Anything Said

Found in the stacks

2009-07-07T13:59:00.004-05:00

I want to meet the woman responsible for this, and I want to shake her hand:

How could it get more awesome, you ask? Let's take a look at the close-up.

Watch out, Nurse Barrie, you innocent young thing! The circus life may be "in [your] blood for keeps" (as the book jacket suggests), but look o'er yonder! A nefarious clown approaches!

Although the promise of future titles in the series (Desert Nurse; Border Nurse; Jane Arden, Space Nurse; and Listen, Dr Galahad among them) is enticing, I plan to savor this one for the full three weeks of my library loan.

Unclean

2009-07-05T12:41:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, at around 11:30 AM, I experienced a moment of complete and utter self-revulsion. It was prompted by the State of My Floors. The hardwoods on the first floor of my house are a bit scratched and worn; that is not the problem. The problem starts with the good half-inch of dog hair with which they are constantly padded, and continues to the formerly fluffy area rugs that dot their surface -- once a bargaining tool for the home's former owners ("we'll leave you these pretty things if you let us slide on the poisonous radon...") they're now matted and stained with a year's worth of apple juice and pug dribbles.

How often do you all clean your floors? Because we just can't seem to be bothered with it. I could count on my fingers how often I've mopped since we moved in. And the vacuum... ohhhhh, the vacuum. See, it's just so heavy, and I have to drag it all the way up the stairs to do the second-floor carpet, and then I have to empty the damn cartridge, and that is why there is a dead moth carcass resting next to my foot right now as I type. I wish I were kidding.

I am the queen of picking up. I also excel at bringing order. I firmly believe that it is because of these two things that I am able to get away with being So Damn Filthy. I believe I have written about this here before, about how I basically change my sheets with the seasons and use the same hand towel until it becomes so stiff that it actually walks itself to the washing machine. It would be one thing if I were out-of-my-gourd busy and just didn't have time to worry about things like, you know, dust and mildew. But yesterday I found plenty of time to read a book for two hours, mess around on Facebook while listening to Car Talk, and play cards with my friends. Yes, I've got some work, and yes I'm raising my kid, but... I'm not that busy.

This morning I was taking a shower and noticed for the first time how disgusting our shower curtain had become. Its filth stood out, given that I had scrubbed the tub and tiles the day before, prompted by the aforementioned fit of self-revulsion. The liner was yellowed and dirty and the curtain itself had a long faded stain running its length, marking the spot where it rubbed against the tub. Clearly this was not an overnight thing; it must have been like this for awhile, and I had not even noticed. Not even a bit.

The thing is: I am not remotely interested in having a pristine home. Any house I live in will probably always boast mismatched furniture and stacks of half-read library books, will always invite people to describe it as looking "lived-in." I'm cool with that. But man. You can't, like, opt out of basic home hygiene. Unless you want mice and earwigs. Which I don't. If I lived with someone who gave two thoughts to the idea of cleanliness, it would help. As it is, my husband could assemble an entire week's wardrobe, including socks and undergarments, from the articles of clothing he has left strewn, crumbled, and/or stuffed in random locations throughout the house. He would describe this as absentminded habit. I would describe it as another reason I'm not disinfecting those countertops.

There are just so many things I'd rather do than clean. Plus, I'm not good at it. I get bored and abandon tasks half-finished. When Cletus gets old enough to do chores, she's going to realize that whatever she's scrubbing is the only clean thing in the house. We'll pass along our lack of household skills to her! She'll go to college with one set of linens to her name! Her freshman roommate, like mine, will have to leave notes reading "Empty me!" on their dorm room's overflowing trash can!

Or I could just hire a cleaning person twice a month and turn the shower of self-loathing into a veritable swim.

Beat it

2009-07-01T14:47:00.003-05:00

It does not bode well for my future sanity that I have already reached my Michael Jackson saturation point on this, the sixth day after his death.

Oh man. I am having one of those days. Cletus the Former Fetus woke up this morning and refused to put weight on her left foot, saying it was "ouchy." I checked it for swelling and discoloration, wiggled it around to see if it was tender or stiff, couldn't find a thing wrong with it. Still, she took a step and winced and stumbled.

I called my mom, who told me to check for bug bites. She also told me that my brother's CAT scan had gone fine on Tuesday, but that his surgeon wouldn't let him return to work until August, and that they still hadn't been able to get him an appointment at the fancy specialty clinic for the disease they think he might have, and that Daniel was depressed and scared that he might lose his job. And then she started crying.

I checked the bottom of Cletus' foot and found two faint pink circles where some creature apparently feasted. I took her in to see the doctor. Cletus' doc gave her a quick exam, glanced at her foot for about.006 seconds, and diagnosed with authority: "She's limping." I was all "Yeah, so, I thought we'd covered that when I walked in the door and called your attention to her limp, but... thanks!" And he was all, "Yes, and those are bug bites. Would you like some lotion for them?" And I was all, "Yes, some lotion and proof of your malpractice insurance, which you will need when these bug bites infect my child's bloodstream."

[The only up side to the appointment was the knowledge that I wouldn't have to pay for it, since we've already maxed out our deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses for the year. And it's only July! Wheeee! For the rest of the year, we are living like Canadians!]

And then I took Cletus to daycare (where, upon seeing her friends playing baseball outside, she experienced a sudden and miraculous recovery) and went home to write. Except I didn't write. I puttered around and did laundry and worked my volunteer shift at the resale shop. And now I feel that big blah empty feeling you get when you spend your day accomplishing not a damn thing.

I'm gonna go get my kid now.

Rejection, real and imagined

2009-06-29T13:42:00.003-05:00

It's official: Cletus the Former Fetus has imaginary acquaintances. I'm not sure that I can call them imaginary friends, as they seem to not always be super nice. A few days ago, Cletus ran up to me with a concerned look on her face, her half-eaten snack dangling from an outstretched hand. "Mama, they said no!" she cried.

"Who said no?" I asked, looking around the room. I had briefly been in the bathroom; maybe one of our friends had come by in the meantime and let themselves in through the back door, as we tend to do out here in The Sticks.

"The Dora friends said no!" she said, pointing back over her shoulder at her playroom. "They said I couldn't eat my snack!"

I followed her back into the playroom, asking "Who are the Dora friends?". I thought maybe she had been playing with her Dora and Diego dolls, or her Dora-themed Memory game, or her ridiculous purse that is designed to look like a giant head-of-Dora. But she had not; the room was devoid of any evidence of Dora-related play.

Cletus continued to stare at her snack, hesitant. I told her she could tell the Dora friends that her mama gave her the green-light on the fruit roll-up. Cletus smiled and announced into the air: "My mama said YES!" And then she took a bite. Apparently the Dora friends, mysterious bullies though they be, still cleave to my authority.

Aren't, like, actual kids mean enough, with their pushing and their toy-stealing and their name-calling? It seems really unjust that my child's fake playmates are trying to keep her down as well.

I think the Dora friends' repressive regime must be somehow related to Cletus' current obsession with being told "no". These days, whenever the husband or I tell her she can't do something, or ask her to stop french-kissing the dog, or refuse to let her eat a bowl of juice for dinner, she squints her eyes and puckers up her mouth and wails, "You said NO to meeeeeeeeeeee!" On particularly choice occasions, when only one parent plays the role of the offender while the other has the misfortune of simply being in the same room, Cletus turns to the onlooker and cries, "Daaaaaaddy, Mommy said NO to meeeeeeeee!"

We're in a real limit-pushing phase right now, so Cletus is hearing us say "no" a lot. Which results in a near-constant transition from plaintive ass-kissing (batting her eyelashes and rubbing my arm while cooing "Mama, can I watch a little bit of TV?") to tortured whining (resting her forehead on the floor while sobbing "But I WANT to watch a little bit of TVeeeeeeee!"). A Dr. Toddler and Mr. Hyde. And I fear the end result will be a gang of imaginary friends that do nothing but send my kid to timeout, over and over, all day long.

Tax-deductable contribution

2009-06-24T14:31:00.005-05:00

I'm still volunteering for the battered women's program, still taking hotline calls once a week for a couple of hours. Like a lot of nonprofits in Illinois right now, the program I volunteer for is facing a pretty major financial crisis. The state is about two shakes from passing a ridiculous budget that, in lieu of an income tax increase, will cut significant funding to social service agencies. The mental health center in town will lose half its staff. The program serving victims of child abuse and child sexual assault will close its doors. The domestic violence program will lose its court advocacy and shelter services, among other things.

Last fall, the program opened up a resale shop to help raise money to subsidize the cost of services. They bought a house on a busy street, filled it up with racks and shelves, and opened it up as a business. Everything they sell is donated: mostly women's and children's clothes, shoes, toys, household items, books, the odd piece of exercise equipment or furniture. They're open six days a week; all the proceeds go towards providing services to victims of violence and their kids. In addition to my hotline shift, I help out at the store once a week. It's fun, mostly; I work the cash register, sort and price donations, buy armfulls of Dora-related merchandise to enable Cletus the Former Fetus' growing habit.

Today I was going through some big black trash bags of stuff that had been left in the store's drop-off bin. I stuck my arm inside one of them, felt around a bit until something sharp pricked my hand. The bag was full of crafting cast-offs: half-finished cross stitching projects, stained fabric, rusty sewing needles, half-shredded quilting magazines from the 80s, straight pins. Someone packed up the bottom half of a closet, sharps and all, tossed it all into an unlabeled bag and left it. "For charity."

There were salvageable bits. I gathered any usable craft supplies into ziploc bags and priced them at $3.00 per lot. Every little bit helps, or something. But I can't help but indulge in a little self-righteous anger. Who is the person who thinks that a) someone else deserves to buy dull, rusty needles, and b) staff or volunteers at a resource-strapped nonprofit should have to sort through bags filled with loose pins and dirty kleenex (yes. seriously.)? It's the same mentality that says "Hey, this shirt is stained and torn and I won't wear it anymore... but I bet a POOR PERSON will! I'll donate it!" Or: "This television no longer works, and I don't want to wait until the large trash pick-up day later on in the summer. I'll donate it!"

You can always tell when someone's donating crap. They come in to the store and hand over their bags without making eye contact. They practically sprint back out to the car. They never ask for a receipt for tax purposes. In contrast, people donating gently used (or even really-old-but-still-usable) items often stop to offer a summary description. "This bag is full of girls' clothing. My daughter can't wear them anymore." They look around the shop for awhile. They smile and chat and ask how the store is doing.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I believe that beggars (for lack of a less offensive saying to appropriate) CAN be choosers. I mean, come on. There are so many people out there who are willing to donate nice things, suitable things -- I'm not talking about new merchandise, I'm talking about clean merchandise. I'm talking about merchandise that's all in one piece, that fulfills its basic intended function (i.e. a toaster that toasts, or a book with all its pages). If you've got trash, just throw it away. Recycle it. Take it to the dump. But don't assume that just because someone is hard-up (and the majority of people who shop at this store are hard-up, a significant portion of them clients of the agency), they should buy and use and wear garbage.

The end. And a hearty fuck you to the person whose crusty snot-rag I ended up holding in my hand this afternoon, whoever and wherever you may be. The downtrodden citizens of western Illinois thank you for your kind donation.

Progress report

2009-06-16T14:46:00.003-05:00

Things are looking up on the homefront. Daniel has graduated from a walker to a cane, which he can use to get around my parents' house. He goes to physical therapy three times a week. Next week he goes to his local doctor for a pretty standard checkup; the week after that he goes back to the city with my parents, to meet with his surgical team and start Next Steps. Next Steps, of course, being the kinder, gentler way of saying "Slicing You Up To Figure Out Just How Bad This All Is."

We are going back this weekend for Father's Day. When I talk to my mom on the phone to check on my brother's progress, she says "You'll feel better when you see him. He gets really down, but he looks much better." Any thoughts on a good pick-me-up present for a housebound 26-year-old who already owns every DVD known to man?

In other news, the husband's college finished classes two weeks ago. Commencement was a rainy mess, but it was fun to see the husband and all of our new friends march up the aisle in their faculty robes and fancy caps. After the ceremony, Cletus asked, "Daddy, were you wearing a special dress?" Now that it's summer, it's like I'm married again! I have someone to hang out with in the evenings! I don't have to do every household chore myself, feeling like a martyred housewife! This past weekend, for instance, the husband and I watched a movie together (Wendy and Lucy - don't bother) AND played hours of Rock Band on the Wii! Today, he took the car to the dealership to get a new timing belt! This weekend, he's accompanying me to my parents' house! IT'S INSANE!

And speaking of summer, can we talk about the awesomeness that is So You Think You Can Dance? I know that some of you watch it (and I maintain that the rest of you should). This year, who's in for a finale viewing party on Twitter?

And someone remind me that as soon as I get my shit together for longer than 15 minutes at a stretch, I've got about 30 obscenity-studded posts on Sonia Sotomayor, misogyny, and racism just waiting to be spewed forth.

Buddy bands! They work!

2009-06-10T10:38:00.002-05:00

This made me laugh out loud for the first time in a week:

The new normal

2009-06-08T15:12:00.002-05:00

A dear blog-friend sent me an email today sharing some of her experiences in dealing with the chronic and life-threatening illness of her geographically far away father. One thing in particular really struck a chord with me -- she said that it took her a long time to be able to go out and have fun without being seized with fear that while she was laughing the night away, her father was on the other side of the country, dying, that exact same moment.

My OCD is such that I have always, to some degree, harbored those kinds of thoughts. It's something I used to work on a lot in therapy, my tendency to fixate on worst-case scenarios at inopportune times. Out to dinner with friends? What a perfect moment to randomly start worrying that Cletus the Former Fetus is at home, falling down a flight of stairs at the babysitter's feet!

Only now, with my brother, the thing is that my fears are more justified (although Cletus IS crazy-fast on those stairs...). I have been doing ok when I'm just puttering around the house, except for when the phone rings. When the phone rings, all bets are off and my stomach drops to my feet and I run like a mad woman to check the caller ID. Is it my parents? Is it my one of my other siblings on a cell phone, driving behind an ambulance on the way to the hospital? Cletus' daycare provider called before 7:00 this morning to let me know that she would be opening late on account of a dentist appointment; I barely understood a word she told me. All I knew was that the phone had woken me up, and all I could think was no.

What's hardest for me is leaving the house -- or rather, coming back home after leaving. I first found out about Daniel's ruptured aneurysm upon returning home from a Friday night shopping trip with a friend. We both had our cell phones turned off, and the husband had been trying to contact me for hours. He met me at the door as we stumbled onto the porch with bags and boxes. He said, "You need to call your parents." While Daniel was being airlifted to the hospital, bleeding internally and paralyzed from the waist down, I was getting a chocolate shake at the Hardees drive-through.

Here's the new normal: deep breathing and heart palpitations every time my palm hits that back doorknob and starts to turn it.

Accepting the things I cannot change

2009-06-04T18:53:00.003-05:00

When your baby brother has a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm, the worst thing you can possibly do is look it up on Google. You would think that I would know this, being the queen of Using the Internet for Self-Destruction. You might recall that I spent close to a year in therapy on account of my tendency to, among other things, diagnose my ten-month-old with autism using online checklists. And yet here I sit at my computer, not four hours after returning from my hometown, reading statistics that clearly show: my brother shouldn't be alive.

Daniel came home from the hospital last night. By home, I mean my parents' house. It's going to be a long time before he can live on his own again. He's exhausted, doped up on pain pills and blood thinners and blood pressure meds, unable to sleep, unable to drive or lift more than five pounds for a month, using a walker to get to and from the bathroom. We're ecstatic -- ecstatic -- to have him home after only five days in the hospital. Only it's hard to find that ecstasy, hidden as it is by about fifty layers of gut-churning fear.

Bottom line is we have no idea what happened. No idea why, or how, or what it all means. He goes back in for tests at the end of the month.

I've never even been inside of an ICU before. Have you? How did you cope? It's such a miserable place, full of scared, crying people sitting around in huddles. The ICU waiting room had free coffee, and an internet terminal that no one even approached, and an information desk with a phone that would ring whenever nurses or physicians wanted to reach a family member of a patient. I hated that phone. Every time it rang my heart fell into my stomach and all I could think was "something's wrong something's wrong something's wrong."

Every once in awhile the emergency helicopter would approach the hospital for a landing. You could hear it coming for several minutes before it arrived, and a few children would always gather at a window to watch it come in. I didn't. The sound of it made me feel sick. That's how my brother arrived, I wanted to tell them. He was so scared, just like whoever's in that helicopter right now is so scared. It's not an airshow. It's somebody's family.

I have never been good at living in the moment. I'm trying. It was easier when I was back at my parents' house, sitting in the same room as my brother, where I could see him, whole and breathing and eating a sandwich. I could feel gratitude over his survival because hey: there he was. At home! Just like before! But now I'm five hours away again and I'm shaky, shaky like I was when I stayed up all Friday night just waiting for a phone call to update me on the first surgery (which didn't take), shaky like I was in the car Saturday morning waiting for a phone call to update me on the second surgery (which did). Shaky because I'm far away and for all I know, shit could be going down right this very moment. Shaky because what if his life is completely different from now on, what if he can't do any of the things he likes to do ever again, what if his life is short?

Earlier this afternoon I spoke with a friend on the phone, who encouraged me to take an Alcoholics Anonymous approach to my fear: if you can't take things day by day, try hour by hour. If that's too much for you, try minute by minute. So that's where I'm at. Right now, this minute, my brother is fine. This minute he's fine.

Daniel

2009-05-31T19:16:00.002-05:00

On Friday night, my younger brother Daniel collapsed at work. He couldn't feel or move his legs. They transported him by ambulance to the hospital, where a CAT scan showed a tear in his aorta, near his groin. He was airlifted to a bigger hospital and spent over 6 hours in 2 surgeries to repair the tear. The surgeons were able to get a stint into the vein, remove most of the clotting, and restore some bloodflow to both legs. He is stable, for now, and in the ICU, hooked up to a million devices. Once his surgical team feels more confident about where things are at, they will do more testing (some of it probably surgical) to figure out the underlying condition that caused a healthy 26-year-old's aorta to rupture. We are sitting in waiting rooms all day, our collective stomach in our collective mouth. Daniel is depressed and scared. Please keep him in your thoughts and, if you're into such things, your prayers.

Just like Erica Jong

2009-05-26T14:10:00.006-05:00

Now that I reside in Middle of Nowhere, Illinois, I fear that I will never see another direct flight -- to anywhere -- for as long as I live. Our town is situated equidistant from two regional airports, each of them about sixty miles away. Flying anywhere from either requires at least one leg in a wee li'l plane, one of those jets that have the suffix "-link" somewhere in their name. The kind where there is one flight attendant (usually a baby flight attendant, a toddler in eyeliner serving out her inaugural assignment) and no beverage service. The kind where you never get up high enough to escape the bumps and air pockets. The kind that is a PROBLEM for me, a mother with OCD and a breathless fear of flying.

This past weekend I went to Pennsylvania for a friend's wedding. My travel involved four flights; that's nearly two full days of sitting in airports and airplanes taking part in stupid little rituals. Flying is the only thing that brings out my OCD in visible, suitable-for-Maury-Povitch-show ways: every time I settle into my seat on the plane (but before I buckle my seatbelt) I scan the passengers for the human interest stories that will dominate the press after our inevitable crash. A newborn baby. A honeymooning couple. A little old lady wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Then, after the plane takes off, I count to 180, slowly. That's because most plane crashes seem to happen during the first three minutes of the flight, and I don't want to be caught unaware. And then, when the beverage service starts, I make eye contact with each and every flight attendant to establish his or her baseline facial expression. Beverage service is routine. Whatever Amber or Elaine or Jennifer looks like when she's pouring my Coke? That's her baseline - what she looks like when everything is normal. Establishing a baseline gives me full freedom and license to freak the fuck out should Amber or Elaine or Jennifer ever stray from the status quo. A widened eye of surprise from any one of them? Clearly, we just lost an engine and are about to plummet to our deaths.

I have been like this for years. My first flight was when I was 21, an overnight flight to Scotland. It was fine, perfectly smooth and easy. I got on that plane without a care in the world, and somehow emerged with a crippling, ridiculous phobia. I have promised myself, over and over, that I would never let it limit me, but it does. It does. The husband and I honeymooned in Canada and New York instead of somewhere tropical and exciting, largely because I didn't want to have to carry around any airport-related dread on our trip. We are embarking on our first ever family-of-three vacation this summer by car, ostensibly for financial reasons but really? If we're being honest? My fear is at the heart of it.

Ugh. I mean, I know most people have something like this, something that crawls up under their skin and takes control, but I still hate it. It makes me feel weak, like a baby. Everyone else on the plane always seems so calm, bored even. No one else ever grabs the armrest and closes their eyes and breathes in and out like a yoga instructor. No one else looks round and fat with ten pounds of airport comfort food swelling up their belly (french fries, nachos, milkshakes, Dairy Queen fudge-dipped cones). Why can't I be deathly afraid of something less public, less essential?

The way I look at it, I have three real options: 1) Figure out a way to get my shit together so that flying becomes just another pain in the ass, the way it is for most functioning people; 2) Continue to be afraid, and continue to fly, and continue to eat my feelings at the airport TGI Fridays; or 3) Stop flying and save myself the nausea and anxiety. Of course, given that I live in the aforementioned Middle of Nowhere, Illinois, refraining from air travel and thus only seeing locations within driving distance of my town is likely to cause its own share of nausea and anxiety. So maybe I actually only have two options.

I've thought about trying drugs, some kind of magic doctor-prescribed pills that would reduce me to carry-on luggage. That could work when I'm flying with other people, but not when I'm flying alone. Which more often than not is what I'm doing. Maybe there's a therapy animal for airport anxiety? Or maybe airlines should offer a companion service, where frightened solo passengers could hire a soothing grandmother with pockets full of Werther's candy to sit next to them and read aloud out of the Reader's Digest?

Reading all about it

2009-05-19T13:52:00.003-05:00

About a year ago, my friends Laura and Shannon surprised me with a gift subscription to this:

Now let me just preface this rant by informing you that I loathe most parenting magazines. Loooooooooaaaaathe them. With very few exceptions, I find them to be overwhelmingly sexist and heterosexist (I recognize that it would probably be bad business for the unfortunately named "Parents Magazine" to change its header to "Straight Mommies With Cash Magazine" but it would certainly be more accurate), insulting, and filled with advertisements to a degree that would make Vogue and Cosmo blush. I find them alienating. They don't reflect what I care about, how I parent, or any of the myriad problems and issues I talk about with my other parenting friends.

When I started reading Wondertime, I immediately recognized it as one of the few exceptions to the Shitty Magazine Rule. Yes, it still tried to sell me clothes and toys and food for my kid, but it also gave me actual items of substance to, you know, READ. There were long, thoughtful articles about interracial parenting, what to do when your kids ask about sex, whether or not babies dream, nontraditional ways to celebrate the holidays, natural remedies for common illnesses, and more. The stories were well-written and good. The pages were attractive and uncluttered. There were even interesting recipes -- suitable for vegetarians! -- that I cut out and used. My Thanksgiving guests last year benefited from Wondertime's take on roasted brussels sprouts.

Then, earlier this year, Wondertime's owner (Disney, for the sweet love of cheese) decided to shut the magazine down. It sent out a mailing to announce the cancellation, reassuring subscribers that they would receive another fabulous Disney-sponsored parenting publication in its place. About a month later, I received this in the mail:

Because readers of Wondertime would, of course, be equally interested in learning how to carve critters out of carrots, making a spring garland out of tissue paper, and reading the answer to the suspenseful question "Is nail-biting unhealthy for kids?" (all featured in the May issue).

Those of you who are within a few years of my age will likely understand when I tell you that this whole affair brings back many painful Sassy Magazine-related memories. If you ever went out and bought a Shonen Knife cassette because Christina Kelly told you to, you know what I'm talking about. When Sassy Magazine sold out to The Man and ultimately went kaput in the mid-90s, it was a blow to tiny hipsters and hipster-wannabes in small towns everywhere. Then later on, Jane Pratt (former Sassy editor) tried to sell us on Jane Magazine. And she was all "No, really, I'm still cool and you still want to hang out with me and remember how I was in the Shiny Happy People video?" And we, the confused and betrayed masses, were all "But this magazine kind of sucks, whereas Sassy did not. And look, why are you trying to sell me mascara and telling me how to get boys to like me?" And she was all "I'm still wearing a Fugazi t-shirt, people! I still have an alterna-haircut!" And we were all, "Really? A talk show? Wow. Bye."

How much does it suck that in the world of mainstream publishing, Family Fun magazine will thrive while Wondertime will fail? I'm not saying that I don't consume my fair share of crap culture -- probably more than my fair share, let's be honest -- but it's sad how cookie cutter magazines and books and movies will always find an audience, while the ones that try a little something new (not innovative, not groundbreaking - just new) will often flounder and fade.

You ponder that. I'm off to make a carp-shaped wind sock out of an envelope, a plastic cup, and some acrylic paints.

Well that was fun

2009-05-17T13:14:00.004-05:00

Early Thursday morning, after nearly four hours of nonstop retching from Cletus the Former Fetus, I covered the child in bath towels and shuttled her to the doctor's office. The doctor, a wee Indian man with possibly the loudest voice I've ever heard, declared her dehydrated and sent us to the hospital. What started as an observation period turned into three days and two nights on IV fluids and antibiotics for pneumonia and rotovirus. The experience was among the more heartbreaking of my life, seeing my crazy funny little girl tethered to a hospital cot, dead-eyed and limp.

She's home now, resting and improving. Since being freed from the tyranny of the IV's hysterical beeping every two hours, she slept thirteen hours in a row. She also resumed eating (albeit a minuscule amount of applesauce) and drinking, and is showing interest in things other than rubbing her hands over her sore little stomach.

I feel like I could write about 35 posts on the topic of nurses right now. I have friends who are nurses -- lovely, lovely friends who are nurses. I'm sure that, like my lovely nurse friends, most nurses get into their chosen field because they are compassionate individuals who are committed to taking care of people. But man. The nurses who don't fit that description? Or the ones who do, but are having a shitty day for some reason? Let's just say there are a whole lot of ways for them to have an impact on a scared, sick little two-year-old girl.

Like, for instance, trying unsuccessfully to insert an IV into the child's dehydrated veins for NINETY MINUTES before calling in a more experienced nurse to do the job. (The second nurse finally got it inserted into Cletus' foot; her arms and hands are now covered in purple bruises.) Or removing said IV the next day before the doctor had arrived for Cletus' afternoon checkup, at which point the child was diagnosed with rotovirus and ordered back on IV fluids. Or acting all insulted when I demanded an ER nurse to insert the second IV. (The ER nurse, by the way, turned out to be a no-nonsense older woman who got the job done in five minutes. I was nearly crying from gratitude and offered to buy her a beer; she smiled primly and said "I don't drink" before retreating from the room to the sound of me shouting lamely after her: "Well, then, how about a cake??")

Other ways to leave your mark: giving my daughter a dose of oral antibiotics that I later learned was never ordered by her doctor. Trying to force a spoonful of probiotic-laced applesauce into her mouth while she was in the act of vomiting. Generally acting rude and unresponsive when I suggested that perhaps this particular blood pressure check could wait until the completely exhausted little girl woke the fuck up from her nap.

We did have a couple of really fabulous nurses (who, by comparison, put quite a spotlight on the actions of their counterparts). We had the excellent fortune of getting the same overnight nurse both nights, who went out of her way to catch the IV before it beeped so it wouldn't wake Cletus up. She also made sure that I always had one of those tall, magical styrofoam glasses of fresh ice water, and that a vegetarian breakfast tray was ordered for me each morning. We had one daytime nurse who brought us cartoon DVDs and stopped by to chat with Cletus in an attempt to establish some kind of rapport. (One of the other day nurses barely glanced at Cletus on her trips into the room, then had the nerve to bark "Why does she cry every time I take her temperature?" Um... maybe because you're a stranger shoving a pointy object into her ear, Miss Personality.)

Everyone says that nurses are the people who really run hospitals; doctors just pop in and out, but nurses make things flow. I've always considered this in a positive light -- like, nurses are thought of as playing a supporting role, when really they are the unsung masters of the medical universe. I still think that's true... but what's also true is this: if you're in the hospital, it doesn't matter if you have the best doctor in the world; the quality of your care depends upon your nurse. Period. If you've got an awesome nurse, or a good one, or even a mediocre one who gives a shit, you're golden. If you don't, all you can do is count the hours until the shift change and hope you don't require any, you know, nursing.

ANYWAY. Cletus is home now. Napping on the couch with her daddy. Apparently still contagious for, like, months -- but if she's smiling at me again after three days of nonstop crying and staring into space, there's no way I'm not slobbering all over that diseased little face.

Oh, and our basement flooded while we were in the hospital. Nothing says "Welcome home!" like having to wear a life vest to access your washer and dryer.

Did it all for the Nukkie

2009-05-11T13:36:00.004-05:00

On Friday, completely randomly, I got it into my head that Cletus would be giving up her pacifier habit. Cold turkey. That afternoon. I don't know... the weekend was approaching, I had just gotten paid, I was feeling confident - or at least proactive. Now, mind you, I didn't harbor any particular visions of success. I was more or less expecting things to go down as they had during one of the various weeks I had dubbed "Time to Get Started With Potty Training. For Real, This Time." Read: the universe laughing while I flail.

(Speaking of potty training... remind me to tell you the story about how Cletus stood outside the bathroom the other day while I was inside relieving myself. She pounded her fists on the door and shouted "Mommy, are you peeing in the potty?" until I answered "yes," to which she replied "GOOD JOB, MOMMY! WAY TO GO! WHAT A BIG GIRL!")

So... pacifiers. I picked Cletus up from daycare early and brought her back home, where we commenced a full-scale search of the house for all Nuks and Nuk-related paraphernalia. I told Cletus that her baby friends were all out of pacifiers and asked her, since she was a big girl now and everything, if she wouldn't mind giving HER pacifiers to these needy, pathetic little wretches. She was amenable to the idea, especially when I sweetened the deal with the promise of a new toy for her trouble. Some might call that a bribe. Some might be right.

We popped the Nuks into an envelope and drove downtown to the little locally-owned toystore, whose owner I had called earlier in the day to solicit her participation. The toystore owner met us at the door with much fanfare, took Cletus' envelope, and made a big show of writing down the names of all the babies Cletus could think of, so that she could mail them their new [filthy, bitten-down, spit-stained] pacifiers. Cletus was enchanted by this process; her eyes were huge and thoughtful as she listed baby name after baby name.

Then we picked out a toy (I told her she could have anything she wanted; thankfully, she ultimately decided on an old-skool teddy bear rather than the three-foot-tall educational Mandarin-speaking doll she was orbiting for awhile) and were on our way. The toystore owner patted my arm as we left, saying "Have a good night, Mom" -- meaning, of course, enjoy the 24 hours of screaming that are about to commence when your child figures out what just happened.

But friends, I could not be more astounded when I tell you that I DID have a good night. Because my child? Asked for her pacifier a total of two times that evening before settling in for the long haul... and has not spoken of it since. She was ready. And while I'm sure the smoothness of the whole affair had 99.9% to do with her own readiness level and .1% to do with my involvement, I'm going to go ahead and classify the occasion as one of the first unqualified successes of my parenting career.

(Of course, the next night found me changing the child's pajamas about an hour or so after bedtime when, upon doing a routine bed-check, I discovered her face, hands, and clothes caked in -- AVERT YOUR EYES, YE WHO ARE SQUEAMISH -- a festive layer of blood, the result of impressively rigorous nose-picking. I almost hurled. And then I cut off her fingernails. Aaaaaaand... we're back to the status quo.)

Moments of weakness

2009-05-06T11:05:00.004-05:00

I do believe that about 50% of my 200+ Facebook friends have announced their pregnancies in the past seven days. Seriously. Yesterday I logged on and scrolled through about two pages' worth of status updates, nearly all of them pregnancy- or baby-related. Then an old colleague who was pregnant with her first child when I was pregnant with Cletus IM'd me: she's nine weeks pregnant with her second. And then a high school friend updated her page with some sonogram pictures. And then my uterus shot itself from all the pressure.

It is embarrassingly hard to keep the jealousy under control. It's like, I know: I've only had one miscarriage. Cry me a river. But I was supposed to be four months pregnant right now.

I try to put out good fertility karma. I talk to my pregnant friends about their babies to be. I have planned and hosted two baby showers this spring. When yet another friend tells me she's pregnant, I clap and cheer and celebrate. But it's like there's this little voice buried deep down; I don't want to acknowledge her because she's not who I want to be, but she's screaming and scratching and pounding around with her fists. She wants out, and during the few brief moments when I let her out she smacks me down and sits next to me on the curb and says "They're pregnant and you're not and doesn't that suck?"

I hate that voice and I stifle it as best I can. I want to be sincere. This hidden bitterness is not a part of the plan.

A call for suggestions

2009-05-04T13:47:00.002-05:00

If you have visited this blog more than once or twice, you are already well acquainted with my obsession with radio. But people! I have to tell you! I just up and bought myself an internet radio and I am so completely, ridiculously in love with it that I can't even deal. For the better part of the past three days I've been trying out channel after channel, swooning around my house and hugging myself with glee. If you tried to call me and I didn't answer, it's because I was listening to Danish college students DJ an hour of electronica. Or talk radio from Bosnia. Or hours of the BBC talking about swine flu.

I read the paper and cleaned house to the strains of Chicago Public Radio's Saturday morning line-up. I listened to my college's radio station, some of my favorite folky stations from Boston (Boston friends: what happened to The Coffeehouse??), a great hippy-folk station from my hometown. This morning I tuned in to my favorite Chicago morning show while I fed Cletus the Former Fetus her breakfast. It was like visiting with old friends, except now with less rush hour traffic to navigate.

Tonight? My long-awaited, highly emotional reunion with David Allen Boucher.

So do any of you have fabulous radio stations that you love and adore in your collective necks of the woods? Please share, so that I can add them and continue to swoon...

Hey, here's a post about my period!

2009-04-30T14:17:00.003-05:00

I've been self-censoring for days about writing this post, mostly in deference to the maybe two or three male friends (Hi Christopher) who occasionally read this blog. But then this morning I was at the Y, sweating all over an elliptical machine, and I realized: Wait. Dudes, your mothers bleed every month; therefore, you exist. The end. And I will hold back no longer.

Last week I got my period for the first time since the miscarriage. This is a good thing, in that it means my body is getting back to normal and sometime in the next few months we can start "trying" to conceive again, provided that my husband ever stops working for long enough to come within five feet of me. Which is unlikely, considering I just received a gilded invitation asking for the honor of my presence at a ceremony binding him to his laptop in holy matrimony. BUT I DIGRESS.

My period: ohhhh, it was awful. People, I have been on birth control pills since I was 18 years old. I am presently 32. For the better part of 14ish years I have been either pregnant or enjoying a wee little minimal-flow, highly regulated tidbit of a menstrual cycle. A cyclet, if you will. Before I got pregnant in early 2006, I was off the pill for a measly two months and got my period exactly once during that time. Now, granted, that one time was an awful, crampy mess, but it was nothing compared to the present day. The present day in which I drown in a sea of my own womanhood.

All week last week it was all I could do to stay a) upright, and b) out of the bathroom. I was bleeding like it was going out of style. There were a couple of nights where I actually got lightheaded and felt anemic. I spent Friday and part of Saturday with Laurie in Chicago, visiting a generous sample of the Windy City's restrooms as we made our way between downtown and Hyde Park. I'm not exaggerating: I had to stop to resupply almost every ninety minutes. It was ridiculous.

If we're lucky enough to have things go our way this time around, I'll be knocked up and happily puking my way through the day before I have to suffer through too many more of these weeklong bloody massacres. But after that -- what then? Despite my dearest hopes, I'm guessing it's not in my best interest to stay on birth control pills forever. Along with Splenda, Nalgene bottles, and my cell phone, the pill is likely yet another delightful development that is secretly giving me cancer. When I finally bid the pill farewell, is this how it's going to be, like, all the time? Am I doomed to spend 12 solid weeks -- 84 days out of the year -- incapacitated and afraid to sit on the furniture?

And please forgive me if this is a personal question, readers, but I know that some of you use the Diva Cup, and to you I offer the plaintive cry: good Lord in heaven, HOW? Because I swear to you, I would need a Diva Tupperware. Or a Diva Moat.

Poems in April

2009-04-23T14:29:00.003-05:00

In honor of National Poetry Month (and in the tradition of The Oh Really, who has been doing this for weeks), I present: my favorite poem from my favorite book from my favorite poet. I have loved this one since I first read it in 1998, long before I knew what it meant to be "bound with the tie of the delivery-room."

The understimulated English major in me would be thrilled if you would offer up one of your own favorites in the comments.

True Love

In the middle of the night, when we get up
after making love, we look at each other in
complete friendship, we know so fully
what the other has been doing. Bound to each other
like mountaineers coming down from a mountain,
bound with the tie of the delivery-room,
we wander down the hall to the bathroom, I can
hardly walk, I wobble through the granular
shadowless air, I know where you are
with my eyes closed, we are bound to each other
with huge invisible threads, our sexes
muted, exhausted, crushed, the whole
body a sex -- surely this
is the most blessed time of my life,
our children asleep in their beds, each fate
like a vein of abiding mineral
not discovered yet. I sit
on the toilet in the night, you are somewhere in the room,
I open the window and snow has fallen in a
steep drift, against the pane, I
look up, into it,
a wall of cold crystals, silent
and glistening, I quietly call to you
and you come and hold my hand and I say
I cannot see beyond it. I cannot see beyond it.

-Sharon Olds

from The Wellspring, Knopf, 1998

Pop quiz

2009-04-20T15:28:00.003-05:00

Which of the following things did I NOT do this morning?

1. Put on a giant dinosaur costume, including five-foot-long tail and enormous headpiece equipped with tiny holes for "breathing" and "vision." (In quotes because I could neither breathe nor see.)

2. Allow my boss to lead me through downtown street traffic in said costume.

3. Watch as my boss abandoned me to stand in a buzzing huddle that appeared to consist of McGruff the Crime Dog, the Cat in the Hat, Little Bo Peep, a rabbit, a giant tooth with eyes, a gentleman wearing the top half of a Winnie the Pooh costume over blue jeans, and a jolly cow.

4. March several blocks in a parade for children, in the company of the aforementioned characters, a high school marching band, and a garbage truck.

5. Trip over my huge dinosaur feet, only to be rescued by the jolly cow who, upon closer inspection, turned out to be a dalmatian.

6. Dance blindly and exuberantly to "If You're Happy and You Know It," only to be told later by my boss that when I was supposed to patting my head I was actually pawing myself in my giant dinosaur eyes.

7. Wipe out a baby with my tail.

8. Shower.

Dental appointment number two: a special report

2009-04-16T14:49:00.001-05:00

Ten years of no dental care = ONE CAVITY! Woot!

(Don't hate me, Rachel.)

Passing through

2009-04-14T13:37:00.003-05:00

There are things I love about living in a little college town. For instance: coffeeshops. We have three of them (down from four, before the Starbucks closed last December). Granted, one of them is not so much a "shop" as it is a drive-through cart situated in the Dollar Tree parking lot, but the coffee is good and the lattes are cheap and if you answer the weekly trivia question correctly you get 30 cents knocked off the price of your order.

Also, the college radio station. It plays Morning Edition until 9:00, which is a gift considering that no full-scale NPR stations get consistent clear reception in town. After that, when school is in session, it switches to a marathon of hour-long student-run programs. The DJs air experimental noise-music and angry feminist awakening punk-folk anthems and obscure 70s throwbacks, interspersed with self-conscious rambling and adorably subversive rants at the establishment. One girl has her mom call in to her show on a weekly basis to give health tips to the student body.

There is a health food store, because tiny student vegans need their seitan and vital wheat gluten. (Without you, tiny student vegans, I am certain I would have to settle for Hy-Vee's sad little half-aisle of a "health market," which is centered around a selection of allegedly organic potato chips.) There are cultural events, none of which I have attended but still. They are there. There is an art center. Once a year, the international students cook dishes from their countries of origin and offer them for sale at an International Fair. There are wee bearded boys riding around on bicycles. There are white girls in dreadlocks standing in line at the drugstore, filling their prescriptions next to the Illinois elderly.

What I don't love about living in a little college town, however, is the division. It's there and it's profound, the separation of college community from rest-of-the-community. Almost everyone that I know, outside of the library where I work and the nonprofit where I volunteer, is affiliated with the college. And almost everyone that they know is similarly affiliated. In town, there are stores and restaurants patronized by the college families, and there are stores and restaurants patronized by everybody else. When the local newspaper publishes articles about college speakers or events, the online versions are riddled with disparaging comments.

Last week the town elected a new mayor. There were eight candidates in the running, with no run-off or narrowing of the field. A tiny fraction of the population turned out to cast their ballots, and the eventual winner only garnered 30 percent of the total vote. Among the candidates was a professor at the college. She had been in the community for eight years and was active in local politics, but her candidacy was widely renounced as offensive -- an outsider trying to infiltrate. The newspaper launched an understated smear campaign. One of the other candidates went on record asking that students not be allowed to vote, since they were only "passing through."

Spouses and children of professors are considered college community members by extension. We are not excluded from the general distrust. When the daughter of a longtime professor recently won a writing contest sponsored by the public library, a patron reading over the list of winners gave a knowing look to her companion and said, "College kid."

I wonder... if the husband gets tenure and we stay, for the long haul: will I live my life here, working and shopping and raising my children, and never be considered a valid member of the community?

A lost one

2009-04-13T10:30:00.003-05:00

One of my favorite blog-friends, Shana at Gorillabuns, just lost her infant son. I just... I can't even imagine.

The realist in me says "That's life. People die. It's hard but it happens." Meanwhile the mama in me boils over with undirected rage.

Fellow Shana-fans can find info on donations for the hospital stay and funeral here.

I'm crying and I'm only slightly ashamed to admit it.

2009-04-12T19:16:00.006-05:00

*Edited to add: Can't find a version of this video that hasn't been deemed "embedding disabled" in the past 24 hours. You can go view it here, though. It's worth it.

Conversation while watching Arcade Fire on Austin City Limits

2009-04-10T14:45:00.002-05:00

Me: Wow. These guys are fighting The Man in, like, five different ways.

The husband: [gesturing toward the band's female singer who is angrily eating her microphone]: She's about to beat someone down.

Me: She's about to beat YOU down.

The husband: These guys are way too hip for us.

Me: Too hip for you, maybe.

The husband: You think you're hipper than I am?

Me: Yes.

The husband: Who used to listen to broadway musical soundtracks? Who was in the show choir?

Me: Just because you were all sullen and listening to Fugazi...

The husband: ...means I was hip.

Me: Ok, but who was hipper in college? You were an athlete. Athletes aren't hip. I smoked lots of pot and people thought I was a lesbian.

The husband: Lesbians are pretty hip.

Me: See?

The husband: But I was in a band.

Me: You played the euphonium.

The husband: Exactly.

Remember that toddler I'm raising?

2009-04-06T14:31:00.003-05:00

If posts about Cletus the Former Fetus are few and far between these days, it's because I don't know how to string together any kind of cogent description of what our life together has been like lately. My girl is two and a half. She is smart, strong, and fiercely independent. I used to make fun of people who said that about their kids -- "Baby Emily has a mind of her own!" -- as if a baby or a toddler could have any kind of defined personality other than that projected upon them by their parents. Now I know that, as with most things about which I spout off, I was full of shit. Toddlers are fully capable of being their own frenzied, maniacal, exuberant little persons, with their own frenzied, maniacal, exuberant interests and areas of expertise.

Cletus the Former Fetus will gladly spend each and every day, in its entirety, doing the following three things: 1) eating dried fruit, in any form, 2) running around in the backyard and/or on a playground, and 3) reading books. Always, always reading books. When she's not being read to, she climbs on the couch with a stack of books and pages through them herself, throwing each to the floor as she finishes with it. She has memorized several of her shorter board books and can "read" them aloud word for word. She also, bizarrely, adores our family's small collection of bilingual dictionaries. Although they have no pictures and neither my husband nor I can pronounce most of the words in them, she faithfully carries them around the house with her in twos and threes, opens them and studiously explores their contents.

Her vocabulary has exploded. Does anyone else understand that I am not trying to be an asshole when I say that this makes her so much more real to me, as a person? Yesterday, when we drove over a set of railroad tracks, Cletus piped up from her carseat, saying "Mommy, be careful, ok? We don't want to break the car. We just got it fixed!" All this because I took her along with me a few weeks ago to get an oil change. Last Thursday, the child started randomly begging for a haircut, so I took her to go get one. While I was loading her into the car, I asked her to tell me what we were about to go do, expecting her to grin and call out "Haircut!!" Instead, she looked at me thoughtfully and replied, "They gonna put a cape on me, and then my hair's gonna get wet. Then I get a haircut. Then I get a sucker." Dude. Yes.

A couple of weeks ago the husband told me that he wasn't sure, but he thought that Cletus has started to cry upon hearing him sing "Oh my darling, Clementine." Thinking that was weird and unlikely, I tried singing the song to her myself a little later. Sure enough, her eyes filled with tears and she started to cry, sadly and inconsolably. I was instantly filled with irrational terror, of the What Horrible, Scary Thing Happened To My Child At Daycare While This Song Provided The Background Music variety? The husband [naturally] was more calm, reflecting, "Melinda, it's not a happy song."

I asked Cletus, "Honey, why are you crying?" And sure enough, she sniffled and wiped at her teary face and said in the smallest, most heartbreaking voice ever: "Lost and gone forever..."

How can this baby, the one I gave birth to, like, five minutes ago, already be emotionally sophisticated enough to cry over song lyrics? It's too much. It's like when my friend Big W. wrote about her daughter, who's just Cletus' age, sobbing out of empathy for Dorothy while watching the Wizard of Oz. How does the two-year-old mind work this kind of stuff out? I don't even know how the thirty-two year old mind does it.

Cletus is, in many ways, very much the two-year-old your parenting message board of choice warned you about. She pushes boundaries. She throws massive, violent, ear-splitting temper tantrums in public places at peak times. She scoffs at the concept of "time out," using her time in the chair to thrash about wildly and cry out the name of whichever parent did not put her there to begin with. She will not be potty trained. She will not hold still. She does not care that you are on the phone; she wants more raisins now. When you cover the mouthpiece with your hand and say to her, in response, "Cletus, how do we ask for things that we want?", she replies: "I want more raisins... IN A CUP."

But she also reaches up her arms to encircle your neck when you lean down to kiss her goodnight, pulls your cheek down to hers and holds it there, says "I love you, Mommy." She asks you to reach back and hold her hand when you are driving her somewhere in the car. She greets you the same way every time you pick her up at daycare: by running up and throwing her arms around your legs, screaming "Mommy! My mommy's here!", breathlessly telling you about her day. "I played with the dollhouse! I ate a cookie! I have a jean jacket!"

When I am away from her, I can't wait to see her again. When I am with her, I find myself longing for quiet. There is no one else I would rather be with at any given time. Except for the times when I would rather be with anyone else, as long as they don't ask me to get them a juicebox or wipe their butt. Sometimes my heart and my gut are just boiling over with so much love and so much frustration, all at the same time, I don't know how to put it into words -- other than to say: this is it. This is what my life's about right now. Living it, drowning in it, coming up for air, floating. Remembering to enjoy it. Comforting the parts of myself that want to rage against it. Trying to take it all in.