You say potato

Long before Nolan was born, when I was first pregnant with him but before we knew he was Nolan or even a he, I had a dream. I was just at the end of the first trimester and we were starting to feel pretty safe that the pregnancy was going to continue (if there's going to be a miscarriage, it's usually in the first trimester.) So I think my subconscious was finally acknowledging that we were really going to have a baby and be parents; sort of letting myself start to think about the baby as a reality rather than a possibility.

So, the dream. I dreamed that I'd had the baby, and it wasn't a he or a she. It was a Spud. Spud was the baby's name and also what the baby was. Not a boy, not a girl, but a Spud. It didn't seem to be out of the ordinary in any way, it was just another kind of baby. It wasn't a potato or anything, either, it looked like a regular baby, but I knew that it was a Spud. (Let me just say here that I have a long history of rather fucked-up dreams; not fucked-up in a scary way, but more like in a "What the hell are you trying to tell me, subconscious?" kind of way. Other people dream of going to work naked or flying or what have you; I dream of playing soccer with Cyndi Lauper and then riding my bike up a hill and into some telephone wires. Yeah, thanks, subconscious. Let me just look that one up in my dream interpretation book. The only person I know who has more fucked-up dreams than me is Dru.)

Of course I told KB about the dream and we took to calling the baby Spud. It hasn't really continued since Nolan was born and became Nolan, but all during my pregnancy we referred to him as Spud, even once we knew it was a boy. Erica's mother Pat made us a gorgeous baby blanket patchwork quilt that has an embroidered potato dancing in the middle of it under the word "Spud." It's so nice I'm afraid to use it for fear that it will be ruined.

Anyway. Spud's due date according to our OB/GYN was June 5th, 2005, which also happened to be KB's and my first wedding anniversary (we starting "trying" right away after we got married.) I worked all the way up until the end of the school year - graduation at my college was May 14th and all the department heads had to stay for another week after that, so I worked until May 20th. At home the night before the graduation ceremony I fell down the bottom half (maybe six or seven stairs) of the stairway leading up to our second floor. Thankfully, KB was home and I didn't really hurt myself or Spud too badly; just a skinned knee and some bruising on my legs and ass (which you would think would have been well padded). That was the first time I remember thinking, "Okay, I'm ready for this baby to be OUT of me. I can't even friggin' walk anymore!" KB wrapped up a month of working nights on May 27th, and I was so grateful Spud didn't come during that month.

Friday, June 3rd, was the last time I saw my OB. She said all was well, cervix was zipped up tight, and Spud was definitely head-down in my uterus. Her guess was that he was around eight or nine pounds. She knew we wanted to have an entirely natural, un-induced vaginal birth, and she reassured me that it was still possible with that big a baby, although it was "not a slam dunk." I made another appointment for Friday the 10th, at which point we were scheduled to talk about inducing labor. I really, really, didn't want to do that. I sent telepathic vibes to Spud to come before then. (In my heart of hearts I thought he would be born ON the 10th, actually. My older brother, who is the first grandchild in my dad's family, was born on his dad's (our grandfather's) birthday, and I was secretly convinced that my son, the first grandchild, would be born on his grandfather's (my dad's) birthday, which is June 10th. I liked the symmetry of it.)

On Sunday, June 5th, my official due date, I woke up around 8 am (not to give you the impression that I slept much - at the end there I was getting up 3 or 4 times a night to pee*) and went to the bathroom, only to find a little bloody spot in my underwear. I remember my exact thought process, which was this: "Oh. Well. Okay, then." I told KB and together we decided that Something Was Definitely Happening.

*I love how people tell you, when you complain about getting up a zillion times a night to pee while pregnant, that that is Mother Nature's way of preparing you for the lack of sleep a baby brings. That's got to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard - that's like saying you should prepare for a 40 day fast by not eating very much.

I called my mom down in New Jersey. She concurred about the Something. Since I hadn't had any contractions or anything, we didn't exactly know what the Something was, but it was definitely (probably, maybe) Something. We decided I'd just keep her posted.

That entire day, I had a grand total of two contractions. One at 2pm and one around 7:30 that evening. I wasn't even sure they were contractions. They were more like a heavy, uncomfortable, squeezy feeling. I sat on my exercise ball and chatted on IM and had panicky thoughts like, "This is my last day as myself! Pretty soon, I'm somebody else's mom! And then my life is OVER!"

Sunday night and all day Monday, absolutely nothing happened. KB went to work as usual on Monday (he was working in - wait for it - OB ultrasound!). I sat around at home, peed a lot, and took pictures of my giant, bloated feet. I began to think I was terribly, terribly wrong about the Something. Maybe it was Nothing At All. Maybe I had just placed my entire extended family on high alert for no particular reason whatsoever.

I think my mom called 17 times from work during that Monday. Each time I had to tell her that it seemed like nothing was happening, that maybe I was one of those panicky, misguided, late-stage pregnant women who always think they're going into labor when really they've just eaten too much penne arrabiata. She, however, was convinced that I was in early labor. She was going to leave work that night and drive up to Boston, a five hour drive in the best-case scenario, more like eight in the worst case. She was only able to take one week (five workdays, that is) off from work since she'd only just started there, and I was worried that if she drove up for what turned out to be a false alarm, she'd waste all her days off and not get to be here for the birth.

I shouldn't have worried. Mom got in around 1:30 am Monday night/Tuesday morning. I think I had about one contraction per hour after that. When I woke up Tuesday morning (the 7th), I knew it was happening. It was ON. The heavy, uncomfortable squeezy feeling was back with reinforcements, as if to say, "Oh, I'm sorry - you weren't sure you were having contractions? Here you go, how about THIS?!" We started writing them down (I still have the sheet of notepaper with all the contractions listed on it) at 8:20 am on Tuesday. KB went in to work again, since we figured he was working where he'd need to be if things progressed, and my mom could drive me in.

Each contraction was about 30 seconds long, and they were about 20 minutes apart or so. I bounced around on my exercise ball, which is supposed to help open up your pelvis and keep things moving along nicely. I took a shower since I didn't know when I'd have a chance again. I called the hospital at 10 am and told them that my contractions were regular, strong, and each about 30 seconds. They basically said, "That's nice. Call us back when they're 5 minutes apart for at least an hour, or when your water breaks."

So then it was like...doopty-doo. What do you wanna do? I don't know, what do you wanna do? So, like all red-blooded American consumers, we went shopping. My mom said she thought it would take my mind off of the contractions, and we needed to pick up a couple things anyway, so...yeah. I was in labor at K-Mart. We went to this big shopping center near here that has a K-Mart, a Best Buy, a Borders, et cetera. You know those places. We walked around K-Mart with me stopping every 10 minutes or so (they're getting closer together now!) to lean against the cart and wince. It was highly surreal and yet strangely reassuring to be in labor while purchasing Drano and lip gloss. It was like my brain was going, I'm shopping, it's just a normal outing, pay no mind to the intermittent discomfort that signals the biggest change of your life. I also picked up some sugar-free candies to throw in my hospital bag. Very exciting stuff.

By the end of the K-Mart sojurn, my contractions were about seven minutes apart. My mom's next idea was to get some lunch. She told me the story (which she'd told me before but I let it slide because hey, she was about to become a grandmother for the first time) of when she was in labor with me. She invited my grandmother and her cousin over for reuben sandwiches right after her water broke, because she knew after giving birth to my older brother that the hospital won't let you eat after you get there. So, let's see, we've started my baby's birthday with some blue light specials, what's the next typical white trash Americana thing we could introduce him to? How about...lunch at Chili's? Oh yeah!

There's a Chili's in another behemoth shopping center right near the first one, so off we went. As we were seated, around noon-thirty, I started to feel distinctly nervous. We were three miles from home and a half-hour drive from the hospital where I was supposed to give birth. The contractions were getting longer and stronger - still not painful or anything, but distinctly uncomfortable and definitely closer together. My sheet says 12:40, 12:48, 12:57, 1:01, 1:06, 1:11. I really didn't want my water to break in a friggin' Chili's. Mom said we could get the food to go if I wanted, but I figured I could stick it out for a little while. We ordered southwestern egg rolls and asian lettuce cups - two whitebread American takes on ethnic cuisines. (Actually, they tasted pretty good.) I mostly just remember feeling anxious to be home. I wanted to be somewhere safe and familiar, and a leatherette booth at a chain restaurant with Foreigner blaring on the sound system was not cutting it.

So we left Chili's around one-thirty. Mom saw an Office Depot on the other side of the shopping center and wanted to go in to look for some Red Vines. (I had been complaining about the dearth of Red Vines in local stores, and my mom, being my mom, wanted to give me something that I'd been jonesing for.) She remembered that they sometimes sell those big round plastic jugs of Red Vines at office supply stores, so she went in to check it out. I opted to stay in the car. There's one entry on the contractions sheet in my shaky handwriting: 1:36. She came back out and informed me they only had Twizzlers. No joy. (And don't even try to tell me Twizzlers are an acceptable substitute for Red Vines - that is just blasphemy.)

Then, homeward! Yay! Three more contractions - 1:44, 1:50, 1:55. We pulled into the driveway. I hefted my gigantic belly out of the car and waddled up the three stairs to the front door while Mom got the K-Mart bags from the car. As I put my key into the lock, I felt this huge, internal Splorch!-ing sensation and a gush of fluid filled my maxi-pad (thank god I remembered to put one on). I yelled, "My water just broke!" over my shoulder as I ran for the bathroom. When I sat down on the toilet, another huge gush of fluid came out. (I figure I lost any squeamish readers about 12 paragraphs ago, but if the gushing fluid is not for you, you may just want to stop right here.) I got up to flush and grab a clean maxi-pad and I glanced down into the toilet. There was a big blob of bloody mucus floating there - my cervical plug had come out! Gross! And yet, sort of cool and fascinating, the way a scab is fascinating when you pick it off.

I called the hospital and told them my water had broken and answered all their questions (time? amount? color? smell?) and they told us to come on in. Yay! It's happening! Then I called KB and told him we were on our way in. He said he'd meet us at the main entrance to the hospital. Then, let's see...I'm in labor, my water's broken, I've packed my bag, what else do I need? CDs, of course. My poor computer had died in March and I had been trying to figure out a way to make a mix CD to bring into the labor room with me, to help "set the mood" and take my mind off things. Being the procrastinator that I am, I hadn't made the CD yet, so I went down to the basement to pick out a few entire CDs to bring instead. As I'm standing there, staring at our hundreds of CDs and trying to pick the perfect song or songs to be hearing while my new baby son is coming into the world, I realize, "This is stupid. Your water has broken. You're going to have a baby. Go get in the friggin' car, you idiot."

We put a towel down on the passenger seat of my mom's car and put my hospital suitcase in the back. On the drive to the hosptial I called the coordinator for the research study we were enrolled in to tell her I was in labor. There were a few minutes of bad, backed-up traffic when I thought "Oh please no I don't want to have a baby in my mom's PT Cruiser" but it cleared up and then there was just the normal craptastic Boston traffic. I guided my mom through downtown Boston and to the hospital while having contractions and writing them down on our trusty sheet of paper (2:25, 2:31, 2:35, 2:42, 2:46, 2:51, 2:56, 3:01, Jesus Christ, are we there yet?).

We pulled into the turnaround at the front of the hospital and there was KB, in his white doctor coat and scrubs, waiting for me with a wheelchair. I've never been so happy to see him - I knew he would take care of me and not let anything bad happen. (Not that there's really much he could have done had things gone badly, but I just felt calmer the moment I saw him.)

He wheeled me through the lobby and up the elevators to the 14th floor where the maternity ward is. We'd taken the tour during our childbirth preparation class and all, but what I wasn't prepared for was how normally everyone else in the maternity ward and hospital at large was acting. I was at Defcon One, goddammit! I felt like yelling, "I'm having a baby! Everyone! Attention please! Imminent baby! Right here!" And everyone else is like, Ho hum. It's our job. Yes, yes, baby, birth, blah blah blah. No one wanted to share in my specialness, god damn them.

They have a kind of triage room where they check you out to make sure you actually ARE in labor before they admit you, and we were set up in there. The nurses hooked me up to two monitors, one for my contractions and the other for the baby's heartrate. They do an internal exam (That was fun. And by fun I mean awful.) to see how dilated you are and take a sample of the fluid to make sure it's amniotic fluid and not something mundane like pee. The way they do that is to put some of it on a slide, let it dry, and then see if it forms crystals in the shape of ferns. This is called, oddly enough, "ferning." When they took the sample KB asked if they were going to look for "planting," and the nurse said, "You mean ferning?" which made me crack up.

After the exam they said I was 3 cm dilated and 75% effaced, which didn't sound like much to me but I guess is enough to confirm that you're in labor, because they let us stay. This was about 3:30 in the afternoon. My mom, who had returned from parking the car in the garage by this point, said, "Oh, three centimeters honey, that's great!" but she pronounced centimeters as SONT-ih-meters, which made me do a double take. I was like, "Since when do you say it SONT-ih-meters? Have I ever heard you say that word before? I can't remember!" There's a picture she took of KB and I right around this time, and I look really quite happy and excited, which I guess I was. I was so happy that I was safely at the hospital with KB and my mom, and that things were finally happening. I wasn't really in pain yet, just uncomfortable, and I was excited that we were going to see the baby soon.

They gave us ID bracelets and took us into our labor and delivery room. We didn't get a Jacuzzi room, which bummed me out. They try to save the two Jacuzzi rooms for women who are going to try to go drug-free, but I guess they were both taken when we got there. But our room had a shower, which turned out to be my saving grace in the end. The anesthesiologist came by and I signed some legal schmegal form about not suing the shit out of him if he screwed up my epidural, but since I didn't plan on having an epidural anyway, I wasn't concerned about it. I kind of felt about him like I imagine junkies feel about their pushers - simultaneously repulsed and needy as all hell. I wanted him out of the room so he would quit tempting me with something I didn't really want. Or did I?

I'd heard all these horror stories of women who are in labor for 36 hours and crap like that, so I'd packed lots things to do in my little suitcase. I had massage lotion, playing cards, a "focus" picture, the candies to keep my mouth moist, all kinds of stuff. We didn't use any of it. I did one walking lap around the maternity floor holding on to KB and my mom, and then I just wanted to be back in the room, hunkered down. The Pain was beginning, and I was kind of starting to lose it. Each contraction was lasting longer and hurting more, and there was less of a break between them - sometimes only 30 seconds or a minute. They had an exercise ball for me to use, and I tried out various positions to see which hurt the least. I got really tired really fast, and I just wanted to lie down, so I did. The contraction I had while lying on my side was the most painful one yet, so I stood back up.

At this point, my brain kind of took a little vacation. As Carol Burnett famously said, "If you want to know what it feels like to have a baby, take your bottom lip and pull it over your head." There's a certain amount of pain you can handle rationally, and then your mind just kind of goes, "See-ya, wouldn't want to be ya!" You know that Simpsons episode where Homer goes to the Bigger Brothers to get a little brother to show Bart up for getting a Bigger Brother? And when the volunteer dude asks Homer his motivation for wanting a little brother, Homer's brain says, "Don't say revenge! Don't say revenge!" and when Homer says, "Revenge!" his brain says, "That's it!" and you hear some footsteps and a door slamming? That's kind of what happens.

(The actual physical feeling is a lot like stretching, but to an extreme that you wouldn't think your body would be able to survive. The whole point of all the contractions is to open up your cervix enough to give the baby enough room to get out, and the amount of stretching it has to do to accomplish that is alarming. Imagine your left nostril stretching out, through a series of muscular contractions spread out over, say, 12 hours, to become large enough to accomodate...oh, say...a good-sized Florida grapefruit. That's about right. You wouldn't think your nostril could get that big, would you? The other thing is, now that I've been through labor, I can pinpoint exactly where my cervix is in my body. If someone says to you, "Think about your right elbow," you can locate your right elbow and sort of feel it with your mind - you don't have to touch it with your other hand to know it's there. It's almost like you can tune into your elbow by thinking about it. Well, now I can do that with my cervix. What a great party trick, huh?)

I know a couple hours passed, because at the next internal exam I had, I was 6 cm dilated and 100% effaced, and that was at 6:05 pm. I'm reading that information off of the notepaper where my mom wrote it - I have absolutely no memory of that second internal exam.

What I do remember is wanting to go into the bathroom, get into the shower and have the warm water on my belly. I took my gown off (all social anxiety about being buck naked in front of strangers was of absolutely no consequence to me at that point - I could have been on stage at Carnegie Hall and it wouldn't have mattered) and brought the exercise ball into the shower with me to sit on. The nurses were afraid the ball would slip on the wet tile floor, so they put a sheet down on the floor of the shower. After about 30 seconds of shower time (Oh, warm, blissful water! Oh, soothing, soothing, spray!) they realized that the sheet was clogging up the drain and the shower was overflowing and they wanted me to get out. I can't even begin to tell you how angry this made me. I remember thinking, "This situation has never come up before in all your combined years of working as maternity nurses, you fucking hags? There isn't some standard procedure for taking the ball into the shower? What the fuck is wrong with you people?"

In the end, KB saved the day. He had packed his swimsuit in my hospital bag in case we got a Jacuzzi room, and he put it on and got into the shower with me. That way I could sit on the ball and hold onto him and I wouldn't slip. I had my arms around his waist and my face buried in his stomach, and he directed the warm shower spray handle thingee onto me. At this point I remember thinking, "If I could just have five minutes without a contraction, that would be great. I just need a little break to catch my breath and then I can get right back to it." Of course, that didn't happen. The contractions were now about 90 seconds long each and there was maybe 10 seconds in between them. It was horrible. I remember just saying, "It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts" over and over and yelling a lot. Poor Kevin must have been freezing - I was getting all the hot water and I think we were in there for about and hour and a half.

At some point, I began bearing down at the height of each contraction. It just started happening on its own - my body knew to do it - it wasn't like I had the conscious thought, "Okay, I'm going to start pushing now, here I go." I guess I was grunting or something because someone out in the room said, "It sounds like she's pushing!" and the nurses came into the bathroom to check on me. I started saying, "He's coming! He's coming!" The nurses' shift was supposed to change at 7 and the old nurse was trying to introduce me to the new nurse while I was sitting on the ball in the shower with KB. I paid no attention.

They made me get out of the shower and back in bed so they could get a doctor to check on me. I guess I put my gown back on, because I've seen the pictures and I have a gown on in the pictures, but I don't remember doing it. When the doctor came in, I remember thinking how pretty she was. She had long straight black hair and pale skin, very fine-boned and pretty. I couldn't get over how beautiful my doctor was (she wasn't my regular OB). She checked me out and pronounced me fully dilated and ready to push.

There was a nurse on my right side, and KB and my mom were on the left. The nurse showed me how she wanted me to hold my legs back - with my hands behind my knees pulling back. The doctor told me to take a deep breath at the start of the next contraction, and then push while counting to ten, then release the breath. You do that three times during each contraction, and then you're supposed to "rest" in between contractions. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! Rest! I let my legs down while resting, and I guess when I pulled them back up for the next push, I had my hands in FRONT of my knees, by my shins, instead of behind my knees like the nurse had showed me. She tried to move my hands and I remember thinking, "What the fuck does it matter where my hands are? Just leave me alone!" I'm pretty sure I didn't actually say that out loud, though.

So I pushed for a while, probably about 20 minutes, and it became apparent that the doctor was concerned about the baby's heart rate. (They'd hooked me back up to the monitors when I got back in bed, I guess, I don't remember) His heart rate wasn't recovering between contractions - it just kept dropping and dropping with each one. All of a sudden there were like, 15 people in the room with me, where before there had just been five. They had all these nurses and pediatricians standing by in case something went wrong. That totally freaked me out.

The doctor said I needed to get the baby out in the next two contractions or she was getting the vacuum extractor. I remember thinking, "No way. Nope. No vacuum. Not gonna happen." and I just powered through it. The next contraction came and I pushed like hell. I remember feeling myself pushing into my face and knowing, realizing somehow that that was the wrong kind of push and just redirecting the push down through my body. I could feel the baby moving down there, which was really weird. I thought the baby was sort of passive and just got pushed out, but I could feel him turning sideways toward the end and kind of wriggling, and I was amazed there was enough room for him to do that. His head came out and then I pushed once more and he popped the rest of the way out all at once. That was at 8:03 pm. The doctor held him up to the waiting nurse and I saw him in profile, and he looked just like his ultrasound picture. It sounds weird, but that was somehow reassuring to me, like, "Yep - that's the right baby."

Turns out the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck - that's why his heart rate kept dropping. Apparently that's a pretty common complication, but they have to treat it as life-threateningly serious for the baby, because it is. He was fine, though - he scored 9 out of a possible 10 on his Apgar test. I remember a huge feeling of relief after he was out - I just thought "Oh thank god it's over I can finally rest." But of course I still had to deliver the placenta and get stitched up. It took a long time to sew me up, longer than I was pushing for, and I was so fucking irritated with the doctor. She wasn't used to sewing up a woman who hadn't had an epidural, and she kept having to give me Novocain to numb me up. I kept saying things like, "Aren't you done yet?" I just wanted to rest and be with my new family, and there was my pretty doctor, still sewing between my goddamn legs. KB said I should be patient, that this wasn't something you wanted to rush, and I guess he was right.

At some point while I was being stitched up they brought the baby over to me, all cleaned up and swaddled in a blanket with a knit cap on. He was wide awake and so alert and wrinkly! He looked like a wise little old man. Mom asked us if we had picked a name yet, and I looked at KB. We had narrowed it down to Nolan or Ellis, and KB told me to pick, so I picked Nolan. He just seemed more like a Nolan. Then I told KB to pick the middle name and he picked Baxter, and that was that.

When the doctor was finally done sewing me up, one of the nurses took me into the bathroom to show me my "wound care regimen." You get a little squeeze bottle that you fill up with warm water and a little antibacterial soap. After you pee, you spray that all over yourself and then PAT dry with toilet paper. No wiping or rubbing. Then you get one of these maxi-pad shaped ice packs and cover it with witch hazel pads (like Tucks, basically) and you spray your whole "area" with a topcial antibiotic spray. Then you put your ice pack/witch hazel pad construction into these lovely mesh granny panties (size extra-large) and put the whole thing on. So comfortable. Actually, the ice pack felt good, but the sensation of it melting and running down and puddling in the bed was not so nice.

After that all the medical staff left us alone, and we realized we were starving. I think this was around 10:30 or 11. We ordered a pizza and a caesar salad from a place the nurses recommended, and we ate it in the delivery room while we called half of the western world on our cell phones to tell them about Nolan. They moved us to a recovery room one floor down. We got a private room, thank goodness. KB got a cot to sleep on in the room, and Nolan was in his little plastic bucket on top of a rolling cart with all his supplies in it. KB walked my mom to the parking garage so she could drive home and get some sleep. While he was gone I noticed it was almost midnight, so I sang "Happy Birthday" to Nolan before it was too late.

Then I crawled into my hospital bed and tried to sleep. The nurses kept coming by to give me big 600mg horse pills of Motrin (what?!?! Friggin' Motrin!??! Doesn't drug-free childbirth at least rate some codeine?) and prod my belly to see if my uterus was shrinking down appropriately. I kept having to go to the bathroom to pass big blood clots. They put a plastic dish in your toilet to collect everything you pass in the first 24 hours to see if you're losing too much blood. If ever I needed proof that I was not cut out for the medical field, that's it right there - your job is collecting someone else's blood clots? Tempting, but...no. One of the nurses saw my chart and whistled and said, "NCB, all the way, baby!" I looked quizzically at KB and he said, "Natural Child Birth." and I was like, "Oh yeah!" and felt absurdly proud.

And that's how we had a son. Lots more happened in the two days we were in the hospital, but I think I've written enough. We came home from the hospital on June 10th, and nothing in our lives has been quite the same since, in both good ways and bad. I meant to get this up on Nolan's first birthday, but the more I wrote, the more I remembered, and it took me longer than I thought. Longest! Post! Ever!

I love you, Nolan. It was all worth it.

Thanks for reading.

And we'd like you to dance, take a ch-ch-ch-chance

Amazing.

Happy first birthday, Nolan!

One year ago today, Nolan was born. Holy Moly.* I'm trying to reach past the cliches and really think about what it's been like, this past year, but all I can come up with are things like, "It's all a blur," "I can't believe how fast the time went" and crap like that.

The thing that amazes me most is how much he's changed and grown in just a year. He started as this little pod, this little larvae, almost, just a pooping machine, and now he's crawling and standing and talking and he's got a personality - he has wants and needs and desires and he can express them (sort of). Just imagine if all human beings kept growing and developing at that first-year rate throughout our lives. We'd be telepathic and able to fly by the time we could vote.

I was talking to a fellow new-mom yesterday and realized the other thing that has really changed in the past year is how much I'VE grown and changed. I think back to last summer when Nolan was a brand new baby and how frightened I was of everything. I don't think we left the house with him much more than 4 or 5 times the entire summer. It just seemed too dangerous. I could drop him! Someone could sneeze on him! Or touch him! He could get overheated! He could get chilly! Aaaack! Better just stay home. Of course, staying home all day has its dangers, too, namely in regards to my sanity. I feel like I'm getting much better at living my regular life as much as possible and just including Nolan in it, rather than structuring everything around Nolan and his moods. I think there's a word for that...oh yes, balance! Moderation in all things, blah blah blah.

I've been reading a lot of parenting books lately. Checking them out from the library to read them first before I see if I want to buy them. So far I've read How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk, The 7 Worst Things Parents Do, and The Blessing of a Skinned Knee. They're all pretty much directed at parents with slightly older kids, but I figure it can't hurt to start doing some reading now. I'm kind of torn between the "Ahhhh, I'll figure it out as I go along" approach and the read-as-much-as-possible-to-avoid-any-mistakes approach. In reality, I know I can't avoid ALL mistakes and I know there will be some things that I'll be able to handle instinctually and some that I'll need to bring out the books for.

Now I see why people have more than one kid. You need the practice!

Pix from Nolan's party on Saturday will be posted with all possible haste.

Thanks for reading.

*I'm trying really, REALLY hard to swear less. Nolan's just starting to say words ("Dada" was the first. Yes, I spend 24 hours a day with you, clean up your poop, feed you, dress you, and work my butt off to entertain you, but your first word? Dada. Not that I'm bitter.) and I'm afraid he's going to pick up some incredibly foul language from me. Particularly in the car. So I'm harkening back to my days growing up with Mormons and them saying "Cheese is sliced!" (instead of Jesus Christ) and "Shut the front door!" (instead of shut the fuck up). So far, it's not going too well. Of course, "Mother pus bucket!" gets plenty of use. That one's almost as good as swearing.

You've got to put one foot in front of the other, put the other foot down, down, down

Whew! Long time no post. Sorry about that. My excuse is two-fold:

First, we were out of town from Wednesday to Saturday last week at my mom's down in New Jersey. I know, I know, you can post to Blogger from any Internet-enabled computer, but who wants to blog when you can watch your mother's brand-new High Definition Plasma Super Duper Extra Fabulous 48" screen television? Seriously, it's the nicest thing in her condo. I was afraid to ask how much it cost in case it was more than our car. We actually didn't spend all our time watching TV (although we did watch The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which was hysterical, and criminally under-represented at the Oscars). My dad's parents (Mom-mom and Pop-pop) came up to visit with us one day, and KB had his Penn fellowship interview the next day, and then we drove home the following day, so it was a short visit.

Secondly, both Nolan and I came down with a cold on the Sunday following our return from my mom's. I'm not sure who the vector was, since my mom and my grandmother also reported having the same cold, but I'm going to blame it on Nolan, or, more specifically, another baby in his playgroup. We spent all of Sunday (yes! my first Mother's Day!*) sniffling and snorting and moaning about our sore throats (well, I moaned. Nolan was just a snottier, slightly less-energetic version of his usual self). Now we're feeling better but KB is feeling not-so-hot. Sigh. I guess we can expect...oh...a hundred or so more viruses like this before Nolan starts pre-school.

Thirdly (three! three main weapons!), Nolan is seriously crawling. Like, freaky speed-crawling. And climbing. And pulling up on things. He has morphed into a small demon overnight. I keep thinking that there's another baby around here somewhere - didn't I have a baby named Nolan who was a little bundle? Who stayed where I put him? Who ate what I gave him? Where did he go? Seriously, not in a misty, metaphorical oh-where-has-my-baby-gone kind of way, but in an actual, physical way. I keep having these moments of panic, thinking, "Ohmygod, where did I put the baby?" until I realize that THIS IS THE BABY. This small child pounding on the oven door with a spatula and trying to shove his hand through the screen door. It's the same person. I suppose it will sink in eventually, but in the meantime I feel like I'm babysitting someone else's toddler and waiting for the REAL parent to come back. The one who knows everything.

When are they coming?

Thanks for reading.

*Thanks for the cards and phone calls on Mother's Day, my non-baby-having friends! It's so nice to be remembered and appreciated by people who don't have any kidlets running around! Since KB was working all day, it was truly the highlight of my day.

You said go slow...I fall behind

Ugh. No computer for almost a week now. We finally, FINALLY seem to have resolved some computeralogical shit around here (but only by hiring a $50/hour consultant who had to TAKE THE MACHINE AWAY last Tuesday to work on it at home and bring it back later).

Also, KB's fabulous brother KA rehabbed my old Titanium Powerbook (yay!) and sent it to us a few weeks ago*, but I could not for the life of me figure out how to get it hooked up to our wireless router. That was finally accomplished today, at the exact same time that the consultant finally brought back KB's computer that is now working. Finally. I'm just going to say FINALLY a few more times, because it seems like this has been an ongoing saga for, oh, I don't know, months. Finally! FINALLY!

Okay, anyway. So also last week, KB was working at a different location than his normal T-accessible hospital, and needed to take the car to get there. If I wanted to use the car during the day, I had to drive him there in the morning (a 45-minute trip one way) and then pick him up at night. So that's a minimum of three hours in the car just getting KB to work and home, and then any other driving during the day (say, to the Y for swim class) that was the whole reason I needed the car in the first place. Not to mention that KB was also moonlighting most every night last week, which, if I had the car, meant going to pick him up, driving to the moonlighting place, and then driving home again. So I'm kinda sick of the car.

Which is a bummer, because we're driving down to my mom's in Dirty Jers on Wednesday, which is a minimum five-hour car ride. KB has a fellowship interview in Philly, and my mom is about 45 minutes away, so we'll stay with her for a few days. She's all excited to see Nolan, of course. I'm hoping the drive won't be too too painful, but you never know. The last time my mom came up to see us, she made it up here in 5 hours, but the drive back home took her 8 hours. Bleah.

Plus you have to factor in the releasing-Nolan-from-the-car-seat-purgatory time, 'cause I know he's not going to be happy. He hates the car seat on ten-minute trips across town, much less a marathon. I think part of it is because he's crawling now, and he's so thrilled to be mobile, he just wants to go everywhere. When we take our swim class now, he's constantly trying to push my hands off of him, as if to say, "Let me down so I can crawl, Mom! I know if you'd just let go of me, I'd be across this pool in a flash! Just watch me!"

So I'm feeling bad because I haven't been able to read anyone's blogs or comment or anything, so I'm going to try to catch up in the next couple days before we head out.

Whew. I guess that's about it. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Thanks for reading.

*Just to give you an idea what a huge deal this was, the man is working full time and his wife is expecting TWINS at like, any second. She had a blood-pressure scare a few weeks ago, so she's confined to bed and he's taking care of her. And he STILL made time to gussy up my old Mac for me. What a guy, huh?

Don't speak, I know what you're thinking

OH. MY. GOD.

I'm probably late to the party, but have you seen this?

Stephen Colbert is my hero.

Hakuna Matata

I think one of the neighborhood feral cats got a bird under our bird feeder. There's a whole mess of reddish feathers on the ground under the feeder.

There's this one fat, long-haired black cat that's always under the tree next to the feeder, hanging out, waiting for an unsuspecting dumb-ass bird to linger too long, so I think he was finally successful. I hope it wasn't the female cardinal. There's a pair of cardinals that regularly visit the feeder, and the female is a muddy reddish-brown color, kind of like those feathers. That would be a bummer if it was her.

Whenever I see that cat (or any other cat) under the tree, I fill up a big cup of cold water and go out on the deck and throw it in the general direction of the tree, and the cat usually runs away, (note to self: purchase Super-Soaker) but it's always kind of half-hearted on my part. I figure the cats and the birds and the squirrels and whatnot are all sort of keeping each other in check, balancing each other out, maintaining the Circle of Life and all that, so I don't try too terribly hard.

Which reminds me of a story.

When I was at HBO, one of the other assistants, Ron,* was given this mini-aquarium kit as a Christmas present from his boss. It was a small glass globe that came with some little aquatic plants and a tiny little frog and snail to inhabit the place. The whole thing couldn't have been bigger than a softball; it was very cute sitting there in his cubicle, and Ron was quite enamored of his mini-life setup. He held a naming contest to determine what the tiny beasties should be called, and there were a number of cutesy suggestions along the lines of Cheech and Chong, Laverne and Shirley, Simon and Garfunkel, et cetera. I can't remember what he finally decided on, but for the story's sake, let's say it was Laverne (frog) and Shirley (snail).

Sadly, Laverne passed away inexplicably a mere few days after setting up housekeeping on Ron's desk. Ron was quite upset at the frog's early demise, and called the company that made the aquarium to find out why it might have happened and how to get a replacement frog. The company's hapless customer service rep asked Ron for the serial number on the bottom of the globe (or something like that), and informed him that they'd had "a bad batch of frogs." So he got a brand-new frog.

Not two days later, when he came in to work in the morning, Ron discovered that Laverne the Second had also died. Not only that, but Shirley had gone missing. Dead frog, floating on top of the water, and no snail. Naturally, Ron was quite distressed.

Another assistant named Rowan (who is Australian) and I were in Ron's cubicle commiserating with him on his bad luck and trying very very hard to keep straight faces about the whole thing. We were saying things like, "It wasn't anything you did" and "They had a bad batch of frogs, Ron." He obviously felt bad about losing his mini-pets and was trying to determine what might have happened.

He explained his theory to us: Maybe Laverne had tried to eat Shirley and choked on her, thus explaining the missing snail. At this point, Rowan and I couldn't even make eye contact with each other, we were in such fear of bursting out laughing. Then Rowan sealed the deal. He said (and you have to imagine the Australian accent) "Well, you know Ron, it's the Circle of Life." and I couldn't help myself; I busted out the "Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, nee-benzaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, habba beech eemawaaaaaay" from the opening of The Lion King.

Then we fell all over ourselves laughing, and apologizing for laughing, and then laughing some more. We were terrible people, laughing at another person's mini-aquarium tragedy.

But it was pretty funny.

Thanks for reading.

*That's his real name. I know you thought this asterisk was going to be one of those "Some names have been changed" kind of things, but I actually just wanted to give a little shout-out and say, "Ron the Don! Wassup my homie?"

It's the end of the world as we know it

It's all over. He's crawling. Nolan is crawling, ladies and gentlemen. And life as we know is about to come to a screeching halt.

He's been on the verge for about three weeks now, getting on his hands and knees, rocking back and forth and then slumping down to his belly, wiggling backwards and all that, but yesterday the light bulb went on and he put three slide-knee-forward-and-lift-hand movements together in a row.

So now, instead of staying in a pretty pre-determined radius on the living room rug when I put him down, he's gonna be all over the friggin' place, finding all the (probably numerous) instances where we haven't completely thought through the childproofing measures we've taken.

The books all tell you to get down on your hands and knees and look at things from the child's point of view to see what they might find interesting, and I actually did that, but I think the problem with that approach is that I don't think like a ten month old (thank God). I have absolutely zero interest in the speaker wire behind the stereo as long as it does its job and provides us with music, but to Nolan speaker wire is apparently a tasty appetizer. Ditto the tumbling tumbleweeds* of cat hair under every piece of furniture. I am quite capable of looking at them and going, "Ew, cat hair" and moving on, but I think Nolan will add them to his list of Nasty Things That I Must Taste Immediately.

The funny thing is, I was so worried because Nolan seemed to me to be rather late in learning to crawl. My friend Christa's daughter Samantha is 7 weeks younger than Nolan and she had crawling mastered about a month ago. I was trying to remain calm and tell myself all those things that the What To Expect bible tells you, namely "Every child develops at their own pace" and "There is a wide range of normal" and blah blah blah. Secretly I was afraid Nolan would be so delayed he'd have to crawl onstage to get his high school diploma.

I guess it's one of those grass is always greener kind of things, because Christa babysat Nolan one night and she was marveling over how long he was content to sit and play with a toy compared to Sam, who is like the Tasmanian Devil all over the room.

So I'm looking forward to the next few weeks of "No, don't touch that!" and "Yuck, that's dirty!" and "Oh my God, what the hell is in your mouth?!?!" And when I say looking forward, I mean dreading like a tetanus shot.

Thanks for reading.

*If you don't now have the opening scene of The Big Lebowski stuck in your head, well...that's just sad.

And I wonder, I wah-wah-wah-wah wonder

I'm so bummed. Almay is no longer making their Pure Tints line of tinted chapstick-like lipcolors. They were so perfect, particularly the shade Cocoa. They were skinny and small enough to fit in my pocket, just like a chapstick, so I could take it everywhere. They were SPF 25, for my butt-white self.* They put just enough color on your lips to, well, give your lips some color, but they were sheer enough not to look too lipsticky.

I'm not a big makeup person, particularly since I can almost never find colors that look good on my tres tres pale ass. I don't buy department store makeup because it's too friggin' expensive - who wants to spend twenty bucks on a mascara that you're supposed to replace after six months when it "expires?" I don't wear it often enough to make it worthwhile. So I stick to makeup I can buy in the drugstore, without the interference of a "helpful" saleslady whose job it is to sell me more than I really need.

Even with drugstore makeup, I've made some expensive mistakes, especially in the lipcolor arena. I walk out with a lipstick that looks great in the store, seems to be that perfect pinky-browny-red I've been looking for all my life, but then when I get home and put it on in natural light, it always becomes too...something. Usually too magenta. And I look like a dead fish. So it gets thrown into a drawer, never to be seen again, at least until the next time I move house and start boxing up the bathroom, only to discover the makeup graveyard I've created.**

But the Pure Tints! They were fabulous! My mom introduced me to them, believe it or not (my mom's not a big makeup person, either). Two years ago at my wedding she brought the Nude and the Cocoa shades and I borrowed one from her purse and was like, "WHERE DID YOU GET THIS?" Ever since that day I've been buying the Cocoa on a regular basis. And it was only 5 bucks! And they lasted, well, not forever, obviously, but quite a while. I would slip one in my pocket (I'm not a purse person, either) when I grabbed my money and driver's license - it was like, part of my essential equipment. "Cell phone - check. Money - check. Pure Tints - check."

I got suspicious that something was afoot a couple weeks ago when I did my usual drugstore run at our local Brooks and found the Almay display conspicuously empty of Pure Tints. They didn't have any of them, not a single shade. So I figured maybe their shipment didn't come in or something and I'd just check back next week. Then I looked at the Big K-Mart the next time I went and THEY didn't have them either, and alarm bells started to go off. I asked my mom to look down where she lives and she can't find them, either. Where have all the Pure Tints gone?

Almay's discontinued product page doesn't even list them. They're still on Drugstore.com, but who knows for how much longer? I'm going to buy a bunch of them right now and hoard them in my medicine cabinet. I hate it, HATE IT when a company discontinues a product I love without telling me. Why wasn't there a news bulletin about this? How dare they stop making Pure Tints without a Homeland Security Alert? Argh.

Thanks for reading.

*When a makeup company finally invents a shade of foundation or concealer called "Butt White," I will know it is for me.

**Of course, the makeup graveyard is nothing compared to the hair product graveyard. I have probably spent, over the course of my thirty-one years as a Curly Girl, enough money on hair products to finance Nolan's college education, 95% of which products did nothing special to my frizzy-ass, wacked-out hair.

Love is such a beep beep feeling

I wish there were a way to use computer shortcuts in real life. Perhaps our lives are overly influenced by our computers these days, but it seems that we should be able to figure out a way to make these things happen.* How many times have you spilled Fruit Punch flavored Crystal Light on your beige carpet and thought, "Oh shit! Control-Z! Undo! Undo!" Or spun out your car on an icy highway, crashed into the guardrail (these are all purely hypothetical examples, of course) and looked at the bumper and wondered if you could Restore your car to an earlier, uncrumpled version?

I knew I had been using Microsoft Word a little too much when I was writing in my journal one day. I wasn't sure about the spelling of a word, so I wrote it like I thought it was spelled and then waited to see if the little red squiggly line showed up underneath it.

KB uses this computer application called TalkStation when he dictates his radiology reports. Basically it's like an instant computer transcriptionist that uses voice-recognition software to type out what he's saying. Apparently the technology is till not one hundred percent up to snuff, because they still have to go back and read through the reports and correct all the mistakes the computer made, like "violate the pubics" instead of "evaluate the pelvis", or "according to the State Department" instead of "according to protocol." (He finally got the chance to dictate to an actual human transcriptionist at one of his moonlighting jobs recently and he said it was awesome, so the computers haven't taken over the world just yet.) My favorite feature he's told me about is the "macro" feature. If you've ever used Excel or another spreadsheet program you know what a macro is, I'm sure. KB can say "Macro" and then something like "Osteosarcoma" into the computer, and it knows to type out a whole phrase describing that particular condition or observation or whatever.

How I wish we had this feature in our conversations sometimes. You could just say "Macro" and then "I'm feeling unappreciated" or "Macro - Boy am I tired" and not bother to go through the whole routine that you've gone through a hundred times before. But I guess that would take some of the fun out of things, now, wouldn't it?

Thanks for reading.

*I also think it's about time someone invented the Star Trek transporter, already. What's the holdup, science geeks of the world? Imagine the time saved! The fuel crisis solved! Jeff Goldblum with endless sexual energy! What could go wrong?

I'm a Marcy Projects hallway loiterer

So KB has decided he wants to do a fellowship year in Interventional Radiology after he finishes his residency. Basically, this means an additional year of even more specific training before he finishes and gets a "real" job. MGH has already told him he can stay here if he wants to, without bothering to go through the whole interviewing process, but he's not sure the training here would be the best for him. So he's also applied at Cornell and Columbia in New York and Thomas Jefferson and Penn in Philly.

I'm torn about this whole thing. One more year of training means one more year of KB working like a dog at his regular gig plus moonlighting at a couple other extra gigs in order to make enough money to support us so I can stay home with Nolan. This is because even Mankind's Greatest Hospital doesn't pay its residents or fellows shit. We don't get to see KB as often as we'd like, he's really tired and burned out, and our relationship suffers because our conversations happen mostly at 10:30 pm when we're both exhausted and consist of things like, "Did you write that check to the oil guy?" So part of me really wants him to say "Fuck it" and get a private practice job next year as soon as his residency is over. Quit dicking around.

On the other hand, KB's going to be working in a private practice job for the next 40 years or so. I want him to be happy with what he's doing and feel fulfilled and creative and like he's learning and all that. I don't want him to look back in about ten years and go, "Geez, I wish I'd done that fellowship year so I could be doing more Interventional stuff*." Then I would feel bad for asking him to skip it and he might feel resentful for not doing all the training he wanted to.

The other factor is where we're going to live. If he takes a fellowship at one of the places in New York or Philly, we'll have to move once to be near that job and then move again to be near wherever he ends up with his private practice job (which will hopefully be in the same general vicinity, but still.) That's two moves in a year, and that would suck big donkey dick. We have to think about Nolan and good school districts and safe neighborhoods and location location location not once, but twice.

Plus, I'm not the kind of person who makes friends easily, and moving twice in a year just makes me feel that much more unsettled. It's like, why bother putting down roots and making friends and getting to know your local butcher when you're just going to move in a year? What's the point? (Although, I also have to concede Zach's point, made in January on our visit to the Bay Area when I got to go out drinking with him [on a school night!] like a non-parent, which was something along the lines of "We met at a three-week long summer camp when we were fifteen and we've never lived in the same place since then, but we've been friends for fifteen years." Which made me go, "Oh yeah.")

We spent a year in New York when KB did his internship year, and let me tell you, a year is a weird length of time to live in New York City. It's not long enough to really get to know the place well and feel like you're actually a resident, but it's way too long to get away with being a clueless tourist who doesn't know anything.

So I'm torn. We know we'd eventually like to end up in the New Jersey area, simply because I have oodles of family in Pennsylviania/Delaware/New Jersey/New York and it would be nice for Nolan to grow up around his family, and there's plenty of job opportunities out there. I'd like to live in the Bay Area, which happens to be near KB's family, but the cost of living there is ridiculously high. Plus my mom would hunt us down and kill us if we did that after she finally moved from Wyoming back to the East Coast after 25 years.

Why is this so hard? Why does it feel like whatever decision we make is the FINAL one, the huge fork in the road where once we choose our path, we can NEVER NEVER GO BACK AGAIN. It may be just in my head. But it feels like a doozy.

Thanks for reading.

*For those of you who, like me, know bupkis about radiology, Interventional Radiology is a little more active than traditional radiology. IR involves doing procedures on the patient using imaging to guide the procedure - things like threading a catheter into a blood vessel. Traditional radiology involves a lot of sitting in a darkened room staring at a computer screen - there's very little patient interaction.

I'm taken with the notion

Looks like I spoke (or typed) too soon. The computer is once again on the fritz. I've had to resort to actually taking the laptop downstairs into our basement and (gasp!) physically plugging it into the modem. Dear lord, what is the world coming to and all that. This means that I am once again limited to getting on the computer when Nolan is asleep, because he's not real thrilled about hanging out in the Pack-n-Play in the basement any more.

So, I'll keep this quick. Here are some baby pictures. My friend and fellow new-mom Christa showed me some baby pictures of herself, and they look exactly like current pictures of her daughter, Samantha. I was inspired to go look for some baby pictures of me to see if they resembled Nolan at all (or rather, if Nolan resembled them.) The first one is me at about eighteen months, I'm guessing, judging by the Easter-type colors that were prevalent in the other pictures that were with it. So, about 30 years ago this time of year. The second one is Nolan enjoying his Easter present sent to him yesterday by his great-grandmother, my Mom-mom. (The actual present was three teddy bears (three!) and two books, but, Nolan being Nolan, he was much more interested in the box and the card. Specifically, chewing on both of them.)






He's only ten months at the moment, but I think you can see a wee bit of a resemblance.

Thanks for reading.

CORRECTION: My mother was here over Easter weekend and she informs me that the top picture is actually me at about 12 months - she thinks it may have been taken at my first birthday party - so the age difference between the two photos is pretty small.

I'll tell anyone whose heart can comprehend, baby

We've been having computer problems here at Chez Thptpth. KB has started a new moonlighting gig at another hospital near us, and they needed him to install software on his laptop so he could basically work from home - they would send him what he needed over this network software they had him install. Well, every time he installed the software, our home wireless network went down. Which kind of made the software moot, because he needed to access the internet to get the work from the hospital. Uninstall the software, hey look! There's the wireless network again! So all of last week there was much sturm und drang surrounding the computer. At one point we had to take the laptop in to the hospital's IT department who, in the oh-so-helpful way of IT departments everywhere, said, "It's working fine for us. It must be something with your network, not our software." Then we found out that a couple of KB's co-workers who also moonlight at this place had problems with the software, and it's like, "Hmmm."

So the upshot is, it's still not working. We finally just uninstalled the software again so we could use the friggin' computer. (We have another, old, slow desktop computer at home, which is how I managed my one measly post last week, but it is sloooooooow. Did I mention the slowness?) The lesson we've learned here is that old cliche "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." We need to move some of our vital info off of this computer and onto either another computer or an external hard drive, 'cause if this one dies, we're screwed.

So other than that, things are pretty much status quo around here. My dad left to go overseas with the Army yesterday, after several delays while he was at Fort Benning, in Georgia. Apparently the Army has some doubts as to my father's clinical skills since he's no longer a practicing physician, but rather a medical director for an insurance company, even though he keeps his license current and takes all of his CME credits. Of course, they didn't bring up these doubts while he was still happily at home in Nebraska, but rather, once he got to Georgia. And they didn't bother to factor in that he went to Ecuador with the Army in November for two weeks and demonstrated his perfectly fine clinical skills there. (I know, you're shocked - the Army is not a model of efficiency and good communication? Preposterous!) So their brilliant solution to this problem is to send him first to Germany for a couple of weeks so he can work under another physician and show them he's still got what it takes, doctor-wise. Did I mention my dad is a Colonel? So the time he spends in Germany won't count towards his BOG (Boots On Ground) 90 days that he's officially supposed to be gone. Which just means that he'll be gone that much longer. *sigh*

Anyway. That's the haps 'round these parts. I'm going to try to get back into the routine of posting on a regular basis, if only for my own need to feel connected with the world somehow. Thank god the computer's working.

Thanks for reading.

I am a snake head eating the head on the opposite side

I read that early this morning, at two minutes and three seconds past one in the morning to be exact, the time and date were 01:02:03 04/05/06. For some reason that's really cool to me. I know that time is just an arbitrary construct, months and days and numbers are just applied by us humans, and that that particular second of time really has no intrinsic significance to speak of, but it's still cool.

I'm the kind of person who pays attention to the odometer on the car and notices when it's a palindrome, too. That's fascinating to me. I think I picked that habit up in Wyoming on looooong car trips when I had no car stereo (my first car was basically an engine, wheels and doors) to entertain me. I would play mental games with the odometer, trying to figure out when would be the next time a palindrome would occur, if there was some kind of pattern I could divine. I would do it with the mileposts and the exit numbers, too.

Maybe I should check out numerology. Or become an actuary.

Thanks for reading.

Pants on fire

By popular request* here are some more examples of LIARS attacks:

Getting Nolan out of his high chair after a meal, I usually ask, "Are you ready to get down?" This, naturally, led to Kool and the Gang's "Jungle Boogie" being transformed into the Baby Boogie:

Get down, get down
Get down, get down
Baby Boogie
(dititidoo dititidoo)
Baby Boogie
(it's time to get down)

Also after meals, as I struggle to wipe the accumulated food mush off of his face, I tend to exclaim, "You've got food on your face!" which always brings on Queen's "We Will Rock You":

You've got food on your face
Your baby face
Somebody better pick you up and wipe off your face
(singing) I will, I will, wipe you!

Jesus, I'm a dork. (That's not a lyric, that's just an observation).

Then there's the classical section. When Nolan has a nice, big but relatively manageable poop, he gets Handel's Hallelujah chorus (sometimes in two-part harmony with me and KB):

Super Pooper! Super Pooper!
Superpooper! Superpooper!
Super-er Pooperrr...

Also, on our way to the changing table when he's got an evident load in the pants, I like to bust out the, umm...that Wagner (I think it's Wagner) song about the, uh...you know. It goes, "Kill da wabbit, kill da wabbit..." Not only am I a dork, I'm a poorly educated dork. Except instead of "Kill da wabbit," it's:

Poopy diaper, poopy diaper
Poopy diaper, poopy diaperrrr...

And let's not forget the poor, neglected cats. Every now and then one of them, usually Jake, will decide it's time to freak out and tear around the house with his tail puffed up. This earns him a tune by Joe Jackson, "Steppin' Out":

Kitty's, spazzing ouuuuut...
All through the house
He's spazzing out

But probably the most embarrassing one of all is this: Among Nolan's many nicknames is the frequently used (by me, anyway) "Baby Guy." I don't know why, I just call him that sometimes. I'll walk into the room and see him sitting on the floor with a toy, and it seems so natural to say, "Hey, baby guy!" So of course, you know what's coming...that's right. It's "Cherry Pie," by Warrant.

He's my baby guy
He's so cute make his mama cry
He's my baby guy
Sweet! Baby! Guy!

This poor kid. He's going to be so warped.

Thanks for reading.

*Nobody requested these. I just felt like posting them. So there.

Put the hammer down and keep it full speed ahead

Today is the birthday of my oldest friend in the whole world, Erica. Not oldest like she's ancient or something, but oldest as in we've known each other forever. Since before we had boobs.

She's an excellent artist and a fabulous friend. She's brave and talented and prone to finding reptiles in her backyard, apparently. She was the maid of honor at my wedding.

We've been friends for twenty years (dear god, we're old!) and I'm looking forward to twenty more. At least.

Here's to you, Louise! Happy Birthday!

Love,
Thelma

Thanks for reading.

Do those teeth still match the wound?

I've discovered a new and alarming syndrome that seems to be directly related to Annoying Song Syndrome, or ASS, which I discussed earlier. (It's not really new, but I just thought of a nifty acronym for it, and so I shall pretend it is new so I can post about it.) It's called LIARS, which stands for Lyrics Inadvertently Are Replaced Syndrome, and it is equally as if not more contagious than ASS. It seems to manifest itself right along with ASS, much as Kaposi's Sarcoma oftentimes manifests itself in conjunction with AIDS.*

What happens is this: Sometimes, when I have an attack of ASS and the song continues to reverberate** around inside my skull, a small portion of my warped brain decides to try to replace the real lyrics to the annoying song with made-up lyrics that are germane to the situation, thus triggering an attack of LIARS. For example:

One of my nicknames for Nolan is Pooter Man. I don't know exactly why or how this nickname came to be, just that I have always called him that. So, naturally, he needed a Pooter Man theme song. I suppose I could try to write my own music for one, but I'm probably not that talented and besides, why bother when the Spider-Man theme song works so well? To wit:

Pooter Man, Pooter Man
Does the things
A Pooter can
Pooter Maaannn, Pooter Maaannn
Diapers in his diaper can

And that's as far as it goes. Here's another one:

When Nolan was a little tiny guy and was still solely breast-fed, he would occasionally have these giant bowel movements that would fill (and sometimes overflow) his diaper, necessitating an immediate bath and complete change of clothing. We took to calling these "monster poops." What better tune to sing whilst changing a frighteningly messy baby than that Halloween hit "The Monster Mash?"

He had a poop (It was a Monnnnster Poop)
A Monster Poop! (It threw his parents for a loop)
The Monster Poop! (His losses could not be recouped)
The Monster Poop! (They wished they had a pooper scoop)

The replacement lyrics rarely spring immediately to mind completely formed during the first attack of LIARS. But one of the characteristics of this debilitating syndrome is that each time the situation that triggered the initial attack reoccurs, the same song gets stuck in your head, and you can't help but mull over possible replacement lyrics each time. (It took a number of iterations before KB came up with the "recouped" line above.)

The only LIARS attack we ever experienced where all the lyrics came at once happened to KB shortly after we came home from the hospital with Nolan. He was in the other room holding the baby in the rocking chair, and I heard him sing (to the theme song from "Rawhide"):

Nolan Nolan Nolan
In the chair he's Nolan
Everywhere he's Nolan [last name]!

(I realize that doesn't work as well without telling you our last name, but I promised KB I wouldn't.)

Most of the songs I am afflicted with are in fact just short snippets of songs, the chorus mostly, because that's usually the catchiest part and the one that springs to mind most easily. But occasionally, after months of having the same song gouging a track through the hard drive of my brain, I will come up with an entire verse of substitute lyrics. This one is from pre-Nolan days, when our cats Jake and Lola were the center of our attention:

(To the tune of "Copacabana")

Her name is Lola
She is my kitty
She's got a very fuzzy head
And she sleeps upon the bed
She's got a brother
His name is Jake
His head is fuzzy too
and they both make a lot of poo
They site there, two felines
They think they're so sublime
They are so cute and they are so fuzzy
and they Are! My! Cats!
They're Jaaaake, they're Jake and Lola
The only word that rhymes with that is granola
They're Jaaaake, they're Jake and Lollllaaaa
Cu-ute and fuzzy and spastic and lovely
They're my caaaats
They are my cats.

Sad, isn't it? Think of all the mental energy wasted by this pernicious disease that could be better applied elsewhere. Once again, I hope that someone, somewhere, will discover a cure. Until then, I will continue to suffer in (non) silence.

Thanks for reading.

*Yes, I just compared my silly little made-up syndrome to AIDS. I'm so going to hell.

**If the word is re-verberate, what does it mean to verberate? Is that the first time the sound is made?

Na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye

Caspar Weinberger, former defense secretary, Reagan flunkie, and pardoned Iran-Contra affair participant, died yesterday. The only thing I thought of upon hearing this news was this:

"The wind doth taste of bittersweet
like jasper wine and sugar.
I'll bet it's blown through other's feet...
like those of Caspar Weinberger."

It's from a Bloom County strip of long ago - Opus is sitting on a hillside, struggling to write a poem, and that's what he comes up with. After the Caspar Weinberger line, Portnoy sits up from further down the hill and says, "Start over." I would link to it, but Berke Breathed has a thing about not putting all his comics online for free, I guess, so I can't. Alas.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. Confidential to Electric Mayhem: Happy Birthday! Your (late) card is in the mail!

What the hell am I doing here? (Nobody walks in LA)

Nolan and I walked to swim class today. That was partially because it was a nice day outside (finally!) but mostly because KB has the car today.* On the way home from the Y, we encountered a number of people also walking, as you would expect with such nice weather.

But you have to ask yourself, who is walking around town at 11 o'clock on a Monday morning? Who has nowhere else they're supposed to be? Stay-at-home moms (or dads), high school kids playing hooky, and skeevy unemployed men, that's who. So guess which ones we kept running into? The skeevy unemployed men, of course!

Skeevy guy #1 - Shirt inexplicably open almost to the waist, showing a remarkably dirty chest. He is carrying a mostly empty black plastic garbage bag (contents unknown) and smoking a cigarette. He asks if I know where Fourth Street is. I think for a minute, mostly to give the appearance of thinking about it before I get my child the hell away from his cigarette smoke, but also because I really don't know of any numbered streets in the immediate vicinity. (This isn't surprising - I know as much about navigating in Boston as I do about brain surgery. Which is to say, just enough to cause damage. You don't want to ask me for directions anywhere.) I say, "No, I'm sorry, I don't." He keeps walking. We're going the same direction, just behind him, so I go slowly so as not to be walking in his hanging cloud of secondhand smoke. Then it occurs to me that he may have said Fort Street, which is right nearby. So I call after him, "Did you say Fourth Street or Fort Street?" He turns around and says, "Either one." Okaaaay. So I point out Fort Street to him, he crosses the street, and we move along, happily smoke-free.

Skeevy Guy #2 - Not two minutes later. This guy is wearing shorts. It's a nice day for March, but it's certainly not shorts weather (unless you live in Wyoming, that is). He is coming towards us on our side of the street. As we get closer and I debate whether to make eye contact or not, he shouts, "I bet I know what your favorite color is!" This creeps me out, even if Nolan and I are both wearing green and walking along with our green stroller. That's just not something you say to a complete stranger on the street. You say, "Nice day, huh?" or "What a cute baby!", not "I bet I know what your favorite color is!" So I laugh my weak courtesy laugh and say, "How'd you guess?" and keep moving.

It was nice to walk, though. I felt like I got some decent exercise for once. And as we came up the street to our house, I spotted these crocuses in our front yard:


Which means, Yay! Spring!

Thanks for reading.

*It's the weirdest thing. We used to have no car. We walked or took the T everywhere. This worked just fine for us. We saved money, didn't need gas or insurance or any of that. Belonged to Zipcar for those occasions when we did need a car. When Nolan's birth was imminent (and I do mean imminent - we bought the car May 20th and he was born June 7th), we finally bought a car, figuring we would need one at the very least in case of emergencies, but also to be able to buy diapers in bulk and cart them home, etc. Now that we have the car, KB is more able to work in far-flung places. But when he works in far-flung places, Nolan and I don't have the car at all because he's got it. It's almost like we need two cars. Like that saying about martinis (and breasts) - one isn't enough and three is too many.

Of course I've had it in the ear before

Everything old is new again. Or some cliche like that.

I mostly listen to this radio station when I'm tooling around in the car. I think it's the only non-college-radio station around here that isn't owned by Clear Channel (of course, I listen to lots of college radio, too; how could you not, living in Boston?) It bills itself as "true alternative" radio, but it mostly just plays a slightly different selection of songs over and over, as opposed to the Clear Channel stations that play the same "top hits" over and over. Sigh. (Side note: Why, when the DJs are talking about a new album coming out, do they have to say "drops"? "The album drops March 28th." I hate that. Just say it comes out March 28th, for pete's sake.)

I've been struck lately (ow!) by how many acts from my relatively long-ago youth (we're talking late high school/early college years and yes that's more than ten years ago now) are either still a going concern or have re-surfaced after disappearing years ago. Driving to a doctor's appointment with Nolan a couple weeks ago, I heard: Morrissey* (new), Depeche Mode (new), Nirvana (old, obviously), Red Hot Chili Peppers (new, but sounds old) and Nine Inch Nails (new and sounds like crap).

Now, you could certainly argue as to whether these guys ever really went away (Depeche Mode) and come back or have just been lurking around the whole time putting out mediocre albums (Chili Peppers and NIN), but I can't believe that there aren't more new bands out there that could blow these guys out of the water.

(I remember driving around my podunk little hometown with Nine Inch Nails in the tape player [yes, tape player] with the volume cranked, shouting "I'd rather die! Than give you control!" at the top of my lungs. It fit right in with being 16 and aching to get out of there - out of my parents' control, out of high school, out of that hellhole of a small town. Perfect teenage rebellion music for your mom to say "Turn that crap down!" to. But these days, Trent Reznor's lyrics just sound stupid and pointlessly belligerent to me. I mean, "There is no fucking you, there is only me"? Then who the fuck are you singing to, Trent?** Maybe it's time to pack it in, buddy.)

I think part of it, of course, is the corporate culture of the music industry today, with big behemoth media companies like the aforementioned evil megalith Clear Channel being so unwilling to risk taking a chance on new acts that haven't already been proven sellers. They keep putting their marketing and publicity machinery behind the established acts because they know there's big bucks in it for them. I'm glad for the "revolution" in the industry taking place now with the Internet giving smaller acts a chance to build a following and get some oomph behind them so the corporate-owned radio stations have to take notice.

But I also think part of it is that the shelf life for any given act or song is incredibly short. I heard The White Stripes described on the radio the other day as "elder statesmen" of alternative rock. I was like, "What the fuck? Elder statesmen? They've been around, what, five years?" Elder statesmen are The Who. The Rolling Stones, for fuck's sake. Even U2 or R.E.M. I could accept as elder statemen of alternative rock - they've been around for twenty years. But The White Stripes? Come on.

It's MTV's fault.

Thanks for reading.

*Have you ever heard a more Morrissey-esque lyric than "As I live and breathe, you have killed me, you have killed me"? I gotta get that new album.

**This brings me to another tangent: Songs that have contradictory, oxymoronic lyrics. I hate them. Two prime examples are Carly Simon ("You're so vain, I bet you think this song is about you" - well, if it's not, then who are you talking to, Carly?) and Meatloaf ("I would do anything for love, but I won't do that" - well then you wouldn't do anything for love, now, would you, Mr. Loaf?) Hate them!

I can't stand it

I don't know about everybody else, but I'm having a hell of a time uploading pictures to Blogger. I have three posts waiting in the wings, but they all require photos, and every time I try to upload them, I get a blank friggin' screen and no photo. I'm starting to get really frustrated. Does anybody know anything about this?

Your own personal Jesus

This church is right down the street from our house.

I thought Jimmy Kimmell landed on his feet after he left The Man Show - didn't he have his own talk show or something? - but I guess I was wrong.

Ain't no drag

I hate this.

These are two different trees in my backyard, each with a plastic grocery bag stuck in the branches. I don't know how the fuck I'm going to get them out without renting a cherry picker or something. The one on top has been there for like, three months, and is consequently somewhat shredded. The one on the bottom is brand new. I'd been stewing all winter about what to do about the first one and I looked out the window the other day and was like, "What the fuck?" I hate that these things are all over the place.

When KB and I went to Ireland for our honeymoon, we went to a grocery store in Kinsale to shop for items for a picnic. The checkout girl asked us if we wanted a "sack." We had a number of items, so we said yes. So she added the price of the bag to the total - they charge ten cents a bag over there. And we were sort of surprised and not a little bit indignant - "They charge for bags? For pete's sake!"- in true asshole American fashion, until we thought about it. It certainly helps cut down on the number of bags you use, and if you bring them back to the store and re-use them, they take five cents off your bill for each one.

I wish the U.S. did this. Even more than that, I wish the U.S. would start making biodegradable bags mandatory. Many other countries use biodegradable bags in their grocery stores. Of course, they're slightly more expensive, and God knows we're all about the bottom line here in the United States. Good for the environment? Sure! We'll do it! Oh, wait - it'll cost an extra two cents per bag? Fuck it. No way.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, considering we have a president who still hasn't acknowledged that global warming is real and not a hoax.

Thanks for reading.

Raindrops keep fallin' on my head

Aaaaaaaaand the good news just keeps on comin'.

KB's mother is in the hospital. Her friend took her in last night after her regular doctor said she needed to go to the emergency room. She had an emergency appendectomy last night at 9pm.

We're waiting to hear how it went. Supposedly, an appendectomy is fairly routine and shouldn't be a big deal. Her appendix hadn't ruptured, so that's good. If it ruptures, they usually keep you in the hospital for a week. No rupture, 1 to 3 days.

Must...focus...on...good...things...

Thanks for reading.

UPDATE: She's doing well. They're keeping her overnight tonight for observation, but the surgery went exactly as it should. She'll be out of commission for a few days and will miss a planned weekend trip to Calistoga (bummer!) but otherwise, she's okay. Thank goodness.

More sweet than bitter

When we were down in New Jersey visiting my grandfather in the hospital, we had to spend some time in the hospital cafeteria. It was pretty tiny and lame as hospital cafeterias go, but I guess it's all relative. I'm just used to the MGH cafeteria, which beats the pants off a lot of buffet restaurants* you could go to. (King's Table, anyone?) I guess Mass General has to have a kick ass cafeteria when 11 THOUSAND people work there. (That's more people than live in my hometown. I'm not sure if that says anything about the hospital, but it sure says something about my roots.)

We were there around lunchtime both Saturday and Sunday, so we would feed Nolan his baby gruel at one of the tables down there, and then share an overpriced turkey sandwich or salad bar between us. On the Sunday, my younger brother was also there, and he came down to the cafeteria with us.

There was a table-tent advertisement for a Valentine's Day promotion on a lot of the tables. (Only a few weeks out of date.) It basically suggested that you buy your sweetheart a slice of dessert pie at the cafeteria. 'Cause nothing says "I love you" like hyperglycemic shock, I guess.

Nolan took a liking to the little paper tent, and decided to sample it. Or maybe the picture of the pie looked good to him. Whatever the case, he went after it:


He likes to chew on paper items like the newspaper and magazines. I usually give him one of those heavy cardboard paper junk mail flyers whenever I'm opening the mail to keep him occupied for a bit. The trick is to get it away from him before he gets it so soggy and shredded that he's able to ingest pieces of it. That we don't like. (I've found bits of paper in his diaper before - I don't think it's harmful, but I'd rather avoid it if possible.)

So that's what we did with the little table tent - took it away before the saliva reached critical mass.

Then we put it back on the table.

Then my brother decided to augment it a bit with his pen and return it to the table. Here's how we left it:

You gotta take your fun where you can.

Thanks for reading.

*Not that restaurants have pants. But you know what I mean.

I'm gonna see the cow beneath the sea

Confession time.

I have a disease. A horrible, debilitating disease. It's not one of those front-page headlines kinds of diseases, like breast cancer or Parkinson's. It's a shameful disease, with no celebrity spokespeople, no telethons, no 5k runs to raise money for a cure. People don't talk about it. They're too embarrassed.

But I have decided to break the silence. I have taken it upon myself to be the courageous one, the sufferer who finally tries to let some light shine into the darkness.

I have Annoying Song Syndrome. Sometimes abbreviated ASS.

*sob*

Yes, it's true.

I'm ashamed to say I don't know exactly where or when I contracted ASS. It may have been during my freewheeling college years as a theatre major - going to parties where everyone sang along with the Grease soundtrack and traded lines from Rocky Horror. Some of those days are a blur. I may have been infected while I was drunk or passed out.

For those of you who aren't familiar with ASS, let me share with you some of the more common symptoms: An attack usually begins because of a trigger. It varies from case to case, but for me, the trigger is most often a situation that reminds me of the lyrics of a particular song. In some instances, actual dialogue in my life quotes lyrics verbatim from a song, but more often, it's just a close approximation. Even that close approximation is enough to set off the song in my head, and from there, things spiral quickly downward.

For example: In the above paragraph, when I said "I may have been infected while I was drunk or passed out," I triggered an attack. The phrase "drunk or passed out" is rhythmically similar to a line in the song "Bobby James" off the N.E.R.D. album "In Search Of..." where the protagonist sings "I'm just one hit away from being passed out...young, and assed out." That similarity is enough to start the song on an endless loop inside my head. (The truly horrific thing is, it's my least favorite song on that album. Why not "Rock Star" or "Truth or Dare?" I guess because those songs aren't annoying, and it wouldn't be ASS if the song was kick ass.) Who knows how long "Bobby James" will live inside my head? I can't tell you. But it will be a lot longer than I would like it to. This is the price I pay for sharing my pain with the world.

Sometimes the only relief comes from inflicting the song on an innocent bystander. (Usually, in my case, my poor, long-suffering husband, KB.) I will sing the annoying song to the unsuspecting person in the hopes that just venting some of the pressure will allow the song to completely escape my head. Often, this tactic works. Occasionally, the technique backfires and both of us get the song stuck in our heads - this shows how virulent ASS really is.

I used to preface my singing with the statement, "I've got the most annoying song stuck in my head-" but most of my friends and relatives have learned that this is code for "I'm about to inflict unimaginable annoyance on you" and they quickly going into ASS defense mode: Fingers stuck in ears, singing the theme from "The Flintstones" as loudly as possible, they run from the room. So I usually don't tell them what I'm about to do. I put my own comfort ahead of theirs (I'm so ashamed) and knowingly infect them with ASS. I'm such a shit.

Sometimes I can derail the ASS attack by running to my CD collection and playing a completely different, but equally catchy song. I have a few favorite "go-to" tracks that, while others might find them annoying, serve as much-needed balm for my aching head. "One Week," by Barenaked Ladies comes to mind. I have come to terms with using them as temporary fixes - all previous joy at hearing these songs for their own sake is gone. It's sad, but this is the harsh world of ASS.

If, as they say in the Twelve Steps, the first step towards recovery is admitting you have a problem, then let this be my first step. Let this confession start me on the road towards healing, towards the day when it will no longer be a social stigma to blurt out "Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the fandango?" in a crowded restaurant.

Perhaps sharing my pain will be the push that other ASS sufferers need to admit their own problems. Maybe even a celebrity sufferer of ASS will come forward and be the driving force needed to bring ASS to the public's attention. (Fiona Apple? Mike Myers?) I hesistate even to voice these hopes, as they may be dashed on the rocks of reality all too quickly.

But where there is truth, there is hope.

Thanks for reading.

Tell me something good

My dad got his orders from the Army. He's definitely going. March 29th he has to report to Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Then from there he goes to Fort Benning, Georgia, and then overseas. They're still saying Kosovo, for the moment.

I was reading the paper this morning and found an article about how Milosevic just died in jail a month before his alloted defense time in his trial was up. They say it was a heart attack - I hope the fucker died because he was finally overcome with remorse and guilt over all the people he killed. Probably not, though. I hope there won't be any more mishegass* in Serbia like there was six years ago. Apparently popular opinion there is pretty generally upset that the war crimes tribunal took so long that the guy died. People feel like they didn't get justice.

So that's the atmosphere my dad will be going into. The Army has told him six months, which may put him back in the US around September. I just hope the government keeps its word. (Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! Yeah, right. How naive is that?)

I was able to talk to him this weekend and tell him why I was upset he didn't tell us sooner - maybe we could have changed our travel plans over the holidays and come see him before he left. His POV was that since the Army sent him an e-mail (that was how they first told him he'd be shipping out) he wanted to wait and see if it was for real - he didn't see any point in upsetting people until he knew for sure he'd be going. I guess I can understand that.

I'm still bummed, however. Hopefully he will have e-mail. He definitely will not have his cell phone. Maybe he'll read this site? Who knows.

Thanks for reading.

*Yes, I realize "mishegass" is probably not an adequate word to describe government-instituted genocide and years of civil war. I don't, however, know enough about what happened in the Balkans to be more politically astute about it, so "mishegass" will have to suffice.

Loving would be easy if your colors were like my dreams

I have seriously bad car karma this week.

As I've mentioned previously, Nolan and I go to a playgroup at a senior citizens' residence on Friday mornings. This past Friday, when the group was over, I walked out to the car, put Nolan in his car seat (which is always a struggle, he HATES the car seat) and got into the driver's seat. Then I noticed something stuck under the windshield wiper. I first thought it was a flyer, but I looked at the cars on either side of me and didn't see anything under their wipers, so it wasn't that. I got out and pulled out a brown paper bag with writing on it. The unsigned note said:

"A Volkswagon Golf Silver color Lic # XXXX Hit your rear bumper parking next to your car I tried to question him but he just walked away."

Fabulous. So I look at my car and sure enough, there are lovely little scratches on the left rear bumper. The silver Golf is still parked next to me. It has matching scratches on the front right bumper. What to do, what to do?

I removed Nolan from the car seat (oh joy, oh rapture!) and went back into the residence and asked the women at the front desk if they had any way of finding out who the silver Golf belonged to. They said if it was a resident's car, they'd have the license number in their registry. So they looked, but of course it wasn't there. Must be a visitor's car, they said. I asked if they had a PA system so they could say, "Will the owner of a silver VW Golf..." et cetera. They said they didn't. They suggested I call the police.

That would have been a feasible option if the damage was greater or it wasn't lunch time (actually past lunch time, the group was fun that day and we went over our usual time) for Nolan.* So I decided to leave a note of my own for the VW Golf owner.

I went back to the car, tore a page out of my notebook and wrote:

"I have a witness that saw you hit my bumper while parking. I will be reporting the incident with your car's make, model and license plate to the police and my insurance company. Call me at 617-XXX-XXXX."

It wasn't really that much damage, I just thought it was crappy that someone would hit the car and not leave a note. If they had done that, and said "I'm so sorry, here's my number and I have insurance please call me if you want to get it fixed" I probably would have looked at the scratches and gone, "Eh." But since they didn't, I felt all pissed and righteous and left my snotty little threatening note. I figured I'd never hear from the person.

To my surprise, the guy called me yesterday. He actually IS a resident at the senior's home, so I don't know why his car wasn't in their little log. He sounds like a sweet, befuddled old guy who probably shouldn't be driving anymore. He admitted hitting the car but said he saw someone in the driver's seat and since they didn't approach him, he didn't think it was a problem. Obviously there was no one in the car at the time, so who knows what kind of mental status this guy has. He couldn't remember the name of his insurance company, but he said he would get in touch with them and have an appraiser come look at the car and do a repair estimate. So who knows if that'll happen. I'm feeling kinda bad about forcing the issue. I really just wanted an apology.

Thanks for reading.

*To the tune of "Springtime for Hitler" from The Producers:
"It's lunchtime
for Nolan
and Mommy
It's time for
this boy to
get fooooood"

Do this, don't do that, can't you read?

Sigh.

Don't you know that there's no devil? That's just God when he's drunk

Things are going pretty well for me, emotionally speaking, considering all the crap going on that I posted about last time.

I think back to the time when I was seriously depressed when I lived in LA - serious enough to be medicated and in group therapy three days a week plus one-on-one therapy twice a week - and look at what was going on in my life at that point. And the answer is: absolutely nothing. I had a good job that I liked okay and paid me well, I had my own apartment that I could afford, I lived in a place of (almost) perpetual sun, I had plenty of friends and was not lacking for dates*, et cetera. And I couldn't get out of bed in the morning. I lost 30 pounds because I wasn't eating. What was the problem? I have no idea.

*This, of course, was before I met the fabulous KB.

Now, with all this stuff going on, I feel pissed (at my father) and sad (for my grandfather and our family), but I don't have that awful, bleak what-is-the-point-of-it-all feeling that I did back then.

They say depression is a genetic disorder, a chemical imbalance just like diabetes or high blood pressure. That's true, but I also think part of it is this: my brain likes a crisis. Car accident? No problem. Once the initial "Oh shit this isn't happening" moment is over, I am cool as a cucumber; I'm all about calmly exchanging insurance information. Sick family member? I got it covered. I can Florence Nightengale with the best of them. I do well in emergency situations. I thrive under pressure. It's when things are hunky-dory that I fall apart.

But even that simplistic explanation isn't enough for what going on with me right now.

You know what I think it is? I think it's Nolan. Not just in the sense of "Oh, I have a baby, I'm too busy to be sad" way, although that's certainly part of it. It's hard to be depressed when you have a 9-month old who wakes up happy every morning, a giant smile on his face. I try to get up before him in the morning to have some coffee and a few minutes to myself before he gets up. When I hear him talking to Grover and Purple Bunny (his two crib buddies) over the monitor, I go up to get him, and when I walk in the room, he's so excited he starts kicking and yelling like crazy. He loves being awake. He loves being. He fights sleep because he doesn't want to miss anything that might be going on while he's asleep. It's pretty difficult to be a cynical crank in the face of that.


Look at that. How can I stay sad, or mad, or depressed when he looks like that?

Thanks for reading.

Nothing ever happens on Mars

We're back from Dirty Jers.

Not to get all existential on you, and this is not as big a tangent as it will initially seem, but do you believe in God? I don't, really, not as a militant atheist sort of "God is Dead" non-belief, but more of a I-don't-really-think-about-it-that-much-and-it's-not-a-big-part-of-my-life kind of thing. I bring it up now because several monumentally crappy things have happened to me in the last few days, and those are the times when people who have religion* turn to God and say, "Why me?"

Something I read recently on Mimi Smartypants's site has gotten me thinking about this issue. She takes to task people who use phrases like "You are special to the universe" as meditation mantras (the underlying assumption being that they don't believe in God but need some sort of spiritual woo-woo to think about whilst meditating) with the old "if everyone is special than no one is special" argument. Then she says something key: "Remembering how totally un-special I am to the universe is particularly helpful when shit is going poorly, because then I feel less picked on."

Right now, shit is going poorly, and I'm feeling pretty picked on. We drove down to New Jersey on Friday, leaving Boston at 2pm because KB was able to get out of work early. A drive that should have taken about 5 hours (plus a little more with bathroom/gas/nursing stops) took us 8 hours, mostly because we spent about an hour and a half pulled over to the side of the 287 in New York after being sideswiped by a box truck which then left the scene of the accident and drove away. We had to call the State Troopers and wait an hour for someone to come and take an accident report with Nolan fussing (with good reason, he was hungry) the entire time.

The car is drivable, however, and no one was injured, thank goodness, so we pressed on. We got to my mom's at about 10:30 at night. Then, in the morning, while talking to my younger brother about his possibly coming up to NJ to see our grandfather, I find out that my father is being deployed to active duty in Kosovo at the end of the month. My father is a colonel in the Army Reserves, and spent six months in Afghanistan at the end of 2002. Kosovo is somewhat less nerve-wracking a location than Afghanistan or Iraq, but it still means my father will be gone for six or more months with very little access to phones or computers. There's also the problem that the Army brass are perfectly within their rights to tell my father one thing (say, where he's being deployed or for how long) and then turn around and go, "Oh, guess what? When we said Kosovo? We were wrong. You'll actually be stationed in Abu Ghraib for twelve months! Sorry about that! Ha ha!"

My father has known about his deployment since December, but for reasons known only to himself decided not to tell anyone until now, a mere three weeks before he leaves. He and my stepmother are going to San Francisco next week to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary, and then he has to report to his "staging location" before being deployed. Yay.

Then there's my grandfather (this is my mother's father). We saw him in the hospital on both Saturday and Sunday. He wasn't actually as bad as I had feared he would be, but he still looked awful. He's been having dialysis to compensate for his non-functioning kidneys, which is helping, but at this point his care is palliative (meaning they're just trying to keep him comfortable and lucid) rather than curative.

I'm glad we got to see him while he was still pretty much himself. He dozed off a lot and was quite weak, but other than that, he seemed normal. At one point, Nolan was playing with some mylar "Get Well Soon" balloons that had a reflective surface he was just fascinated with. My aunt Patty kept bopping him gently in the face with one and he would squeal with laughter every time. Then she bopped me in the face (not quite as gently) and I squealed and pretended to be just as delighted as Nolan. Pop looked at KB and said, "You married her, not me." Which got a laugh.

So for the most part, we just hung out in his hospital room and did what we normally do when we get together as a family, which is tell embarrassing stories about each other and make snide jokes at each other's expense. You know, just like other normal, loving families. I think having people around was good for Pop, and I like to think that seeing Nolan made him happy. One of my aunts feels that we shouldn't all be visiting him, because everyone descending on his hospital room makes it seem like he's going to die. I understand her feelings, but it's not like he's not aware of how dire his situation is. He knows. I think the visits make him happy and maybe even take his mind off things for a little while.

The thing I wanted to ask Pop that I didn't was "Are you scared?" It would only have been to satisfy my own curiosity and wouldn't have made him feel any better. I wanted to know if he really believes he'll be going to Heaven or wherever in the afterlife. Does he believe he'll see Grammy there? The priest at his church came to see him and left some...I don't even know what to call them. Devotional items? Talismans? It was a little picture of Mary washing Jesus's wounds and a book on trusting God to take care of you. Do those things make him feel better? I don't know, and I didn't want to ask in case he wasn't really up to the questions.

In the end, I'm glad we went. It was a lot of driving for a short weekend, but worth it. He may die soon, or he may keep fighting and live for another few months. In either case, I'm glad we saw him while he had his wits about him and could appreciate our company, and we his.

I have more crapola to post about religion, God, and Waiting for Guffman as metaphor for the search for meaning in life (no, really!) but this post is too long as it is. So I shall end it here.

Thanks for reading.

*I don't really like the phrase "have religion" because it sounds like a disease ("Wash your hands after you touch John - he's got religion.") but I think it's appropriate in this case. It's not something I have, clearly, and I think it's one of those either-or things.

I'm the man who loves you

My grandfather is dying. He's had bladder cancer for about 10 years now, but he's had a number of cystoscopies and been in remission (on and off) for most of that time. Now it seems things are coming to a head. The cancer has metastasized to his kidneys and lungs, and he's been hospitalized for renal failure. KB assures me that renal failure is a very peaceful and easy way to die - not much pain or suffering, and fairly speedy. I guess that's good, as far as anything about this can be said to be good.

We're leaving today to drive down to New Jersey to see him in the hospital. Even though Nolan won't remember the visit, I'd like him to see his great-grandfather at least one last time, while Pop is lucid enough to enjoy seeing him.

When Grammy, his wife, my grandmother, died (almost four years ago now) we were all very surprised that she was even sick. Pop had always been the sick one, and no one expected Grammy to die first. She was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia, was admitted to the hospital to start chemo, and died eight days later. I didn't get to see her while she was still conscious, although I was able to be there and hold her hand when she died, and I've always wished I could have spoken to her once more to tell her how much I loved her.

So we're driving to New Jersey today.

Thanks for reading.

I watch the sun come up while you're sleeping it off

I have this bizarre fear of the mailman. I'm not afraid of him, exactly, I just don't like being there when he delivers the mail. I never used to be home when the mail was delivered (usually around 11 in the morning) because I was always at work. Now that I'm home every day, I'm always acutely aware of when the mailman is going to come.

It's usually the same guy, a gruff stocky older guy with a buzzed haircut and a salt-and-pepper beard. His name is Joe. I know this because one year we left him a Christmas card addressed only to "Mailman" with ten bucks in it and he gave us a card in return that was signed "Thank you, Joe (last name)."*

That was before the Great Snow Shoveling Dispute of '05. We went away for a week in March of last year, when I was six months pregnant with Nolan. It was kind of our last hurrah Vacation By Ourselves Before The Baby. We went to California and spent half the week with KB's mom in the bay area and the other half in LA with various friends from our old lives. We had a cat sitter come once a day to feed the kitties, bring in the mail, etc.

Well, the first day we were in California, it snowed about a foot back in Boston. The cat sitter didn't shovel the walk, of course, because why would she? She could still get into the house, and we weren't paying her to shovel our walk for us. So the mailman decides that we aren't holding up our end of the mailman/resident contract for mail delivery, whatever that is, and stops delivering our mail. Apparently the whole "Neither rain nor snow nor dark of night" thing is no longer a going concern for the US Postal Service.

The whole week we got no mail. The cat sitter told us about it when we got back. We shovelled our walk, but still no mail. KB called our post office to complain, and the supervisor transferred his call to our actual mailman, Joe. KB was like, "What the fuck, dude? Where's our mail?" and the postman said since it wasn't safe for him to come up our sidewalk to the door (we have a mail slot in the door rather than a mailbox), he didn't deliver the mail. KB was like, "The walk's clear now. Why haven't you delivered our mail? Are we being punished?" And the mailman totally denied he was being punitive, but the next day we got that day's mail. We had to physically go down to the post office to get the backlog of mail, he wouldn't deliver it to us.

Ever since then, our relationship with Joe the Mailman has deteriorated. A week later when the snow started to melt off the roof of the house, we had some icicles hanging over the front porch, and we got a note with our mail saying, "Clear icicles off of overhang." The unspoken threat was, "Or I'll stop delivering your mail again, you douchebags." So we cleared the icicles. (That word doesn't look right. Icicles? Icycles? Iceicles?)

Now it's kind of a running joke for us. Whenever it snows (which thankfully hasn't been much this winter) we joke that we'd better hurry up and shovel so Joe the Mailman won't put out a contract on us. Needless to say, Joe did not get ten bucks in a card from us this past Christmas.

So now that I'm home during the day, I feel weird being there when he brings the mail. If I happen to be right by the front door when he comes, I freeze. Like he can sense movement. I'm weirdly afraid he'll bend down and peek through the slot and go, "I see you in there." That would be creepy. Sometimes I work up my nerve to open the door and take the mail from him directly. I always say, "Thank you!" real bright and friendly-like, like I'm so thrilled he's managed to hand me my mail, and he always gives me this "Welcome." that sounds affronted, like, "It's my frickin' job, lady, I have no choice."

I'm probably overthinking the whole thing - I'm sure he has about a thousand houses he delivers to, and we may not even be a blip on his radar screen. But I'm still relieved when there's a relief mailperson on duty instead of Joe.

Thanks for reading.

*It was a Christmas card, but the theme was monkeys. There were three monkeys celebrating Christmas on the front of the card - wrapping presents, drinking, and eating. All I could think was, "Monkey card?"