-22T11:34:00.003-05:00

It's all a haze of seasonal affect disorder and pregnancy-related discomfort and extended wintertime sniffles that refuse to dissipate around here, which is why I've not been writing. I feel like a toxic pill these days. I think it's mostly the constant snow and freezing temps and gray skies; I could handle my physical woes much more gracefully if I weren't constantly pulling up snow boots, moisturizing chapped hands, and sliding around on ice-covered sidewalks our awesome neighbors refuse to shovel. [In two years of living next to these people, they have not cleared their walk once. Not once. And sometimes, to avoid clearing their driveway, they wait until we shovel ours and then drive through their backyard to use our driveway as their own.]

Newt in the Ute is reclining like royalty in the transverse position, has been for weeks now. I'd like to publicly announce the following: ouch.

Over the weekend I went through roughly 700 plastic totes of Cletus the Former Fetus' baby clothes and assorted paraphernalia, sorting out the keepsakes from the giveaways, the at least moderately boy-appropriate from the gifted t-shirts bearing slogans like "Everyone loves a blue-eyed girl." Not that it wouldn't amuse me personally to dress a boychild in such items, but I'm committed to at least trying to keep the gender games in check.

Picking through Cletus' old onesies and filling up Newt's bedroom with rattles and crib mobiles and slings made me feel equal parts psyched and nervous. Psyched because: yay, a new little warm baby to sniff and snuggle and nap with on the couch! And nervous because: say, isn't that little warm baby going to have to be birthed and breastfed? Remember how awesome that last part worked out before?

I've promised myself and everyone around me that I'm going to go easier on myself this time around: assemble some resources, give breastfeeding what I've got to give, and if my boobs insist upon remaining recalcitrant lumps this time around, move forward to other options without the martyr complex. Hold me to it, friends. I'm arranging for a lactation consultant ahead of time, since God knows the hospital here in town doesn't provide one. Far from Cletus' cushy birthing suite in suburban Chicago, Newt's going to make his grand entrance into the world of routine IVs, near constant fetal monitoring, and thirsty laboring women who are denied access to all food and drink. Around these parts, it's that or a homebirth, and you all know how I feel about messes.

If I'm being honest, though, I'm not feeling super concerned about the whole "birth process," short of hoping to avoid being sliced and diced and C-sectioned. Not really interested in whether the lights are dimmed in the delivery room or whether or not the umbilical cord is still pulsing when the midwife cuts it. Episiotomy? Been there, done that, it healed up just fine. Maybe it's the miscarriage, maybe it's having gone through labor and childrearing already, I don't know -- either way, this time I kind of just want the baby. You know? I want it alive and kicking, out of my insides and squawking on top of my chest. I want to be a family of four.

And I want it to stop fucking snowing. Sometime before May. Please.

Free verse vegetarian poetry: a weekend in Asheville, North Carolina

2010-02-16T14:26:00.004-05:00

Tofu sloppy joe on whole wheat, with sprouts
and tahini mustard sauce.
Jalepeno-onion fries.
Blueberry rice milk smoothie.
Carrot cake; Raspberry chocolate layer cake with
dark chocolate
ganache.

Portobello mushroom cap,
marinated and grilled;
mashed potatoes and vegan gravy,
sauteed kale with grilled red onions,
warm ginger chocolate chip cookie,
homemade sweet peppermint iced tea.

Eggplant hoagie with herbed goat cheese;
collard greens;
life-sustaining Diet Coke.

LIQUID TRUFFLE HOT SIPPING DARK CHOCOLATE.
Assorted truffles.

Garlic bread,
Cheese pizza with kalamata olives and
whole cloves of roasted garlic.

Airport bottled water and banana.

Wherein I reveal my secret antifeminist past

2010-02-09T10:48:00.003-05:00

My dining room table is covered in glitter from the 37 Dora valentines I had to prepare for Cletus the Former Fetus' various social obligations this week. Fifteen cards go to her preschool class, along with some kind of card-holding vessel I have yet to concoct. Another fifteen go to the weekly music class she attends on Wednesday evenings, in which four of the participants are named Chloe. And the final seven go to her friends at daycare. Since those friends are special and she hangs with them every day, they get suckers affixed to their cards. We play favorites, and suckers are expensive.

The husband proposed to me on Valentines Day eight years ago. We had been living together for a couple of years at that point, and I had harvested up all of my unused girly energy to yearn for an engagement that felt like it was never going to happen. We argued a lot. I had yet to be beaten into submission by his workaholic tendencies, so I both harbored and expressed my fantasies about occasionally seeing him before 9:00 PM. This caused strife. One Christmas, I thought I was going to be receiving an engagement ring for a gift. I received a sleeping bag. This caused additional strife. He wasn't sure we could make things work. This caused strife plus angst.

Not long after the Sleeping Bag Incident, I issued a manifesto, which basically went like this: I have been in love with you for many years, have made an ass of myself in your name on many occasions, and would like to marry you and be fruitful. If you don't want those things with me, if I am not part of the life you ultimately want, that sucks -- but I would like to know soon so that I can start listening to The Cranberries' "No Need to Argue" on eternal repeat and get on with my life of neverending sorrow. It was about a half-step shy of an ultimatum shameful enough to be featured in your garden variety Lifetime movie of the week.

We went on with our lives. I was prepared to give things six months or so and then start thinking about other options, other places to live, other jobs. Valentine's Day rolled around. Neither the husband nor I have ever been very good at doing Valentine's Day. I do believe the first time we ever celebrated it was after three years of dating when, on a visit during a year living in separate states, the husband bought me carnations and a bag of Red Hots. (On one hilarious occasion after we were married and living in Boston, he grabbed me a last-minute bouquet of roses from the flower stand in the Porter Square T station, all of which turned out to be blackened and dead. LIKE OUR UNION, we mourned. But I digress.)

Anyway, it was Valentine's Day, and so certain was I that we had no plans of celebrating that I agreed to cover someone else's on-call shift at the Hideous Women's Anti-violence NonProfit of Doom where I was employed. Because of this, I came home late and grouchy, walked in the door ready to eat frozen pizza in my pajamas. But instead found the husband standing in a room full of candles (who knew he could light one, let alone shop for a handful at Pier One?) with the Lloyd Dobbler boombox theme cued up on the stereo, a seafood dinner on the table, and a freezer filled with little heart-shaped cakes he had molded himself out of frozen yogurt.

And then we got engaged. And married. And had a daughter. And soon will have a son. And my husband is still just the best, funniest, smartest, most effortlessly kind person I know. And I say that now, even knowing that the seafood dinner and heart-shaped cakes were just a ruse, to be followed by years and years of chili and tuna noodle casserole and Boboli pizza crusts topped with bagged shredded cheese.

Which actually taste pretty good when you're eating them on the couch next to your valentine.

So grateful

2010-02-04T13:32:00.002-05:00

In response to the Focus on the Family-sponsored Tim Tebow anti-abortion ad that CBS is going to air during the Superbowl this weekend, two professional athletes teamed up with Planned Parenthood to make the following video. Warning: if you are pro-choice and pregnant with a baby boy and struck dumb by the responsibility of teaching feminist values to your future son AND absurdly hormonal, get out your hankies:

Look. I don't have anything unkind to say about Tim Tebow's mother or the choice she made. (Although it bears noting, as many liberal media outlets have pointed out, that she HAD a choice.) I'm happy she ended up with the family she wanted. I don't want to get all pissed off about how CBS is airing this overtly political ad during the Superbowl; while I'm sure we can all agree that it will be a cold day in hell before they air a commercial featuring a woman celebrating her reproductive freedom, I don't have any concrete proof of that claim, so... you know, there's that.

All I really want to say is how grateful I am that two male athletes are speaking out publicly about trusting and honoring women's choices. That takes guts, and so few guys would be willing to do it, and I really just feel like it's a gift. And I appreciate it. And if either of these guys' mothers ever writes a parenting guide, I'm totally buying multiple copies and setting them to memory.

Memo to myself

2010-02-02T15:02:00.002-05:00

When you suffer from a well-documented and debilitating fear of flying, and when you are -- in spite of that fear -- about a week away from leaving your daughter and husband behind and boldly putting yourself, your unborn child, and your golfball-sized ovarian cyst onto a flight to North Carolina for a mini-retreat with your BFFs, you might want to just consider refraining from clicking that New York Times link right there.

Why, to which link are you referring, self?

This link. The one that references the wretched last-minute crash of a commuter flight in Buffalo that took place almost exactly a year to the date before your planned flight. The one that details how said crash looks to have been caused primarily by multiple pilot errors, rather than simply by weather as was previously thought.

I'm going to go ahead and advise you, self, to not read about how the pilot and the first officer entered contradictory preflight information into the plane's computer system, thus delaying a warning signal that could have prevented the crash. Or about how when that warning finally did go off, the pilot's response was the exact opposite of what he should have done to keep the plane in the air.

Oh. You say you already read all that, self?

Well, then I promise you that you do NOT want to read the bit about how the first officer was sick with a cold, admitted to the captain that she should have stayed home but couldn't afford to do so, and was sending text messages from the cockpit before takeoff. Nor will you benefit in any way from learning that the captain had failed five performance checks over the course of his career as a pilot, but was still allowed to fly living, breathing human beings through the motherfucking air in airplanes on a regular basis. Like, as a job.

And for the love of God, under no circumstances should you look at the picture of the first officer, who appears to have been juuuuuust about old enough to have the training wheels taken off of her bike, or at the interactive graphic showing the plane weaving and bobbing before -- oh look. You went and did it. Well, don't say I didn't try to warn you.

But anyway, don't worry, self. I'm sure this was just an isolated incident, a freak joining of two less-than-stellar pilots combined with bad weather and crappy luck. I'm sure that whoever operates your regional commuter flights out of and into Peoria will be completely separated from this whole -- i'm sorry, what's that you say, National Transportation Safety Board? The crew on the Buffalo flight was "set up for fatigue and inattention before they even took off, partly because of the structure of the commuter airline business"?

Oh. Well. Who wants a free Sprite and some pretzels??

Add to the list of things I do not find charming. . .

2010-01-27T15:29:00.003-05:00

. . .old men whose schtick involves "flirting" (read: making sexist comments, telling Reader's Digest-quality jokes, and crossing physical boundaries without permission) with young women and girls who are working in customer services roles and thus often feel forced by the constraints of their job responsibilities to be polite and sweet in response.

There is an old man who comes in on a regular basis to the resale shop where I volunteer. He always makes some kind of grand show of walking in the front door (shouting "Fancy meeting you here!" while stomping the snow off of his work boots), spends 5-10 minutes picking out a small item to purchase (a stocking cap, a mug, something for a quarter, usually), and then makes his way to the check-out counter to be lecherous.

The man seems to have a standard repertoire of material from which to draw. Sometimes he asks the volunteer running the cash register if she would shake his hand, then compliments her on how firm her grip is given the softness of her skin. Other times he opts for the time-honored "No ring on that finger? Pretty girl like you should be murried!" Most times, he pulls a Hershey's Kiss out of his pocket and asks if he can "give you a kiss." One volunteer reported that he asked to put the candy into her palm, but when she held out her hand Grandpa grabbed it, pulled her toward him across the counter, and tried to kiss her on the forehead. Several volunteers have been given a cheek stroke.

There are generally two approaches you can take with this guy. First, you can swallow your dignity, play along, and rest assured that he will amble out of the store before too long, as he always does once he's achieved physical contact or at least a girlish giggle. Or alternately, you can refuse to engage, not laugh at his jokes, speak only in reference to the transaction at hand ("Would you like a bag for that? Would you like your receipt?"), and claim to not eat candy. The trouble with this approach, of course, is that it upsets and confuses him, causing him to stay longer and keep trying to win your affection.

Yesterday -- and, if we're being honest, most days, but REALLY yesterday -- I had zero patience for the routine, and was entirely not capable of playing nice when I saw Mr. Hershey walking towards the counter. I rang up his baseball cap to the strains of "So a doctor calls this woman on the phone, and says 'Honey, I've got good news and bad news'..." I couldn't tell you what the punchline to that zinger turned out to be, as I was busy staring and announcing "That will be 54 cents."

This displeased him greatly, so he responded by reaching his hand down into his pants pocket and bringing up a palmful of loose coins, cough drops, hard candy, and a kleenex. "Can you find 54 cents in there for me?" he asked. I grabbed three quarters from the top of the pile, ignoring the pennies and nickles wedged in between the Werthers Originals and the snotrag, and then handed him back the change.

"How old are you, honey?" he tried next. But I pretended not to hear him and moved on to the next customer, coincidentally an elderly woman who had been quietly waiting her turn. The old guy was silent for a couple of seconds, then turned to the woman and said "Hmm. Never ask a woman for her age. No sir. They don't like it."

And then, God love her, the woman turned her head, looked him straight in the eye, and said "I'm a woman. You want to know how old I am?"

A reasonable person might have taken that moment to shut the hell up and move the hell along, but alas. Grandpa did not. He elected to take the next best option, which was, naturally, to spew the following: "I don't know how old you are, but I bet you're old enough that you used to pee in them cloth diapers back in the day. You know, the ones with the pins?"

To her credit, the woman did not take out her dentures and wave them in the air like a declaration of war. Instead, she simply stood stone-faced and said, "I'll be 90 next month, sir." And at that, our friend finally retreated, with a half-assed "Well... just keep on doing what you're doing then, honey. You look just great."

Dude will be back next week. Dude gets away with it because he is old, and because handsy old men are allegedly as cute and as sweet as puppies and kitties and baby birds and sunshine, and because there will always be 17-year-old girl cashiers who haven't yet learned that they have the right to not be touched by a stranger, even if said stranger looks a bit like Wilford Brimley in "Our House."

Awww. Is it your time of the month?

2010-01-25T15:46:00.003-05:00

Apparently someone snuck into my bedroom while I was sleeping at some point last week and injected me with a bucket's worth of hormones, because I am suddenly, completely, So Very Pregnant. I have looked and felt pregnant with a little p for a couple of months now, but now we have officially entered Big P territory. The discomfort, the nocturnal tossing and turning, the round ligament bullshit, and the weeping. Oh, the weeping.

Yesterday, the husband worked past my arbitrary deadline (known only to me, as I had not communicated it to him in any way) of 10:30 PM, causing me to dissolve into hysterical sobs while washing the dinner dishes. When he heard me banging saucepans around and hiccuping and moaning he came downstairs to help, which somehow made me even more upset and caused me to exile myself to the bathroom for another half hour of solitary wailing. The husband eventually tried to join me, but he was denied access. All the while, a voice in my head tried to be reasonable. "Why are you crying?" it asked. "You are crying for no reason. You are just crying to cry. You can decide to stop crying whenever you want to. Like now. Or now." But I didn't stop, and I didn't stop. Until finally I did. And then I came out and laid on the couch and watched tennis on TV and felt sorry for myself until I could barely stand it. And then I went to bed.

And that was actually a vast improvement over a few days earlier, when I wept in my bedroom for the better part of an hour over the out-of-nowhere realization that someday, somehow, my mother would die. Bear in mind, please, that my mother is neither sick nor old nor someone who engages in anything vaguely resembling risky behavior. But I was sitting there just thinking about Newt in the Ute and Cletus and about taking care of them, which segued into thinking about my mom taking care of me, which segued (naturally) into thinking about her funeral and my subsequent empty motherless life.

It is only days, I fear, before the husband begins a series of dramatic deaths and heartbreaking extramarital affairs by way of my pregnancy-induced nightmares. As it stands now, I am still situated in the relatively benign second-trimester territory of Weird-Ass Dreams, including last night's offering in which I and Detective Greggs threw Lucy Kaplansky (whose music I haven't listened to for, like, years) a baby shower featuring a spread of bacon, eggs, mozzarella sticks that I passed around to guests on a greasy paper plate, and a massive professionally decorated chocolate sheet cake that occupied a table stretching from one end of the room to the other.

File under "social anxiety disorder"

2010-01-20T14:31:00.004-05:00

Yesterday was Cletus the Former Fetus' second day of preschool. Catholic school, if you can believe it! We're hoping she will learn to both kneel and submit. And if we keep her enrolled there through both pre-K and Kindergarten -- which we're thinking we might do given the scarcity of in-town educational options that don't end with pregnant nine-year-olds -- she'll get to wear a uniform, and who doesn't love an actual schoolgirl wearing an actual schoolgirl uniform? They're not just for Halloween costumes and pole dancers, you know.

Anyway, what I wanted to tell you was this: when I picked the child up yesterday after class, her little backpack was already (already!) stuffed with little papers and flyers. I've now officially been asked to volunteer in the classroom, contribute to a bake sale, and donate money or items to the "preschool class basket" for a charity auction. On the second day!

One of the flyers was signed by the preschool "class mom." I've got hives already.

Affects, seasonal and otherwise

2010-01-18T14:15:00.004-05:00

Last week was not a good week. I realize that saying as such makes me an asshole of the highest order, since I am lacking in neither food nor water and am not currently mourning the loss of 50,000 of my country's citizens. I mean, how do you even start to process all that, you know? We use the New York Times as our Explorer homepage, so countless times a day I find myself looking at those images, piles of bodies like a genocide. I feel like I should be looking at them 24/7, as some kind of penance for being privileged, for worrying about my own little shitstorms. But I guess at the end of the day, your own little shitstorms are the ones you ultimately have to wade through...

Cletus the Former Fetus has been diseased, first with a gross viral cold, then a double ear infection, and finally a stomach bug of demonic proportions that kept her up all night, vomiting and writhing. How do all you single parents deal with the stomach flu, man? Because between the husband and myself, we barely get the situation contained. It's all divide and conquer: you hold the girl upright, I'll go get the barf bucket. You change the pajamas, I'll strip the bed. You crate the dog so she stops lapping up the vomit (I. KNOW.), I'll throw up quietly in my mouth in response.

This was only our second family experience with any kind of prolonged pukage; our first, if you recall, landed us in the hospital for three days. I feel that I am sorely lacking in appropriate context as a result. After six hours of the plague, having really no idea how much was too much, I was ready to haul the child off to the ER in the middle of the night. She finally drifted to sleep, though, and went a few hours without hurling, and then I managed to get a couple of sips of fluid into her, enough so that I felt confident that I wasn't killing her off with dehydration-via-gross-negligence.

Also on our family's list of recent happenings? An ultrasound that revealed the presence of wee boy parts dangling off of Newt in the Ute. [Insert references to The Penis Inside Of Me here.] A boy! On which to inflict my radical feminist agenda! To defiantly dress in Cletus' pink onesies! (Really, though, that's just because I'm cheap.)

That news might have brought more uncontained excitement and joy, though, had it not been paired with the finding of a man-eating cyst taking up residence on my right ovary. Hello, stray golf ball. Nice to make your acquaintance. May I introduce you to my internal organs? Oh - I see you've already met. My midwife assures me that as long as the beast doesn't grow, twist my ovary, or start unionizing in there, it shouldn't pose any problems for the baby or the pregnancy. I do have to have it continually monitored by ultrasound, though.

I have got some serious midwinter cabin fever, people. Caaaaaaabiiiiiin fever. Makes every damn thing seem ten times worse than it is.

Hey, did any of you watch the Golden Globes last night? Did you stay awake long enough to see James Cameron's acceptance speech for best picture? The one where he invited the room full of sparkly rich people to give themselves a round of applause for being so awesome? For real, he did: he was all "we have the best, funnest jobs, people, we bestow the gift of movies upon the common folk, let's all give ourselves a gold star!" He also said something in his made-up Avatar language as if it were a Real Thing. Which it isn't. See the above paragraph, James Cameron. You are suddenly ten times more annoying than ever before.

Royalty

2010-01-11T09:24:00.003-05:00

I am not a fan of the Disney Princesses' doe-eyed world takeover. Do I even need to put that out there? I hate that for just about every kid-related necessity (pajamas, diapers, underwear, dishes, sheets, towels, toothpaste, water, air, oxygen), most stores offer a Girl Option and a Boy Option, the Boy Option being, usually, Disney's "Cars," and the Girl Option of course being princesses. All tarted up, boobs popping out their little corset-dresses, hair teased like they're the lost Soprano daughters, eyes half-drunk and woozy. Smiling and gesturing with their magic wands, all "C'mere, you. No, not you, pervy old man, although I can understand your confusion, given that placed in a different, less animated environment I would suit a centerfold quite nicely. I'm talking to you, of course, my intended audience of 3-8 year-old-girls. C'mere. Let's talk about marrying princes!"

This past Christmas, my parents bought Cletus the Former Fetus a Disney Princess-themed sleeping bag and rolling suitcase. Given that we had made our feelings on such things perfectly clear (aka "We will filter until it becomes physically impossible for us to do so"), we were displeased, and we expressed our displeasure by exchanging said items for a plain blue sleeping bag and Winnie the Pooh luggage.

Cletus also received, however, a game entitled "Disney DVD Bingo," a version of Bingo wherein the number squares all bear pictures of animated Disney characters and are called out by a companion DVD that shows little movie clips. The game, which we kept, is by far the child's favorite Christmas present. She asks to play it immediately upon waking up in the morning, and then again when she comes home from daycare. She concentrates intensely on putting her little chips on the correct squares. She memorizes the names of all the characters, most of whom she has zero context for whatsoever given her lack of exposure to the general Disney oeuvre.

So given all the joy this game has brought to her life, and to show that I am not completely hardheaded and restrictive in my parenting choices, I decided to check out a couple of Disney movies from the public library for Cletus' weekend treat. Except that -- wouldn't you know it -- when I got there to survey the shelves, the only three films that had not already been checked out were Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs. Princesses, princesses all.

Now, it had been a very long time since I last saw any of these movies, but I seemed to recall that the Disney Princesses of yesteryear -- the original movie characters -- came off as substantially less whoretastic than do their modern day manifestations. I mean, yeah, the gross "someday my prince will come" life goal would still be espoused (heh. get it?), but the movies also had cute talking animals, right? And singing dwarfs? Who doesn't love singing dwarfs? I checked out the latter two films on DVD, vowing to keep an open mind.

Friends, I come before you today, two days after my child's fateful viewing of Snow White, to tell you that this was a Very Bad Call. Not for the reasons I would have suspected, however, but because the the world of the early Disney film is, in a word? TERRIFYING. The stuff of horror movies. The stuff that would get parental guidance warnings if they tried to air it on TV today. People! All I remembered about Snow White's unfortunate relationship with the wicked queen was that the queen tries to take her out with a poisoned apple. Apparently it somehow slipped my mind that before she gets around to handing out bad fruit, the queen actually hires a hit man to murder Snow White, hands him a pretty little box, and instructs him to CUT OUR HER HEART and tote it back in said box. All of which eventually sends Snow White running through a dark forest full of evil trees with eyes, trees that cackle and try to grab Snow White with their branches while she screams and cries.

Somewhat of a far cry from the satin-clad Playmate winking out at preschoolers from the covers of their plastic lunchboxes. And I'm honestly not sure which is less appropriate for a three-year-old girl. But I do know that I'll be following my instincts and sticking to the Safe Space that is Dora the Explorer for the immediate future.

Blog nepotism

2010-01-06T15:43:00.003-05:00

Last summer, my brother-in-law and his family packed up their stuff, left their home in Minneapolis, and moved to a farm in rural Minnesota. Farming had been a dream of theirs for years. Now they live on 20 acres of land, raise chickens, and send Cletus the Former Fetus' two little cousins out to romp in snowy fields like they're the Ingalls children. It's brave and crazy.

My brother-in-law (the husband's older brother) drives an hour each way to his teaching job in the city, while his wife shuttles the kids, looks after the farmhouse, teaches Pilates and Lamaze classes, and writes. She is a beautiful writer. Which is ultimately my point: she started a blog!

Go forth and read, all ye who yearn for quiet spaces, commune with nature, and the ability to gather eggs from one's own backyard (Rachel, I'm looking at you).

Grandma

2010-01-04T15:33:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, the husband and Cletus and I were engaging in our favorite Sunday morning routine: lying in bed together, sleeping in (me, the husband) and watching back-to-back cartoons on PBS Kids (Cletus). I was pleasantly drifting in and out of consciousness when I heard the Former Fetus exclaiming my name. "Mommy! Mommy!" she shouted. I rolled toward her in response, thinking the child was encountering some kind of pajama-related crisis, only to find her sitting up in bed, pointing excitedly at the television. "Mommy," she squealed, "you're on the TV!"

I looked at the screen. Pictured there, in some kind of promo for a PBS crafting how-to bonanza, was a woman I would estimate to be in her sixties. She had my haircut, except hers was entirely silvery-gray, and she was wearing a pair of eyeglasses not entirely dissimilar to mine. She had on a striped sweater and slacks. She was helping a group of kids cut up little pieces of paper for scrapbooks.

Have I failed to mention here, on this blog, that I am NOT in my sixties? That I am, in fact, 33 years old?

The husband laughed for about 35 minutes straight. I was mortified. It reminded me of a time during college when I was providing babysitting for a parents' group in the community. One night I was hanging out with this one little girl, reading stories to her and playing games and just generally feeling like we were doing some big-time bonding, and then all of a sudden the girl smiled sweetly up at me and asked, "Why are your teeth kinda yellow? Why aren't they white, like mine?"

All day yesterday, I was consumed with guilt over what my filterless daughter had clearly pointed out: I have grown prematurely old! I have Let Myself Go! When was I going to learn to be better at girlhood?

Generally, these issues don't register too often on my radar, but from time to time they make guest appearances. Then it becomes all about second-guessing myself and my choices. As in: maybe I should become more interested in clothes. Not necessarily in spending more money on clothes, but in exerting more energy toward finding interesting and flattering wardrobe selections to supplement my collection of turtleneck sweaters, horizontal stripes, and cords from thrift stores and Kohl's. Maybe I should start paying more attention to my hair, doing something to it other than washing it and, every once in awhile, applying the one and only styling product I own. Maybe I should finally suck it up and start dying the gray patches at my temples. Maybe I should moisturize my disgusting, cracked feet. Maybe I should wax my eyebrows. Maybe I should shave my legs above my knees in seasons that do not rhyme with "bummer." Maybe I should get some hip new frames. Maybe I should learn to apply mascara. Maybe I should buy some cute new underwear that does not come from the ubiquitous 5-for$25 Victoria's Secret collection. Maybe I should own more than, like, 3 bras. I mean, don't most women have whole drawers for this shit?

And then, like always, I try and figure out why none of the above sounds particularly appealing to me. Which things do I neglect by at least semi-conscious choice (the eyebrows, the legs, the makeup) and which go by the wayside because of pure laziness (the hair, the feet, probably the clothes. and the bras! definitely the bras!)? Am I willing to try and carve out time for any of this? Am I even interested? And if not, why do I feel so damn shamed by it?

I try to make a somewhat political point of not spending much time worrying about my appearance (and an overtly political point of avoiding products and processes that aggressively market physical perfection to women), but. . . sometimes I can't help but question my own motives. Is there a safe middle ground between conviction and complacency? And am I taking the easy way out by avoiding that middle ground completely?

And do other people aside from my three-year-old think that I seem geriatric??

I realize this is about a month late.

2009-12-29T16:00:00.002-05:00

This is not a statement on Obama; it's just a personal pet-peeve:

When I hear "I try to be humble," I don't think twice. Ditto "I did my best to approach the task with humility." But there's something about hearing someone say "I am humble" or "I do this with humility" that just rings false to me.

Is it possible to both call yourself humble and actually BE humble? Or does the self-naming, by definition, negate the being?

Discuss.

Aftercare

2009-12-28T15:13:00.003-05:00

There is something almost holy about returning home after an orgy of holiday excess. About being suddenly alone in your own house with your immediate family - your partner, your kid, your goldfish, whatever - and the things that belong to you, the little messes that you created and that only you can clean up efficiently. About filling up your fridge with fruits and vegetables, milk and whole wheat bread, tofu and yogurt, when all you've eaten for days is a steady diet of egg-and-cheese casserole, barbecue potato chips, and cookies.

I think maybe I'm finally becoming a grown-up. This was the first year I found myself wishing for a little quiet Christmas, just me, the husband, and Cletus. The first year when my own little family seemed like enough. Always before I've equated the holidays with my parents and siblings in Indiana; even thinking about not waking up in my parents' house on Christmas morning would get me all upset. When we were living in Boston, I used to weep hysterically upon leaving their place post-holiday to travel back to whatever apartment the husband and I were occupying at the time. This year, I don't know. I still had a good time, but it was just. . . different. It felt like a visit away rather than a coming home.

Cletus the Former Fetus opened presents on about 35 different occasions over the past two weeks, had near constant attention from aunts, uncles, and grandparents, and as a result spent the day yesterday thrashing around on the floor like a wild beast, fireworks and smoke shooting out from her ears. If I could have left her in a wee basket on the front steps of daycare this morning at the break of dawn, I would have. But I exercised restraint and waited until 9:00.

The Christmas travel was disgusting on both ends of the trip this year. On the way there, we had five hours of freezing rain; on the way back, ice, snow, and some kind of broken pump that left us without windshield wiper fluid. Meaning that we spent the entire drive trying to stay in the wake of semi-trucks so that we could receive the bountiful sludge-spray kicked up by their wheels, which we used to lubricate our half-frozen wipers. Combine this with the following ongoing commentary piped in from the overstimulated elf strapped into a carseat in the back, and you'll get a small taste of the day's deliciousness:

Cletus: Mommmmmmmyyyyyy!
Me: What, Cletus?
Cletus: I JUST have to TELL you something!
Me: I'm right here. What do you want to tell me?
Cletus: WHY can't I TALK to yooooouuu?
Me: What do you want to talk about?
Cletus: I JUST HAVE TO TELL YOU SOMETHING!

Repeat repeat repeat.

The only saving grace was our new XM radio, the toy that came along with the new car we bought a few weeks ago. While we did spend a lot of time scrolling through channels full of crap, our trip eventually yielded the majesty and glory that is "Theme Time Radio with Bob Dylan," followed by a Terry Gross Fresh Air interview with Jon Bon Jovi. There's nothing better to lift your snowy-driving spirits than an NPR personality earnestly inviting you to listen to a snippet from "Livin' on a Prayer."

Merry

2009-12-22T11:30:00.006-05:00

Checking in from my front row seats at Holiday Family Fest 2009 (opening act: Sister-in-Law and the Delectable Gifts of Chocolate, followed by main stage performers My Husband's Parents and afterparty ravers Mom, Dad, and the Siblings 4) to say Merry HanKwanMas to you and yours. Traditionally, I use this occasion to post particularly ridiculous rejects from our annual Christmas card photo-shoot. This year, though, all I've got is my awesome kid being awesome.

Have a good one. Don't shoot your eye out.

Not just semantics

2009-12-16T12:02:00.003-05:00

Twice this week alone, a friend has told me that she is leaving her job to "become a full-time mom." Let me preface the ensuing rage by admitting that I am having a particularly craptastic week, so am particularly sensitive to bullshit, but still. STILL. The implications of that statement for mothers who do paid work in addition to raising their children are so loaded and entitled and enraging that I just don't know what to do with myself today.

Yes, you're right. A mother becomes a full-time mother only when she withdraws from outside work and stays at home with her children all day. There are working mothers, and then there are full-time mothers. A father is a father is a father is a father. No working father, no part-time father, just a father.

As a woman who turns in her mother card every day when she goes to work, I can't say enough about what a relief it is to only have to raise my children on a part-time basis. Once I'm sitting at my desk, all parenting bets are off. It's so easy!! There's no balancing act, no frenzied double-duty, no caring for sick children with one hand while trying like hell to raise money for their preschool bills with the other -- why, I basically even forget I have children.

My God. What mother is NOT a full-time mother? Where's the off-switch? Can somebody show me, because I am worrying, planning, taxiing, and parenting this kid 24/7. Women who use the phrase "full-time mom" may not intend it with malice, but this is the stuff that sticks. Labels are powerful. Call it like it is. If you have a job other than parenting, you have a job other than parenting. If you don't, you don't. Both lifestyles are 100% lovely, perfectly valid, and fully worthwhile. But as I tell my daughter (during the few hours each day in which I can apparently call myself her mother), use your words: a mother is a mother is a mother, full-time. Period.

Also? Man, I'm tired.

I'll kill my own insects, thanks.

2009-12-14T10:36:00.003-05:00

As I had previously feared, the great bat infestation of 2008 was not an isolated incident. This the husband and I learned last night as we sat on the couch, innocently trying to finish season 3 of "The Wire" (which, oh my sweet God, all your friends were most certainly not lying about; it is almost unbelievably good). Cletus was asleep and something awesome was happening on the TV and we were thoroughly engaged, and then all of a sudden we heard this sickeningly loud, unmistakably bat-esque clicking and screeching disgustingness coming from somewhere in our front living room wall, behind the radiator.

Over the past several months we've heard some rustling back there on a few occasions; we knew we were getting periodic visits, from the bits of bat poo we found scattered about the basement, although the steel wool-and-spray insulation cocktail we bathed the living room in last year seems to have been keeping them out of our living quarters, at least. We've figured out where we think they're getting in to the building, and plugging up those holes on the outside of the house (if it's even possible) is going to be a bitch. We have been meaning, though, to do something about the gaps into the basement that have been letting the little bastards poop all over our storage containers and whatnot.

Last night's bat screeching, which was by far the loudest I've heard, was apparently the call to action we needed. I ran out to buy more spray foam insulation, while the husband went downstairs to valiantly exterminate the rodent. Which turned out to be two rodents. At least.

I will spare you all of the revolting details. Suffice it to say, using naught but a pair of winter gloves, a flashlight, a garden rake, and -- when circumstances deemed it necessary -- his shoe, the husband located and then relocated two bats from our basement. As these horrid creatures (I KNOW, THEY EAT BUGS AND POLLINATE PLANTS AND BASICALLY FIGHT CRIME, COLOR ME IMPRESSED) are protected by Illinois law, I will leave their ultimate fate up to your imagination. Afterwards, the husband pulled out the old blanket insulation that had been providing said creatures their cozy repose, and we sprayed about two cans' worth of foam insulation into the gaps that had been letting the cold drafts and critters into the basement.

Later, we heard another one scratching around in the wall, meaning that we really need to get going on those bat-doors, the ones that let the little assholes out but keep them from getting back in. I'm picturing whole truckloads of bat families just chilling out where we can't get to them, hibernating, playing cards, having their evil bat babies. It's unjust! When people do it, it's breaking and entering; when bats do it, I'm supposed to build them a door? So wrong.

Sticking it

2009-12-10T13:47:00.003-05:00

The only thing more surreal than peeing into a specimen cup in your own bathroom is, maybe, sitting at your kitchen table with your dog in your lap while a cross-eyed nurse draws three vials of your blood.

The husband and I are applying for life insurance. More than three years after our daughter was born. We're on the ball like that. (Now ask me about our "will," the one we constructed from a fill-in-the-blank CD-ROM I checked out from the library. In the event that we croak, could someone please alert the authorities that said document is half-completed, unsigned, unwitnessed, but totally in existence somewhere on the husband's semi-functioning laptop? Thanks.)

Today, as part of the application process, a nurse came to our house to give us both physical exams. As one might expect, companies apparently don't want to insure you if they have reason to suspect they might actually have to pay. The nurse -- sporting hot pink scrubs, a huge Farrah Fawcett 'do, and a seriously unfortunate case of the cross-eye -- set up shop in our dining room, putting out rows of pee cups and needles right next to my stacks of Christmas cards (if you get yours and it's dotted with blood, now you know why). She had a scale, a blood pressure cuff, the whole nine yards.

Nursy McCrazyEye had a couple of issues going on, though, the first of which was BOUNDARIES. As in, when I told her about my six months on Lexapro for anxiety, she responded by putting her pen down on the table, nodding feverishly, and saying "I'm in the process of weaning myself off right now. I started taking them after a bad breakup. With a partner. I thought I was going to be ok after it happened, and then three months went by and.. I wasn't ok. But I've been cutting back, and now I'm down to just half a pill once a day." And I was all "um...yeah, just make sure you wean carefully, because those things have crazy side effects. But...uh... I guess you already know that? Since you're a nurse?"

And then she revealed her other issue, which was a profound lack of needle-inserting ability. Was it the crossed eyes? I don't mean to be rude... except that I totally do: don't they make corrective lenses for that? Because I am telling you, I don't have medical qualifications and even I could see the nice, fat, blue lines snaking up both of my arms. Sister Nursie was all "make a fist! no, harder! now flex!" and slapping and poking my arms and huffing and puffing and sighing "now where IS that VEIN?" And I was all "dude, you've smacked it around so much that it's basically holding up a white flag right now." It took her three tries before she actually had success. And the spot where she eventually found that success? Hurt like a motherf'er and bled like crazy, which never happens when I give blood.

Now we wait to see if are approved, and then we'll get rewarded with yet another bill to pay. I will admit to feeling a little financially stressed right now. We just bought a second car over the weekend -- it was a necessary evil, as the bitchin' Hyundai Accent just can't accommodate 2 adults, 2 car seats, and a dog. So now, on top of trying to save bits and pieces of money where we can for the Newt's impending arrival, we're adding a fatty car payment, extra car insurance, a life insurance premium, and most likely preschool tuition (another whole post in itself) for Cletus in the new year. This all at a time when my freelancing has slowed to a veritable trickle. It's tight. I'm feeling like we're going to have to cut back on something, although I have no idea what that something might be.

Hopefully work will start picking up again soon. If you know of anyone looking for freelancers, particularly ones who like to make fun of other people's visual impairments, please do let me know.

My family's real funny

2009-12-09T13:06:00.004-05:00

Cletus the Former Fetus: Mommy, Daddy is my best friend!

Me: Well, then, what am I?

Cletus: You're my friend too, but... sometimes you're kind of bad.

***

Cletus, sitting in the back seat of the car, apropos of nothing: Mommy, I know that you love me, but...[scratches head, looks thoughtfully out the window] I just love you, too.

***

Warning: the following will only be amusing to fellow dance-show fiends:

Me [last night, upon learning that my favorite So You Think You Can Dance contestant, Russell, would be performing his Shane Sparks hip-hop routine with a stand-in, due to a sudden injury to his regular dance partner]: Oh no. This can't be good.

Cat Deeley, So You Think You Can Dance host: Here's Russell, performing with choreographer Shane Sparks' assistant, Rachel!

[Silence, as the routine begins and the husband and I watch the poor stand-in fumble about in an ill-fitting track suit.]

Me: That's his assistant?

[More silence.]

The husband: Yeah. His administrative assistant.

Before and after

2009-12-02T15:13:00.004-05:00

Pregnancy after a miscarriage is an entirely different animal. It's not like I was ever one to share pregnancy news early in the first trimester anyway, but this time around I've been guarding myself like I'm carrying around the key to some top secret code. I'm just a few weeks away from the ultrasound that reveals the baby's sex, and there are still plenty of people in my life who have no idea I'm expecting.

A number of bloggers whose sites I follow are also pregnant. Many of them announced their pregnancies to great fanfare while I was sitting around, quaking in my proverbial boots, fully expecting to have my morning sickness and breast tenderness disappear at a moment's notice once again. Some of them told their friends, families, and a world wide web full of strangers their news immediately after peeing on a stick and getting a positive result. I have to tell you - that just seemed so foreign, so unthinkable to me. I mean, what freedom, to feel so confident that your pregnancy is going to yield a live baby that you don't even wait a day before spilling the beans.

Not all of this is due to the miscarriage, of course -- I've always been somewhat of a nervous freak (insert chorus of incredulous "SOMEWHAT?"s from everyone who actually knows me in real life). But the fear this time feels different. Probably because for one of the first times in my ridiculously charmed life, it's actually grounded in reality.

One of my dearest friends is pregnant with her first daughter, due only a couple of weeks before me. When she told me she was expecting, I couldn't bring myself to do the same with her, even though I had known about my own pregnancy for weeks at that point. Couldn't stand the thought that if I told her, we would start to link our pregnancies together emotionally, and then after I miscarried (which, of course, I was positive was going to happen) I would always connect her living baby to the one I lost. (By this point, of course, she knows, and I have started to allow myself optimistic visions of our offspring being BFF pen pals or e-pals or robot-pals or, you know, whatever the KIDS OF THE FUTURE will do.)

About six weeks ago, a friend of mine from Chicago came to visit with her family for a weekend. I was about ten weeks pregnant and whispered my news to my friend as an explanation for why I was not consuming my usual three-beer-a-day "company's here!" diet. Furtively, she leaned in and did the same: after two years of trying, multiple fertility drugs and treatments that ultimately resulted in an infection and the loss of a fallopian tube, she was happily, terrifyingly pregnant. We hugged and shared morning sickness stories for a bit, and then resolved to save the celebrating in earnest for when we both reached a more "stable" stage of pregnancy. She was due for her first prenatal appointment the following Monday; I was going in for my second, the one that would include a sonogram to look for signs of life, that Thursday.

On Monday, she didn't call. On Tuesday, I did. She called back. There was no heartbeat, no baby. Just an empty gestational sac. She was scheduled for a D&C. She wanted to know if mine had hurt.

That Thursday, I went in for my sonogram, with the same ultrasound tech who had seen me for my previous pregnancy. Back in February, she wouldn't meet my eyes, told me gently that the doctor would go over the results of the scan with me later. This time, her smile was wide with relief and she turned the ultrasound screen around immediately to face me, turned on the sound and said "Just listen to that heartbeat." I walked out of her office with a due date and a printout photo of Newt in the Ute.

I think I understand now just the tiniest bit of what survivor's guilt feels like.

Now playing in a womb near you

2009-11-30T23:31:00.002-05:00

Newt in the Ute it is! So many visual images to savor. . . a brightly colored salamander nudging my bladder, a disgraced political douchebag shaking a fist inside my womb. What? He's only trapped in there because of his own repressive policies on women's rights.

Thanks for the great suggestion, Heather, your fabled prize package awaits.

Name that fetus!

2009-11-25T16:06:00.002-05:00

My third pregnancy is already drastically different from my first. For starters, I was way sicker this time around. I spent most of October walking around in a cloud of gas and nausea, made all the worse by the fact that we were keeping the pregnancy a secret and, as such, I could not engage in my twin favorite pastimes: bitching and moaning. Also, I'm showing already, which is nuts. I mean, I don't need to break out the maternity clothes yet or anything, but I have what looks to be a substantial beer gut the likes of which causes me to sit around the house with my pants unsnapped most days. And in the craziest of all developments, I started feeling the baby move earlier this week. Already! At fifteen weeks! When I first felt it, I motored over to Google to find out if it was, in fact, possible to feel kicks from a fetus that had barely started to develop legs. As it turns out, it is! Apparently it happens earlier with subsequent pregnancies. I only feel movement a couple times a day, usually in the evening, but it's still pretty awesome.

So friends, the unborn kicker and I have a favor to ask of you on this extended weekend of thanksgiving. Since Cletus the Fetus is already taken, might you be willing to come up with a name for the current resident of my uterus? The funnier, the better (with extra points awarded for puns and/or rhyming). Entries will be accepted until Monday; if you already made a suggestion on this post, consider it entered as well. The husband, Cletus, and I will review all options and choose a favorite. Whoever's name gets picked will win a valuable prize pack, suitable for holiday gifting, including custom artwork from Cletus the Former Fetus and some candy from our scary Christmas parade. Also, Frodo the Pug will record the message on your home answering machine.

Ho Ho Hoes

2009-11-23T15:22:00.002-05:00

Before I begin the pregnancy blogging in earnest (and thanks, by the way, for all the nice congrats), I feel it is my duty to share the important lessons imparted upon me yesterday by the fine people of my current town. Please feel free to pass them along to the appropriate parties -- city aldermen, Chamber of Commerce members, PTA freaks -- in your own city, if you feel so called.

Essential Elements For a Successful Downtown Christmas Parade:

1. Chain smokers. What kid-oriented holiday affair would be complete without adults exhaling carcinogens into crowds of children? If I can't celebrate the baby Jesus' birth on this here street corner with my toddler AND a Marlboro Light, then I'm not gonna celebrate it at all. FREEDOM! It's what makes American great. For best results, make sure to station at least one chain-smoker per ten-foot length of sidewalk. That way, there will be enough secondhand smoke to go around. Nothing says "Have a holly, jolly Christmas" like stale air and early lung cancer.

2. Parents obsessed with their children's candy haul: Old people think parades are about marching bands and floats; modern era parents know better. Parades are all about free candy! Halloween is already, like, three weeks past, and children are in danger of having to pull out their sweettart IVs. Quick! Strap an empty Hy-Vee sack onto your kid's wrist, shove him to the front of crowd, and scream at him until he fills that bag to the brim with the candy canes that Santa's elves keep throwing into the street. "LOGAN, YOU MISSED A PIECE! LOGAN, LOOK OVER THERE! BY YOUR FOOT! NO, THE OTHER FOOT! GOD!" And if screaming at the kid doesn't do it, try screaming at the parade. After all, that pom-pom squad can show off their Christmas routine anytime; today is about FREE SHIT FOR YOUR KID, DAMMIT. "Hey, we've got KIDS over here! Where's the CANDY? This is BULLSHIT!"

3. Scary religious tracts handed out by pre-teens in Santa hats. Yes, please! My three-year-old IS fully capable of making informed decisions about religion, and it's therefore completely appropriate for you to try to hand her a little black booklet entitled "The Beast." Might we have two or three copies, please, so that I can press one into her baby book as a remembrance of the day she learned about the impending promise of a "gigantic witches' coven" led by Satan's minion, the Pope? I smell something burning -- are those chestnuts? Merry Christmas everyone!

Knocked up

2009-11-19T14:59:00.002-05:00

I've been trying to think of some kind of elaborate way to share this news, but then I just said screw it. We're family. And after fifteen weeks, two Doppler readings, and one sonogram, I finally feel confident enough to let you know that I am pregnant again, this time with what all signs point to being a living, breathing, heart-beating baby-to-be. I'm due in May.

We've known for a couple months, but only told our families when a 10-week ultrasound showed a healthy little stump-of-a-fetus rolling around in my insides. Then it was a couple more weeks before we told friends. I still haven't told anyone I work with. Keeping things close has felt good, protected in a way.

We told Cletus the Former Fetus a week or so ago, once we were sure we were ready to be out of the pregnancy closet, because Lord knows that child can't keep quiet about any damn thing. When she goes to the bathroom, she makes pronouncements to passers-by regarding the size and general shading of her poop. We were pretty sure she would be quick to share the news. Her initial reaction upon learning of her impending big-sisterhood was roughly as follows:

Me: Cletus, you're going to be a big sister.
Cletus: Wow, cool!
Me: Yeah, just like Dora, with the Super Babies.
Cletus: AWESOME!
Me: Mommy has a baby in her belly, and --
Cletus: I have a baby in MY belly, too!
Me: Um, uh-huh, and in a few months, the baby is going to grow, and mommy's belly is going to get bigger.
Cletus: MY belly's gonna get bigger, too!
Me: Oh. Ok. And so anyway, the baby's going to come out of mommy, and then you'll have a baby sister or brother.
Cletus: Yeah! The baby sister or brother's going to come out of MY belly, too!

So. . . not really sure where to go with that one. I don't suppose there's reason for concern, unless the child does, in fact, give birth to her own sibling at some point in the future. In which case, helllllooooo TLC Friday night medical-freak-of-nature docudramas! We're ready for our close-up!

You can vote and own property; what else do you want??

2009-11-18T09:54:00.002-05:00

This is an actual commercial that I saw on actual network television last night:

Anyone for a nice pair of Nikes?

Fruitless notes of indignation from silly women can be addressed to corporate@reebok.com. For best results, put the word BOOBS in the subject line; that way, you'll know you included at least one word they can understand.

Pay up. Oh, and then pay up some more.

2009-11-16T15:40:00.003-05:00

Can we talk about something that's been bugging me for... oh, about ten years now?

Once every few months, the husband and I receive a mailing or an email or a phone call from our alma matter, asking us for money. Some of these requests are straightforward: phonathon students calling to chat us up and asking us to support the college, or annual reports grouping past donors by the amounts they contributed in order to guilt us into submission. These requests don't bother me so much. I glance at them or I don't, and then I toss them into the trash.

But then there are the letters from alumni that come a couple times a year, the ones that wax poetic about how awesome the college was and how personally obliged they feel to donate annually. They usually read something like this: "I can remember it like it was yesterday: the smells of [insert perennial dining hall favorite dish] wafting down the loggia, the feeling of contentment while walking across campus on a Friday afternoon, the sense of wonder at having my eyes opened to new ideas and ways of seeing the world. My college experience changed my life and/or made me who I am today. You can't put a price on that."

Except, here's the thing: you can, and THEY DID. Currently, that price is $45,000 a year. When I was in school, it was around $25,000.

I want to be clear: I LOVE my college. It did, in fact, change my life and/or make me who I am today. It was the most fun I've ever had, the hardest I've ever worked, and the time of my life from which I have the most fabulous memories. College gave me my husband, most of the friends who are like family to me now, a tattoo, an imposing shelf of self-important feminist theory, and several Phish CDs. I am so happy I decided to enroll where I did. I have all kinds of fantasies wherein Cletus the Former Fetus goes there too, and meets her husband or wife there, maybe even in the same dorm where the husband and I met our freshman year, living across the hall from one another.

But all that college awesomeness? Friends, it wasn't given to me; it's not like the college was some benevolent benefactor handing out education and experiences to everyone who approached with outstretched hands. My parents and I paid for that awesomeness, tens of thousands of dollars of my parents' savings and my savings and blessed, glorious student loans. I'm still paying, in fact, every month, and will for at least another year or two. So this idea that because I loved my college and had an incredibly rich experience there, I should feel obligated to continually financially contribute in order to show my gratitude? Um, no. For the amount that my parents and I paid and continue to pay, I would expect a Most Excellent Collegiate Adventure; anything less would be, frankly, a rip-off. And to be honest, I'm pretty sure I fulfilled my end of the bargain when I signed my life away to Iowa Student Loans Liquidity Corporation.

Now I have no problem with the idea of someone choosing to donate their money to their alma matter, if that's who they determine to be a worthy recipient of their charitable dollars. But it's the entitlement in those mailings, that message that says "we gave something to you; now you give something to us." Because, man. My checkbook history says I've been givin.'

And what's with all the carrots?

2009-11-13T12:31:00.002-05:00

Attention all fellow ardent devotees of both Buffy the Vampire Slayer AND So You Think You Can Dance (in other words, calling all soulmates): I just learned that Adam Shankman was the choreographer for "Once More With Feeling." You may have already known this bit of trivia, but for me? Suddenly, everything in my life makes sense.

You're welcome.

Fair and balanced?

2009-11-12T14:44:00.002-05:00

A representative sample of the emails received from my county's local Freecycle listserv over the past week:

WANTED: Couch and Recliner
WANTED: Kitchen chairs
WANTED: Gas range
WANTED: Twin bed with sheets
WANTED: Shelving and steel poles
WANTED: Infant swing in excellent condition
WANTED: Full-size bed or daybed
WANTED: Breaker box, shoplights, and house wiring
WANTED: Interior bedroom door
WANTED: Electric clothes dryer

OFFER: 4 Scholastic workbooks
OFFER: McDonalds Monopoly game pieces
OFFER: Huggies coupons, some expired

Wanting what I haven't got

2009-11-10T15:32:00.002-05:00

On the way back from my parents' house on Sunday, Cletus and I stopped in Chicago to shop at Trader Joe's. Now that I live three hours away from the closest Trader Joe's, I can't even comprehend how I lived near one for nearly eight years without saying daily prayers of thanks and wearing Trader Joe's t-shirts and changing my name to TJ. Seriously. I would drive for a day just to go to Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's is so awesome, I don't understand how it doesn't levitate and heal sick people. How is Trader Joe's even legal?

I'm talking about $1.50 organic tofu. A 12-oz tub of hummus for less than the cost of 6-oz in my local grocery store. Affordable organic chicken (and frozen grilled chicken strips instead of chicken nuggets) for the Former Fetus. A jug -- I mean, for real, a JUG -- of balsamic vinegar for $3.49. I actually whooped out loud at that one and endured the stares of my fellow shoppers but DID NOT CARE because: $3.49! No-sugar-added fruit leather by the box. Fancy cheese. Peppermint Joe-Joes.

Part of me wishes that they would start selling their products online, but then another part of me worries that adding online sales would just turn Trader Joe's magic powers to shit. Sometimes, nice folks will sell boxes of Joe-Joes on Ebay. I know because I've checked. I think there's a whole community of addicts like myself who would respond positively to a thriving black market Trader Joe's scene.

Did I tell you about the gigantic bottles of olive oil? Gigantic, I say!!

Real life application of social networking knowledge

2009-11-09T13:55:00.003-05:00

I was in my hometown over the weekend to watch my dad get inducted into a local sporting hall of fame. For his ten-pin bowling prowess, no less. At the awards ceremony, I was chasing my kid all over the banquet hall, trying to keep her fingers out of the punch bowl, unclenching the twelve dinner rolls she had hidden in her fists, when I noticed a little girl sitting at one of the honoree tables. I recognized her, not from having met her before but from having seen her picture on Facebook. She was the offspring of the craziest of my batshit crazy high school boyfriends.

Oh friends. This was the boyfriend who listened to Stryper and DC Talk unironically, who once made me a mix tape of contemporary Christian love songs that also included, in a non-sequitur that I can now recognize as being patently awesome but that at the time struck me as hurtful, a slash-metal anthem called "You're a Pagan." I wore his class ring, which bore a blue stone with a cross and Bible imprinted upon its face. On our second date, he brought me a dozen red roses and then asked me to slow dance with him to Styx's "The Best of Times." Hell yes; he went there.

He ended up breaking up with me on the midway at the county fair, shortly after I told him I wouldn't sleep with him because I was saving myself for marriage. You know, as you do when you're fifteen and you just read James Dobson's Preparing For Adolescence. My dad took to calling him a pig, and oinking if ever his name was mentioned. It should be noted, though, that my dad never liked the boy to begin with, and would on occasion don his old-skool artificial arm (my dad lost one arm in a work accident in his twenties), the kind with a hook for a hand, when he would come to pick me up on dates.

So anyway, short of approving his friend request on Facebook, I hadn't heard from this old boyfriend since the time he came by my house my senior year of high school (two years after we broke up), begged me to go for a drive with him, and then attempted to romance me by taking me to Dairy Queen while playing "I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore" on repeat on his car stereo. I recognized his kid immediately upon seeing her, because she is -- how do you say this about a third grader -- not quite an average size. As in greater than. I gawked for a moment, then ran back to my table to scour the program for the event, hoping for a positive ID.

As it turns out, the ex-boyfriend's mother-in-law was also being inducted that evening. How small-town awesome is that? Me and the old flame, brought together 17 years later by the fact that our parents own their own bowling balls. Sadly, though, the ex-boyfriend never made an appearance. Anti-climactic, I know. My sisters and I watched the door all evening, hoping that maybe he would show up late, wearing one of his trademark God's Gym t-shirts. But alas. It was not to be. It's probably for the best; my dad didn't have his hook on him, anyway.

Buying it

2009-11-04T11:28:00.003-05:00

I'm sure all this posting is wildly misleading, but I can assure you that I am not doing NaBloPoMo. I have commitment issues. What I am doing is riding the collective energy with hopes of posting, I don't know - more?

So today, I check in for the briefest of moments to deliver the following bit of breaking news: this morning, having filled up a five-tiered, multi-reward sticker chart, Cletus the Former Fetus has officially earned her Official "I Poop In The Potty" Trip To The Toy Store, where she will obtain a much coveted dump truck made out of recycled milk jugs.

Here's what I have learned about my child: she responds to bribes like a champ. Judge all you like. All I know is that my kid is wearing underwear and waking up dry. If I had to dangle a little cheese in front of the mouse to get there, so be it. Last week, the child's first trip to the dentist was sponsored entirely by a promised trip to the library for a Berenstain Bears DVD (which, can I digress for a moment and share with you the Most Unintentionally Awesome Theme Song EVER? Sung by country sensation Leanne Womack: Somewhere deep in Bear Country/ lives the Berenstain Bears family/ They're kind of furry around the torso/ They're a lot like people, only more so/ The bear fact is that they're just like you and me/ The only difference is they live in a tree). Cletus sat in that dentist's chair as sweet as could be, then announced on the way out the door: "Mommy! I didn't whine!" as if she herself had not realized it was possible until that exact moment.

Lately, Cletus has really been putting us through the wringer. Some days she falls asleep in mid-tantrum and wakes up the next morning still filled with fury, as if she had merely paused for a 10-hour breath. She threw an epic screaming and kicking fit in the church parking lot a couple of weeks ago that I feared might scare a few Unitarians back to their repressed Catholic roots. Once last week when I told her she couldn't do something -- like climb on the table or punch buttons on my laptop -- she stomped over to the couch and announced, "I'm just going to sit and think about how Mommy is mean."

But then this past Sunday morning, so drastic was the child's post-Halloween overstimulation that she actually collapsed, sobbing and thrashing, into my lap in the rocking chair and fell asleep. Out cold for a nap in my lap, like she hadn't done in, well, years. I held her and rocked her for an hour, listening to the radio, doing nothing else, and I can't tell you how grateful and privileged I felt for receiving that gift.

Book club!

2009-11-03T15:38:00.002-05:00

At the intense urging of one of my best friends, I recently joined Goodreads. So far I haven't been finding it much fun. Anyone else on there who updates frequently and wants to be my friend?

Anyway, here's what I've been reading lately:

1. Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers. I just finished this last night. I am always nervous to say outloud when a nonfiction book blows my mind -- like, I worry that people will roll their eyes or feel quietly embarrassed for me because the story that so moved me was actually overhyped two years ago, or was proven to be some kind of sham and I just never heard about it. But this story blew my mind. It's about a contractor who stayed behind in New Orleans during Katrina and, after the storm blew through and the levees broke, rescued a handful of neighbors (people and animals) using a little secondhand canoe. Then he got arrested for looting, thrown into a makeshift prison camp, and held there for weeks without being allowed any of his legal rights. Did I mention he's Syrian-American? The book itself is fine, overwritten I thought, but fine. But the story? Knocked me out cold.

2. Where Men Win Glory, by Jon Krakauer. I've really enjoyed Krakauer's adventure stories in the past, and when I heard him promoting his new book -- with a lefty political bent! -- on Jon Stewart, I got all excited and ILL'd it at my library. The book is basically Pat Tillman's life story, with heavy focus on his enlistment in the Army, his death by friendly fire in Afghanistan, and the Bush administration's efforts to lie about his death in order to use him as pro-war propaganda. I think something that Krakauer really excels at is situating events within their larger historical and political contexts, and he definitely does that here. I will be honest: I read this thing feeling like a half-literate fool, because I could not for the life of me follow the detailed descriptions of battle scenes that make up a lot of the latter portion of the book. I ended up skimming most of them looking for the word "Tillman," kind of like that Far Side cartoon where the dog sits there hearing "blah blah blah blah ROVER blah blah blah." But when I was able to grasp the narrative, I got pretty into it, and I appreciated how well-documented everything was.

Does it make a loser that I wanted pictures? One of those 8-page glossy inserts in the middle of the book? It's just that I had to keep Google Image-ing everyone to see what they looked like.

3. Official Book Club Selection, by Kathy Griffin. Oh beloved celebrity memoirs: usually I just skim through your contents while sipping a latte at Borders. But then I read in Entertainment Weekly that Kathy Griffin talks trash about Oprah and Brooke Shields throughout her book, so I had to read the whole thing. It was lovely and I read it in one sitting and only felt the slightest modicum of shame.

As it turns out, I only read nonfiction, apparently. I did get some fiction from last week's Friends of the Library Book Sale (love!), though: two Julia Glass novels, The Pillars of the Earth (hi Oprah), some ovarian paperback that my sister read called Baby Proof, and a YA paperback about a girl in foster care (a can't-lose plotline for 13-year-olds) called Pictures of Hollis Woods. I'm going to start one of them tonight, I think. Unless I end up playing 17 hours of Scramble again.

Anyone engage in life-changing reading lately?

This Western Illinois Life

2009-11-02T14:28:00.002-05:00

Last Friday night, the husband and Cletus and I went out to eat at the local Chinese buffet for the first time since we moved to town. I happen to be a big fan of all-you-can-eat MSG. I would go far as to say that I have, in the past, experienced sublime bliss upon encountering the right combination of hot and sour soup, "crab" rangoons, and fried tofu and broccoli in brown sauce. And one of those little individual pitchers of hot tea. And a bowl of those fried crispies.

The Chinese buffet here in town is run by an elderly white guy and his substantially younger, substantially more Asian wife. They are known, inexplicably, for their cheeseburgers. The buffet featured about twenty-odd dishes, one of which was vegetarian. (Guess which? Hint: it rhymes with "no gain.") It also offered up a variety of delicacies perhaps better suited to an Old Country Buffet (which, I won't lie to you, Robyn and I patronized once about seven years ago, with disastrous digestive results), including chicken nuggets the shape of large marbles and clumps of macaroni and cheese that had been breaded and fried. There was also a separate sweets station with two kinds of jello salad and chocolate cake.

While we were eating, a man who looked to be maybe in his mid-50s started roaming from table to table, carrying a Big Mouth Billy Bass. The man had obviously just acquired or received this treasure and was delighted by it. He visited each table in the restaurant and invited one of the diners sitting there to push the little red button that would cause the fish to sing. And then he would stand there, grinning at the novelty of it all, until the 30-second musical clip ended. Then he moved on to the next table.

And then we had soft-serve ice cream for dessert.

Scary movie

2009-10-27T13:15:00.003-05:00

Last Friday the husband and I were sprung from the parenting slammer for a date night, which we spent at the movies, seeing Paranormal Activity. This was an exceptional treat. Friends, movie-going used to be my thing. When we were grad students and living in Boston, we used to see a movie a week, if not more. I was Netflixing way before everybody's parents figured out that it was a thing. I've subscribed to Entertainment Weekly for years, and every week without fail I flip right to the movie review section as soon as my issue arrives. Granted, these days the process is bittersweet (or maybe just bitter?), given that only about 5% of all movies receiving positive reviews will end up coming to my town. Our theater typically enforces a fairly strict "animated action heroes/Harry Potter/mall cops only" selection policy in its feature films.

AND YET. There we were last Friday night, in the third row (we sit up close or we don't go, yo), ten dollars worth of popcorn and Diet Coke in our laps, eagerly anticipating a film we had actually read about(!) and wanted to see(!!). The previews were rolling and the theater was packed, loud with teenagers laughing and shouting. I didn't pay much attention to them. I figured they would quiet down once the actual movie started.

Except -- the movie started, and they didn't. Quiet down, that is. In fact, they got louder. At the end of our row sat a clump of teenaged girls, decked out in layers upon layers of those micro-thin long-sleeved t-shirts that are meant to piled up like so much snakeskin. They had their feet propped up upon the seats in front of them (movie theater cardinal sin!) and were all texting and giggling away. Next to them, only a few seats down from us, was a cluster of three similarly aged boys. I don't think the two camps were together, but each was certainly aware of the other's presence. There was lots of posturing, particularly from the girls, who kept whispering and glancing and then laughing out loud in that conspicuously uproarious manner that says "Observe me having the time of my life in your general vicinity!"

Now, here's the thing: I, like probably most of you, used to be that girl. Being that girl is a fairly benign and, as I remember it, pretty fun thing to do. You're 16, your best friend has her own car, you just got your curfew extended, and nobody pushes arbitrary and barely-enforceable rules like you do: you'll put your feet up on the back of the seat in front of you if you damn well please! (Unless, of course, the usher comes down the aisle with a flashlight and asks you to remove them, in which case you will do so and then giggle with abandon immediately afterwards. Stuffy ushers! WhatEVER! But of course you will leave your feet safely on the floor for the rest of the evening, because although you are a rebel, you are, after all, a Midwestern rebel.)

So it's harmless, the loud laughing and the cellphone-screen-flashing and screaming during scary parts in the movie, right? Except, here's the other thing: I am not that girl anymore. These days, I am a dead tired mother of a toddler who had to work for weeks to schedule a babysitter so that I could get out of the house for three hours with my husband to see a movie, a deliciously scary movie, a deliciously scary movie that I would have really appreciated being able to HEAR for more than five minutes at a time. I am officially That Person. I shush sixteen years olds in movie theaters.

Also, can we talk for just a moment about the wee teenaged boys sitting a few seats to my left? The ones who somehow decided that the film we were collectively seeing required additional narration other than what the director saw fit to include, and who appointed themselves the parties responsible for providing said narration? Oh. My. God. These kids would not shut up. I am talking about every single point of action: if the female main character, a girl who was haunted by a creepy demon, started to walk down a flight of stairs, one of the boys would call out "She's going down those stairs!" Or if a ghostly vision showed up in the girl's bedroom at night, one of the boys would pipe up with "It's right there! You can see its shadow; it's RIGHT THERE!"

It's getting awfully hard to navigate this world of mine, seeing as how I can't tolerate cranky senior citizens but also want to throttle joyful teenagers. I'd consider moving into a plastic bubble (now THERE'S an awesome movie), but I don't think I'd have access to a spigot of butter-flavored popcorn sauce if I did. Which, let's be honest, kind of does make everything worth it.

Question: When does being a librarian suck the hardest?

2009-10-25T20:51:00.002-05:00

Answer: When you have to find reference books and authoritative web sites on the topic of Illinois family law for a woman and her eye-rolling, gum-chomping teenaged son, for the purpose of helping said son get out of paying child support to the mother of his newborn baby. Because the son's ex-girlfriend already has a kid with another guy, you see; she makes a habit of getting herself knocked up just to get her hands on some cash, the mom says. And HER son, the gum-chomping guy, gets a disability check, and why should he just have to hand it all over? What about his life? What about his future? What about FATHERS' RIGHTS? Do you have any books on FATHERS' RIGHTS?

Being a librarian sucks the hardest when you have to sit silently and hand over the information that will enable douchebags to nourish their own douchebaggery.

What's on your mind?

2009-10-19T14:42:00.003-05:00

I have close to 25 aunts and uncles, 50-odd cousins, and who knows how many children-of-cousins (what are those called -- second cousins? cousins once removed? nameless shorties who show up at funerals?). . . and lately it seems that they're all showing up on Facebook. Never mind that half of them used to be Amish; they seem to have figured out this technology thing since leaving the flock.

I live hours away from my geographically closest relatives. Both sides of my family used to have annual reunions, my mom's family at Christmas and my dad's family in the summer. But now that all of my grandparents have passed away AND due to the fact that several of my mom's siblings are currently warring after their co-owned bakery business tanked, these get-togethers have become rather sporadic. In that respect, I guess establishing family connections on a social networking site is kind of a good thing. Instead of annual face-to-face superficial communication, we can engage in more regular passively electronic superficial communication. Wheee!

Oh, but the status updates. The status updates from these distant relations are blowing my mind on a daily basis, and not usually in a good way. Most of them seem to fall into three general camps. First, there is the Super-Religious Camp, whose members post Bible verses and the lyrics to worship songs as their status updates regardless of the fact that doing so makes no linguistic sense. For instance, "Joanna Keim For I will follow you Lord, I hunger for your spirit" does not a sentence make.

Then there is the Let's Ruminate On The Day of The Week Camp, whose members are prone to acquiring cases of The Mondays and spend a lot of time engaging in countdowns to the weekend. They also, by the way, often fail to achieve a proper sentence. "Brian Kauffman Ugh! Is it Monday already?" is followed by "Brian Kauffman is Happy Hump Day!" before escalating to the inevitable climax: "Brian Kauffman TGIF!!!!!!!"

But the third and final group, the Oh, Of COURSE You're All Rabid Republicans Camp, is the one that's really starting to bring me down. It's like, I've always known that the vast majority of my relatives are superduper Fox News Nascar conservatives, but somehow the veiled passivity of the Facebook format allows them to put it right out there in a way that you just don't do at a family reunion volleyball game. Every day, every time I log on (which, come on, I work from home, I'm logging on with every other breath, basically) somebody's just finished taking a quiz called "Is Barack Obama Hastening The End of Days?" or posted a link to some YouTube video wherein teenagers use puppet theater to illustrate the "holocaust" being perpetrated against fetuses. "Rachel Williams doesn't want the government to decide when we die. Say NO to communist health care!!"

I've got this one cousin, Joe, who posts -- I kid you not -- five to six new status updates per DAY, all of them about health care reform. I'll give you a hint: he's against it. Typically, I ignore this kind of bullshit because arguing about this stuff online just never goes anywhere. But his latest line of reasoning involves going off on how the elimination of "pre-existing condition" restrictions will result in "healthy, responsible" people having to foot the bill for people who make bad choices. Because that's what people with chronic conditions invariably are: stupid, fat, lazy smokers. "Joe Perfect is tired of having to pay the price for other people's mistakes. Equal coverage for everyone is not fair to me and my family!" (This, of course, coming from a self-avowed member of the first camp described above. WWJD, indeed.)

After I had read so many of these little mini-whines that I could barely see through the smoke erupting from my ears, I went against my better judgment and posted a response to the above. I was polite and brief: said hello, mentioned his wife and children and my hopes for their general health and well-being, and then brought up the example of my brother, he of the life-threatening chronic condition that busted in out of nowhere and beat the shit out of my family. I noted that should my brother lose his job, he would never again be able to buy private insurance. Period. I urged Joe to be cautious about his judgments, and to remember that sick people were just that: people, who deserve the chance to receive treatment without losing everything they have.

His response verified why I should have just left the whole damn thing alone. Oh Melinda, he replied, your words mean a lot to me. Daniel is a great example of the minority, but unfortunately most people with pre-existing conditions are simply wretched drains upon the system. As long as Daniel stays employed or uses Cobra, he will never need to worry. Most people don't know that. (Yes, he actually said that to me: most people don't know that. As if I had never heard of this magical program called Cobra, as if I had heard it mentioned before and thought to myself "why are all those doctors talking about a snake?")

Oh man. I think -- at least in political matters -- there's a place for distant family, and it's, well, distant. I just left it at that, and I blocked his status updates, and I said a little prayer of my own, thanking whatever force it was out there in the universe that led me to get the hell out of my hometown and enroll my little 18-year-old self in a liberal arts college way back when. I may still be paying back my student loans until the actual End of Days, but at least I know what it is that I'm paying for. There but for the grace of God go I.

An open letter to the seasoned senior population that comprises approximately 85 percent of my town

2009-10-13T13:15:00.002-05:00

Since I seem to be in the letter-writing mood these days, I thought I'd take a moment to send some warm wishes out to you, the nice, wizened elders who together with all the imported hippy students comprise the heart and soul of this here college town.

Elders, we see a lot of each other, you and I. It turns out that semi-employed freelancers with small children keep the same schedules as senior citizens. Who knew? Like you guys, I run my errands and buy my groceries during the workday. Also like you guys, I eat dinner at the ripe old hour of 5:30 PM. And also like you guys, I like to hang out at the public library. (On that last point, though, I don't call the copy machine a "xerox machine," and I don't fail to write down my Hotmail password and then expect you guys to somehow magically know what it is, and I don't yell at you guys about how everything was just perfect with "the old card catalog." So it turns out that we do, in fact, have a few differences.)

But what I really wanted to talk to you fine folks about this afternoon is a little activity I like to engage sometimes called driving. Now, this is uncomfortable for me, because the last thing I'd ever want to do is come off as being ageist. But I know that sometimes modern guidelines and "rules of the road" can be confusing, so I just wanted to go over a couple of key pointers that you may or may not be aware of.

First, let's talk about four-way stops. See, a properly executed four-way stop requires equal parts caution and confidence; you've got to pay attention to turn-taking while protecting yourself and your passengers from harm. Generally, the first car to arrive at an intersection featuring a four-way stop should be the first car to leave it. So, basically, if you get there before me, I'm going to wait for you to go before proceeding myself. See how that works?

Problems happen, though, when the driver of the first car to arrive at the intersection gets a little sheepish, a little nervous, and decides instead to let all other cars within a five mile radius both approach and proceed through the intersection before crossing through himself. This may seem like a safety-conscious, neighborly thing to do, friends, but really all it does is create a parade of drivers who, confused and annoyed, have to inch through the intersection stutter-by-stutter, certain that at any moment you will decide that it's finally your turn and lurch forward into their driver's side door.

How about this? When it's your turn, go. When it's not your turn, stay.

Great. Now that we've got that out in the open, let me draw your attention to one more little thing: those white and black signs with numbers on them, the ones posted by the side of most roads? Those are speed limit signs. What's that you say? You know that those are speed limit signs? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought that perhaps you were under the impression that they were little roadside math problems, designed to keep your skills fresh and sharp. After all, your first impulse upon seeing one of them is generally to take the number displayed upon it and divide it in half, using the resulting figure to guide your travelling speed.

Now, I like a leisurely Sunday drive through the country as much as the next girl. But usually -- and I'm not saying always, just usually -- I like to restrict those Sunday drives to, well, Sundays. And also, to the country. When I'm travelling on main streets or busy roads, I'm often trying to actually get to a destination, and from time to time I also have a set time at which I'd like to arrive. Say, today maybe. Or at least later this week.

I know, I know. What's the rush? When I'm your age, I'll understand. And you know? I probably will. And I'm sure there will be a special place in nursing home purgatory for whippersnappers like me who, when but wee thirtysomethings, were impatient with their elders. But until then... I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to pass you on the right.

Kids these days. No respect.

Love, M

Daily

2009-10-08T12:43:00.003-05:00

I was paging through some of my archives today. Man. I used to post a lot. Back when I started this blog almost five years ago, a bunch of us -- Maven, Marigoldie, Dori, Madness -- would write all the time, every day even. I guess it's only natural for things to slow down over time, but still. It's a little sad. I wish I had more to say.

Maybe it would help if I got out of the house more. When your workdays consist of carting your kid four blocks to daycare before perching in your home office and staring at a computer screen all day, there is little of interest to snark over. Wanna hear about the frivolous Youtube-viewing I did this morning when I was supposed to be on PubMed? Or the quart of homemade applesauce I ate for lunch?

Sometimes I try to run little errands in the middle of the day to break the time up. I go for coffee. I stop by the grocery store. I rock the post office-UPS store circuit. On Wednesdays I volunteer at the resale shop. When the college is not in session I will meet the husband for lunch, but during the term every second of his time is heavily scheduled and filled with 19-year-old hippies requiring guidance and paper extensions.

Somehow when other bloggers outline the details of their day-to-day, it seems fascinating. Mine is more like: yesterday, I wrote for two hours in the morning, a piece about a nursing home that just installed some new fancy technology. I played a couple of rounds of Scramble and went through my usual routine of self-flagellation over my inability to focus. At noon I drove to my volunteer shift.

I had to stay an extra hour at the resale shop because another volunteer called in sick. I scored a heavy coat, Halloween-themed shirt, pumpkin socks, cords, and a sweater, all for Cletus, all for under $10. The store was crazy-busy with browsing customers but hardly anyone was buying. One woman paid for two huge stacks of dog-eared self help books all in dimes and quarters. Another woman brought a big green sweatshirt up to the counter and asked me if I thought it was suitable for a teenage boy. I said I thought it looked more appropriate for a grown woman, and she hmmphed like she was angry. Clearly that was the wrong answer.

I was relieved at 3:00 and went to Target to return some picture frames. I meant to pick up some rolled oats while I was there so I could make apple-oatmeal bars, but I forgot. I remembered bread, though. And socks.

I swung by daycare and picked up Cletus. We went home and read some Highlights magazines, her current fave. She's a virtual Doogie Howser with the find-the-hidden-picture geniusry. We sipped on an afternoon cocktail (grapefruit juice for me, apple for her) before I retreated to the kitchen to listen to All Things Considered and make an apple/onion/cheese gratin with Morningstar fake buffalo wings on the side. The husband came home around 5:30 and we supped. Cletus turned up her nose at my dinner but consented to a plate of plain whole wheat pasta in olive oil with a side of green grapes.

After dinner I read Bust magazine, for which I'm afraid I am getting profoundly too old, and the husband graded tests on the couch while Cletus read more issues of Highlights and played with a toy pirate ship. In one of the magazines was a recipe for "strawberry yogurt pops," which consisted of strawberries and yogurt crushed up in a blender and frozen overnight. Cletus decided she wanted one and could not be persuaded otherwise, so we attempted to make them. In lieu of the tiny paper cups called for by the recipe, I dug out some cupcake liners. I am about 95% sure that said cupcake liners will stick disastrously to the popsicles when I try to peel them off, but that, apparently, is a struggle for a different day.

Which is today. See? I was even sleeping a little bit as I typed all that.

I think I'd rather post weekly than phone it in.

An open letter to the assembled public in the pediatrician's waiting room

2009-10-05T15:05:00.003-05:00

Neighbors, I bid you good morning.

We all appear to have been blessed with the good fortune of having to spend a portion of today at the pediatrician's office. What a special time. Personally, I'm here for my daughter's three-year checkup. I imagine she and I will be sitting here in this waiting room for another thirty minutes or so, biding our time until we are ushered back for our four minute visit with the doc, where he will hand us some coupons he got from pharmaceutical reps and wave a stethoscope in our general direction before charging us $125.

Oh, what's that you say? I couldn't quite hear you over all the phlegm you're hacking up into your open palm. You say your son has a cold? Wow, that's unfortunate for you. I mean, it must be tough dealing with sickness on top of the debilitating illiteracy that led you and your family to sit down in the "Well Child" seating area. Co-occurring disorders are the worst. Tissue? (What? Oh -- it's a thin disposable cloth used to wipe your nose and mouth. I happen to have one right here, in my healthy, non-phlegm-covered pocket.)

Your children sure are adorable. It's really sweet, the way they keep admiring my daughter's stuffed dog and stroking it with their fingers. It's also super cute how they've huddled up around me as I read my daughter a book. Free storytime for everyone! I mean, it IS flu season, and your children ARE being kept out of school today to visit the doctor upon displaying symptoms of illness, but hey: why let details get in the way of some good old-fashioned collective parenting? You just go ahead and sit over there and send text messages while your kids drip snot on my lap. After all: I scratch your back, you scratch... oh. Well, that's not really what I had in mind, but ok. I'm sure that itches too.

Anyway, just wanted to say hey, and thanks for sharing this moment -- and your half-dressed, wheezing offspring -- with me. With all this talk of reform, I think we too often forget all of the good things about health care! Like how it brings people from all walks of life together, and makes it more efficient for them to share their diseases! As they say, it takes a village.

Oops, the nurse is calling my daughter's name. Gotta go! Good luck with that open sore -- hope it stops oozing soon!

Love, M

When it gets the best of me

2009-09-28T14:27:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was one of those days where I sit around berating myself for being a sucky parent, all the while continuing to behave like a sucky parent. It sucked.

The husband spent the day standing atop a ladder painting trim on the outside of our house, parts of which were semi-crumbling (the trim, not the house, although on mega-windy days like today the house doesn't always seem too far behind). It was a whole-day project and I had next to nothing on my plate, which meant my day would be filled with nonstop three-year-old action.

A better parent would probably have been thrilled with the opportunity. I try really hard to be that parent. Sometimes, I succeed. Yesterday, though, Cletus the Former Fetus emerged from her bed in the morning, tousled and only half-awake and yet still uttering demands like a tiny, adorable drill sergeant and it was all I could do not to go downstairs to the laundry room and hide myself in the dryer.

All morning long, it was limit-pushing and whining and begging, and I felt like I was constantly delivering lessons. ("That's not how we ask for things that we want. I'm going to let you ask me that again, this time like a big girl.") If her cup was full of juice, she wanted milk. If her cup was full of milk, she wanted juice. If mommy's cup was full of anything, she wanted to redistribute the contents to the floor. She wanted to be outside. She wanted to be inside. She had to go to the bathroom, but refused to go on the potty and cried at the mention of a diaper. It was ridiculous.

It would've been so easy to plop her in front of the television all day. I was tempted to the point of fondling the remote control. God's honest truth: sometimes I wish I was raising kids during the era of my childhood, before kiddie tv became so taboo. Dude, who didn't veg in front of four hours of cartoons on Saturday mornings? And I was practically raised on The Price Is Right...

But instead, I soldiered on like an idiot, ignored the child's clear warning signals, and took her to a fairy tea party being held at the public library. I was told there would be crafts, which are Cletus' current obsession -- I sat on the carpet with her for one crappy pipe-cleaner mobile-building project a couple weeks ago and before I knew it she was basically hosting scrapbooking weekends with her toddler friends. The fairy tea party promised a homemade wand and a pair of fairy wings, which sounded perfect.

So we got there and made our little glitter-glue wand and our coat hanger-and-pantyhose wings and all was well with the world... until the storytime portion of the event rolled around. An author of short chapter books about fairies who hang out at backyard picnics was reading from one of her works. She gathered the twenty or so kids in the room over to a little makeshift fairy throne, complete with pastel streamers and some kind of new-age sparkly halo of greens, where the kids were to rest at her feet while she read aloud. Which she did, holding the book in her lap with nary a visual aid to be seen.

Cletus responded by opening up the Dora the Explorer book she was holding in her lap, showing it to the children on either side of her, and then waving it in the storyteller's face while shouting "I HAVE A DORA BOOK!"

The author gave a little laugh in the manner that one does when one sees absolutely no humor in a given situation, before proceeding on with her presentation. I hustled up behind Cletus and whispered a "close the book" into her ear, to which she responded by bursting into hysterical tears and wailing something incomprehensible about Boots the Monkey. Which, ok, awesome. So I gathered up my child and took her outside to blow off a little steam. When we returned ten minutes later, we learned that there had been a drawing for a free signed copy of one of the author's books, and Cletus had won. Again, awesome.

The remainder of the day was a blur of whining and tantrums and me losing my shit in response. Does anyone else ever yell at their toddler, like, really yell, and then feel like a huge, horrible bully after the moment passes? Man. At one point during the afternoon yesterday, Cletus was in time-out for trying to beat the crap out of Frodo the Pug, and I shouted at her about how she was behaving, and I don't even remember what I said, but her face crumbled and she cried "Mommy, are you mad?" And I said, a bit more calmly but still with a raised voice, for sure, "Yes, Cletus, I am mad." And God help me if she didn't come back with "Mommy, I will make you happy."

I am just the worst. The worst.

He ain't heavy

2009-09-24T14:05:00.002-05:00

Lots of you have asked about my brother, and I appreciate it. Trouble is, I don't really have much to offer by way of an update.

In many ways -- certainly in the ways that are most immediately important -- the lack of update-worthy news is good. Great, even. He is walking unassisted and easily, has been back to work for almost two months, is bowling again (his favorite hobby), and two subsequent CAT scans have showed no new aneurysms building. He looks amazing and is gaining back some of the weight he lost when he was sick. He checks his blood pressure every day and it has been, for the most part, stable. He is easily exhausted and his legs and hips hurt in the evenings, but his spirits are up.

The less great news, though, is that he continues to receive confusing and fractured care with little to no continuity, and he looks to be a long way from receiving a diagnosis. We are afraid that obtaining the latter is the only key to fixing the former. As it stands now, he maintains regular appointments with the original surgeon and cardiologist (in separate practices) who took care of him in the ICU, a special genetic disorders clinic at Indiana University, and the family doctor my siblings and I all grew up with. None of these people and places play well with others, and my brother is constantly on the phone with one or all of them, begging for test results to be explained or faxed or filed.

No one is coordinating his care, and it seems like half the players can't be bothered to even read his charts. For instance, less than a week after the surgeon told him that he should live life with extreme caution since "this could happen again at any time, with no warning," the cardiologist told him he was healthy as a horse and could go play basketball that afternoon if he wanted to.

The most helpful among the caregivers my brother has seen was the IU clinic, who spent several hours with him and worked up an 8-page report of findings. The general consensus is that he most certainly has a collagen vascular disease, but they have no idea yet which one it is. The prime suspect right now is a spontaneous mutation version of this one. He doesn't display many of the symptoms, but the doctors think it might still be emerging and are going to run all the tests again in six months. Which seems like an eternity, but I think I can understand.

It's impossible for me to see this whole health care reform battle through any other lens than the one my family's dealing with right now. Who ARE these people that are so enraged by the threat of fictional socialism that they are willing to deny others the peace of mind that comes with knowing your health will not cost you everything you own?

I will be honest here: I would LOVE a public option. Hell, I would love a single-payer system. But even when I saw the finance committee version of the health care bill, the one that all the Democrats are (not necessarily wrongly) shitting on because of its perceived overcompensations to the right, I was half-ok with it because it contained the main element I'm looking for, the one I think is key to any humane, rational, and just version of health care policy: prohibiting insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. I don't (and honestly, won't) understand how any thinking, feeling person can agree to a health system that allows that practice to go on.

As it stands now, my brother's (and really, my whole family's) financial stability rests on his ability to remain employed so that he can maintain his employer-provided insurance. He's a 26-year-old guy with the insides of an old man -- he's going to need medical care, lots of it, for the long term. I feel like the passage of a reasonable health care reform bill would allow my family to just... exhale, you know?

But I'm sure it's much more important to defeat the Commies and, insodoing, maintain our current status as a world leader in health care. Right there above Slovenia.

Suffer the little children

2009-09-20T14:52:00.003-05:00

This morning we decided to ride the wave of post-birthday energy and head back to our new church for the first time in a few months. The crazy Unitarians, as it turns out, take the summer off from Sunday services. It's a perk, along with getting to wear jeans in the sanctuary and being around people who aren't profoundly confused by hyphenated last names.

Since Cletus the Former Fetus is now a whopping three years old, we decided to start putting her in the preschool religious education class. Before the summer break, she was in the nursery. This meant that we just plopped her down in a room full of toys before the church service started, then went back to pick her up when it was done. Starting with the preschool class, though, all children are expected to attend the main service with their parents for about twenty minutes, at which point they are called to the front for a "Children's Moment" and then released to their RE (yeah, that's me, throwing around the Unitarian lingo) classes.

I was nervous about how Cletus would react to sitting quietly for that amount of time, given that a church service is a completely foreign experience to her. Neither I nor my husband was raised with the idea that infants are supposed to be baptized, so we didn't do it with her, and we never went to church when she was a baby. I thought she would maybe throw a temper tantrum, or shout out her new favorite pronouncement ("WHAT THE HECK!") during the moment of silent meditation.

She ended up doing ok, though. It was interesting to see the experience of church-going through her uninitiated eyes; her reactions actually made quite a bit of sense. Like, for instance, if you're in a big fancy room full of people, and those people are all sitting nicely and quietly, and then all of a sudden an organ starts playing and everyone stands up and starts singing in unison, including your parents who have never, ever done such a thing before in your life? A natural response might be to look around with your mouth open for a few moments, then start to silently weep in fear.

Or if your mom and dad urge you to walk up to the front of the same big fancy room with a whole bunch of other kids, promising that you will be told a story when you get there, except that when you sit down with the other children the alleged "story" in question turns out to be five minutes of call-and-response Unitarian propaganda? You could hardly be blamed for getting up and wandering off to examine the table of shiny candles intended for the "Joys and Concerns" presentation.

All in all, I'd say it went pretty well for a first try. Especially given that when I was a kid I attended church weekly since birth, and that didn't stop me from spilling communion grape juice all over the house of the Lord and, on one occasion, dropping a hymnal off the edge of the balcony onto the head of an infirm old lady below. Glory be.