Perturbation

I am experiencing waves of anxiety, the kind that make me dither over every decision, however small. Everything seems to take such monumental effort, and my will is weak and whiney. I can't even stand to hear myself think.

I want to sink my claws into everyone I love and make sure we all stay safe. There’s too much illness and uncertainty. Someone very dear at my workplace has advanced cancer. Dear Husband has some mysterious digestive ailment and the testing for that is before us. Blood work apparently revealed significant inflammation, and startling words such as “Crohn’s Disease” have been mentioned. More blood work and an endoscopy next week. Meanwhile everything he eats seems to hurt him. And what can I do about it? Damn all.

I myself wish I could just give up eating altogether. I’m taking acid blockers, but I still often feel queasy. And for some reason, despite the fact that I’ve found gluten free bread that pretty much tastes like bread, it disturbs me. I can never finish it. It makes me think of trying to eat mushrooms. I can, sort of, if they are in a stew or over steak, but I can’t shake the knowledge that they are fungus. That’s so gross. Why would I want to eat fungus? And somehow this gluten free bread evokes the same hesitation. It’s ersatz bread. I KNOW what it truly is. I feel like I took the red pill and I can never unknow its true properties.

Firecracker is, well, Firecracker. Everything goes well and then something strange comes out of left field, like her extreme reaction to ant and mosquito bites. I feel like I need to wrap her up just to get to the car. And by extreme, well you should have seen the enormous blisters the ants created. She looked like she had bubonic plague. Tomorrow it’s a trip to the orthodontist. That’s sounds so minor, just the usual stuff kids go through. Except everything the orthodontist says makes my stomach knot. Her palate is too small, so she will have to have an expander, which basically forces the soft bone apart (ye gads, it sounds so awful), but it needs to be done quite soon to avoid an overbite. Her teeth are all over the place. She almost looks like she has two rows, that's how crowded they are. She also has gum hyperplasia (too much gum tissue), probably from years of seizure meds, so the orthodontist tells us she will need periodontal surgery to remove some of the excess tissue. Yep, there's that knot tightening. Firecracker does not deal well with pain and discomfort. She used to, but I think she depleted all her reserves. Now needles provoke temper tantrums and crying jags, and she focuses on every scrape and cut, examining it every few minutes, asking the same questions over and over about why and when and how it will get better.

DramaQueen is, as always, healthy, thank you God, but she has my eyes, poor girl. She has to have a physical soon and the thought of having blood drawn panics her. Seems when I was a kid I was getting shots all the time, and I don't even remember the first time I had blood drawn. It just was what it was, a moment of ouch and over. Somehow DramaQueen is all, well, dramatic about it. 

I have more doctor appointments I need to schedule, the endless rounds of keeping on top of my health issues. I feel like a ticking time bomb. Somewhere a rogue cell is waiting. I feel old. I don’t get enough sleep. I don’t get enough any exercise. Mortality is giving me the beady eye. And all I want to do is lie down.

Zombies and Faeries and Not Enough Candy (for me)

Our neighborhood sucks at Halloween. We never stay at home handing out candy. Not many people come by, and I always worry that the ones who do could be planning a home invasion. The street by our house is spooky, but not playfully seasonally spooky. I would not be surprised to come home one day to find the entire street closed off by police cars. On the surface our area looks fine. I’ve just never felt like scratching the surface.

So we go to other neighborhoods to trick or treat. A mere few blocks away is a neighborhood where people actually know each other. They even have their own Facebook page. DramaQueen’s best friend ArtistChild lives there, so we weaseled our way into the community trick or treat caravan. ArtistChild’s family have lived in the neighborhood for 11 years and seem to know everyone. We’ve lived in our neighborhood for 3 years and know the neighbors to the right and left. The others seem to live in an alternate reality and have figured out how to teleport in and out of their houses, because we never see them. We got election fliers addressed to at least 5 different people who have lived at our address – we are a neighborhood of transients and hermits.

There's nothing like a home-cooked meal

DramaQueen was a zombie housewife this year. We put her hair in curlers and tied a “bloody” bandage around here hair. She wore an apron splattered with more fake blood and carried a skillet with a bloody brain. That brain was a piece of inspired work, I can tell you. At first I planned to use a cauliflower, but I discovered that cauliflower is friggin heavy. So I found some white playdoh and crafted a very nice brain. I cherish these few moments of ingenuity and accomplishment. We covered her face and arms in sickly grey and black makeup and added more blood. She was fabulous. 

FireCracker, on the other hand, will have nothing to do with scary costumes. She was even nervous around her zombie sister. FireCracker was a faery (not a fairy, which is the boring US version). We made use of DramaQueen’s old drama costumes and added some sparkly wings. The wings ended up being larger than Firecracker and were something of a hazard all night, particularly on stairs, where they tended to wonk other kids who were trying to leave.

Not many faeries wear such sporty shoes

ArtistChild went as a Goth, wearing a costume that looked like something I wore back in college. It’s sad when you can find part of your past for sale at Party City.

In the past we’ve usually gone to these planned neighborhoods with all the houses close together and little handkerchief front lawns. You could cover a lot of candy territory very quickly. This year I hadn’t counted on walking a half acre just to get to the door. It seemed annoyingly inefficient.

As the night wore on the teenagers came out. I know some people are really annoyed by trick or treating teenagers. I don’t see why, as long as they are actually in costume and aren’t being jerks. Some of them girls were a little, ah, robust for their costumes, but they seemed to be having fun.

This year the girls made us swear oaths not to touch their candy without them being present. They think we’re sneaky thieves, which we are. Now we’re grumpy reformed thieves. And this year DramaQueen traded her peanut candies, which I usually can count on getting, with ArtistChild. I had to make do with Almond Joys, which I guess no one wants.

Musing

Through my window I can see across the street to the nondescript office building, which, dull as it is, still reflects the trees in its sleek black windows. In the median of the divided road stand a row of bushes with deep red flowers of some sort. They look brushy and tough – not delicate flowers. There are two trees shading my window, thankfully. Sitting in a cubical next to ceiling to floor glass gives you a good view, but you suffer the fluctuation of temperature. Right now those trees are producing a very pleasant deep green shade. I love shade. The clouds are smeared along the horizon but building up to billowing storm clouds further up in the sky. Despite the traffic I can still hear birdsong.

I watch the cars pass and I wonder about the lives of the people inside. Are they boring or interesting? Do they have fond memories of childhood? Are they obnoxious? How many of them are murderers? You see, I figure some of them have to be murderers. When I lived in New York, I liked to go for walks in the evening, just as people were turning on their lights. Because this was New York, I would usually catch glimpses of bookshelves as I walked past. I found that very comforting. You don’t see that here. Suburbs aren’t comforting in that cool, intellectual way. They offer instead a haven without connection: planned communities, cul-de-sacs, community pools, a common belief in keeping your yard well-groomed and your cars washed. You may or may not know your neighbor, but together you present a united front against the messy, obsolete suburban sprawls of earlier years, now revealing their age.

You might think that I don’t like suburbs from what I just said, but that is not the case. We live in an obsolete sprawl, and I would prefer to live in the more polished neighborhoods with fresh sidewalks and shiny black street lamps, the sort of neighborhood where young women roll out the baby strollers in the evenings and the cars have to drive slowly. DramaQueen envies her best friend, who has a huge, beautifully decorated house with a pool. She would much rather go there than have her friend over to our house. I remember feeling the same way as a girl, once I got a glimpse of some of my classmates’ homes. Ours was pokey and dingy with no redeeming features at all. Where there was carpet, I wanted yards of glossy wood. Where there was scrubby grass I wanted a smooth velvety lawn. I wanted to trade up my parents as well, for some who were more sophisticated and younger.

Dear Husband has been feeling sad lately, as he watches DramaQueen become more independent. He feels the relationship shifting as he’s gently nudged out of the center. I don’t feel this so much. Mom’s remain the go-to person by default. Still, I notice the contrast between her and Firecracker. DramaQueen is growing less inclined for goodbye hugs and kisses, happy to spend time away from home with friends, but very protective of Firecracker when they are somewhere together. Firecracker is still intensely affectionate, uneasy without her family, particularly uneasy when her big sister is away. She remains very much a little girl, eager to curl up on my lap for a cuddle.

I was hoping I might stumble upon some concluding thoughts, but I haven’t the time to ponder further if I ever want to actually post this. Make of it what you will.

Thank You God for Air-conditioning

I haven’t felt much up to blogging, tweeting or hopping onto FB. I’m navigating summer. I’m not a big fan of summer. Well, I am for about a week. Then the full force of a Southern summer begins to hit – sweltering humidity. The air clings to you like Saran Wrap. The burgeoning grass and greenery feel itchy as you walk through them. The trash can ripens. The mosquitoes, ants, flies and unknown flying and crawling entities multiply. The playgrounds sizzle. The pools are crowded. Under no circumstances do I spend any leisure time outdoors in the summer. It’s too miserable.

So this would be a perfect time, you would think, to hop online and poke about. Instead I’ve been downloading free books onto my Sony Reader and watching Roswell Season 3. And of course the girls are free agents in the summer. This weekend Firecracker used her birthday money to purchase Zhou Zhou Pets. These are toy hamsters that whir about their little hamster abodes, chittering to each other in a way I doubt hamsters ever manage. They wheel about the kitchen until they snag in the shag rug in front of the sink, when they begin to sound distressed and I have to rescue them. I thought the cats might chase them, but they seem indifferent, or perhaps too lazy. We also purchased a game called Chess without Stress, which I can tell you really overstates its claims. Firecracker and I began snarling at each other and never did finish a game. I was reminded of why I’ve always avoided chess – I can’t remember the rules from one minute to the next, and strategy bores me. Whatever part of the brain chess is supposed to activate donned flip-flops and a Hawaiian shirt and kicked back with a martini years ago.


Go ahead, click above to satisfy your curiosity about this little critters.

Dear Husband is annoyed that I never mention him on here. I’m not sure why. He is a continual source of entertainment. His recent transformation to Emergent still has me rather bemused. I suppose I’m wondering if this is a temporary stop on the line to who knows where, or perhaps back to the original station. He has also developed a great affection for Glee, although that isn’t so unexpected. He has always like the quirky. Though he still doesn’t like Torchwood and refuses to even think about Dr. Who. Still, he’s a good man.

Summer and Broken Bells

Summer stretches before me straight and flat as a North Dakota highway. I feel pretty much like jumping in the backseat and taking a snooze until the scenery improves. I’ve always had a problem with summer. While the other kids were exuberant about free days of swimming and playing, I was faced with the enforced isolation of Bleak House. Now the countdown to summer stirs vestigial anxiety.

This summer I put the girls in a summer camp at an indoor rock climbing facility. Yesterday DramaQueen showed me how she can belay Firecracker, while Firecracker scooted up the wall like a little monkey. I imagine myself clinging forlornly while someone tries to talk me down. A number of dogs hang about, some of them as large as ponies, I swear. DramaQueen tells me they are assistive dogs trained to help climbers in distress. Firecracker loves them. I stooped to pet one of them and Abby grinned up at me, “He smells like dog.”

I used my birthday money to buy a digital reader. Any purchase over $100 makes me nervous. What if something better comes along? What if I didn’t do enough research? I finally settled on a Sony Daily Edition, but of course I’m still looking it over anxiously. There’s a bit of glare – will that bother me? B&N has better free books – would the Nook be better? But I don’t like the Nook’s interface. Still, you can switch fonts on a Nook. And the Kindle, well, I can’t check out books from the library on a Kindle. And on it goes. Meanwhile I’ve found the places to download books in the public domain, and that makes me very happy. Some of them are out of print and too eccentric to be on a library shelf in our little suburb. And then I found a writer named Cory Doctorow, who releases digital editions of his books for free on the same day as the print editions. I have not yet read any of his works, but I found that he has a daughter named Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow. Show off.

Now, for some music. One of my current favorite songs:

Aw crap, it's summer again

This time every year I start to obsess about where my girls will go to summer camp. I like our daycare. They’re organized and love what they do. But with daycare, let’s face it, after a few years your kids have been to Super Expensive Theme Park, the Mosquito Nature Preserve, Land of Bouncy Pounce, and World of Ubiquitous Soft Drink enough times to run the tours themselves.

Also, DramaQueen is going to absolutely die, I tell you, if forced to remain there all summer.

The summer camps have been promoting themselves for several months now. Fliers come home from school. The local parent mags publish summer camp editions. There are summer camp expos at the local malls. You get the impression that there are endless choices. Yum yum yum. Language camps and art camps and circus camps. You could create a camp sampler – a week of clay sculpture here, a week of soccer there. This could be the most enriching summer of your child’s life!

And then the winnowing begins. The cool art camp is 80 miles away in a section of town you’ve never even heard of. The soccer camp runs from 10 am to 3 pm. The gymnastics camp SAYS it has before and after care – if you work from 9 am to 5 pm and your office is 10 minutes from the camp site (BTW, no one in this state works 9-5 because your lunch hour is unpaid). The cool performing arts camp is $460 a week. The reasonably priced funky-sounding camp is…definitely funky, and not in a good way. The drama camp starts at age 9, so Firecracker would have to go to a different location and, on yeah, it doesn’t have before or after care EITHER. (I’m really ticked off about the lack of before and after care options. I suppose that’s why most people end up at daycares, and why if you go to the Aquarium on a weekday you’ll find yourself among 32 field trip groups, each with their own brightly colored t-shirts.)

I’m now down to two options:

Option A. A small, family-owned, sports facility offering a smattering of gymnastics, cheerleading, hip-hop, martial arts and swimming. Relatively close but in the opposite direction from my work. Refreshingly minimalist when it comes to forms and requirements. No obvious whack jobs on the premises.

Option B. The Y. Different specialty camps every week as well as equestrienne and swim camps. Very reasonable, even for non-members. Not too far but in the worst possible location as far as traffic flow. Not entirely sure I will be able to exit the parking lot during rush hour. Suspect commute could be longer than anticipated via Google Maps. Weirdly complicated lunch/snack purchase program. There seem to be three or four different configurations for lunch, lunch + snack, snacks + drink, smoothie Thursday, pizza Friday, all of which has to be nailed down and paid for in cash on the Monday of camp week. Yeah, right. The base level is pack you kid a lunch, 20 oz of water and THREE snacks. My kids will starve, probably.

DramaQueen is vehemently opposed to any sort of martial arts participation. I don’t know why. She wants Option B just to spite me for even considering Option A. She also has some odd notion that she wants to go to horse camp. This from the girl who complained about the smelly farm field trip. Firecracker, however, wants option A because she saw the students practicing Tae Kwan Do and she can’t wait to get in there and do some kickin’, which I think would be really cute.

I'll be glad when the decision is made.

We All Lived

Children did actually show up at Firecracker's birthday party. One didn't bring a gift and one brought his older brother, but who am I to complain? The room was full and my child was happy, and, best of all, two very competent women ran the whole thing. They played games and marched them outside and did more games and made periscopes and took photos and read them a story, and yet when it was all over they still looked tidy and in control, much to my amazement. I was exhausted and I didn't do anything more than cut the cake, pass out the snacks and hand over the presents. One little boy threw up. It's not really a party until one child throws up. That's how you know the party's winding down. And Firecracker did not receive any girlie presents, no Barbies that have to be passed along to DramaQueen. Her fave was a NASCAR race car that vrooms away when you press a button. Good stuff. Not that she's completely opposed to gentler activities. She used a gift card to buy a doll carrier to hold her little pink puppy, the one with sunglasses and a heart pillow that says Hot Stuff. I've had to buckle it into the car seat each morning on the way to the daycare and promise that I will take it into work. Shhh. Of course I take it into work.

I can breathe again. For a while.

The path of my life is strewn with cowpats from the devil's own satanic herd.

I wonder if I’m doing okay? Sometimes I’m not sure. Sometimes I’m not sure I’m that in touch with myself. Maybe I could send myself an email. My thoughts have been soggy. When we passed the anniversary marker for Firecracker’s surgery, and when I remember it, my stomach clenches its fist and looks balefully at me. What were you thinking? To put your child through that? And for what? Nothing!

I feel death wafting around me. Perhaps I will die this year. I don’t want to die. I’m really opposed to it. My nephew, my friend. My friend. Is it easier to meet death deliberately instead of waiting for it to snare you? Why did she feel that dying was better than living? I miss her. And what about me? I think of estrogen. Perhaps I should have gone on tomoxifin. Maybe estrogen is the enemy. I’m overweight, so I’m even producing more of it. I’m practically swimming in it. Perhaps it’s wreaking havoc even as I sit here so indecisive. Perhaps I’ll die from indecisiveness. And then there’s Dear Husband. Whenever he has a flair up I wish I could peek into his bladder and make sure all the cells are behaving, no proliferation. Everyone’s health panics me. What is going on that I cannot see? Death and his demons, where are the creeping?

It’s amazing what plastic surgeons can do with reconstruction, it really is. But my new breast will always be a…a… construction. It is better than cancer, but it is still this alien sculpture perching on my chest. How I wish they could have done the TRAM. I’m still sad about that. I’ve never intended to have another child, but the knowledge that I could never nurse one if I did makes me cry. Isn’t that weird?

I’ve come to the conclusion that I am not doing what I was intended to do. The problem is that I have no idea what I was intended to do. You know, that idea that God has a plan with a place for everything and everything in its place. Do I even believe that? What do I believe? How can I believe? When I think of death, it seems the most preposterous suggestion that we would go somewhere after. It pretty much looks like a blank wall: bye bye. But there are these stories, this scripture that says otherwise. I find it hard to swallow.

I find it hard to chew on most things Christian these days. The claims, the glib prayers, the churchy stuff, the inspirational books, the enthusiasm, the dull dull tumbling of words. The bright shininess and maudlin spectacle of it all. The music. Oh god the awful sameness and bouncy bouncy of it. Sometimes it seems that if I jumped in the river it would come up to my ankles, so shallow the water is full of silt.

And then there are these longings that I don’t believe in: to home school my children, or at least to be a SAHM there when school is over, when the bus drops them off. The mom who can visit the class with the cupcakes and a story to read, who may actually someday meet the other mothers whose children my daughters spend more time with than with me. It seems so out of balance, but who am I kidding? My salary is essential and always will be, even after we pay off the cars and the student loan. Besides, I can’t organize my own time. I’m useless at it. How can I organize anyone else’s?

There, I’ve written it out of me for now. Tomorrow Firecracker is having a birthday party. I’m afraid no one will come. That happened one year, or nearly. Only one child showed up. I’ve tried calling, and the moms either don’t speak English or act as if they are reluctant to admit that the live in this universe, the universe with the invitation, my child, their child, and their common classroom.

More on my adventures in dyspepsia later. The title of this post, btw, is from Black Adder, and it gave me the day's first laugh. If you aren't familiar with Black Adder, you need to correct that deficiency right away before it becomes a way of life.

Random before-Christmas observations

1. DramaQueen has a Girl Scout fundraiser on Sunday. They will be set up at B&N taking donations to wrap presents. Scratch that. The girls will be looking sweet and asking people if they want presents wrapped and the moms will be wrapping the presents. I must remember to find her sash.

2. I finally found Dear Huband's present. Not exactly the right thing but very much on the right track. I hope.

3. I need to purchase tissue paper.

4. I must at all costs avoid the Mall of Georgia disaster area by a radius of about 5 miles. Except that of course the B&N is in the Mall.

5. DramaQueen has another Girl Scout event on Monday, visiting a senior center. Must remember sash again.

6. We have to make cookies close enough to Christmas Eve to ensure that there are some left for Santa.

7. I'm not sure I remember where I hid everything.

8. Despite my intense dislike of crowds I have a perverse desire to visit a toy store and a craft store and just sort of wander around.

9. Lindt white chocolate truffles are yummy.

10. Firecracker is finding that the kitties need "talks". She has to take them aside and talk to them about good and bad choices. It seems they are making a lot of bad choices.

September 11

On September 11, 2001, I awoke and did a second pregnancy test, which was positive. This put me in a thoughtful mood. A little excited, a little nervous. I was missing my mom, who had died in June, and was sad she wouldn’t get to see this granddaughter. I had to take DramaQueen (not yet two) to her daycare and get to work. I wasn’t in the mood to turn on NPR, which I always listened to on the drive. When I walked into our daycare provider’s home, I was ready with my usual greeting, which quickly evaporated. She had the TV on and the phone to one ear. While I was trying to make sense of what I was seeing on TV, the second plane hit.

I wasn’t sure what to do. I got in my car, called Dear Husband, turned on the radio and drove to work, crying the whole way. There was supposed to be a very important company meeting, so everyone showed up but nobody worked. We all sat in the one room with a TV, and then they let us go home and rescheduled the meeting.

I never really recovered a sense of joy about being pregnant; it seemed to be tainted from the start, and I wasn’t really surprised that it didn’t go as it should. Looking back, it seems to have ushered in a season of sorrow that stayed on for years. I’m sorry that my first memory of Firecracker is so tied up with a national disaster, and that every subsequent challenge to her health has seemed like an echo.

Conversation on the way home from church

Firecracker, chanting to herself: God made spinach. God made broccoli. God made tomatoes . . .

Me: Oh, does that mean you’re going to eat all that?

Firecracker: Noooo. God didn’t tell me to do that.

RevGals Friday Five: Labor Day

From the RevGals:

Here in the USA we are celebrating the last fling of the good ol' summertime. It is Labor Day weekend, and families are camping, playing in the park, swimming, grilling hotdogs in the backyard, visiting amusement parks and zoos and historical sites and outdoor concerts and whatever else they can find to help them extend summer's sun and play just a little bit longer.

It is supposed to also be a celebration of the working man and woman, the backbone of the American economy, the "salt-of-the-earth neices and nephews of Uncle Sam. With apologies to those in other countries, this is a Friday Five about LABOR. All can play. Put down that hammer, that spoon, that rolling pin, that rake, that pen, that commentary, that lexicon, and let's have some fun.

1. Tell us about the worst job you ever had.
I think canvassing door to door for a political group was probably the worst. It so goes against my introverted nature. I don’t like selling anything, even a cause I believe in, and no one wants a canvasser to show up at their door. On the other hand, I worked with some really cool people. So, perhaps the worst job was the time I worked for a researcher at Emory, where I had to dispose of the radioactive waste. I mean, it was low-level and all that, but still.


2. Tell us about the best job you ever had.
I’m not sure it’s happened yet. There are aspects of every job I’ve had that were positive. I worked at Cambridge University Press for a while—that was a connection with a prestigious history and legacy and knew we were publishing some of the best intellects around. On the other hand, the books were pretty boring. Working for a literary agent was kind of glamorous. I met some authors, even some Russian spies (and it’s pretty cool when you answer the phone and it’s Michael Nesmith on the line). But the husband and wife team I worked with were pretty much insane. Working for a Hispanic press introduced me to a culture I didn’t know much about, and the work atmosphere was very relaxed. The head of the press was completely nuts, and the managing editor was chronically late with everything (which is really not what you want in a managing editor). The computer publishing company sounds dull, but there were some very quirky and interesting people there. The educational publisher. Well, maybe that was my worst job. My boss had no ability to feel compassion. Even when Firecracker was in the hospital for a week she expected me to be at work. She never even asked about her. When I had the shingles, she expected me to be at work. So, I guess she was a . Where I work now is pretty cool. It’s not the work I thought I would do, but they have been extraordinarily understanding of my family emergencies, and despite the fact that some of their beliefs don’t sit well with me, I know that they have warm hearts.

Afterthought: Holy cow, I can't believe I forgot about working in Walmart summer of my senior year of high school. Walmart had just moved in, right across from KMart. It was so awful. I was in the fabric department, and I developed conjunctivitis from the dye. We had to take shifts as greeters--no one was used to that then, so they skittered around us suspiciously. Customers left stuff in an unholy mess, and we had to spend hours in the evening "zoning", putting everything back in order, labels facing out. I once had a freaky old man pray for me in the linens section, and there was a biker in automotives who took a shine to me. Whew. I'd never want to do that again.

3. Tell us what you would do if you could do absolutely anything (employment related) with no financial or other restrictions.
I would like to be a stay-at-home mom. That’s kind of ridiculous because I am horrible at creating a viable structure for myself, much less anyone else, but I have this longing to be there when the girls get off school and not having to rush rush rush in the evening. We can’t afford for me to go to part-time, even. Part of me wants to home school, which is probably even more ridiculous, given my chronic disorganization and inattentiveness (not to mention my distaste for the religious tone of most home school communities), but there it is.

4. Did you get a break from labor this summer? If so, what was it and if not, what are you gonna do about it?
Not exactly. I had almost no vacation time, and we moved. But I did take a Friday and head off with the family to Savannah and Tybee Island. Savannah is becoming a favorite place to visit. I’m not sure why. It’s not as if there’s tons to do there, particularly for kids, but we love the waterfront with its cobbled streets and the old, gracious houses.

5. What will change regarding your work as summer morphs into fall? Are you anticipating or dreading?
Fall is easier for me than Spring, when there’s a major conference to prepare for. The pace is pretty steady now. But, someone just retired, and her jobs are temporarily being spread amongst us. And then there’s the hurricane season. If there’s a major disaster, the work here will increase greatly. We also do a lot of projects for Thanksgiving and Christmas, fun stuff for us as well as community work. It’s pretty jolly, but it means the workday is a bit crunched.

Bonus question: For the gals who are mothers, do you have an interesting story about labor and delivery (LOL)? If you are a guy pal, not a mom, or you choose not to answer the above, is there a song, a book, a play, that says "workplace" to you?

Oh, do I ever have a labor story. Firecracker was determined to leave the womb early. It was so unexpected—DramaQueen had been full-term, healthy as could be. We had to go to the hospital twice. The first time the stupid nurse told me it was Braxton Hicks. The next day all hell broke loose when I got to the hospital. The doctors were in a kerfuffle figuring out what to do. They didn’t have the facilities to care for a baby born so early (26 weeks). Soon I was loaded onto a helicopter for transport to another hospital. Things were getting surreal. To this day the sound of helicopters is a little unnerving. They put off labor for as long as possible to give me various meds, but they couldn’t do what they hoped, which was to put it off for weeks. My room was full of hospital personnel for the delivery. I don’t know how they all fit. They warned me that she probably wouldn’t have enough lung power or energy to cry, but she managed it—feisty right from the start. I got to kiss her and she was whisked away to the NICU and oxygen and a heated bed. This was probably the single most frightening experience of my life.

Firecracker's New Teacher

Thursday I took Firecracker to her school orientation, where she got to meet her teacher. Her teacher has a rather difficult, hyphenated name, Potts-Datema. She told Firecracker that it was okay to call her Ms Potts.

When Dear Husband came home he asked Firecracker if she had met her new teacher. "Yes," she said, "Ms. Teapots!"

Who Let the Worms Out?

Dear Husband got Firecracker some worms this weekend. I had some reservations about this venture, mainly that worms give me the heebie jeebies. I’m all for supporting my kids in their interests, but I know my limits. I think the people at the pet store thought he was nuts. We have them in a little “critter box” that I covered with dark paper and a ventilated paper plate. Obviously that was not all that secure because this morning I found one by the sink and one on the living room floor, being stared at intently by one of our cats. Dear Husband was angry with me for waking him to take care of the matter. He kept yelling from bed that I should use the dustpan to scoop them up. Well, I figure he bought them, so he can deal with them, because I would never under any circumstances have bought a box of worms. I would have found a nice little plush inchworm or something like that, something cuddly to keep Gary the snail company. But the very idea of letting the worms go upsets Firecracker. Why not a fish? I asked. At this point I would be willing to undertake education in keeping an aquarium. Nice fishies. Firecracker’s response? “How about a spider?” Shudder.

Boys and Girls

This weekend Firecracker had a playdate with a little boy from her class. They had a grand time, and Hunter was not too pleased when it was time to go. After he made peace with it, he tried to give Firecracker a kiss. She held him off, saying, "It's against the law!" This pleased Dear Husband very much.

It is odd how parents speak of boyfriends and girlfriends at this age. Would kids even think about it if grownups weren't asking "Is so and so your boyfriend?" I remember chasing a boy around the playground when I was in first grade and giving him a kiss when I caught him. He looked terrified. Where I got the idea to do that I don't know. It would never occur to DramaQueen, now entering third grade, to do anything like that. She has been completely impervious to the girlfriend/boyfriend nonsense that was already percolating in second grade. The little blond haired cheerleader (boy they start training young) already had quite a few adoring boys--isn't it odd how you can already predict the trajectory of certain children? It seems like not fussing about boys ought to be the norm for this age.

I fear a worm farm is in my future

The mourning for Wormy continues. I noticed a plump dead worm on the doorstep a few days back. I have to keep telling myself that no, Wormy did not find himself abandoned, get drowned out by rain, and try to crawl his way bag to his pining mistress. Dear Husband tells me that we are getting her another worm. I've been looking up how to make a worm habitat, and it all gives me the heebie jeebies. I mean, ewwww. But it's either that or go out each night to visit the little patch of ground where he was last seen. Today Firecracker dissolved in tears because her playmate had laughed at her for calling Wormy her friend. "He was mmmyy bbbest friend," and she looked up at me with such a heartbroken expression that I almost went teary myself.

On a lighter note, one of my favorite books, Twilight, has been made into a movie and is set to be released in December. After watching the trailer, though, I have my doubts. You can check it out here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1099212/

I was delighted to find that Cirque du Freak is being filmed, and it has a stellar cast, including Willem Dafoe and John C. Reilly. The series is great fun to read--like old fashioned cliff-hangers.

Oh, it's late and I need sleep.

All creatures great and small, but in this case very small

As we were leaving day camp today, Firecracker stopped to pick up a Styrofoam cup filled with dirt. "Is that a plant?" I asked. She examined the cup, looking for her name. "No, a worm!"

Hmm. I imagined running across a cup of dried up dirt with a dessicated worm several weeks from now. "I think we should let him go--so he can dig into the dirt and enjoy the rain." That's what we did when we got home. We tipped him and the dirt out into the grass behind our apartment, close to a little wooded area.

Later she asked to go back out to look for him. We took our flashlights and gently prodded the little mound of dirt with a twig, but worm had no doubt burrowed into safety (if a bird didn't find him, a possibility I did not mention). Well, not long after that Firecracker began sobbing, "I miss Wormy." I had to take her aside and say a little prayer for Wormy's safety. And again when I tucked her in she said that she missed him so much. I promised we would look again in the morning.

Did I mention that her sister will soon be off to Los Angeles for three weeks?

In which I whine quite a bit

Last night I dreamed I had a beard. That was a very unpleasant dream.

My life is filled with anxieties large and small. I’m so used to it that I think I’ve always told psychologists that I don’t feel particularly anxious, except at times of crisis. But really I am anxious about everything, from getting to work on time to calling the dentist to choosing the new daycare, to worrying about the next health issue the family could face. I’ve also admitted to myself that all the meds I’m taking aren’t making a big enough dent in the depression that drags at me. There are so many things that seem to have eaten up a little bit of me, starting with Firecracker’s premature birth six years ago all the way to my last biopsy last month (benign, thankfully). Instead of feeling that I’ve been through a lot and so I can handle a lot, I feel that one more thing will sap the last of my reserves. Perhaps I’ve never properly processed any of these horrible events. Maybe I just want to wallow in self-pity a while. I found myself crying one night because of losing a breast, something that didn’t particularly bother me at the time (which is probably abnormal, but I was so relieve not to have a raging cancer that a mastectomy sounded positively positive). Now I have this new breast that impresses the doctors but feels utterly alien to me.

Sometimes I tear up thinking of Firecracker’s surgery, feeling guilty that she went through all that and then there was nothing to be done, and it even seemed as if there was no reason to be there in the first place. No seizures and none since. A blessing, yes, but I would rather have felt the blessing firmly in place before they cut into her skull.

We have bought a house. Our apartment is filling up with boxes, and we’ve been dropping off lots of stuff at Goodwill. I don’t do change all that gracefully, more from sluggishness than anything else. So much effort required. Looking for a house was full of disappointments, and I haven’t become particularly excited about this one. It’s smaller than I had hoped for, but it’s in a good school district (or so say the statistics) and it was what we could afford. It has a yard for the girls to play in and it’s still close to my job. And really, you can make something out of almost any house, although that has never been one of my talents.

DramaQueen is flying by herself to Los Angeles to spend three weeks with her grandparents. I’m fretting over this to a ridiculous amount. I will probably have dreams of traffic jams and getting lost on the way to the airport. Firecracker had issues when DramaQueen went to a slumber party, so I’m preparing myself for a steady stream of “When is she coming back?” DramaQueen will miss the move, so she has made me promise that I won’t unpack anything that goes in her room, because she thinks it will be great fun to unpack it herself. I’ve been assigned to purchase a disco ball to hang from her ceiling.

The Endocrinologist Revisited, or Dear Husband's Day from HELL

Friday was quite an adventure for Dear Husband, who had to take Firecracker to the hospital for presurgery assessment and a visit to the dear old endocrinologist. You can read a full report here.

On a positive note, Firecracker's birthday party was yesterday. A dear friend opened her house for the party, and her husband dressed up as a pirate. We had treasure maps for the kids, and they had set up an obstacle course and a bouncy room in the basement. The treasure hunt was kind of chaotic, and one little girl kept disappearing and once tried to insert herself between the couch and the wall. There was one total meltdown when a little girl called a little boy "baby", and the pirate had to comfort him. One child had a peanut allergy, which I only heard about the morning of the party, so the store-bought cake was off limits, and for some reason the ice cream we provided brought tears to her eyes. I also got to meet the little boy that Firecracker has talked about quite a bit "Today Eric was nice to me," "Today Eric was mean to me," "Eric is my friend," "Eric says he's not my friend" (said with sobs), and even "This Friday Eric is going to be mean to me." Already Eric knows how to string a girl along. You can tell he will grow up to be quite a heartbreaker--dark hair, big eyes, charming smile. A good party altogether. The kids seem to really like each other--every time a new arrival appeared at the door there was general hysteria, as if the latest pop star had appeared.

I never wrote about DramaQueen's party. We took 10 girls to see a local production of High School Musical. And survived. I was worried that we might need some entertainment, games or something during the home portion, but 10 8-year-olds need nothing. One wise little girl told me that she knew why Vanessa Hudgens got in trouble, but (whispering in my ear) she wouldn't talk about it.

Between these two parties and Christmas, the play room is about to burst apart. We have almost as much Play-Doh as Toys R Us, and DramaQueen has three Hannah Montana dolls, all slightly different. And the number of WebKinz is rapidly growing, because DramaQueen has saved up quite a bit of cash. Ganz has a good thing going: like beanie babies with their own internet site. DramaQueen frequently checks to see which ones are being retired, and bewails her fate, that she does not have the Pegasus, or the Unicorn, or what have you.

Well, off I go. Next week is going to be stomach churning.

Afterthought: If you are familiar with High School Musical, i.e. if you have girls between the age of 5 and 18, you really must check out this Indian version of All for One.

Cough, Cough, Cough

Cold fingers have been playing along my spine today. Firecracker has caught whatever virus I had and is coughing. Her school nurse even called today, asking to use the nebulizer sooner than indicated. Pneumonia, I worry. Pneumonia, pneumonia, pneumonia. We have spent a lot of time with Firecracker in the hospital with pneumonia. So today I have a dark feeling of dread. Isn’t it odd that I find this more sinister than the upcoming brain surgery? I guess it is because I remember how long she was on oxygen after her birth, and how the nurses gave me steroid shots in the hopes of maturing her lungs before I finally gave birth. They only got to inject 2 of 3. Would that third shot have done the trick? Because she was so premature, she has chronic lung disease. That sounds so ugly: chronic lung disease. I prefer the way the pulmonologist termed it: bronchopulmonary dysplasia. There’s nothing to be done about this chronic lung disease. They can’t remove it the way they can remove a tuber from her brain. She’s stuck with it, on top of worrying about whether the tuberous sclerosis will affect her lungs as she gets older and cause LAM--lymphangioleiomyomatosis--which can only be cured with a lung transplant.

I've spent almost 6 years now worrying about Firecracker. Those 2 months in the NICU after her birth were just the start of an endless journey.