Negative Lane

The Swine of 09

2009-11-10T14:52:00.000-05:00

If you follow me on Twitter, you already know that at the end of October, Goose had H1N1. Ugh. The tiny margin of togetherness I'd managed to accrue went out the window when I had to take time off of work to share in sick baby homecare duty. Couldn't get anything done at work; wasn't there. Couldn't get anything done at home; was spending all my time comforting a sick, fussy baby. Up until then, I barely had a moment to catch my breath between my 5 a.m. wakeup and my 11 p.m. bedtime, my days a crazy mash-up of work, childcare and housework. Everything fell behind.

Then I got kidney stones. I'd always heard that they were as painful as childbirth and let me say, that's a very accurate description. The pain was almost exactly like labor pains. Two caveats. One, whereas you can sometimes kind of "ride the wave" of labor pains if they come in spaced contractions, kidney stones aren't like that.* Two, there's no baby at the end of it all. When I went to the ER my second night in pain, they admitted me! I had to take off another day from work, at the end of the quarter when grades are due.

And so my hectic, sucking autumn became even more hectic and sucking. (Eloquent, huh?)

Luckily, there have been a few positives. Goose was the only one who got swine flu in our house. Amazing. After he'd been sick a week -- involving a doctor's office visit, an emergency room visit and two(!) chest x-rays -- one of my doctor-friends offered to put Monk on a prophylactic dose of Tamiflu. (The hospital had already prescribed it for Goose.) Normally, I'm not for unnecessarily medicating children, but after the experience we'd already had with Goose -- the high fever, the breathing difficulties, the associated fear, not to mention that healthcare providers treat you like you have Ebola when you get treatment for H1N1 (no joke) -- we thought it was a good idea. My kidney stones passed on their own, although I live with a cold, nagging fear that it will happen again someday. But, best of all, this Thursday Hub and I are GOING TO MEXICO with friends.

We rarely get to go on fun grown-up trips with each other and without kids. Our group of friends does a long, couples-weekend in the Caribbean every other year, but I've always been saving days for maternity leave, or pregnant, or breastfeeding. Not this time. My mother-in-law is flying in to care for the kiddos while we fly out to laze on the beach and relax. For four days I want my only concern to be: frozen or on the rocks?

*Although, childbirth isn't always like that, either. With Monk I didn't have any space between contractions, so it was a lot like kidney stones. Until I got an epidural.

Planning Ahead Are Smart

2009-10-03T20:43:00.001-04:00

Next week is picture day at the kids' school. A couple of days ago, Hub told me he was going to cut Monk's hair. We essentially give Monkeyboy a crew cut; his hair is thick-thick-thick, straight as the proverbial board and grows like a weed so his only other choice would be a Prince Valiant-esque bowl cut. The Hubster didn't want Monk's hair to look too short and freshly shorn in the pictures. Cutting it then would give it a week to grow in and look natural.

As you can see, that worked out very nicely. The clipper guard fell off as Hub was going in for a pass at the front (you can still see the very low spot dead center if you look closely) and so he was forced to even it out. We think the resulting haircut makes Monk look like one of the Spartan boys from 300.

No More Good Days

2009-09-28T15:11:00.001-04:00

After thirteen years, we are now dogless. On Friday, we had to euthanize Marley, our remaining dog of the three who were once part of our family.

After years of extraordinarily good health, about six months ago she developed osteosarcoma. We were unwilling to put her through surgery (amputation) and chemotherapy/radiation/other painful treatment at her age. Twelve years old is the equivalent of about 95 for a Giant Schnauzer. Instead, we opted to keep an eye on her condition and medicate her to keep her comfortable. For a while, she was the same as always. She ate and drank. She played with the boys (as much as a 95-year-old would). She greeted us at the door after work. She could still use her dog door to go in and out on her own. She ran the fenceline and howled like the Hound of the Baskervilles at the deer in our woods. She wagged her tail and perked up her ears. And so we worried about how we would know it was time, when the time came. We didn't want her to suffer. Our first two dogs each just died; no terrible math was required from us. Everyone we talked to gave us the exact same advice: When the time comes, you will just know.

Last week, it became obvious. Without going into agonizing detail, it's simplest said that she stopped having good days. We're lucky that since we got our first family pet thirteen years ago, we've become good friends with our vet (seven pets means a lot of vet appointments). Hub and I have never had to have a pet put to sleep before; Doc was there for us as both a vet and a friend. But it was still probably the hardest thing I've ever done.

Now it's constantly obvious that something is missing. It's still at our house in moments when it shouldn't be.* After the kids go to bed, no dog stirs in the great room when we pass through it or sighs softly on her bed in the corner of our bedroom when we go to bed. No eighty pound dog blocks the front door and refuses to budge. There's no click-click of dog nails on the hardwood floors. No dog comes to lay their head in my lap. There's one less being that I have to think about feeding and caring for, yet I still find myself thinking about her before I remember that she's gone.

*Yes, we still have four cats, but two stay mostly outside and besides, cats are silent ninjas compared to dogs.

New School Year's Resolution

2009-09-15T12:34:00.003-04:00

I don't generally make New Year's resolutions, because I find I never keep them. The reason for this, I figured out a few years back, is that I track my years from August to August (which is when school starts around these parts).

I've spent most of my life circling the school year. The elementary-junior high-high school track flowed seamlessly into college and then, with only a two year break, graduate school. Overlapping with grad school was my teaching certification program which launched immediately into my teaching career. For 32 of 39 years, my year has "begun" with the start of the school year.

The last several years have been a blur. Thank gah I knew what I was doing at work (and could do it blindfolded), because I certainly haven't felt very sharp. There's nothing like a near constant round of fertility treatments, pregnancy, breastfeeding/infant care, fertility treatments, pregnancy and breastfeeding/infant care to make a woman feel like she's drained of her very essence. I knew there was a light at the end of that tunnel, but there were days that it seemed very small and far away. I can't say I've walked out of the tunnel yet, but the opening is definitely closer and now looks human-sized.

I feel like I finally figured out to slip the pills under my tongue, rather than swallow them, when the insanity-ward nurse brings them 'round.

So now that I feel like I'm awake, alert and getting a grip on things, what do I go and do? Change teaching positions. I'd been teaching the same subject and grade for the past seven years. I didn't have to do any planning. I didn't have to do any preparation. I could walk out of school one day and back in the next and not have to think about it in between. I was at the top of my game with minimal effort.

Uh, wait a minute. What part of "I have two young children, a husband who takes more than twenty business trips a year, no family to help within a 90 mile radius, five aging pets, a daily hour-long commute (two hours when the Hubster's out of town and I add the daycare run), a car on its last legs that I can't afford to replace, a mammoth landscaping project underway, a house renovation project about to start and a shamefully low level of household management and organization going on" made me think I needed a change from my easy, predictable, mindless job?

Oh, yeah. The easy, predictable, mindless part.

So, I've left the middle school world behind and have returned to high school (11th grade, mostly). I've left the field of American history behind and have moved back into what is my original field, European history. It's exactly where I wanted to be when I originally decided to leave academia and teach high school. But it means starting from scratch. I haven't been this swamped at work in years.

I'm still making a New School Year's Resolution, though: This is going to be the year that I get my shit together.

For starters, I'm talking about my shamefully low level of household management and organization. Part of the problem arose when we had two kids before adding on two bedrooms for them (our plan when we bought the house before they were born), so we lost our guestroom with storage closet and study with storage closet. The main problem, though, is that there is no realistic way two people can work full time, raise children, maintain their relationship and effectively care for their house and property if they have any interests or hobbies other than those things alone. And the Hubster and I do have hobbies. Many, many time-~~wasting~~ -consuming hobbies. They make us the people we are and keep us sane. (Well, okay... sane-ish.)

But I have a plan.

Step one: Hire a cleaning person. My friend, Frieda, quit her job as a social worker to return to school for a more lucrative career and has decided meanwhile to clean houses to make some side income. She's the amazing combination of trustworthy with mild OCD (no joke) which makes her perfect for this job. This won't actually free up any of my time -- Come on, like I regularly cleaned? Get real. -- but it will mean that basic household cleaning tasks will be taken care of. Before they become our own personal Augean Stables requiring an entire weekend to get under control.

Step two: Start the house renovation project. Even if we have to eat mac and cheese for a year, we will launch this project which has been in the planning stage since we bought our house five years ago. We need more room. Everything that once resided in the rooms the boys are using is currently in boxes. Two rooms worth stuff in boxes: boxes that are now in my bedroom, in the attic, in the basement, in the dining room... you get the picture. It's making me crazy not to be able to find anything or put anything away. (Well, okay... crazier.) In the classic "things are always darkest before dawn" scenario, this will raise the level of chaos before lowering it, which is one reason why we've hesitated. But the time has come.

There will be more steps in the "getting my shit together" project as it unfolds, no doubt, but so far I'm being cautiously optimistic that I can actually do it. Right?

It gets even better. And weirder. Or something.

2009-08-20T22:18:00.005-04:00

The Hubster gave me Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog on DVD for my birthday at the beginning of the month. Although I'd watched it a number of times on Hulu, and had even downloaded the soundtrack from Amazon, Monkeyboy had never seen it or heard it. The day I got the DVD, though, I opened it right away and we all watched it. Quite the family entertainment, no?

Monkeyboy is obsessed.

He's watched the DVD repeatedly, which has led to some very interesting discussions about the moral complexities of the Dr. Horrible story. (As most preschoolers probably would, he missed the point and tends to root for Captain Hammer.) The soundtrack is almost the only thing he wants to listen to in the car. He's asked me to clarify lyrics for him when he can't understand them and has even asked me to explain the meaning of some for him: "What's it mean, 'catch your breath'?"

Once he memorized the lyrics and could sing all of the songs, he started ordering me to "sing the girl parts." Which I do with gusto because, hey, there's nothing weird about harmonizing with your toddler. Even when it's a song from a Sci Fi musical about an evil scientist trying to rule the world/get the girl. Right?

Skip ahead to 1:45 (if you're not interested in watching the whole thing) to see the best part of the duet, where each person sings different lyrics at the same time (is there a musical term for that technique?). Now, imagine me doing it with my three-year-old son -- sternly directed by him, I might add -- in the car as we drive to daycare. The first time the Hubster heard us do it, he gaped open-mouthed at us.

Where my sick sense of humor, eclectic taste in music and poor judgement collide

2009-08-16T14:00:00.000-04:00

I love music. Before I had children, I regularly went to hear live music and I still go when I can fit it in. I'm obsessed with my iPod. Making iPod playlists has replaced my old-school obsession for making mix CDs (which replaced my older-school obsession with making mix tapes). This summer, I got Monk a pair of children's headphones so he can listen to his own playlists (of songs he's chosen himself) on my iPod. The Hubster and I are always singing around the house, and to the kids, especially if a lyric fits the occasion. The other day found me singing to Goose, "Mama said there'll be days like this. There'll be days like this, my mama said. (Mama said, Mama said.)"

When Monk hears a song he likes, he always asks, "What's it called?" and when it ends, he asks to hear it again. (Often again and again and...) Once, when he was about two years old, Monk asked Hub that very question about a Tool song (Disclaimer, re: the Tool song: I was not in the car at the time) and when told the title responded, "I love it! It's noise!"

As you can tell, the Hubster and I rarely censor our music choices around our kids. Until recently, they really didn't pay that much attention to the lyrics, so we didn't have to. This summer, however, a serious misstep on my part resulted in my 3 year old singing Salt n' Pepa's "None of your Business," so we're we now giving it some thought. (I'm grateful he didn't understand most of the words and has made up gibberish to substitute for the lyrics to everything except the exclamation "It's none of your bidness!")

However, there are still a wide range of songs which it's appropriate -- or at least, mostly appropriate -- for my kids to hear. Over the last few months, Monkeyboy has made a commitment to memorizing the lyrics of the ones he likes so he can sing along. I admit that with this development, I've started feeding him songs that I want to hear him sing. This has resulted in what are some of the funniest moments with this kid so far.

There isn't much that's more more bizarrely hilarious than a three-year-old belting out, "Laundry day. See you there. Under things. Tumbling." in the grocery store checkout line.

Or when we walk into daycare, singing, "Black coat, white shoes, black hat, Cadillac... the boy's a time bomb!" to his teacher.

Or playing in his sandbox by himself, singing, "Oh, woman, oh, woman, why you treat me so mean? You're the meanest old woman that I ever seen..." under his breath.

Or recently -- and this one probably takes the proverbial cake when it comes to bad judgment on the parents' part -- at the mall, singing, " 'Booze! Booze!' The firemen cried, as they came knocking at the door." (This last one was damn hard to find anywhere on the Interweb. I also liked this rendition.**)

But, all joking aside, if this kid can't get a date in high school? I'll have to take at least part of the blame.

**The really weird thing? The more I watch it, the more I think I might have actually been there in real life for this one. The web is a strange place/six degrees of separation/it's a small word after all/etc. MacIntyre!

One

2009-08-14T14:28:00.002-04:00

So, Jen over at Une Petite Raison tagged me on this meme and I was all Thank gah, I haven't posted anything in a while. (Not because the well has dried up; because I'm too scattered.) I can do this. And the one-word thing? Brilliant. Even in my diminished capacity, I can focus for that long. Then as I started, I was all, Hey...this seems familiar. But that was six months ago. Can you blame me for hardly remembering? I don't even remember my answers. And it looks like some of the questions are different. So I'm doing it anyway. And I'm not tagging anyone. Because that's how I roll these days.

1. Where is your cell phone? Table

2. Your hair? Up

3. Your mother? Home

4. Your father? Work

5. Your favorite food? Chocolate

6. Your dream last night? Work-related

7. Your favorite drink? Pepsi

8. Your dream/goal? Ph.D.

9. What room are you in? Dining

10. Your hobby? What?

11. Your fear? Sharks

12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Here

13. Where were you last night? Home

14. Something that you aren’t? Awake

15. Muffins? Meh.

16. Wish list item? Hot tub

17. Where did you grow up? North

18. Last thing you did? Nap

19. What are you wearing? Comfy

20. Your TV? On

21. Your pets? Asleep

22. Friends? Far

23. Your life? Busy

24. Your mood? Anticipatory

25. Missing someone? Oz

26. Vehicle? Old

27. Something you’re not wearing? Jewelry

28. Your favorite store? Target

29. Your favorite color? Blue

30. When was the last time you laughed? Today

31. Last time you cried? Today

32. Your best friend? Hub

33. One place that I go to over and over? Shopping

34. One person who emails me regularly? Spam

35. Favorite place to eat? Mexican*

I'll be curious to go back to the old post and see how my answers compare.

*I know it's not a "place," but around here there are several real Mexican restaurants, each about the same and each fantastic.

Learn from the Past, Live in the Present, Prepare for the Future

2009-07-10T18:57:00.001-04:00

Some days I long for the time when I no longer get puked on, peed on, pooped on, drooled on or snotted on. That Shangri-La-like future when no one head-butts me by accident or tries to climb me as if I am a human-shaped ladder or piece of playground equipment. The golden days when the only daily hygiene tasks I perform are my own. The moment of zen no one insists on joining me in the bathroom. The tender moment when I no longer get fishhooked while trying to snuggle. The relaxing mealtime when no one, upon deciding they do not, after all, like the food they are eating, removes the partially-masticated mass from their mouth with their fingers and expects me to take it in mine to relieve them of it. Right. Now. When I am not expected to lift or carry anyone on a routine basis. When no one needs me to wipe anything. When I finally feel like my whole life no longer smells like shit, and I mean actual shit, not a metaphor for anything.*

But the day will come when I can't lift or carry them. When no one will let me pick out their clothes. No one will want me to hold them on my lap in the rocking chair and sing to them before bed. At some point not only will they not need me to help them with grooming, they won't ask my permission -- or even my opinion -- before getting a haircut (or tattoo or piercing). So when parenting gets rough, I try to think of the coming days as an incentive to cherish the ones I have now.

My own dad has a philosophy about parenting: that it reflects the relationships in the business sector. When your kids are babies, you're a line worker. You're on the factory floor every day. You're so essential, the place couldn't run without you. If you don't do it, it doesn't get done.

When they get a little older, you're more of a foreman. You provide direct supervision, but they do most of the actual work themselves. You set up the framework or system for what needs done, but your kids take care of it on their own.

Then, as teenagers, you eventually become upper management. Oh, you still call the shots, but if you're good at your job you don't micromanage or concern yourself with minutiae. If you've fulfilled your role well, then they will do the same.

Finally, when your kids are adults, you become a consultant. They only call you in on special projects when they want your expertise. They may listen to your advice, but ultimately the decisions they make and the lives they lead are their own.

There are ways to keep your children dependent on you for longer than necessary, but frankly, that's not the kind of mother, or person, that I am. My sister-in-law picked out the clothes my nephew wore each day until he was well into high school. By contrast, by the time I was in high school, I was doing all my own laundry. (By choice. My single dad, who I lived with, had seriously f-ed up a couple of my things and was forbidden to wash anything of mine after that.) I guess I was just raised that, once you can do for yourself, you do it. That independence is a virtue unto itself.

I'm aware that before I know it, I'll be less of a necessity and more of an accessory in their lives. I know it's true, though right now it's hard to believe, that I won't be mired here in wiping hell, feeling constantly distracted and running behind, forever. So for now, I'm trying to learn to relax and enjoy my time on the floor.

*Actually, it would be a simile, right? Using like or as to compare something?

Couldn't See the Forest For the Trees

2009-07-03T23:17:00.001-04:00

I've mentioned before that we live in the woods. Our house is remote, in the sense that it's difficult to get to (our driveway is half a mile long, steep and unpaved; UPS won't attempt it) and very secluded (we have no curtains or window coverings in any rooms except the kids, and there only because they nap and go to bed before dark half the year; we don't need window coverings because no one can see our house).

But it's also not remote (what the hell is the antonym to "remote?" for Pete's sake?), in the sense that we are minutes from a grocery store, from a nearby highway, from "town," and not even that far from a mall. I drive only half an hour to work. The Hubster, less than ten minutes.

So we have a great balance between rural and suburban (I won't go so far as to say urban, although I can get to urban in under an hour). We're remote enough that people are surprised to find that we don't have a septic tank or a well, but we are just connected enough that we don't have a septic tank or a well.* (In fact, the only public utilities that we are too far removed to get are cable and non-wireless broadband.) I like to call it the best of both worlds.

My point -- and I do have one -- is that this summer we've been trying to carve just a little more civilization out of our woods. We've been in this house just over five years, but haven't been able to really garden, or do any landscaping, or much outside at all, because our acreage has been, from my inexpert calculations, 98.666666666666667% wooded. However, a couple of weeks ago we (finally) paid an excavator to clear about an acre of the woods close to the house, so we are now only -- again, I'm not a math teacher -- about 93.33333333333333% wooded. But that, as Robert Frost said in one of my all-time favorite poems, has made all the difference.

Anyway, my sub-point here is that the past few weeks I've been busy dealing with a) mud, b) dirt, c) sticks, d) branches, e) felled trees, f) other organic debris, and g) yard work (like roto-tilling, grading, raking, seeding, watering, etc, etc.)**, which has resulted in h) lots of beer drinking after dark and i) being too bloody j) busy or k) tired to post.

* We don't have septic or a well because of the crazee people that built our house, spared no expense, and then lived here only two short years before they sold it to us. Maybe someday I'll tell you more about that wackiness.
**And ohsweetmotherofarnold we have about two more years of this to do.

We now return to our regularly scheduled program

2009-06-22T13:26:00.000-04:00

I've needed to get back to a workout routine since, ah, the baby was born, but I've been finding it difficult. It shouldn't be. We have a gym in our house. On our lower floor is what what was probably meant as a bedroom, but one tucked far away from all the other daily living and sleeping spaces in the house. With the full bathroom across the hall, it may have been intended by the builder to be a guest space, but because it's next to the basement, we decided to convert it to our gym. We have a lot of equipment that in our old house was in the unfinished basement, a dark, damp and loveless space that we were looking forward to escaping. So when we moved into this house, we repainted that secluded room, replaced the carpeting with a rubber floor and installed our treadmill, free weights (power rack, lat machine, seated calf raise, dumbbell and plate racks) and the rest of our accessories. Best of all, we hung a television and DVD player on the wall, in clear view of the treadmill.*

Originally, the free weights were mine (go figure) and the treadmill was the Hubster's, but as it's hard to mountain bike during bad weather or with a child, I eventually came around to the idea that running was great cardio. Plus, it gave me the chance to watch DVDs of television series I loved, something I would normally not take the time to sit down and do (although I own quite a few series). A few years ago, after running through the seasons of Northern Exposure**, I started on Firefly. I was a die hard Joss Whedon fan, but for some reason had never caught more than 15 minutes of it while it was on the air (add me to one of the many people to blame for the show's cancellation). As I watched an episode per run, I fell head over heels in love with the series, but after only half of its single season, I stopped running and working out due to my pregnancy quest and fertility meds. So I also stopped watching Firefly as an inducement to get me back to the gym as soon as possible.

Two years later, I'm back.

When I started running again a few weeks ago, I pulled out my old running journal (the ubiquitous steno pad) and noticed that, other than one 30-minute session of walking last summer, it had been a bloody long time since I'd run at all. It had been so long I had to re-learn how to program the treadmill. And there were more obstacles to a successful workout than just that.

Seriously, the Hubster has been running amidst this? I told him that this was further proof that men do not care about aesthetics and without women they would all live in houses with plywood floors, unpainted drywall and lawn furniture. His response? "That's not true. I'm not the one who started using the gym as a storage space for a Christmas tree and all those other decorations and shit."

I couldn't bear maneuvering around that, but I want to be back in my usual sized clothing by summer's end, so I cleaned up. Then I started lifting and running again. Adding insult to injury is that when our treadmill is turned on, it has a question for you.

1 from Negative Lane on Vimeo.

It's been a couple of weeks now. I've finally finished Firefly. I think I like it better than Buffy, Angel, Dr. Horrible or Dollhouse. And I love those a lot. Also, the Hubster bought me Serenity on BluRay as part of my anniversary gift (which I made him watch already, even though he hasn't watched the series). My review? Wow.

It's good to be back. But with Firefly finished, what TV series should I watch next? I can rent just about anything from Netflix, but it's got to be something fast paced and compelling enough to hold my attention. I also like one hour shows best, because I usually run from 40 minutes to an hour, depending on my program that week. Any suggestions?

*Disclaimer: I absolutely do not watch TV when I lift, because lifting requires me to pay more attention to what I'm doing. If I don't stay focused, it's a crappy workout. But while running, focusing on TV helps get me in the zone (as lame as that expression is) and since I can program my treadmill, it does all the thinking for me.
**The greatest television show that ever was. Seriously.

Grammar Police

2009-06-12T22:39:00.002-04:00

I do not pretend to have perfect grammar or even an unusually superior command of the English language. (After all, I am the History Goddess, not the English/Language Arts Goddess). I am guilty of grammatical misdeeds myself, to be certain. Two big ones that came up while I was writing my graduate thesis: I like to start sentences with "But" and "And" and I have a serious comma fetish. (Come on, what sentence couldn't use a few more commas?) Also, I've been know to end a sentence or a thousand with a preposition (pure laziness, I admit). So what follows may be a little hypocritical, but it's my Rant of the Week nonetheless.

I've seen this dozens of places in the past year and I just can't take it any longer. This has entered my top five grammatical pets peeves, rounding out the list that includes what I like to call the "errant apostrophe" (the various misuses of its/it's and your/you're), superfluous quotation marks*, people who use the noun bath as a verb**, and saying "all intensive purposes" instead of "all intents and purposes."

My newest hatin'? "Phased." As in, "I wasn't phased when my mother told me she was really an alien sent to Earth to learn human customs." It's fazed, people. You weren't not phased (carried out systematically), you were not fazed ("disturbed or disconcerted").***

F.A.Z.E.D.

Thank you.

Free Tip of the Day: People who write should, first and foremost, read. It's the single best way to improve your grammar and vocabulary. Read. A lot. Read anything, but, please, not just blogs. Read books and published things that have been edited.

*Quotation marks do not signify emphasis, people. Underline, bold and italics serve those purposes. There are a variety of correct uses, but none apply to being used on the word "sale" on an advertisement for your store. (However, they are correct when used on the word "sale" in this sentence and the previous one, as I am referring to the word itself. )
**The verb form is bathe.
***Disclaimer: The grammar in this sentence? Not sure.

Food for Thought

2009-06-10T17:32:00.002-04:00

From Pundit Kitchen.

School's Out

2009-06-02T13:32:00.002-04:00

It's the first day of summer break, the start of eleven weeks off from school. Since teachers sometimes get grief about having summers "off," I thought I'd make a list of all the things I have to accomplish in the next eleven weeks:

Medical Appointments:

Doctor's appointment for me to get back on my usual prescriptions (asthma, allergies, etc) that I stop while pregnant/breastfeeding
Goose's one year check-up
Dentist appointment for me
Dentist appointment for Monk (first time)
Eye doctor for me: I need new glasses and contacts (last ones are pre-Monk in age)
Find a new allergy doctor for me, since my last one moved his practice (to the beach!) just as I got pregnant with Monk
Possibly take the kids to the allergy doctor, too, since I'm seeing some signs of allergies
Vet appointments for all the critters at my house (five)

Other Appointments:

Have house appraised as part of refinancing our mortgage
Make arrangements for the satellite TV guy to come; we need some upgrades on equipment, including another DVR (one for the master bedroom; the living room one is filled with every Jack's Big Music Show episode, as well as a smattering of just about every other worthwhile children's TV shows)
Find an exterminator. (Live in the woods and you get bugs, people. Lots and lots of bugs. Bugs of all kinds, some merely creepy but others that can do actual damage to your property.)
Have excavators come to give estimates on clearing and leveling some of the woods next to the house, so we can build a shed/outbuilding of some kind and also a playset for the kids

Trips:

No, I'm not going to BlogHer this year. Bah.
I do have a conference in Washington, D.C. for history teachers, though. That should be fun in my "talk nerdy to me" way.
We are taking a vacation this year, yay! Friends of ours (who we often do weekends away with) asked us to go to the beach with their family for a week.
We're also planning on starting to do some camping again, including hosting a kids' campout for all our friends in our own woods.

Miscellaneous activities that I don't have time or energy for during the school year:

Work out/run/bike. (Still need to lose 11 pregnancy pounds.)
Gymnastics classes for Monk. He took some last fall which he loved, but even making it there once a week almost proved to much for me at the time, baby and all.
Photography class
Photoshop class or seminar, possibly
Post-production work on about 3,000 photos I've taken since Christmas
Yard work: vegetable garden, general landscaping, clearing brush, cutting grass, ugh...
House cleaning: The whole house, basement to attic
Organizing: The whole house, basement to attic
Take sixty bagillion garbage bags and boxes of stuff to goodwill
Visit or have lunch with friends I never get to see
Shop for clothes; everything I own is either a) too big, b) too small, c) too out of fashion, or d) threadbare from not falling into category a, b or c and being overused. (I've hardly bought anything in the past four years other than maternity clothes)
Car maintenance, repair & cleaning (the Cheerios alone in my car would make a man weep)
Take just about everything to the dry cleaners, in stages so it doesn't bankrupt me
Shop for school stuff I need for next year
Plan lessons for next school year

In between all this, I will spend a lot of time with my kids. They still go to daycare two days a week so that I can accomplish all that stuff, but also for socialization and swimming lessons.

Teachers don't get vacation days to take throughout the school year. Other than summer, we can't take days off during the week (other than sick days and three personal days for the whole year that we have to save for funerals or other emergencies). That means everything else that people in the private sector easily take a few hours or a half day to accomplish, we save up to do in the summer. I'm already booked nearly solid between tomorrow (first doctor's appointment) and the first day of school in mid-August.

Now THIS is poetic:

2009-05-29T14:54:00.001-04:00

Getting my period on my son's first birthday. Surprise! Gah.

Happy Birthday, Goose!

2009-05-29T10:55:00.001-04:00

This morning, during Goose's now-only-once-a-day morning nursing session, he bit me. Hard. Twice. It's almost as if he knows that tomorrow, the milk bar closes for good. Poetic, no?

A year later and I still haven't written his birth story. I do intend to write it, it's just that I have no bloody idea what happened to my notes. The detailed notes we made sure to take so I wouldn't have to try to remember all the tiny details. So I didn't try to remember all the tiny details. And I don't remember all the tiny details. I know the notes are somewhere in the house, but when we packed stuff for storage and moved other things around in the creation of Goose's nursery, the steno pad they were on got packed away. It would be easy to find if steno pads weren't my medium of choice for every list and note I write. So, somewhere among the 27,000 partially used steno pads in my house, are Goose's birth notes. I am just. that. organized.

In lieu of an exciting, but woefully overdue, birth story or really any other relevant update, I'll just post a couple of photos -- you know: blog baby bling -- I took last week of the boys in the woods around our house.

(Cherish the pics of my kids as the rare things they are, 'cause you never know when they might disappear!)

Scenes from a Memorial Day Weekend

2009-05-26T15:19:00.001-04:00

Saturday morning I found myself at the grocery store with both kids in tow. We had already made a stop at Target, since I had errands that could not be put off any further. I was not looking forward to even the small amount of grocery shopping I needed to do, but we were going to a picnic later that day and I had to pick up the ingredients for the dishes I was taking. The picnic had kind of snuck up on me, because we’ve only been going to the same picnic on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend for the last five years. So, you know, it was kind of a surprise. You can totally see how I was unprepared, right?

Apparently my local grocery store thought, hey, it’s the Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend… nobody is going to be grocery shopping, because they had about two registers open. While I waited in line for what seemed like the amount of time it would take me to gestate and birth a third child, I juggled my increasingly unhappy 11¾ month old (hey… it’s not his birthday yet), trying to keep him from yelling his displeasure at not being allowed to demonstrate his new, and as yet unsteady, walking skills. I was please that Monk continued to remain cooperative. He’d been a peach at Target and just as helpful at the grocery store, so I had allowed him to pick out a treat. He chose a cookie. The last cookie with sprinkles that the bakery had left. I bet some of you can sense the foreshadowing here, no?

After checking out, safely shepherding a cart and two small children through the busy parking lot, wrestling the kids and the groceries into the hot car, I rifled through the bags looking for the cookie. No cookie. I checked all four bags again. Nope. A desperate, praying, third time still yielded no cookie.

Fuuuuuuck. Meeeeeeeee.

There was no way I could get out of going back into the store. From the moment we'd reached the car, Monk had been asking for his cookie. To try to convince him to pass on it would only convince him that I was seriously full of shit when it came to the promises I made.

Back at the register, I asked the cashier and bagger for the cookie which had apparently not made it into my bags. (Since I'd purchase about twenty items that had been placed in four bags, I can totally see how it got lost.) They both swore that they had bagged it, even after my reassurances that I had checked the bags three times. I’m sure my sweaty, harried demeanor and two whining children convinced them I was reliable. (The entire time, Monk kept asking, “Where’s my cookie with sprinkles please?” It was both as comical and as poignant as to seem staged.)

“I checked the bags three times already, but I will go out and check again just to satisfy you. But to let you know, when there’s no cookie there, which I’m sure there’s not, I’ll be back. Because I promised him that cookie.”

Back at the car, again, I went through every bag. No. Fucking. Cookie. Sweatier and angrier than before, I emptied the four bags and carried them back into the store. The cashier and bagger at the aisle where I’d checked out had cowardly abandoned their post!

At the customer service desk, I apologized in advance to the manager for what I expected would be my attitude, then relayed the story and, one at a time, laid my empty bags on the counter. “No cookie.” I smiled, a false and angry smile.

Then I said, “I’m going to go back to the bakery and have them give him another cookie. Not one with sprinkles, because it was the last one. Then I’m going to leave. Thank you.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Later that day as the whole family drive to the picnic, I started to tell the Hub about a separate issue at the register. I’d already told him about the cookie incident.

“So the cashier, the same one that fucked us on the c-o-o-k-i-e?” I began.

“I like how you said ‘fuck’ but spelled ‘cookie’ in that sentence,” he said.

"Hey, which word would you expect the 3-year-old in the backseat to notice? I think I know pretty well which words are apt to cause a mom the most grief!"

* * * * * * * * * *

On the drive home from the picnic, Monk began to tell us a story about playing with the other kids that day.

“Hey, Mommy, you know those fucking kids at the party?”

Work Ethic

2009-05-18T21:16:00.001-04:00

The past several months have seen Monk's imagination take off. Every day is an adventure of caves to creep through, animals to rescue (Thanks, Diego and Wonder Pets), treasures to guard, and various other exploits. Recently he's also been assuming alter egos. Two of his favorites: Rocky (apparently a Rescue Hero, a video he saw at school) and Spiderman.

Tonight he came up to the Hub and I while we both were on our laptops, asking for one of us to play a video game so he could watch (don't ask... it's one of his truly weird obsessions).

"No problem, Spiderman," the Hub told him.

"My name's not Spiderman," Monk said. "It's Monkeyboy. I'm not Spiderman after dark."

"Maybe he doesn't want to risk having to go fight any crimes after dark." I speculated.

"Yeah, I'm not Spiderman when it's dark outside. It changed me back into Monkeyboy."

"Dude, nobody likes being called out for overtime," the Hubster commiserated.

Harvey Milk Day

2009-05-15T15:13:00.001-04:00

Quick flyby to ask, if you're so inclined, for you to add your name to a petition proposing legislation to make May 22 Harvey Milk Day in the state of California. Follow the linky below this quote from the Equality California website:

Last year Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill, stating that Harvey Milk was only a person of local significance.

Sign the petition to tell the governor that Harvey Milk is a figure of national importance. That is all...

Yet another reason why I will never win "Mother of the Year"

2009-05-14T19:09:00.002-04:00

Slacker mom? That's me.

I've been seeking more foods that Goose can feed himself, yet which won't choke him (since he still only has two teeth at nearly a year old). It's been a challenge, partly because he seems to really dislike textures. The other day I fed him some of Monk's mac and cheese and he gobbled it down. However, standard Easy Mac noodles are too slim and slippery for his little mitts to get a hold. Then I remembered something, from my early days of motherhood and blog reading.

That's how I found myself searching for Julie's "recipe" for lunchblock.

Oh, yes. I actually googled Charlie "lunch block"* to see just exactly how she used to make lunch block for Charlie. Because, you know, I probably couldn't have figured that out for myself if I thought hard enough.

Although now that I think about it, which is worse: that I looked up a tutorial on how to mold and slice pasta and cheese, or that Julie wrote one?**

*I'm sure if Julie checks her stats she'll have a sincere WTF?! moment when she sees that search.
**Nope, still me.

Baseball Season

2009-05-12T15:06:00.001-04:00

Me: Little known fact: The guy who wrote "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" penned it 34 years before he ever went to one.

Hubster: That must be why he was looking for someone to take him out to the ball game.

Me: Makes sense.

Mousecapades

2009-05-08T11:35:00.001-04:00

You live in the center of the woods (fifteen acres of which are ours alone) and you get your fair share of wildlife intruding on daily life. Yes, it's a regular wildlife a-go-go around here.

A couple of dozen turkeys regularly roost in two or three places on our property very near the house, scratching and gobbling when I turn on my car in the early morning. A possum spent part of a summer eating the cat food from the bowl on our porch, until I caught him and put a stop to it (more out of concern for the welfare of our cats than any maliciousness toward him). The deer that pass through have long since learned that, although our dog is large, territorial, and not shy about harassing them, she's very effectively contained within a large fence (hidden within the trees and bushes though it may be) and they will walk right along the fence line flaunting their trespass. Every summer, Toad (yes, I like to pretend it's the same one every year) moves into the area around the terracotta pots I plant flowers in on my porch. Groundhogs have set up shop in one of the drainage ditches along our unpaved, hilly, half-mile driveway (but haven't made enough of a nuisance of themselves to have their death warrant signed. Yet.). I've often stopped on this same driveway in the pouring rain to rescue box turtles sitting in the middle of our tire tracks. Once I even dragged an injured snapping turtle to safety by his tail while he hissed at me for my efforts. Among all the various wild birds and songbirds, we have a couple -- and by couple I mean a mated pair -- of cardinals that daily visit the feeders by my bedroom door. There's also a Pileated Woodpecker -- you know, a large one of the Woody Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha variety -- that calls our woods home. And the bugs? Due to my phobia of spiders, I won't go into details on the bugs. Suffice it to say, yikes! (And yuck!)

But spring and fall are for the mice.

During these seasons, late in the night (or early in the morning, depending on whether you're a the-glass-is-half-full or a the-glass-is-half-empty kind of person), it's common to hear the delicate thunder of four sets of cat paws (that's sixteen paws, for those of you keeping track on your scorecards at home), chasing an unfortunate mouse back and forth across our hardwood floors. If it keeps up for very long -- very long in this case being defined as more than about 90 seconds -- the Hubster and I will get up (hell, we're already both awake at this point anyway) and I'll aid him in rousting the cats to behind a closed door and then catching the mouse in a large Glad-ware container we like to call "the Mousecatcher." The unfortunate mouse will then be set free in the woods. (The Hubster is convinced that every mouse thus saved turns tail and returns immediately to our home.) The cats also, during the Mousecapades, often leave gifts for us, usually somewhere we can step on it in our bare feet in the dark pre-dawn hours of a bathroom visit. Those are the truly unfortunate mice.

Recently, our dog has been spending all her time in the house, instead of patrolling our yard or watching the world from our back deck as she previously chose to do. She's 12, which in Giant Schnauzer years is like 90-something, and she's developed some fairly debilitating health problems. Although she's always been alpha of our animal pack (even over our males; she's tough), she's the only dog left so her duties are reduced. In the past she's been death incarnate for any wild creature that strayed within the bounds of our fence: rabbits, groundhogs, tiny moles. I once saw her snatch a bird from the air with her jaws when it flew too close to the ground. Now, however, she is death to no one. Well, there was this one incident recently where she yanked one of our cats back through a cat door like a scene from Jaws, but it didn't result in death, merely a really pissed off cat. In fact, the cats have come to despise her so much they spend all their time outside or lounging in the warm laundry room which is off limits to the dog.

Which brings me to my current point.

During spring cleaning, I excavated closets, moving the boys' stuff around, putting away out-sizes and bringing in the new. Closet cleaning always results in a few surprises, especially in the rediscovery of forgotten items. This spring, however, I got the biggest surprise to date. Our shoes and boots, the ones we use rarely or only seasonally, were filled with dog food, undoubtedly the pilfered stash of some of our unseen rodent housemates.

It might be time to move the cats back in.

Swine Flu, in historical context

2009-05-04T15:12:00.001-04:00

We now interrupt my scheduled post to bring you this little history lesson, because, hell, it's been too damn long since I've done that, hasn't it?

Swine Flu.* To freak out or not to freak out, that is the question. Mashable reports that there are 10,000 tweets an hour with the #swineflu hashtag. Let's cut through the crap. (Let's also remember that I'm a History Goddess, not a Science one. But I'll do my best.)

Why are some people scared and others dismissive of Swine Flu? No one seems certain whether it's a health threat worth the hype. Pandemic? Maybe. Probably. But remember, the term pandemic refers only to the spread of the disease, not to the deadliness.

To my understanding, the main issues are 1) that no one is immune to Swine Flu (no one has been vaccinated and no one has acquired immunity) and 2) it can be spread from person to person. The New York Times reports:

In the United States, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the outbreak had caused such concern because officials had never seen this particular strain of the flu passing among humans.
“There is no background immunity in the population, and it is spreading from human to human — all of which has the potential for a pandemic,” Dr. Fauci said.

In the regular old Flu that people catch every winter the virus evolves. It shifts antigens every year. (Hey, that much I remember from reading The Stand.) That's why we can't develop just one vaccine and be done with it. The Flu usually mutates in birds (often chickens) and spreads to humans, who then spread it to each other. It's transmissible between animals and people and is transmissible from person to person. The Avian Flu that was so feared a few years ago mutated in birds and spread to humans, but could not be spread from human to human. Deadly, yes. But as a pandemic? A bust.

According to the CDC, the FDA, and Wikipedia (who, frankly, don't really agree with each other on a lot of things), in the United States each season nearly 150 million people get vaccinated against the regular ol' Flu. The vaccine has a 57-77% efficacy rate, depending on age, health, the particular strain or strains that emerge that season (whether the vaccine accurately targets it) and the fact that it takes about two weeks for the vaccine to take effect, so it is possible to get vaccinated and still catch the Flu during that period. Each season anywhere from 5 - 20% of the population contract the flu; more than 200,000 people are hospitalized for complications from the flu and 36,000 die.

Historically, the pandemics that made the history books are the ones that were the deadliest. Possibly the most famous pandemic of all was the Black Plague in the mid 1300s. I was going to go into a big lesson about it, but instead I'll just say neither transmission nor treatment was understood at the time. Today, we treat it with antibiotics and no longer do we suffer its 30 - 50% death rate. (But it's still out there.)

The much-feared "Sweating Sickness" of late 15th/early 16th century England is believed to have possibly been a strain of the Flu. Starting as a fever and body aches, it moved to the lungs and often caused death in short course. If it hadn't struck in 1502 (in April to be exact), Henry VII's son Arthur would have been King of England, Arthur's good looking younger brother Harry would have been merely a lovable roguish player and the world would have been denied a visually-wonderful, but historically-bastardized, sexed-up Showtime series. Among other things.**

Of course, the "Spanish Flu" pandemic of 1918 is much discussed these days. It was also a variant of the H1N1 strain. No one really agrees as to how deadly it was, but it's believed it infected about 30% of the world's population. Depending on your source, probably less than 6% of those infected died; about 2% of the world, I think. God, I suck at math. And the seven thousand differing accounts of the deadliness of this disease don't help. What was significant about the disease was not only that it was widespread, but that it was particularly deadly. If you're a history buff at all, it's worth doing some local history research about the 1918 Flu. Since diseases don't spread evenly across the planet and do not wreak their devastation levelly, many communities were disproportionally ravaged by this illness and never recovered.

One last historical thought: Because they had no acquired or genetic immunity, Native Americans who contracted Old World diseases during Post-Columbian contact suffered a 90% fatality rate. Of course, they didn't have penicillin, either. Or vaccines. Or running water, for that matter.

Today? We're both lucky and cursed. We have antivirals. We have knowledge. (And as we know, "knowledge is power.") We have running water and skilled health care providers. But we also have the ability to circumnavigate the globe in 24 hours. Our technology is a mixed blessing. It's easier to spread diseases, but it can be easier to cure them, too.

What's the upshot of all this? Honestly, I don't know for sure. Historical experience isn't always the fortune cookie we'd like it to be. (Oh, wow... did I just say that?) This Flu, although it is spreading, doesn't seem to stand out as unusually deadly, now that we know what we're dealing with and are reacting appropriately. If irrationally.***

When the first case of H1N1 was finally, just today, announced in my state, the reaction was along the lines of "Well, if this disease has finally had the guts to cross state borders, then I guess we'd better do something about it here, too. En garde!" Like it's coming for us. With premeditated, evil intent. Mwah-ha-ha. But consider this: One reason the 1918 Flu was so deadly was because, after the initial outbreak in the spring, it returned in the fall after having mutated in response to increased human antibodies, seemingly with a vengeance and even more deadly. Mwah-ha-ha, indeed.

*Okay. Fine. H1N1. (Whatever, spin doctors.)
**Like the English Reformation being delayed by several decades, if not longer. Among other, other things.
***During the Black Death, Europeans killed cats who were mistakenly thought to be spreading the disease. But nothing like that would happen today, right?

Thank you, Stars

2009-04-29T15:35:00.001-04:00

I don't generally have good luck. Which is not to say I have bad luck, either. I'm sort of neutral in the luck department. The last thing I can remember winning was a consolation bicycle pump when in fourth grade I entered the local bike shop's contest for a trip to Disneyworld. And when people at work get a pot together for PowerBall tickets, I always pitch in. Not because I hope we win, but to make sure they don't. This isn't as as mean as it sounds. I got the idea from my sister-in-law who always does the same thing. She says," I just know the one time I didn't ante up would be the time they would win and then I'd be the only person left at work. That would be my luck. I know I won't win, but by throwing my lot in with them, I'm making sure they don't win either and leave me behind."

But apparently the trick to attracting Lady Luck's attention is for me to ignore her.

Last week while cleaning the closets, I stumbled across a bag of Christmas gifts I brought home from work last December, stuck in a closet and forgot about. Most of my coworkers and I give each other lottery tickets, because who really needs another scented candle or holiday-themed body lotion? When I get them, I make the Hubster scratch off the tickets because there's always some complex formula to determine if you've won anything. Somehow it reeks of math to me, and we all know how I hate math. In the bag of neglected Christmas booty, I found a stack of scratch-off tickets and the Hubster sat down at the kitchen table to make quick work of them before throwing them out. (Because, don't we always end up throwing them out? We never win anything.) After a minute, though, he called me over and said, "Hey, read these directions. I want to make sure, but I think you just won a hundred bucks."

Which I did!*

As Jimmy Buffett would say, "Gonna thank my lucky stars" even for something small. It's not the material value of the prize as much as it's just plain fun to win. It's the surprise, as much as the prize, that I enjoy.

I figured this was my allotted win for, oh, the century. You know, as in: now we return to our regularly scheduled program of not winning anything. Status quo. Business as usual.

For some reason, I've been incredibly busy the last few weeks, probably because the school year is drawing to a close (and... you know... ItouchthefutureIteach). It's been hard for me to carve out even a few minutes at lunch or in the evening to have any down time. Usually, the best I can manage is a quick click-though of my feed reader before I leave work at the end of the day, just to try to stay up to date with all my friends inside the computer. Commenting, however, I really haven't been able to manage. Therefore I was shocked when I checked in at Uppercase Woman last Friday before leaving work and saw that I had won her Yo Gabba Gabba DVD giveaway. I'd completely forgotten I'd even left a comment on that post. But I did. And I won.

No. Way.

Really?

No... really?! Me?

Get out!

Imagine that.

Huh.

I'm off to buy some PowerBall tickets.

*I'm spending my winnings on some photography equipment to go with the Nikon D90 I got for Christmas. Probably a tripod and remote, since I want to take a photography class this summer. Or toward a zoom lens. Or

History Class: It's not just for 8th graders anymore

2009-04-17T11:45:00.001-04:00

Maybe because I spend all day discussing American History, I've been a little sensitive about the recent "Tea Party" protests in a slightly different way than the rest of Liberal America.* From what I can gather, the protests were organized in response to conservative disapproval of the current administration's attempts to help the sucktastic economy. Their main complaints were focused on the stimulus bill and "out of control government spending." I may not agree with their sentiments, but hey, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. And to paraphrase someone who paraphrased Voltaire, I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it. Where my main beef lies is with the protest co-opting the "Tea Party" title, due to the original event's connection with patriots, liberty and righteous protest, but with complete disregard for the veraciousness (or not) of the association.

"History Lesson! History Lesson!"

It's hard to believe the city started as a trading post... Oh, wait, that's a Jimmy Buffett song that has nothing to do with this.

But back to my point, I fail to see the connection between the current "Tea Party" protests and the historic Boston Tea Party from which the current movement inaccurately derives its name.

The Boston Tea Party of 1773 was a response to the Tea Act, a law passed by Parliament earlier that year. Granted, the Tea Act was a sort of colonial era bailout, meant to give support to the British East India Tea Company which was suffering financial problems. Some of these financial problems had surfaced when the colonies began boycotting British tea after Parliament passed Townshend Acts beginning in 1767. That series of Acts placed duties on a variety of goods imported into the colonies, tea among them. The Townshend Acts were met with protests and boycotts because Parliament was beginning to establish a pattern of levying taxes on the colonies strictly for the purpose of generating revenue and not merely for regulating trade. And all of these Acts and taxes were being passed without actual representation of the colonists in Parliament. (Parliament was operating under the theory that the colonies, if they did not have "actual representation," had "virtual representation" by virtue of being British subjects.)

Although most of the Townshend duties were eventually repealed in response to colonial protests, the tax on tea remained. However, the amount of the tax on tea was so insignificant that it was hardly worth mentioning. It was the fact that a tax existed at all that was the sticking point. British citizens could not be taxed without the consent of their representatives. Where was the colonies' representation? Furthermore, the Tea Act gave the British East India Tea Company a monopoly on the tea trade in colonies (bailout), but made British tea cheaper than smuggled alternatives that the colonists had previously relied on during their boycotts of British tea. However, many colonists refused to be manipulated and continued to boycott British tea**

The issue came to a head with the famous Boston Tea Party, when the city of Boston refused to allow three ships from the British East India Tea Company to unload their cargo of tea. The city tried to force the ships to return to Britain without paying the tea tax; the royal governor of Massachusetts refused to allow the ships to leave (it's believed he wanted to force the issue). On December 16, 1773 (on the eve of the deadline for the first ship to pay its tax), a group of vigilantes boarded the ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. The act sent a message to Americans and British alike about how colonists felt about being told what to do by the British government without being given a voice of their own and the steps to which they were willing to go to resist.

Britain -- King, Parliament and citizens -- were not happy. And contrary to current beliefs, most of America was not supportive.

So let's recap. The colonists' main complaint: What do you think we are, stupid? We know there's still a tax on tea. Stop paying lip service to our protests and stop telling us what to do. It was the growing pains of a teenaged colonies.

But the arching overall theme of the colonial protests of the 1770's was that all of the Parliamentary Acts pressed on the colonies were created by a representative government that was not representative of the colonies. No colony had actual representation in Parliament. This was, as the saying goes, "taxation without representation."

The Yahoo News Article "Anti-Obama 'tea party' protests mark US tax day," reported:

One of the bigger demonstrations took place in Washington near the White House, where about 1,000 people waved placards including "Stop Big Government" and "Taxation is Piracy."
"My money is disappearing," said one protester, Marilyn Henretty 70, a retiree. "We are tired of being taxed without representation."

Excuse me... what?! Last time I checked, every U.S. citizen 18 and older who is not a convicted felon and has lived in the state they intend to vote in for at least 30 days has the Constitutionally protected right to vote.

Oh, wait. Do you mean that you don't feel you have representation because your guy lost? Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.

So for someone to say, "The $787 billion economic stimulus bill President Obama signed in February "was basically shoved down the throat of the American people," like protester T. J. Welsh said on Wednesday ("Nationwide Tea Party Protests Blast Spending," CNN.com), is not just their opinion, it's not factually true. We have this cool system that involves separation of powers as well as checks and balances (Don't worry, I'm not going to give an American Government lecture, too). What does all this mean? Short version: the majority of our elected representatives have to agree on something for it to happen.

Holy shit, people. Get your facts straight. And stop trying to gain respectability and legitimacy by piggybacking on an emotionally charged bit of American legend.

Thus endeth the lesson.

*For the record, I'm irritated by the protests in the same way the rest of Liberal America is, too.

**Hmmm. I wonder if the current "Tea Party" conservatives would continue their protest at financial expense to themselves. Principles over personal gain? Somehow, I hardly think so.

Saddened. And a little spooked.

2009-04-14T11:48:00.001-04:00

I usually maintain radio silence on the weekends. Too much to do with the real people in my life to have time for those that live inside my computer. Yesterday, I logged onto Twitter and discovered that another baby had died.

I know I'd never visited his mother Shana's blog before, although her online name rang a bell (I've probably just seen it on Twitter @'s), so I don't know much about Thalon. What I do know is that he is too young to be gone so soon.

And that the Universe can knock it the fuck off right now.

Have you heard the expression "deaths always come in threes?" I first learned this in a novel I read as a teenager. The title escapes me right now, but the same novel can also be credited for giving me an almost unnaturally high fear of SIDS. So, thanks, novel of unknown title. Glad to have known you. Not.

What is spooky, and a bit terrifying, is that this saying has held true for me in most circumstances. I've developed my own canon for this superstition; the group of the three deceased in question all usually fall within the same category or classification. If a close relative of a distant friend dies, then before too long, two more close relatives of distant friends will die, too. Or the pet of someone with whom I work. Or whatever.

I really hope it doesn't happen this time. Hoping against hope that my stupid, stupid superstition doesn't come true.

My deepest sympathies to Thalon's parents and the Myers family. I am keeping them in my thoughts. Sarah at Whoorl has a PayPal link on her site to donate to Thalon's family. Which I'll be doing. Again. And then hope to never have to do anything similar again.