unclear on the concept

I am trying to teach A a few basic cooking skills so he can help around the house a little more.

'Okay', i say,'the first step in the recipie is to saute these onions. That means you cut up the onions, put some oil in the pan, put it on medium heat, and call me when you are done.' (i will be sitting on the couch resting, just watch me)

'Moooooommmm.....where's the cutting board?'
'Where's the knife?'
'Which pot do i use?'
'Do i use this olive oil?'
'But where is the vegetable oil?'
'Okay, i'm done.'

So i go to check it out...and this is what i get....


-------------------------------------------------------

C got one of those sticker/coloring books from one of her teachers. I showed it to her -- 'Look! It has stickers! You can stick them on the pictures, and color the pictures, isn't that cool?'

Here is the result.....



-----------------------------------------------------------------

'Whew', i said to dh, 'i should not have walked all the way to that mall and back today [while our car was being serviced], i am really wiped out by it.'

'Oh, how far is it?' said dh.

'About a mile each way, i would say.' (pushing C in the stroller, when she wasn't falling face-first into mudpuddles, and there is a hill involved)

'A mile isn't long at all', said dh, 'you should walk more, not less. You are getting weak as you grow older, you need to exercise more.'

'Okay', i said brightly, 'we'll talk more about this subject the next time you are pregnant. With twins.'

news travels fast

R. is our neighborhood gossip. She works from home and her work comes in waves -- so essentially she is often free to visit the neighbors, go for walks, write down license plates of suspicious cars, babysit C, call you on the phone and jabber about nothing...that sort of thing. I do like her, because she does play a surrogate grandmother role to C, and her door is always open to us -- it is nice to have someone like that in the neighborhood. I would say, though, that i like her more when she is just a little busier at work....

Anyway, she called me yesterday afternoon to inquire why we hadn't left yet for our trip (which gives you some idea of her general level of busybodiness....). So i explained that we weren't going, because dh wanted to paint, and anyway i was happy not to have to go because i wasn't feeling well. So she asked me point blank if i was pregnant, since i had been telling her i had 'not been feeling well' for quite a few weeks....and at that point, i couldn't very well say no so i told her all about it. I also told her to keep it quiet since dh hadn't even told his family yet.

Well, okay then -- dh recieved his first 'congratulations' phone call this morning. It took....what, 12 hours? The whole neighborhood knows now, as well as several auxilliary people who work in a local jewelry store and who were apparently spending their time trying to work out the actual date of conception of these babies. I mean, really, have people NO shame whatsoever?

Oy, like the next 6 months weren't going to be long enough??

reprieve

Dh decided to stay home and paint the house, rather than go visit the family! I am extremely relieved by this new development....i will be able to rest over the next week rather than running around like a madwoman.

We have been planning to go down to his mom's to get furniture for awhile, so finally he had decided to do it over this break....but actually he wanted to go to his brother's first (which is an 8 hour drive) and then it makes sense to stop at my mom's (she is midway, kind of -- well, it is 2 hours out of the way but whatever) and then he wanted a dining room set moved from his brother's as well...and it was looking to be a hellacious week of driving and visiting and moving. I told him i didn't want to go and it would be physically extremely difficult but i know it has to be done so i would do my best...

But he decided to stay home....so now i am looking at a week of relaxing! So i am very very pleased. In fact it has to be done eventually and we are just putting off the inevitable. But it always looks better to put something unpleasant off, and park your butt on the couch instead.

-----------------------------------------------------

We had a nice low-key Christmas. C is still in that phase where she wants to open one box, and play with what is inside for an hour or two or three, before considering that it may be of interest to open another box. So in fact we gave up on it, half of her presents are still under the tree. Which is fine....they were mostly a waste of money anyway, since the first thing she opened was such a hit that she doesn't even want to look at anything else. Guess what it is? Three small die-cast cars -- Lightning McQueen, Sally Carrera, and Mater, that i bought for $2 each at Kroger.....so much for those pretty wooden toys that i hauled back from France....

-----------------------------------------------------

Overheard:

(C gives me her broom)
Me: What do you want me to do with this?
C: Mommy, clean up those toys. Clean up all those toys right now.

merry and bright

Wishing you all a gentle Christmas and New Year's day...

We will be away for awhile, visiting family, so unless plans change i will post in a week or so...

oh no

If you have a minute, go over and give Clare some support...

just like in the movies

Scene: Me and C driving. Some guy in a beat-up old gold car cuts me off.

Me: (conversationally, to gold car) Well, aren't you an asshole.

C:(loudly, from the backseat) Ass....hole. Ass....hoooole. That car asshoooole! Asshole! Asshole! Asshole!

This refrain continues without stop, while i nearly die laughing, until we see something more worthy of immediate comment -- a police car.

------------------------------------------------

This happened last week...and i forgot to blog about it until this evening i was talking to dh on the phone as he was driving home from work. He was telling me about sausages for dinner when his conversation was punctuated by "Goddamnit you asshole!" "Better watch it", i said, "C knows that word. " He asked, "Really? Are you sure she didn't say 'backhoe'?" "Uh NO", i said, "she knows how to use it in context". "Uh-oh...."

clean bill of health

Babies are fine...looking good, measuring right on schedule. 12-week scans are very cool! They are still so small, but you can see fingers and toes and watch them really moving around in there. They do seem to be very active...the second one was quietly sucking his fist for awhile, then when he lost the fist he started moving around like crazy. Their systems are so immature that they can't move smoothly yet, they kind of jerk around randomly....it is cute. They are facing different directions -- one is head down, one is head up. 'See, they're already going opposite ways!' said the tech. Ha ha -- what am i in for, i wonder??? We got some good pictures but i don't know when i am going to have the chance to scan them for you.

I have no cyst or anything that they can see, so they are mystified as to the cause of this pain i have been having. It is better today, though. Maybe it is that ligament pain that Sarah is talking about though i have had what i thought were ligament pains before and they were really different. Well, as long as everything looks a-ok, i guess i won't worry about, and hope that it continues to receed, and just goes away...

I nearly freaked out in the waiting room though -- totally surrounded by big pregnant women and their happy expectant daddy husbands. Oy. The thing is, i didn't mentally prepare myself for it at all, because i had been there before, when i was pg with C. So it didn't occur to me that it would be a problem for me this time, DUUUH. But there i was, all alone (the deadline of dh's big project was moved up to *today*, so there was no way he could go with me) surrounded by blonde-haired suburban mommies chatting baby talk and chugging at the ubiquitous modern pg woman's water bottles. 'You can drink all the water you want', i thought, 'your baby could still die'. Not nice...i should be 'over' these kinds of thoughts already. At least i didn't say it out loud, ha ha.

Now, back to the holiday preparations...

more pregnancy crap

Ok, i have had this sharp stabbing pain in the left ovary area for about 24 hours of so. I was up half the night with the crap. I thought at first it was just gas but it has not gone away or moved at all, so it probably isn't. I haven't had any bleeding or unusual cramping (this pg is full of crampy, stretchy uterine pain) and i am scheduled for a level II ultrasound at the hospital tomorrow morning. So my doctor said unless i am in total abject pain, just wait for the level II tomorrow, that it is probably a cyst. Something like Clare was talking about, i guess. If i lay in bed, i can hardly feel the sharp stabbing pain.

Of course, both C and A are home with me today and C is having a red-letter-2-year-old-todder day, so we will see how that whole 'laying in bed' thing goes. Not that the alternative, 'walking around doubled up in pain', is a whole lot better....

Oh, re blogger beta -- i changed the comment settings to 'everybody can comment' or something like that. It allows anonymous comments, but it seems to also allow non-beta users to post. Or whatever they are now that beta is supposedly no longer beta.

first day of winter

I woke up and looked out the window. It is a little rainy, and warm, and a bird was singing. I swear that outside, it looks like spring.

What is up with this global warming crap? It's driving me crazy.

mars/venus

So, our fridge is bare, completely. There is *nothing* in it but some condiments, a few eggs, and some beer. I was too tired last evening to go out shopping, so i called dh and asked him to stop at the store on his way home from work.

'What should i get?' he asked.

'I dunno', i said, 'Milk, soy milk, something for dinner, and whatever else you think we need.'

So, he came home with 1 gallon milk, 1/2 gallon soy milk, and hamburger & buns for dinner.

Now, i can't complain that he didn't do what i told him, and i am not in fact complaining at all. Looking at this meager haul, though, it struck me that if *i* had gone to the grocery store with a list like the one i gave him, i would have left with a good 4-5 paper bags full of groceries. Most of which would fall squarely in the category of 'whatever else we need'. I suppose the needs of men and women are simply different.

We did, after all, still have beer.

Xmas preparations

No, sorry, pre-made cookie dough will not do. I have to make everything from scratch here. I have to make anywhere from 3 to 7 different kinds of cookies...dozens and dozens of them. Ideally i would be able to also decorate each room in the house and make a Buche de Noel from scratch (with the meringue mushrooms, made by hand, of course) and send out 50-odd christmas cards (all individually hand-written, no xmas letters here) and wrap everything beautifully with matching papers and ribbons and if i had time i would try a gingerbread house too.

Usually i am up until at least midnight on Xmas eve, arranging the gifts under the tree *just right*.

See what i am saying? It is some kind of mania...there must be some name for this. Christmas Craftophrenia? Martha-itis?

photographic evidence

Here is the picture from my 8 1/2 week ultrasound. See, there really are two! Maybe i will have better pictures soon....

feeling better

It was only a 24-hour type thing after all. So i am much better and even got some housework and Christmas shopping and Christmas cards (not all of them, just some) done this weekend. This week there will be some final exams to give and grade... and some desperate attempts to catch up on all the Christmas crap that i am way behind in doing. I cannot believe it is only a week until Christmas??? I have some packages to send out but there is no way they will be there on time, since i won't make it to the post office until tomorrow at absolute best. Well...oh well.

There will be no cookies, i am almost sure....which makes me very sad as i have not failed to make at least SOME cookies since A was like 2 years old. I even managed to make them the year Nicolas died -- not that i made alot but at least there were a few different kinds. I didn't want Christmas for A to be a complete and total failure, that year -- so i had some motivation. This year, no energy, no motivation, only guilt. Maybe i will be able to do some next weekend, if i can wrap stuff through the week and if dh takes care of C on the weekend....we will see. I will feel really bad about myself if i don't even manage to make ONE goddamn cookie. I have no idea what kind of mental case i am, that this stupid crap is so important to me....is there some kind of diagnosis available here? Anyone?

ugh

well, i'm down with the vomiting and diahhrea now. Lovely. C recovered quickly, though, so though it is a bug it doesn't seem that strong. So hopefully i will feel better by tomorrow...

see if that works

can non-beta users comment now?

beta?

I have read that several people can't comment on my blog because i switched to beta. The thing is, i switched to beta many weeks ago (more than a month for sure), and people had no problem commenting then. So though it might be beta-related, i am hoping it is just a glitch that they will fix soon.

For what it's worth, i switched because i was having alot of trouble uploading pics with the old blogger, and i hoped beta would work better. It does, and in fact everything uploads alot faster. Also i had no problems when i switched -- nothing changed or disappeared, except somehow a few accents aigues over there on the blogroll have unaccountably turned into tildes. I keep meaning to fix that.

for Catherine

This was the ceiling in our east parlor, with the rotted beam in evidence. They tried to jack it up, which resulted in the second floor windows falling out. Meaning, the that whole part above the window started to collapse outward.
The actual cause of the problem was this hole in the bay window roof -- the corner there, that looks like it has no gutter/roofing? It indeed does not. When we bought the house you could literally see the daylight through the wall.
What actually happened was that the water was coming in through that hole -- of course it was rotting the plaster but there was a worse problem. Perhaps you can't see it well in this picture, but the way these houses are made is that there are several layers (courses) of brick. The one closest to the inside has a wooden layer every 3 feet or so. You can just see one of those layers on the bottom of the picture -- the purpose of this is so that they can fasten the lathe onto something (the lathe are the slats that were used to hold the plaster). But the water coming in rotted one of those layers, the result of which was that the beam sagged. In here you can see that they have started to put some new wood up there.
I don't unfortunately have a picture of the house with a big hole in it. I think my neighbor has one but i have not got it from her yet. But here is a picture of when they were putting the bricks back....
Sigh.
Anyway, here is an 'after' picture. It's a little dark (you can't see the tree well) but you can see the ceiling better than in the posts from the Christmas house tours. If you want a pretty picture of Xmas decorations, go look at that post ;)

And yes, eventually we will install a crown moulding -- it will not be identical to what was there but it will be in the same vein. I cannot afford to have someone remake it in plaster so we will buy some premade styrofoam stuff and cobble it together that way....

The joys of parenting

Usually Thursdays are my day-off-all-day day, and i stay home (or go out) with C. But today, i had scheduled a review session for my students, because they have their big final exam coming up. It turned out my babysitter couldn't make it, so i had to bring C along. Which i didn't really feel too bad about even, seeing as the review session is something extra i am doing on my own time. And it gave my students a compelling demonstration of one of the well-known rules of parenthood: It's all good, until the vomit begins.

C was rather shy at finding herself in front of a room full of big people, so i had to hold on to her for awhile until she got used to the idea. It is quite a trick to do calculus problems on the board while carrying a 30-lb toddler who is trying to hide in your armpit. (yeah yeah i know i shouldn't be lugging her around, but really it is impossible not to, and my OB said it wouldn't hurt). I did at least manage to do the problems correctly, though.

Once she got used to it though, she was fine -- she sat quietly and ate her junk food treats (bought precisely for this purpose, of course) and lay under the table and colored some papers and played with some cars. After about an hour of calc problems, she turned over with a glazed look in her eyes, and i said 'uh oh' just a second before she started to spew...

Thus endeth the review session...very colorfully, if i do say so myself.

In any case, she recovered quickly after the incident -- probably faster than most of the grossed-out college students -- and we are now home napping. Or rather, C is napping...i am waiting to see if it was just the excessive junk food that got her sick, or if it is actually a bug (which will be fun for us all, if it is)

ob visit and assorted baby talk

...yesterday went fine. Babies are still both going strong -- good heartbeats, good size. They look kind of cramped in there! I am going for a level II ultrasound at the hospital at the end of next week -- basically (being the freakout i am) i wanted to be absolutely sure there were two placentas, though from my dr's u/s results it sure looks like there are. I was in fact mildly annoyed, because i have been trying to determine this from the pictures they printed out for me, looking for the so-called 'lambda sign' between the sacs. It is kind of clear on mine but not very, and you can't tell the placental masses at all. This has been a great source of time-wasting for me over the last 2 weeks, learning all about reading twin u/s results. However they kept a picture themselves, which i didn't ever even see, where it is all *clear as a bell*, you can even see the outline of the placentas. Granted you can see more of the babies on my pics, but really. So typical that they kept the GOOD picture for themselves!! I will make an effort to scan in my pics soon, so you can see.

So they referred me to the hospital for the level II, which hopefully DH will be able to come to, and they will also do the nuchal translucency measurement and some blood screen for Down's risk. I don't know exactly why i agreed to that -- i didn't have it with C and i won't do anything with the information in any case (even if my risk comes back high i'm not even going to have an amnio, because i am afraid of amnios). But, anyway.

So that was good, and i talked with my dr about this and that about twins. We talked about vaginal delivery vs. c-section and he assured me that if the first twin is head-down and the second is breech, he can still do a vaginal delivery if i want (and he has done it before). Both head down, i would go for vaginal of course -- and both breech would call for a section. It was completely odd to be talking about standards for labor & delivery when i am only 10 weeks along...as if the happy ending was really for sure going to happen. So i was proud of myself for doing it, but not too proud -- after all, i asked mostly out of curiosity. He also said he saw no need for me to see a peri, just because it was twins (his practice does alot of twins/triplets even though they are not 'high-risk specialists'), but he said he would send me for a consult any time i wanted to, or, of course, if there was any hint of anything wrong.

The 'bad news' was that i asked when all this tiredness and achy pains were going to end, if ever, and got the answer -- uh, in 28 weeks or so ;) So that sucks, i am going to have to figure out how to deal with getting something done even though i usually feel like crap. I guess waiting around for it to 'get better' is not going to work. Because it's not just the tiredness -- since they put me on these high-iron prenatals it has wreaked the usual intestinal havoc, and i have *alot* of uterine pain -- presumably the constipation and gas but also from stretching, since everything has to get twice as big as usual. So yeah, at this point it is often a trial to even walk to work, and to lecture two classes in a row. I cannot imagine how i will be able to do this when i am around 30 weeks, if it is so hard NOW. But i guess i will have to figure it out!

toddler fears

C used to be a child with no fear. But as she gets older, apparently she does learn *something*. This is good. So now she is wary of strangers and new situations, and knows not to run pell-mell towards the road because a car might hit her. But she also seems to have developed some odd fears -- things that will make her wail in fear and anguish.

To wit, Santa and elevators.

Now, the Santa thing is rather sudden -- she's not usually THAT afraid of strangers. And i would not encourage her to go visit with Santa since she has no desire to do so. But she is completely freaked out by that guy. I didn't realize it until last Sunday when 'St. Nicholas' visited our church and she wailed wailed wailed in fear as soon as she got close to him. I had to take her out of the church! And then afterwards, they always have coffee & donuts and she loves to go to that, but i couldn't take her because that day was 'breakfast with Santa' and of course she would have freaked. But she didn't understand, and got upset that she couldn't go...ah well.

The elevator thing is different, and that worries me a little. Claustrophobia? She loves to play in the dark closet though. But she gets so scared when those elevator doors close, even if i am right there & she can see me. She is only okay in an elevator if she is in my arms. Wierd...i hope she grows out of it soon.

long day

Six hours at the mall at Christmas-time with a toddler who has not napped, waiting for your unexpected $400 car repair to be done....is not an experience for the faint-hearted, let me tell you.

C, true to form, managed at least to get a new pair of PINK shoes out of it.....i mean, when she was walking out of the store with them on i really had no recourse but to pay....

worthless...

...is what i am.

You would think that the news that i am carrying twins would galvanize me, you know? That even if i don't have alot of physical energy i would throw myself into my school work and try to make progress on my research....because i know that if i am lucky enough to produce two live children at once, there sure won't be time to publish anything.

But NOOOO

In fact, i was doing fine before the twins news. I was not obsessing about pregnancy like i did when i was pg with C. I perused no news groups or bulletin boards, i read no silly novels in a weak effort to relax my mind. I just said, okay, better get a move on -- and did some real work.

Now that is all out the window....i have done no work since i found out. No....I spend my days reading blogs and newsgroups, trying to divert myself and not to freak out. I mentally catalog my symptoms and obsess about what to eat for best results. My mind is a total standstill in anything that requires the smallest amount of thought. Today i made a completely obvious and stupid error doing elementary integration, of all things....and had to apologize to my whole class for being a complete moron. Yeah that was fun. Luckily they did their teacher evals LAST week.

Oy, i had better snap out of this soon....i wish i knew how?

blind spot

A few weeks ago i read this article in the New York Times about a new Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit. 'That's cool' i thought, and i even sent the article to my dh, and said 'Do you know where this is? We should go there!'

The article says, and i quote, 'Housed in an abandoned car dealership on a barren strip of Woodward Avenue...' so i tried to figure out where it was. Woodward Ave. is the main drag around here. They specified... 'The museum stands midway between the gargantuan Beaux-Arts structure that houses the venerated Detroit Institute of Art -- a haunting symbol of the city's faded civic aspirations -- and a recently completed sports and entertainment district on the edge of the downtown business district.' Ok, so i went down the street in my mind and was unable to locate any memory of this building at all...there was a picture of it in the article, you know, which is not there anymore now that the article has been archived. I came to the conclusion that it must be pretty far down, somewhere around Peterboro street, and completely forgot about it...

Until i went to church this morning and realised this stupid building is right on the corner of my street! Which i drive by on quite a regular basis.

And i never saw it, can you believe that??

Yeah, when i thought about it, i can believe it. It was an abandoned building. It *still* looks like an abandoned building -- when they made it into a museum, they put a small sign on top and graffiti'd the side. Nicely. I do remember when the graffiti appeared, thinking -- 'nice graffiti'. But living around here, you do kind of get a blind spot for an abandoned building -- you notice immediately if they are obviously doing work on it, but if they are not...it is just part of the urban scape that you ignore. And these people, they didn't do any work at all, that you could tell from the outside...

I do strongly object to the fancy-pants fellows at the NY Times calling my neighborhood a 'barren strip of Woodward Avenue' though. In fact it is quite bustling -- that new museum is right across from some famous restaurants, just a block from a great club, there are new lofts going up all around...Apparently they are so used to their Manhattan lifestyles that they have no clue about the rest of the world. Heh, give me ten minutes and i could show them 'barren strips' of this city that really deserve that name....and frankly, it is a tragedy that it is so, not some kind of statement about "profound rethinking of what constitutes urban revitalization". Or what the fuck ever.

the problem with tickers

is that they go TOO DAMN SLOWLY.

Mikulas -- St. Nicholas Day

I suppose i should make some acknowledgement, though with all the stuff going on this morning, i forgot to take pictures. We put out our shoes as usual and i put out the little crystal baby shoes for Nicolas. C didn't understand why we were putting our shoes in the window but she sure figured it out in the morning when they were filled with candy.

And in the evening -- instead of going to bed she was jumping up and down screaming 'i want m&m's! I want m&m's!' Good thing these holidays come only once a year.

now i will fascinate you...

...with a long and detailed description of my pregnancy symptoms.

No, never mind...they're not as colorful as Laura's were.

So, i'll just say, still here, still ok, still trying to recover from the strain of the weekend. I think i need some serious time off...well, i will have it soon -- only one more week of classes! And then finals, but that is not so bad. At least i can grade with my feet up.

see, i'm trying to be brave

I made a ticker, and it even has a baby logo that features twins. Boy it will suck if i have to change from two to one or zero...

Of course, now the blasted ticker won't work!! Ah well....

Victorian Christmas house tour

Well, no, they are not pictures from yesterday -- i went down and took them this morning. And somehow the lighting is not quite what you would want. But heck...you will still be shocked -- a week of chucking stuff into the basement and cleaning and decorating has made my house almost look like something you could actually live in. Literally a week ago all these rooms were filled with construction equipment and debris -- some, you couldn't even walk through, they were so full of wood and saws and god knows what.

Our house was billed as a 'work in progress' so people were aware that it wasn't 'done'. Or, they were supposed to be aware, anyway. In any case, though, we did clean out and 'furnish' and decorate the fancy big parlor. By furnish i mean i brought down some rugs & some chairs that were light enough to carry....and borrowed some tables from my neighbor.

I will try to get some better pictures of the tree later today or something....

Here is the fireplace with the kids's stockings & Nicolas' wreath. Yeah, you can't see the wreath well but it is in the middle. I was a little late on doing all this stuff -- i had to wake up at 5:30 am yesterday morning to come down and make his wreath. I didn't get the furniture down until like 11:30....oy. The vendors showed up at 12 (we had people selling crafts & stuff in the house) and the tours started at 2.

Here is the other half of the room. Amazing what a rug and a few plants will do. I wish we could keep it like this, but Randy is going to show up to work monday morning, so i had better roll up the rug or it will be covered in sawdust.









This is the west parlor. The rest of the rooms i didn't decorate. Here they are empty but for the event they were full of people selling stuff. Scarves, jewelry, cookies, whatever.

This is the dining room. There is an archway with pocket doors between the west parlor and the dining room -- i have no idea why i didn't take a picture of that for you. Oh well. Probably i have taken that picture before, though.

The kitchen. As you can see, dh (with the help of our neighbors) has put in the stove, which is a 48" thermador monster -- 4 burners, griddle, grill, two convection ovens. It's about 10 years old and we bought it at a demolition sale (the people were tearing down their old house and building a new one -- so they were selling everything in the house. We got our water heater from there too, and a few pieces of furniture....i have never heard of such a thing before i moved to Michigan, but apparently it is
a big trend now all over the States. I will not comment on this though there is much that could be said....)

In our kitchen we are just waiting for the countertops and some appliances. I threw a piece of plywood over the island to make it into a table to sell my wares -- i had started some amaryllis bulbs to sell for the neighborhood association. They are not ugly, but i did not sell even one plant. From this interesting experience i learned something i should have already known -- things that appeal to me, that i would spend money on, do not typically appeal to other people. So now i am the proud owner of a dozen of the blasted things. Oh well. If you know me, you are getting an amaryllis for your christmas gift...

If you want to impress people, pull out a pocket door. I don't understand now what is so impressive about pocket doors, but wow you should see people's eyes light up when you pull one out. I remember in the dim past when we bought this house, how impressed i was when the real estate agent showed us. Oooooh.
I guess i am all jaded now -- now when i pull one out all i can think of is that i spent a ton of money on having these stripped and fixed and rehung and the damned things STILL STICK.

Here is a closeup of the tile in front of the east parlor fireplace. Pretty, no? What is really funny is that when we bought the place, it was dirty and gross -- but you could see the design underneath. Oh how pretty, i thought, i will have to clean that off first thing. Two and a half years later, i DID clean it, and again realised it was pretty. I don't think i actually looked at these tiles for the last 2 1/2 years....well, you know, when the front of the house is falling in, you tend to look at *that* instead....

The other fireplace, on the other side, also has pretty tiles but they are of a different pattern. Also they were shattered to hell -- some into only 2 pieces, some into 20. So one weekend i took them off, cleaned them, and started to epoxy them back together, so that i could remud the bed and reset them. As you can imagine, they are still sitting in the basement, waiting for the completion of this procedure.

Sarah and her dh came down for the house tours! It was great to see them, but i think we talked for like 10 minutes, and of course about nothing but the house...it seems one cannot really have a decent conversation when there are 200 people trooping through your house....but i hope they had a good time anyway. I thought we could maybe go out for a drink or something afterward, but Sarah was quite right that i would never have the energy to do it...i was flagging by 3:30, counting the minutes until this stupid thing was supposed to be over at 6. And i have to say thank heaven Randy (our contractor) was there for the whole thing, talking to everybody. It was good business sense for him, i think (and i hope he gets some jobs out of it), but it took alot of the pressure off of me, i didn't have to explain everything a million times to everybody -- only about a thousand times! Of course, at 6 (by which time i was sitting on the parlor floor in a heap), my neighbor comes in and says 'they just sold a pile more tickets next door, we are staying open until 6:30 at least'....and i think i just looked at him like he had descended from the moon...but luckily my dh was willing to take charge of the house tour by that point and let me take C upstairs and collapse.

Today, i am not even planning on getting out of bed, if i can help it.

fluffy yet? I'm tryin'....

This twin thing has really thrown me for a loop. No, there is no history of twins in my family or in dh's. And no, i was not on Clomid or any other fertility medication (noone here asked me that but already some stranger did...story will follow). So yes, it is a complete surprise.

The thing is, as we all know, the risks are really much higher now. I don't know yet how high -- i don't know if they have separate placentas or not, i imagine we will find out at a 12-week ultrasound. I am debating if i should ask him to look at 10 weeks, but i am trying not to have too too many ultrasounds...every 2 weeks seems like too much at this stage.

The thing about having a baby NOW, as opposed to several years from now when i would (theoretically, at least) have tenure and we would be financially secure, was supposed to be to *reduce* risk. Because i am 33, so not 'advanced maternal age' yet but surely pushing it. Better to risk a ruined career than increase the risk of another dead baby, is what i figured. Ha ha. And NOW look at my risks. OY! Best laid plans...

I guess i have no right to try and plan...so now i am just flying by the seat of my pants. It is in fact easy to be excited by the prospect of twins -- two babies, alive and healthy. So i am trying to focus on that....and practicing total denial when it comes to the realities of the thing and the possible likely outcomes. I even find myself tempted to tell everybody *immediately* what the deal is -- shout it from the rooftops, as it were. In effect, i am trying very hard to be a fluffy bunny mommy.

So, yesterday, i had to go for a tetanus shot due to stepping on a rusty nail in my basement, and i got a flu shot too. When the nurse had me fill out some form and i circled 'currently pregnant'... she of course asked me 'is it your first', so i said 'oh, no....' and in the interest of being fluffy i told her 'it's twins! I just found out!' Which, of course, caused a sensation at the nurses station. 'do they run in your family?' 'Were you on Clomid?' (only later did it occur to me that this was an extremely rude question, and one i will apparently have to keep answering, if i keep being pg with twins) 'oh, you are so lucky!' One nurse had me rub her belly for good luck, because she SO wants 'twinkies' next time. I did it, and only later thought -- i hope i don't give her my baby luck....anyway the interaction went okay, i didn't get upset, but it was completely wierd to me that everybody was so positive and assumed i would be bringing home 2 babies, even though i am only 8 weeks along. One nurse even asked me if i had told C yet. Ummm, no, i just told you she is TWO years old, and i am 8 weeks pg, and *anything can happen* HELLO?

I don't think i'll be telling any strangers again, any time soon.

signs

OK....so on wednesday, walking from my office on my way to the OB's office...

First i passed a guy wearing a t-shirt that said "I heart heart twins", yeah with two hearts. That's cute, i thought...didn't connect or anything.

Then i passed a funeral. That i distinctly took to be a bad sign.

Then, i passed Lenny. He's one of our local homeless characters and i always take him to be a good sign, to be good luck. I know it is presumptuous to say that a person, especially a homeless one, is good luck. But it is only because the first time i met him, i was pregnant with C, and he was extremely sweet to me, and gave me his blessing. So that's the reason. And yes, i always give him money, if i have any. But i usually give people money if they ask, if i have some in my pocket.

So, well, whatever that means.

you WILL not believe this

There are TWO of them in there!

Both alive even -- heartbeats in the 160's, separate sacks, both measuring on schedule.

ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod

i have pictures but i have no scanner...so you will have to wait.

TOO funny

I was going to post about how i was all worried and anxious because of the fact that i have my first OB appointment later today...well, i am still worried and anxious but upon checking my email at work i learned something new.

Everything's a syndrome nowadays, right? Well, apparently there is now a new syndrome that describes me pretty well -- it is Hurried Woman's Syndrome!!! I kid you not. And there is a seminar on it tomorrow, which was the subject of the email i recieved.

Unfortunately i am too busy to go...

textures of fall

Happy belated turkey day

I didn't (of course) have the energy to post yesterday, so i wish a happy (albeit) belated thankgiving to everybody in the States!

We didn't cook -- thankfully the neighbors invited us to dinner. I made Chestnut stuffing and the aforementioned Pumpkin Cheesecake to bring along. And yesterday was a beautiful day in the mid-50's so i got out and finally cleaned out the garden and planted my bulbs. Talk about getting them in in the nick of time. But of course by the time it was 5 pm when we went to the neighbor's, i was completely exhausted and barely made it through the evening -- as i tottered like a zombie after C while she ran through their house, even my neighbors noticed. "Gee, she runs you ragged", said Jim. "Don't you wish you had two more like her?" Dh and i just exchanged glances. There's not even any way to attack THAT offhand comment...

A word to the wise -- if you don't like where you planted your tulips when they come up in the spring, just move them then, when you can SEE the bastards. And if they don't come back, just BUY MORE. Don't do what i did -- laboriously label each tulip with a tag stuck in the earth so you can move them in the fall. Because what i learned was -- the tags won't be there in the fall anyway; and if the tags still happen to be there, the tulip bulbs won't be; and if the tag & tulip bulb happen to coincide, then your shovel will also coincide and now you will have a bulb nicely chopped in two.

Zzzzzzzzz

Ok, i know my blog is boring these days, but only because i am too tired to think clearly. I have a bunch of pictures but don't have the energy to upload them, and some stories but i don't have the energy to write them.

Yeah, i know i'm tired because i am knocked up....sorry, i can't really say that 'p' word yet...which makes it amusing to *tell* people about it....not that i am telling, but there are some people you tell -- girlfriends & such...'So, what's new?' 'Uh, well, umm, i'm, like, uh, it seems that...' "OMG YOU ARE PREGNANT AGAIN!!' 'Uh yeah, could you keep it down, i'm sure the whole freaking Starbucks doesn't care to know...'

But being tired doesn't make for good blogging, or good parenting, or good working, or making progress toward preparing the house for the Victorian Christmas housetours. Oh, did i mention my house was on the Christmas tour this year? Yeah, my house with the half-finished front porch and holes where there should be appliances and no countertops in the kitchen due to serious dispute with the kitchen people and falling-apart front doors and no light fixtures or furniture or working bathrooms. Yeah, that one. We are billing it as a 'work in progress' ha ha ha. And telling people that they should come back in a few years, once we can afford some furniture. Heh heh heh. I would be totally freaking out about it except i am too tired and nauseous to care.

Other than that, everything is fine...and A had a nice birthday. I made a cake and we had a little family party but of course i was too tired to take pictures of it all and post them....

update on nothing

I was enjoying a chat on the IM with Julie on Wednesday night, when the following conversation took place:

dh: "Well, Friday I'll pick my mom up at the airport, so you don't have to worry about it."

Me: "Your mom is coming this weekend???"

Yeah, i'm always the last to know....

I could have guessed she was, because it is A's birthday on Sunday (14 years, how about that?) but i wasn't really thinking. Oh well. They are due home any minute. I should be scrambling to clean up the place, but frankly i am too tired to really care.

Perhaps i should at least change the tablecloth though, so i don't look like a total slob.

Cheap mommy

So they took 'school pictures' at daycare. They're really cute. But you would NOT believe the prices they are charging -- $22 for 4 wallets and 2 5x7's ? That was the cheapest. It is OUTRAGEOUS. So of course i didn't buy it.

But, yes, i went to their website and saved the images to my computer, because they are cute. Now if i can only figure out how to photoshop the word 'proof' off my kid's face...

Ha!

My proposal has now been officially submitted! Finally that bugbear is off my back!

Now i can forget about until sometime in the spring, when i get a yes or no. We will worry about the no when it happens....i have plenty of other things to worry about now.

toddler cuisine

Cheese and ketchup....

[photo removed]


Mmmnnnn....Delicious!

What did YOU do all weekend?

Well, i laid around like a lump as usual. But my husband was very busy -- he mounted the hood in the kitchen.

Yeah, it's kind of big. It's a 54" hood. And the reason he had to do it himself is that he bought it on ebay for something like 90% off, because there is a small scratch in the upper right-hand side. Oh, you can't see the scratch? I can't either.

But, there were also some parts missing, notably the hangers and screws, so he had to make something that would work. And he had to put a new hole through the old chimney to the outside. Oh, he also has to fill the old hole, but he couldn't do that because i am a bad wife and forgot to pick up the sharp sand or whatever it is that i was supposed to buy at the construction place.

Funny thing about this house -- nothing is ever easy. When he put the hole in through the old chimney, he called me to come see. Apparently there is a brick wall all the way up the chimney, parallel to the short sides of the chimney. Which explains why the old holes in the chimney are all off-center. And where HIS hole was supposed to go, is right through the center of this wall. Huh, that's interesting.

One of our neighbors had the explanation -- the chimney was partitioned into two chimneys -- one for the stove and one for the boiler. Okaaaay...fine. Learn something new every day. So the hubby just drilled through the brick wall and put the pipe in and we he hope the house doesn't fall down....

strange dreams

In addition to the miscarriage/dead baby dreams i am constantly having, which are par for the course, i have been having some amusing ones.

A few nights ago i dreamed that NSF had dispensed with the peer-review proposal process in favor of hand-to-hand combat for grant money. Boxing, to be exact. I had won my first round but i was now going up against my colleague B. and i was not feeling very self-confident. B. is a mentor of mine and rather the man for the ladies -- but with money at stake i had the feeling it would be a no-holds-barred contest that i was sure to lose...

Last night i woke up in a sweat because my neighbor's friend was trying to kidnap Abee!

yay it works!

I just got home and my internet is back! I am hoping this is not a temporary state of affairs but that they really found the source of the problem and fixed it....here's hoping!

Aaccckkk no internet

We have been without internet access at home for nearly 2 days now. And the weekend is coming....i don't know what i am going to do....aaaaaaccccckkkkkkk

bad choice

So, i broke down and went to starbucks again. I scanned the drink menu, looking for an option with less caffeine than my usual choice of chai -- or rather, 'Grande Tazo Chai Tea Laaahhhtte', as the cashier is apparently trained to sing out EVERY-SINGLE-DAMNED-TIME. Ooh, 'Green tea latte', that sounded good. Sounds like green tea with milk, right?

I like green tea. In fact i would go so far as to say i am well aquainted with many forms of green tea. I read somewhere that drinking green tea increased your metabolism (not due to caffeine, because there is very little caffeine in it, but due to something else), so i always drink it when i am trying to lose weight. But never have i encountered any green tea that was remotely the day-glo green color of this drink. Not that it is an unattractive color, mind you -- but it is, in fact, so vivid as to be somewhat disturbing.

Ok, i thought, try something new. Maybe it tastes good. Little did i know that the color was nothing compared to the taste.

'with a hint of melon', said the writeup on the drink menu. Yes, it does taste somewhat like honeydew melon. Somewhat like a rancid honeydew melon, that you ate anyway, and is currently on it's way back up. That is precisely how i would describe this drink. Just what i needed to drink, to settle my stomach -- something reminiscent of warm vomit. Yeah.

The damned thing cost nearly $4, too.

Misplaced anger, righteously expressed at the voting booth *updated*

When we moved to Michigan, it was 2003 and a few months after Nicolas had died. During the next year, i of course had my own set of 'dead-baby-related' political issues that i was suddenly interested in and aware of. Certificates of stillbirth, pregnancy & infant loss awareness day, funding (or lack thereof) for medical research associated with infant loss, record-keeping (or lack thereof) which made it difficult to even get accurate statistics, what have you. All of which issues are important to our little community but probably not very interesting to the average denizens of suburbia. What, instead, animated the ladies of suburbia in that fall and spring of 2003-2004? The issue of whether people should be allowed to shoot doves.

The first time we saw one of the ladies wearing placards and handing out flyers, dh and i looked at each other and said 'THAT is an issue??' In a city, in a state, in a country with a veritable smorgasbord of relevant social and political issues to pick up and be active in....these people care if some other morons want to shoot some stupid birds? When just a few miles away we have poverty and crime and homelessness and hopelessness in an astonishing array, you care about these freaking birds? I was always just so angry that people would waste their TIME on this nonsense, when noone would touch the issues i found important -- that i walked away whenever i saw these women canvassing about the goddamn doves. I was afraid of what i might say to them, if i got started. Because what kind of perfect life must you have, if this is the injustice you are passionate about?

Anyway, i thought i kind of got over it, but funny thing -- there was a ballot initiative about the very issue today. Sandwiched between other issues, of school funding and of affirmative action, there was proposition 3 -- 'Should people be allowed to shoot doves?' And all of a sudden, my old, latent anger got the best of me, and i filled in the 'Yes' circle as hard and dark as i could, with an intense glee. Take that, suburban bitches! It even makes me happy to recall it now, this tiny bit of revenge against the universe. My own vehemence surprises me.

The funny thing is, i do think it is rather, well, gauche to be shooting birds for target practice. I mean, really. I have no problem with shooting animals to eat them, but shooting them just for fun seems extremely gross. So ordinarily i would be against this sort of thing. Why shoot a pretty bird for fun? And if they are going to shoot something for fun, will somebody please come to my house and shoot the squirrels?

*******

So, the proposition didn't pass, it was voted down 2-1. So i need not feel bad that innocent songbirds are dying because of my little tantrum there. Heh. Rosepetal, i looked it up -- apparently the one year they were allowed to shoot them 'in a limited area', there were 28,000 doves shot. So, i guess there are alot of people who like to shoot things for fun... again, i offer my squirrels, first come first serve...

Naughty Abee

Abee is in time out.

'Was he bad?' i asked C.

'YES!' she said.

'What did he do?'

Apparently she couldn't explain this in words, so Abee got off the time-out stool and came over and slapped me in the face. Luckily he can't slap too hard.

'Oh, he hit his mommy?'

'YES!' she said.

'Well, that is very bad, good thing you put him in time out!'

okay, 'fess up

Just look at these beautiful tulip bulbs that showed up on my doorstep! I was so excited when i saw the box...but there was no name or note or anything, i have no idea who sent them. But obviously someone who reads this blog, and even pays attention. Because yes, these are the ones that i planted for Nicolas and the squirrels enjoyed eating the most. But who could it be? I have some idea...but no way of knowing, since they didn't sign their name or anything...

So, whoever you are, thank you very very much! From the bottom my heart! They are sooo beautiful!

And look forward to pics of next year!

C on halloween

[photo removed]

Well, apparently when C said she wanted to be 'princess bride', she meant 'i want a dress exactly like Buttercup's in the movie The Princess Bride'. Because we went to quite a few costume places and could not find a dress that was acceptable to Miss C. So, instead, i told her she could just wear her crown and dress herself. It's a pretty good costume, after all. And excellent for dancing.

[photo removed]

I did insist on the black t-shirt though, i think it goes just right with the tie-died tights. And A didn't dress up at all, he just went as a teenager. Which we all agreed was pretty scary.

OK, i'm a wimp

I didn't want that previous post sitting at the top too long. You know, for more than 5 minutes or so. Because, someone might see it or something.

So now i will blog about something else, which i have been remiss in mentioning, because i have been in my own crazy headspace. But yes, i did go visit Julie last week when i was fairly close by for work. I had a great time, well, i guess *we* had a great time ;) It was so much fun to meet Evan, he is such a wonderful little boy! Very sociable, he is -- my girl will scowl until she warms up to you, but Evan will come up to you and give you a hug. And it struck me how happy he is. Of course, C is usually very happy too, unless she is tantruming or in trouble for the latest rotten thing she did. But it just strikes me that our subs are really happy kids...

And, i hit the outlets on my way back to the conference, too...so C got more clothes, and she was very happy with that when i came home! In fact, despite the unpleasant things i blogged about earlier, i had overall a great trip. It was really very refreshing to leave the house for a few days and just be on my own. And i got some work done too.

Of course now that i am back, i have been cleaning and doing laundry for days. What i can't figure out is, i was only gone for 5 days, and i did a load before i left so they would have clothes -- how did they go through SO many clothes?? I finally finished it all and put it away yesterday, just in time to start the usual weekend loads. Don't you love that?

'lil announcement

Ok, here we go....



Two pink lines! Two! Hee hee hee hee hee!!! Two pink lines!

Alright, that's about as much optimism and perkiness as you will see out of me for awhile....i can't say i feel very 'positive' about this one? Time will tell, i suppose.

Dia de los muertos

Well, here is this year's ofrenda. I was going to make a calculated effort to make it more interesting than last year's, but it is much the same. No bread this year either. I grew marigolds though, so i cut all of the ones in the garden and made one of those marigold garlands. I found out that it takes *alot* of marigold flowers to make those garlands....

Also i could not find my special marigold candle anywhere. I only looked through about 8 boxes before giving up...bonus was that i found a whole bunch of other family pictures instead of the candle (and a computer game that A was missing!). So as you can see, i have alot more pictures than last year. Heh. But no marigold candle -- the candle is a partylite one which smells warm & homey, though. And when C is around, i have to hide the candy dish behind Nicolas' picture, otherwise it would all be gone....

I started to celebrate this holiday after Nicolas died because i really like it -- it is a good idea to have a holiday that remembers and celebrates those who have gone.

great quote!

Today i succumbed to temptation and went to get a chai at starbucks -- this was on my cup.

“I was ahead in the slalom.
But in the second run, everyone fell on a dangerous spot.
I was beaten by a woman who got up faster than I did.

I learned that people fall down,
Winners get up,
and gold medal
winners just get up faster."


– Bonnie St. John

In 1984, she was the second-fastest amputee skier in the world, and the first African-American Olympic ski medalist.

lessons from the conference

actual conversation:

Paul (a graduate student): We went out last night for a few drinks, well maybe more than a few, and had a really good time. What did you do?

Me: I went back to my room and worked on my grant proposal.

Lesson #1: I am old. Officially, now.

Lesson #2 can not be demonstrated so easily....but i have spent 2 days listening to talks relevant to the research that i do and realizing that i hate it now. Not that this is news either, i have known this for some time. I thought things were different though, but they aren't. If i am old, i am old, but i do not need to grow ancient doing THIS -- attempting to write papers on something obscure and useless that nobody cares about, and that i don't care about either. No wonder my career is going nowhere, i hate my research and i am doing a bad job of faking it anymore. So we need to make some changes around here.

Don't worry, nobody is quitting any jobs or going back to school or anything exciting like that. I just need to figure out how to change my specialization to something i actually care about. Without, of course, torpedoing whatever i have going now -- because learning something new takes time.

ummmm...okay

So, i am at this conference, and my advisor I. is here. Okay, i don't have an advisor NOW, she was my advisor in graduate school. I am now an independent entity ha ha. But your advisor is always your advisor -- though now she functions as a 'mentor' rather than an 'advisor', she doesn't tell me what to do. Well, usually.

Anyway, i was chatting with her and with one of her current students, L., who is also submitting a proposal for funding soon. In fact she is applying for a program i had successfully applied to when i was a graduate student. So L. says to me, 'i will have to ask you how you did it'. And i said, 'i just did what I. told me to do' or some such stupid comment. Because this was true, i spent a tremendous amount of time on that proposal and I. totally cut what i had done to shreds and essentially rewrote it. But that was, of course, because i did not know how to write these kinds of proposals at the time, and i had structured the thing all wrong.

But then I. said to me (and i paraphrase), 'oh i remember that, after you came back from France, i don't know what was with you but it was like, you contacted me on friday & we needed to have the proposal in on monday or something.'

Ummm....what was with me? I was completely depressed because it was 6 months after my BABY DIED? Do you remember THAT?

I said, teeth clenched, 'it was a difficult time'. Mostly because L. was there and i have no desire to make scenes in front of the graduate students.

The thing is, I. is wonderful to me, as she is to all her students. She saved my career that time, after Nicolas died, by essentially writing that other proposal FOR me. I mean, it was not like the other that L. was originally talking about, which i worked on but did badly. For this one 3 years ago i had nothing -- i gave her like 2 pages of chickenscratch & shit, and over a few days she returned to me a completed proposal and saved my butt. It was an act of extreme kindness to me in a terrible time in my life, and one i will never forget.

Ok, but i assumed she did that for me because she cared...so why would she forget WHY i was so depressed that i was unable to do anything?

Am i wrong to be hurt by that? That she forgot? I mean, how can someone forget?

I guess i just need to let it roll off my back, like so many other things.

I hate conferences sometimes.

roses

They're so beautiful, you would think they were fake -- except you can see that the outside petals are crinkly and old. So they're real. I think this is 'Tropicana' but i am not sure, i can't really remember for some reason.

The rose bushes look skanky and have few leaves left, but some of them are still putting out flowers and those flowers are really big. I have one bud on 'Chrysler Imperial' which is astonishingly huge. I think it must be some artifiact of the cold weather, it is like they are being grown in the fridge or something. I wonder if i will see that bud open, if so i will take a picture. I am leaving on Thursday morning for a conference so i will probably miss the whole show....story of my life!

bad neighbors

We are, of course, still living on the third floor of our house, and it happens that our dumpster is on the side of the house right under the third-floor walkup. Which makes it very easy to throw out the trash, you just walk out the kitchen door and drop it down.

When it is cold and rainy, it is much easier just to stand in the kitchen door opening and kind of toss it over the rails. Which is what i did today, but rather than the usual *splat* noise as the trash bag hits the lumber pile in the dumpster, there was an odd sort of *squish-bump* sound.

Huh, i thought, as i tiptoed outside onto the wet porch to look.

Indeed, the trash bag had overshot the dumpster and become impaled on the fence between our houses. At which point, of course, it broke open and strewed trash all over the neighbor's back yard. Naturally none of it landed on our side. And naturally, the trash in question was... a full bag of dirty diapers. Naturally.

So, i share this with you so that you will remember it. And the next time your neighbors do something particularly annoying, like...for example....not cut the lawn for weeks, or leave the back porch halfway-painted for two years, or park a bus-sized RV in the shared driveway because of a major sporting event....you can say to yourself, "well, at least they are not throwing dirty diapers at me...."

balance, and volunteering

Anam asked how i 'do it all'. Heh heh heh. The eternal question for the modern woman.

When i was in graduate school i attended a lecture given by Kathryn Thornton, one of the most impressive women i have ever had the honor of meeting. I mean, seriously, when she was talking about all the stuff that they had to do to fix the Hubble telescope and training for the spacewalking and everything...it was just jaw-dropping. Of course, this lecture was a total geek chick event, sponsored by the 'Women in Science and Engineering' group...so the first question she got was "How do you balance work & family so well?" She stopped, chuckled a minute, and said, "I don't do it well!"

If she can't do it well, i sure as hell can't. In fact i think it's impossible to do it 'well'. Something always slides. For me, frequently, it is my career. That, or the house...but never the blog!! For my advisor, who is a famous mathematician in our circles, the slide was on the family side. So it can go either way. There is alot of guilt associated with every unfortunate slide.

I think there is a great disservice done to women with this notion that we can 'do it all'. I don't know where this started -- i think usually women are very tough on themselves personally and have high expectations of what should be. I don't think that the early feminists meant THIS, this mess that we have now, when they spoke about equal opportunity in the workplace. I think they just wanted women to have options, to set their own goals and be allowed to reach them, to be able to self-actualize. Not to be superwomen who take care of everything at home and at work and still bake cookies for the school trip, which is what it seems to have become.

Anyway, i'm babbling. If i had more energy, i would do more, then maybe i WOULD be able to manage to balance it all...

But the other thing was volunteering. I never volunteered before Nicolas died, but now i volunteer a little bit and when C is bigger i will do more. I wanted to say that if you have not done it you would be surprised how little time it can take. Of course, it can take ALOT of time, but at the pregnancy center i do 1 or 2 evenings a month -- including transportation time that is a maximum of 5 hours. Five hours a month is nothing for me, overall -- but it can make a big difference. Most organizations have small things that you can do to help -- just a few hours a month, or on your own time, or whatever. Volunteering doesn't have to be a full-day thing, and it always makes you feel good to help others. So i would encourage anyone to find a cause or organization that you are interested in, and just call and see what you can do to.

the threads of our lives

I was at the grocery store today with the kids, and while waiting in the checkout line C wanted a balloon. It is a nice grocery store where the balloons are both free and bio-degradable; so i sent A with her to go get one. I guess she couldn't decide what color she wanted (a common problem for her) because i had paid and was loading my bags into the cart by the time they walked back -- A keeping an eye on C, who was proud of the blue balloon that he had finally tied to her arm (seeing as she had already let it go twice).

As i put the final box in the cart, i looked around and realized that the woman behind me in line was looking at C. Not just looking, *watching*, with a look i know only too well. I don't know how my face looks when i am watching that way, but i know how my heart feels. And i saw it immediately in her -- she was watching them, with half a smile and half a tear, and doing it quietly and surreptitiously, hiding behind her checkbook. Yep.

The thing is, she was an older lady -- late 50's, i would say. So she didn't just lose a baby. Who knows who it was that they reminded her of -- herself and an older brother perhaps, or a child of her own, or a grandchild...but obviously someone who was gone. What could i say? There was nothing to say. I bundled them out of there and into the car ASAP.

I actually don't feel bad not saying anything to her -- when i am there myself, i wouldn't know what to say if someone noticed. I would undoubtedly come out with something lame, like "it's OK". Which, of course, is not true. It is not "OK". But, it IS, and we deal. It is hard to say what sets it off -- for me it is not usually a newborn or a boy of the same age that Nicolas would have been. It is more esoteric -- a child jumping in puddles, peeking 'round the corner, playing with sticks, or running for mama with arms open wide....and there is some sweetness in these moments too -- it is the glimpse into the might-have-beens. So one relishes the sweetness with the pain.

Yet i am sorry that it was my kids that brought on the pain for my compatriot in the grocery line.

spam/poetry

Good day.
look
wire leads, a nerve drawn from a deadly tooth.



(from an email message advertising low prices on viagra and other assorted pharmacuticals. I should read these things more often -- who knows what wisdom might lie hidden there?)

the 'poor outcome'

I was working at the pregnancy center tonight and a client came in to pick up two infant carseats. She is, evidently, pregnant with twins -- 32 weeks. In the course of our conversation she tells me how she is currently on bedrest, and having ultrasounds/NST's twice a week, because one twin is *significantly* larger than the other. Twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, sounds like -- though i did not say that and she did not either. I am not a doctor so obviously i will not throw out diagnoses left & right...especially worrisome diagnoses like *that*. From what she told me i can conclude that they are watching her very closely & will deliver if the little boy is safer out than in.

But...but but but. When i went to get the carseats out of the back for her, one was missing a base. You know, those infant carrier/car seat things -- they cannot function, as a carseat, without a base and a locking clip. I looked for the other base, asked our office manager, and then concluded that most likely it had been donated without the base -- and was therefore useless. And then what did i think to myself? 'well, it's quite likely she won't need the second one anyway.'

Ok, what kind of a nasty thing is that to think? On the basis of 5 minutes conversation i have diagnosed her babies with a severe syndrome and consigned the smaller twin to death? WTF is wrong with me??

Most babies live. I see, in my life, that most babies live. Yet, not all do live and there are quite a large percentage that do not. Perhaps i am too mired in the grief world, that i can not assume that things will go well for this woman. Of course i would not tell her something like 'your baby might very well die' -- i tell her 'in case they are born early it is *very advantageous* to breastfeed/pump milk, it helps them grow *so* much when they are very little'. Sidestepping the whole issue of the little boy surviving when talking to her, but not at all sidestepping it in my mind. The assumption of a happy ending is simply not there for me anymore. I don't know if this is bad or if it is just realistic. But i wish that that wasn't the reality.

advice please?

I am currently writing a recommendation for somebody, the school has a form to fill out with exact questions. One of them is 'How would you describe the applicant’s sense of humor?'. I have no idea what to say to this, or what it has to do with being admitted to a degree program anyway. So i wrote:

'I have no sense of humor myself so i am ill-equipped to answer this question.'

Now, granted, i find that response extremely funny, but i do not want to torpedo the girl's application (as she is an exceptional student). I truly don't know much about her sense of humor, though. Maybe i should just leave the question blank? But this could be construed badly...

Remembering all our babies, on this day and on every day.


I finally got that blinkie to work....thanks Sherry!

Anemone 'Honorine Jobert'

Not a bad show for the middle of October, eh? A very pretty plant, and basically the only thing still blooming in Nicolas' garden.

beating the weather?

[photo removed]

Apparently not.

I took this picture this morning -- C was very impressed by the experience of snow, though i was more dismayed than anything. You can see that we did get *somewhere* on the painting. At least the front of the balustrade and the stair railings have one coat. The skirting should not be painted at all this fall, since it is treated wood and needs to wait 6 months to 'dry out' before you can paint it. I was very annoyed by this but in fact, the point is moot because i don't have time to paint it anyway.

So it will look unfinished until spring, when hopefully we will be able to get the decorative columns on and finish painting the skirting. That's okay with me. I am still hoping for one good warm dry day, so that we can do a second coat on the railings, finish the inside of the balustrade and paint the ceiling. Here's hoping...

another interesting article

Annals of Medicine: The Score

This one was in the New Yorker last week -- it took me a week to actually open the magazine, but when i saw an article on obstetrics of course i put off my real work to curl up with it...

It reminded me of the recent blogsphere 'birth experience' debate and unfortunately i had to revisit that in my mind...trying hard to let it go though. Of course the writer of this article is a doctor, and so one could claim he is all biased by the medical establishment or something. But, he writes regularly and i always enjoy his articles because they are well researched and well-balanced -- i always learn something. Like the whole bit about Virginia Apgar and the influence of her score, i never knew the history of that.

hiatus again

We have to get this porch painted before it gets to cold do so....and i have a big grant proposal that is due in several weeks. So i won't be on much for a bit...i will still try to read though, and maybe put up some pictures, if i have any good pictures to post...

what, AGAIN?

Ok, remember my student with the siezure? Big test today, and yes it happened again. This time we were lucky -- he didn't fall out of his chair or start shaking and i just kind of held his head up and patted his cheek until he came back. I took him out of class and he claimed he had seen a dr and had an EKG (or whatever it is they do) and the dr prescribed him medication because of some spikes on the pictures but he wasn't taking it yet because of some insurance issue. GO BACK TO THE DOCTOR i said, and TAKE THE DAMNED MEDS.

God this makes me nervous!

my sister ate my homework

[photo removed]

Photographic evidence -- very useful when you try to use this excuse.

[photo removed]

I guess it wasn't very good -- heck, it was Earth Science. Not much there that you can sink your teeth into. Next time, she should try a lengthy, convoluted book report....that might be tasty....

[photo removed]

There is the face of a girl who knows she's bad!

too harsh?

[photo removed]

When i came home on Monday, after blogging about how Randy had undoubtedly left because of the rain, gripe gripe gripe...there he was working on the front porch after all! So, yeah, i was unfair. Not that i don't have history behind my unfairness, but that is another story. And you will notice that it is just him working there, no employees or anything anymore -- that is another story. And he is supposed to finish tomorrow, ha ha ha. We will see about that.

Yet, the skirting is nearly done in the pic, as you can see -- and now the top is done (it is not in the pic) and the railings up the stairs are nearly done too. So though i seriously doubt he will be done on time, he won't be *that* far from done. Then we get to paint. Pray for sunshine...

Yum

Pumpkin cheesecake

I would make it all the time, i love it so much. Except i am the only person who loves it SOOO much and i end up eating the whole damned cake by myself. Very bad for the waistline.

It is worth using the good bourbon, though (i have some Wild Turkey around that i use).

'bout time

Ok, i updated my blogroll a bit. It is getting kinda long....and is still in no particular order. I try to be as neat as i can, but some things are beyond me -- like keeping a clean desk or a properly ordered blogroll.

advil and coffee

The breakfast of champions.

It seems that my menstrual cramps just get worse the older i get. Yesterday i was bent double half the day, only human when i was curled up in a ball on the couch. Of course, i could not do too much of the curled-up-in-a-ball stuff seeing as it was a *beautiful* painting day, and we had to paint. (Current project -- front porch)

Since it was Sunday, Randy was taking the day off. Now, i am no whip-wielding maniac or anything, expecting my workers to show up constantly and work constantly. But, Sunday was a beautiful clear day, perfect for painting and porch-building. WE were painting. But noone was porch-building, and he is *supposed* to have the porch done by this friday. Un-HUH. Sure. Today, of course, it is pouring rain, and supposed to pour rain for the next 3 days. So Randy is taking the day off again, no doubt, because it is raining. I am SO GLAD that he spent much of last week on vacation in Colorado. Yeah.

Well, as soon as there is a break in the pouring of the rain, i am going to go home for the lunch of champions -- advil and a vodka tonic. I am serious, it is the only combo which seems to kick these cramps to the curb. I would have had it for breakfast, only i had to teach. Actually i bet my students would have been amused...

You know you've been renovating too long when...

....one of your baby's first phrases is 'Home Depot! Home DEPOT! Home DEEEEPPPOOOO!'

Abee gets into trouble

I swear, you can't leave a doll like Abee alone for a minute. It was so quiet...and look what he was doing. He took off all his clothes, got into the magic markers, and drew all over himself!

Of course after that he had to have a bath

[photo removed]

and be hung up ever-so-gracefully to dry.

He seemed to enjoy himself though!

hoodwinked

Ok, so today i put C down for her nap, and she went down with little fuss and it was very quiet immediately. I tidied up and sat down to check my email and blah blah and after a good 45 minutes i hear this very strident 'Mommy! Mommy!' coming from her. Huh, short nap, i thought. But she seemed very bouncy and good-natured when i went to get her out of the crib. Dd you have a nice nap? i asked her. YEESSS! She laughed and jumped, so i figured that maybe a short nap but it was a good one.

Heh. Later when we were going to get A, she fell asleep in the car,and slept for nearly hours after i transferred her to her bed. Not possible, if she had really napped before.

She tricked me! She was so so quiet in her bed, but she couldn't possibly have really slept. I have been outwitted by a two-year old....oy. This bodes poorly for the future.

3 1/2 years

Today it is 3 and a half years since Nicolas was born. I can't say the half-year marker actually upsets me anymore, but i do note it still. I am sure that i am the only one who does.

Three and a half years is a long time. Time....moves on. I cannot say it flies, but it moves. It moves whether we move with it or not.

I got nothing

Or rather, nothing that i really want to talk about.

I have been rather sick all weekend, and though i am on antibiotics now and thus feeling a little better, i still came home from work as soon as i could and crawled into bed. Thank goodness for laptops.

In the absence of actual content, here is a picture of some asters. Skimpy, i know, but i can't get any other pics to load either. We will see if we manage to even post this post...

eyebrow raised

As i was walking home, i noticed that on the side of the campus map, some wit had written "University 'Girls' suck this:" complete with a primitive drawing of a penis.

Some other wit had taken it upon him or herself to cover up the penis, by sticking a piece of paper over it -- a page torn out of one of those little bibles that they hand out on streetcorners.

Why don't i ever have a camera with me when i see stuff like this?