tiptoe...

or roll through the tulips, depending on the age.

yesterday was gray but not really raining, so i took the kids to a tulip farm about an hour away from portland. (no school due to a teacher workshop day.) it turned out to be clearer out there, and the sight of rows upon rows of tulips was amazing - boo even asked 'am i imagining this, or are we really here?'.

this sanjaya thing

let me start with the standard "but of course i don't watch american idol". which is actually true, i don't like it because i am not interested in common denominator music, even if all hipsters bow before kelly clarkson's 'since u been gone.'

while there's plenty of chatter about the sanjaya phenomenon, i haven't seen anything about the underlying reason this is happening. ladies and gentlemen, it's about race. it's about those 'other' categories on the census. don't believe me? well, can you imagine this joke (or however you think of it) going on so long if the kid in question was white?

your wish is my command

and another....

spring is in the air, erasure's on the stereo

new erasure song

they asked for erasure fan submissions of 'falling in love' for the video, and i nearly sent one in of bea and i having our first look at each other, but didn't - i wouldn't have been the only mum to have done so, it turns out.

such a sweet and happy song. waiting for the album....

seder went well

seder went very well. jun didn't come, as he started a new session of classes and was tired. the boys behaved pretty well and asked the classic four questions: can we eat yet? can we eat the orange on the seder plate? can we eat yet? when's dessert?

boo helped me make 'fruit heads' - we took a 'personal-sized' watermelon, cut it in half, scooped the innards, and made fruit kabobs with the watermelon, strawberries, mango chunks and grapes, and used the kabobs for 'hair' and pieces of fruit for faces. those we very successful desserts for the boys. we also made chocolate macaroons, which were easy and really yummy. both recipes/projects were from PBS shows we saw over the weekend - the fruit heads from Zoom, and the macaroons from everyday food. boo also helped me mix the charoset together. he really, really enjoys cooking.

lots of songs, including the 'my darlin' clementine' version of the four children's questions, and a song about the ten plagues sung to the tune of the addams family theme!

i made an 'iranian beef and eggplant stew' that was in a kosher cookbook i've owned for years. it came out really, really nicely. nancy brought matzoh ball soup - i will have to ask her to teach me to make matzoh balls, mine fall apart so i've given up. i also prepared baby carrots and baby yukon gold potatoes. and, in great jewish mom tradition, i made waaaay too much (i prepared brocolli that didn't even make it to the table!) so we'll have leftovers for a day or two. yippee!

ca-a-a-an you feel the lo-o-ove toni-i-ight

over on consumerist: (clicky)


some of those comments make me darnright misty eyed. or, erm, dewey eyed.

someone call john hughes...

So my seder tonight includes 2 babies, 2 six-year-old boys, 2 non-jewish husbands and possibly a Japanese exchange student.

librarians are hiding something

the most my brain has worked in a while

there's a buzz about the brooklyn public library considering offering netflix services, for free, for its patrons. it reached consumerist. the long-ass comment from 'dewey decimated' is mine.

mamadramalates

so i'm ready to start exercising again. now that we've moved to the hawthorne area, and the weather has been blissful as of late, i'm doing a lot more walking. but i wanted to do something structured, and something that would help get rid of the post-c-section abdominal pudge. there is a 'mamalates' class for moms and babies at zenana spa, so i thought i'd check it out.

it's taught by wendy foster of divine pilates. i went to her website to get contact information for registration. and that's when i see she has a page about c-section recovery that includes tips on 'getting rid of the toxins and emotional baggage' from having a c-section. and 're-birth your baby with your ideal birth.' and 'talk with your baby about your feelings around your labor and delivery.'

crap like this has got to stop. it's similar to an article in a recent issue of mothering, in which being 'supportive' to a mom who has had a c-section is phrased as 'it's okay, dear, you didn't know any better and next time you can have a VBAC.' it's condescending.

yeah, i want a flatter tummy, but not because it's being pressed down by someone else's idea of how guilty i should feel about having a c-section.

whew

the mac is finally working right again. new MIMO router is making it superhappy.

my son is now 6. my daughter sleeps through the night, at 7 weeks!! (this took the son about 2 years to accomplish.)

my tub doesn't leak, but it doesn't bubble yet. the kitchen sink, on the other hand... sigh.

the library called and asked very gently if i'd like to come back to work, and when. i'll return to my sunday shifts in may. the new branch may or may not be open by then.

house

so today's the third day this week i've been hanging around the house, waiting on a contractor/tech/repair person.

today it's for a ge tech, to see why my dishwasher doesn't work. the builder reinstalled it because it leaked the first time he put it in, causing damage to the wood floor. he seems to have fixed this by preventing water from getting into the dishwasher at all now. ge's warranty doesn't cover installation errors. of course, the builder's assistant swore to me that they ran the machine, so i'm obviously incompetant when it comes to... closing a door and pressing a start button. and hearing the machine run the cycle, and finding a machine full of hot, dry, dirty dishes.

yesterday's wait was for the same assistant. he came by to open the drain for the washing machine. the cap on it had been epoxyed in place, so the sears installer couldn't complete the hookup that i waited for all day on wednesday. mysteriously, the 'it should just pop off, why didn't the sears guy know that' drain cap needed to be drilled open.

last week was fun with qwest, in which we found out that the DSL in our area is painfully slow. also, the phone jacks that the builder put in weren't actually connected to anything. dish network tried to install, but the trees behind our house obscure the signal too much. so, i get to wait on comcast next week. i'm sure we'll find that the cable jacks don't hook up to anything, either.

the builder's assistant will be by on monday, too, to repair the tub. this is a vast improvement from the initial response of 'what's the problem, the shower works, right?'.

so why are we finally getting any help from the builder? because we threatened to go to the contractors' board. and we discovered he's been operating without a license or insurance since october. we know he's working on another house now, and we know we should be reporting him. it makes us ill that someone else will have to deal with the same kinds of issues and nonresponsiveness (until the threat) that we have. but for right now, the threat of reporting him is the only leverage we have to get things fixed.

i'm naming names. the builder is will speakman, his company is reserve construction, and here's a link to his license info:

https://ccbed.ccb.state.or.us/ccb_frames/consumer_info/search_results.asp?regno=167336

and here's how it affects us, although we can say we did not knowingly buy from an unlicensed builder - his real estate agent told us several times he was licensed, bonded and insured.

from the ccb site:

"Check on a Contractor's License

Why check a contractor’s license? The Construction Contractors Board (CCB) believes the best way to a successful home improvement, repair or new home project is to know your contractor. Checking a contractor’s license can tell you:

If the contractor is actively licensed, which means they have a surety bond and liability insurance;
If the contractor carries Workers' Comp Insurance to protect its workers on the project;
Breach of contract complaints filed with the CCB in the past seven years.
CCB disciplinary actions against business in the pasts seven years.

IMPORTANT: Homeowners lose the ability to recover damages through the bond and insurance as well as the CCB Dispute Resolution Service (DRS) if they use an unlicensed contractor."



diagnosis?






"Errmm.... you're screwed."

oookay....

so it appears that the mac/google problem has something to do with airport. this was determined by hooking a cable up to the router, instead of using the wireless connection. boom - instant google, gmail, and blogger. but how the heck do i fix the problem? ran a software update, and it says all my mac software is current....

dammit dammit

this was one of those 'start stupidly, get progressively worse' kinds of days.

for starters.... since yesterday, i've been unable to access any google services from my mac. no searching, no gmail, and while i can look at blogspot sites, i can't get into blogger to edit my own (i am on a windows laptop right now). no freaking idea why. i have rebooted the mac, the modem and the router. i have cleared the cache, erased cookies and reset safari. i downloaded firefox and still no go. WTF?

i went over to boo's new school for next year and went on the introductory tour. thankfully there were other parents of first-graders there (the tour is usually for kindergarteners' parents) because i could let them ask the questions and just listen. i was too tired to engage my brain enough to formulate my own questions.

then, over to the new house. we're having all the furniture moved over on thursday, but we've been bringing in bits and pieces each day - and last night, my muscles were not happy with me. still sore today. so, over to the new house to try out the lovely jetted tub in the master bedroom.

hmmm, i push the button but the jets don't work. so it's just a normal bath. there's also a handheld shower thingy that isn't working. annoying, and since it's a feature that helped sell us on the house, i decide to at least report it in to the builder. after getting dressed, i head downstairs to grab the cell phone and ask husband for the builder's cell phone number so i can let him know about this. and that's when i find water dripping from the ceiling onto the kitchen floor. when i head back up, i open the access panel and see the floor under the tub is wet, and the carpet in the bedroom is soaked. husband didn't have the number, i call my real estate agent and get the builder's number. as contracts are all done and signed, there isn't much she can do now besides friendly advice.

i call the builder, he returns the call. and it turns out HE KNEW THAT THE PLUMBERS WHO INSTALLED THE TUB NEEDED TO REPLACE A PART and that without the replacement, the jets wouldn't work and this leak would happen. he neither followed up to make sure it was done nor notified us that there was a problem. he was going to come to the house this afternoon.... but didn't. last time i talked to him, he couldn't get in touch with the plumbers.

so, i've emailed this to my real estate agent, and asked for a referral to a lawyer. because if this isn't repaired tomorrow, yeah we're gonna need one.

about the only thing that went smoothly today was walking around my new neighborhood, hitting a record shop (why do i still think in this term when they sell very little vinyl?), and quickly finding the cd's i hoped to give boodad for valentine's day. and not getting any snark from the guys behind the counter.

btw - tones - we went with the 32". upon measuring the larger tv, we found we had a 27" so this will still feel like enough of an upgrade. however, upon bringing the small tv there i found that rabbit ears do no good in our house, so we will wind up with dish or cable of some type. oh well.

i'm gonna go self-medicate with chocolate now.

bwaa haa, horoscope

"If you are contemplating a session of retail therapy today, think again. Buying things to make yourself feel better may provide temporary relief. But in a couple of day's time, whatever has been bothering you will still be bothering you. Any impulse buys you make today could drain your bank account of much-needed funds. Save your money for another day and don't take any financial risks -- especially with new technical gadgets that you have not researched."

kinda busy

yep. i'm in those days when taking a shower and doing two loads of laundry counts as being highly productive.

despite this, we are moving to the new house next week. mainly because it's driving us crazy that we're paying for two houses and we're not living in the nicer one.

dumb question for my reader(s): we're contemplating a new tv. we have a 13" that we do most of our viewing on, since it's in the master bedroom. the 32" is downstairs, and doesn't get decent reception as a result (we're on rabbit ears, no cable). the 32" no longer has its remote, and the universal remote we got for it needs reprogramming for time to time - a gigantic pain in the pitoot - and it is so heavy that it's making the cabinet we store it on hard to open. we're looking at the pretty LCDs that my husband's employer makes, which gives us the benefit of not paying retail price, as well as new furniture.

so - do we get a 32" flat tv, or pay almost twice the amount for 42"?

we've been saying we're "not tv people", but i'm not 100% sure if this is a chicken and egg thing -are we not tv people because we have 6 channels, or do we only have 6 channels because we're not tv people? a good chunk of the reason we don't have more is because of our loathing of comcast - which we did give one chance to show up for an installation appointment, and comcast failed - and reluctance to put a dish on a nearly 100-yr-old house. we'd go with dish for the new place.

if we get the 32", will we regret it down the road? and how would we get justify buying a bigger one later?

ugh. technology.

curls!

we're not sure where this comes from on the family tree, but bea's hair forms tight ringlet curls when she has a bath. and this morning, one was right in the middle of her forehead....

awwww 2.0

big brother and sister chat

thanks, worth1000!

'apple's new product' contest generated a high percentage of iPoo toilets, but also this gem....

so she's here

sunday night, we had gone in with regular contractions. they kept us overnight to see how we'd progress, and at some point during the night we had to decide if we were going to keep the c-sec appointment for monday morning or not. it really looked like labor was finally going to progress, so we let the appointment go.... and at about the same time we would have been in the operating room, contractions petered out. we went home, but rescheduled for a c-sec tuesday morning.

about 3 am tuesday, i started being rocked by waves of hard contractions. but i was so tired of how these never went anywhere, and decided to do nothing and keep the c-sec appointment. we went in at 8 am for a 10 am operation. as the spinal was being placed i was still in contractions. at 10:43 am, Beatrice RuthJoy Jesudason was born.... weighing an amazing 10 lbs 4 oz. (the midwives have since opined that the no-progress labor i kept experiencing was likely due to her size, and that the c-sec was the better way to go.)

we're home now, after four days in the hospital recovery rooms. things there went relatively smoothly. boo is doing pretty well as a new big brother, and had made 'welcome home mommy and beatrice' signs for today.

beatrice has a sense of humor

i'm scheduled to go into the hospital in 8 hours for a c-section, and NOW i'm in real labor. going in!!

E for Effort

No, no baby yet. It's as if she tried her darndest on Wednesday night, but has barely bothered since.

Here's a list of what I've tried to convince her to come out:

-acupuncture
-baths
-dong quai tea
-echinachea
-foot massage
-full moon
-pineapple
-spicy food
-walking
-whoopee
-yoga

oh, and begging and pleading and cajoling. oh well.

favorite advice: when i called wednesday night because the contractions were 5 minutes apart for about 2 hours, i was told to call back when i couldn't talk through the contractions. which would have sounded like, "errrrrghhh!" "okay, go to the hospital now" "errrrghhh?" "uh-huh." etc. but it didn't get to that point. i suspect i've trained myself to talk/concentrate through anything, since it's a needed skill when one has a curious little boy at one's side most of the time.

it's a race

so i'm scheduled for a c-sec, 8 am monday. unless beatrice shows up first, or i chicken out.

beatrice, you owe me 15 cents.

OVERDUE!

washpost article on fairfax's weeding policy

i'm cutting and pasting this from the washington post. my former library system is fairfax's neighbor and we had pretty much adopted the same policies, much to the consternation of many librarians. i've been wondering what the reaction has been to this article:

Hello, Grisham -- So Long, Hemingway?
With Shelf Space Prized, Fairfax Libraries Cull Collections
By Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 2, 2007; Page A01


You can't find "Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings" at the Pohick Regional Library anymore. Or "The Education of Henry Adams" at Sherwood Regional. Want Emily Dickinson's "Final Harvest"? Don't look to the Kingstowne branch.

It's not that the books are checked out. They're just gone. No one was reading them, so librarians took them off the shelves and dumped them.

Along with those classics, thousands of novels and nonfiction works have been eliminated from the Fairfax County collection after a new computer software program showed that no one had checked them out in at least 24 months.

Public libraries have always weeded out old or unpopular books to make way for newer titles. But the region's largest library system is taking turnover to a new level.

Like Borders and Barnes & Noble, Fairfax is responding aggressively to market preferences, calculating the system's return on its investment by each foot of space on the library shelves -- and figuring out which products will generate the biggest buzz. So books that people actually want are easy to find, but many books that no one is reading are gone -- even if they are classics.

"We're being very ruthless," said Sam Clay, director of the 21-branch system since 1982. "A book is not forever. If you have 40 feet of shelf space taken up by books on tulips and you find that only one is checked out, that's a cost."

That is the new reality for the Fairfax system and the future for other libraries. As books on tape, DVDs, computers and other electronic equipment crowd into branches, there is less room for plain old books.

So librarians are making hard decisions and struggling with a new issue: whether the data-driven library of the future should cater to popular tastes or set a cultural standard, even as the demand for the classics wanes.

Library officials say they will always stock Shakespeare's plays, "The Great Gatsby" and other venerable titles. And many of the books pulled from one Fairfax library can be found at another branch and delivered to a patron within a week.

But in the effort to stay relevant in an age in which reference materials and novels can be found on the Internet and Oprah's Book Club helps set standards of popularity, libraries are not the cultural repositories they once were.

"I think the days of libraries saying, 'We must have that, because it's good for people,' are beyond us," said Leslie Burger, president of the American Library Association and director of Princeton Public Library. "There is a sense in many public libraries that popular materials are what most of our communities desire. Everybody's got a favorite book they're trying to promote."

That leaves some books endangered. In Fairfax, thousands of titles have been pulled from the shelves and become eligible for book sales.

Weeding books used to be sporadic. Now it's strategic. Clay and his employees established the two-year threshold 18 months ago, driven, they say, by a $2 million cut to the budget for books and materials and the demand for space. More computers and growing demand in branches for meeting space, story hours and other gatherings have left less room for books.

And nowadays, library patrons don't like to sit at big tables with strangers as they read or study. They want to be alone, creating a need for individual carrels that take up even more space. And the popularity of audiovisual materials that must be housed in 50-year-old branches built for smaller collections only adds to the crunch.

To do more with less, Fairfax library officials have started running like businesses. Clay bought state-of-the art software that spits out data on each of the 3.1 million books in the county system -- including age, number of times checked out and when. There are also statistics on the percentages of shelf space taken up by mysteries, biographies and kids' books.

Every branch gets a printout of the data each month, including every title that hasn't circulated in the previous 24 months. It's up to librarians to decide whether a book stays. The librarians have discretion, but they also have targets, collection manager Julie Pringle said. "What comes in is based on what goes out," she said.

Classics such as Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" are among the titles that haven't been checked out in two years and could be eliminated. Librarians so far have decided to keep them.

As libraries clear out titles, they sweep in new ones as fast as they can. A two-month-old program called "Hot Picks" is boosting copies of bestsellers by tracking the number of holds requested by patrons. This month, every Fairfax branch will display new books more prominently, leaving even less space for older ones.

"We don't want to keep what people don't use much of," Clay said. Circulation, a sign of prestige and a potential bargaining chip for new funding, is on pace to hit 11.6 million in the Fairfax system this year, part of a steady climb over the past three years.

No other system in the Washington area is tracking circulation as quickly -- or weeding so methodically. Montgomery County, a similar-size suburban system, has not emphasized weeding in several years, said Kay Ecelbarger, who retired last month as chief of collection management.

In the District, library director Ginnie Cooper said she has not tackled weeding and turnover policy in the system, which is struggling to increase circulation. She hopes to address those concerns with a recent infusion of cash from the D.C. Council.

There are no national standards on weeding public library collections.

As Fairfax bets its future on a retail model, some librarians say that the public library may be straying too far from its traditional role as an archive of literature and history.

Arlington County's library director, Diane Kresh, said she's "paying a lot of attention to what our customers want." But if they aren't checking out Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," she's not only keeping it, she's promoting it through a new program that gives forgotten classics prominent display.

"Part of my philosophy is that you collect for the ages," Kresh said. "The library has a responsibility to provide a core collection for the cultural education of its community." She comes to this view from a career at the Library of Congress, where she was chief of public service collections for 30 years.

The weight of the new choices falls on the local librarian. That's especially hard at the Woodrow Wilson branch in Falls Church, one of the smallest in the Fairfax system. It's a vibrant place popular with Latino and Middle Eastern immigrants, the elderly and young professionals. Branch manager Linda Schlekau, who has 20 years of experience, says she discards about 700 books a month.

"Nine Plays by Eugene O'Neill" sat on the top shelf of a cart in the back room one day in late December, wedged between Voltaire's "Candide" and "Broke Heart Blues" by Joyce Carol Oates. The cart brimmed with books that someone on Schlekau's staff had pulled from the shelves. Sometimes she has time to give them another look before wheeling them to the book-sale pile. Sometimes she doesn't.

The Oates would return to the shelf, "because she's a real popular author at Woodrow Wilson," even if "Broke Heart Blues" isn't, Schlekau said. The Voltaire would go. An obscure Edgar Allan Poe volume called "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" might be transferred to another branch.

Schlekau hesitated over the volume of O'Neill plays, which was in good condition but had been checked out only nine times in its lifespan at the library, falling short of the system's new goal of 20. She sighed. "The only time things like this are going out is if they're [performing the plays] at the Kennedy Center."

But, she said, she's disinclined to throw O'Neill into the discard pile: "That's the English major in me."

Books on the Chopping Block in Fairfax
The following books have been weeded from the shelves of various branches of the Fairfax County Public Library system or haven't been checked out in 24 months and could be discarded. In parentheses are the branches where the books are endangered. The same title might be available at another branch.
The Works of Aristotle Aristotle (Centreville)
Sexual Politics Kate Millett (Centreville)
The Great Philosophers Karl Jaspers (Centreville)
Carry Me Home Diane McWhorter (Centreville)
The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner (George Mason Regional)
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Thomas Hardy (George Mason Regional)
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway (George Mason Regional)
Desolation Angels
Jack Kerouac (George Mason Regional)
Doctor Zhivago
Boris Pasternak (George Mason Regional)
Remembrance of Things Past
Marcel Proust (George Mason Regional)
Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well
Maya Angelou (Chantilly Regional)
The Glass Menagerie
Tennessee Williams (Chantilly Regional)
Writings Gertrude Stein (Chantilly Regional)
Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte (Chantilly Regional)
Doctor Faustus
Christopher Marlowe (Chantilly Regional)
Great Issues in American History
Richard Hofstadter (Chantilly Regional)
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Gertrude Stein (Chantilly Regional)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Pohick Regional)
Babylon Revisited: And other stories
F. Scott Fitzgerald (Reston Regional)
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee (Reston Regional)
The Aeneid Virgil (Sherwood Regional)
The Mill on the Floss
George Eliot (Fairfax City Regional)

it's the due date, and my horoscope sucks

Scorpio:

All your forward momentum is starting to wane a bit, which is both a positive and a negative thing. On the one hand, this time out will finally give you a chance to take in the interesting view you've been missing out on for so long. But on the other hand, this pause means that you are going to have wait even longer for the changes you've been hoping for. Conserve your energy and be more patient. Be confident that you will experience what you deserve soon enough.


Argh!!

The walking yesterday did little to help - in fact, fewer contractions than usual last night. I can't even get in to the midwives' today, my appointment is tomorrow. I'll have my progress checked and if there's been any dilation, fine, I'll give her til Monday to come naturally. If no progress since last week, I will have a c-sec on Friday.

Another gripe:

While out yesterday, I did a little shopping at one of my favorite pampering places. In fact, it was the only shopping I did, so I realized later at the grocery store that my bank card had been left there. It took several tries to get through the busy signal to confirm that yes, my card was there. "Do you want me to hold onto your card?," the salesperson asked. "Um, as opposed to handing it out to a stranger, yes..." I replied. Went back to get card. Somehow wound up in a position where I'm thanking the store for holding my card - that the salesperson had neglected to return to me in the first place. Isn't that supposed to merit an apology for inconveniencing me?

nope

so.... more than 4 hours of contractions without hitting the magic 5 minutes apart, although there was about 1/2 an hour between 3:30 - 4 am of that. and then petering off again. kinda back on this morning, let's see if it makes a pattern. kid is at school; pretty soon i'm going to go walking around the mall or something to try to get 'em back on track.

guess what

so when you call and speak to the midwife on call and tell her you've been in contractions for the past 2 hours, ten minutes apart...... she tells you to call back when they're 5 minutes apart.


gaaargh.

10 mins! wooooot!

contractions have been 10 mins apart for the last 1 hour and 40 minutes. gonna make sure it lasts 2 hours, then we're calling in to the hospital.... (we're supposed to call after an hour of this, but i've had too many false starts to trust it.)

other things to note:

-ran into my coworker hillary on the streetcar today. happy serendipity! and good to see her.

- i measured my belly, it's 47 inches if i'm sucking it in and 48 inches if i'm not.

- lost my mucous plug this morning. while it's exciting, it doesn't correlate to when true labor starts - could be hours, could be a week - so i tried not to get hopes too far up. i will say, though, that it's pretty gross - like the biggest booger you've ever seen, times ten, coming out of something that ain't yer nose. hope that visual memory fades.

poker? i hardly know her!

tried acupuncture this afternoon as a way to kickstart real labor. have a follow-up appointment on saturday if i'm still pregnant then.

i've never tried acupuncture before. really wasn't bad.

deck us all....

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower alley-garoo!

Don't we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby Lilla boy, Louisville Lou?
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Polly wolly cracker n' too-da-loo!
Hunky Dory's pop is lolly gaggin' on the wagon,
Willy, folly go through!

Donkey Bonny brays a carol,
Antelope Cantaloup, 'lope with you!
Chollie's collie barks at Barrow,
Harum scarum five alarum bung-a-loo!

- Walt Kelly.

the baby is a tease

i am really getting sick of the daily 'here's some contractions for ya, now i'm done' pattern. by this point i'll probably ignore them when the real thing happens. "yeah right baby, you're not playing me for a fool any longer!"

i'm mildly annoyed because i'm coming down with a cold. some family was in the midwifery waiting room while we waiting more than half an hour for my appointment (the practice was having a particularly chaotic day), and among the four kids was a boy about a year younger than boo. boo starts playing with the boy, after which the father tells me that boy has a cold. i pull boo to the other side of the room. father allows boy to play with all doorknobs in the place. i ask the receptionist for a sanitizing wipe the second the family leaves. i'm sorry, but if your kid has a cold and you have another parent around, don't stay in the freaking waiting room full of pregnant women!

another moment of 'ewww' - for some reason, i couldn't find the breast pump i used last time. i know i kept it. but i bought a manual one just in case i need one again. i researched them on amazon and saw that lovely 'new and used starting at....' pricing. used??? eewwwww...... eeked me out more than the concept of used bluetooth headsets for cellphones. ewwww. ewwww!

dorota's easy quiche recipe

made this tonight with asparagus and swiss. yum!

-1 frozen deep-dish pie crust
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup milk
- 1 Tablespoon flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/8 teaspoon pepper
- "a dash" of ground nutmeg
- about 1 1/2 cups grated cheese (Swiss, cheddar, whatever...) *note: too much cheese can make it runny!
- either fried onion (or green onion)
- a bunch (a cup or so?) of cubed ham, or cooked turkey, chicken, whatever... spinach, mushrooms? whatever sounds good.

bake pie crust. Mix up eggs, then mix that up with all the other stuff, and pour into hot crust. Bake at 350 for 35-45 or so minutes, stick a knife into the center and if it comes out clean it's done.

--let it sit for some time to cool, otherwise it'll be runny if you try to serve it right away.



this was really easy, as described. i think earlier quiche failures stemmed from an intimidating recipe in a old version of the moosewood cookbook, and a bizarre real simple magazine version that used eggbeaters and a bottle of blue cheese salad dressing. i also tend to add too much cheese to just about anything, and probably tried putting in too much veggies as well.

nothing yet

just a bunch o' contractions, like last night.... not at the magic 10-minutes-apart, usually 20, but not super-consistent.

had a midwifery appointment this afternoon, they've checked and not much is actually going on. but they kinda hinted that this on-again, off-again contraction thing tends to happen a couple of days before the real thing....

pattycake, pattycake, bakerman

realized something yesterday:

boo enjoys cooking quite a bit, particularly soup and cookies. while he'll chow down on a couple of bowls of soup for lunch or dinner after we make it, he doesn't eat so many cookies. currently the kitchen is overflowing with gingerbread and chocolate chip, but he'll still ask for an oreo instead.

miracle on lombard st

boo and i came home after school yesterday to find that the drug house two doors down has been boarded up.

turns out that the nonprofit land trust that owns the land under the house was able to evict the homeowner (who would have been in foreclosure on her mortgage anyway) on the grounds that illegal activities at the property violated her agreement with the trust. i talked to the exec director of the trust, who was apologetic that the process took so long - they had been working with their legal team for five months to make this happen.

well, it was faster than multiple calls to the police.

the activities in the house were worse than we had suspected. based on a conversation with a neighborhood (but alas, not my neighborhood) cop, we thought it was pot - all the activity was at night, nobody around during the day, people seemed to be carrying baggies. lo and behold, it was crack and prostitution.

last night was the first night in many, many months with no driveup traffic on our street. even the amount of driveby traffic seemed to be less. "honey, look at the nothing!" i exclaimed to my husband.

the land trust will buy the house back from the mortgage company, renovate it, and resell it over the summer.

it's a huge, huge relief to us, and we are incredibly grateful to the portland community land trust for doing this. best holiday present we could have received.

no news = no news

for the billions of you who read this,

nothing's going on. no baby yet. a bunch of 'holy heck it's a contraction' but nothing in a pattern yet. i'm running around like a headless chicken getting last-minute stuff done, trying not to panic as the new house stuff seems to be getting delayed, and as usual trying to figure out how to be in 3 places at once.

so i'm takin' half a unisom, and hoping for some sleep.

i'm too sexy for PWC

a former coworker emailed me to say that the filter on the county's internet connection has blocked my blog for sex acts.

i feel so..... dirrrrty.

less hysterical, but still in pain

i knew i was miserable and nuts yesterday, so i put off making a decision on this until i could try to sleep and see if i felt better this morning. i'm not in quite as excruciating pain as yesterday, but still in enough pain that i made the call and have stopped working from now until sometime this spring....

i love my job, i love what i do, and there's a part of me that truly has a hard time letting go of it. but i can't walk without wincing! it's time to give up and stay off my feet as much as possible.

stupid, stupid, stupid

just got back from midwives appointment.

no, they won't change my due date, despite what the ultrasound that THEY ORDERED BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT I WAS TOO LARGE FOR THEIR DUE DATE said. ("late ultrasounds are notoriously inaccurate." good, because i will not pay for it when the bill comes.) gee, maybe i could consult with their doctor next week and talk about scheduling a c-section. however, since they're not changing my due date, and they won't want to do a c-sec until i'm 39 weeks, which they think is a month from now. as opposed to 2 weeks from now.

oh, and the pain which keeps me from sleeping? take tylenol! and ambien??

panic

thankfully i'm headed to a midwives' appointment this morning.

i've had insomnia throughout the pregnancy, but last night was something else. (it's 5:30 am and should still be 'tonight', actually.) i'm really miserably uncomfortable, and the heating pad and tylenol have done nothing. i usually haven't been in pain to the point that i can't sleep, and i certainly haven't been in pain to the point of tears until now. i know the hormones are going bezerk right now - my skin's breaking out again, i can feel that i'm getting ready to lactate again - but i'm not going to be able to get through much more of this. supposedly, this isn't labor yet. we had 'childbirth refresher class' over the weekend, where my main concern was being able to recognize labor since i didn't go through it at all last time.

i worked sunday and although i'm scheduled for several more shifts between now and the 17th - which i though was a safe end-date for working, when i was due mid-jan - i think i'm going to have to bail.

a not-so-small part of me is hoping that they either tell me i'm dilating and this will be over very soon, or for some reason they feel they should schedule a delivery well before the end of the month. as it is, i'm worried about keeping myself together this morning while getting boo ready for school and getting him to class. i could handle it if i didn't have to talk to anyone, but running the phalanx of kindergarten moms asking me how i am doing is a little more than i can deal with right now. that balls into the horrible feeling of disappointment i have about how that's gone, socially - it's a tense and divided group, essentially split between those who put up with Disastified Mom's crap and those who seek to avoid it - and I think that if we weren't all tiptoeing around the toxic one, some better friendships might have been made. As it stands now, however, I don't feel like I can call on anyone for help in that group, ang g-d knows nobody's offered any. Maybe if anyone had said, hey, what are your plans for boo when you're in the hospital delivering, can I help with that, I'd feel a hell of a lot better. Or at least able to tolerate a half-dozen half-hearted 'how are you feeling' queries every freaking morning.

6 am now. maybe i can feign some sleep for an hour.

bunch o' stuff

1) baby is now, according to ultrasound, due dec 28.

2) restauranteurs, please do me a favor. stop using soup veggie mix. it's freaking obvious when there's square carrots, corn, peas and (bleagh) lima beans what's really in the 'primavera' or the 'navratan korma' or any of the other crappy incarnations i've seen this stuff used in. it's an insult to the intelligence of anyone who's ever been in a grocery store.

3) i got a service award at work for walking. or as the patron put it on the nomination form, "for sarah (big belly - pregnant) - she walked me around the library". i'm not sure what to make of this. um, it's my job.

4) chocolate comes from the cocoa plant. therefore, i'm hereby classifying it as a fruit/vegetable serving.

5) all things are good to go with the new house. yippee!

6) i can't fit into any of my shoes anymore, so i got a couple of pairs of not-too-slipperish-looking slippers. one looks like black shearling boots, and the other looks like black flats. why the heck didn't i think to do this all the time?? beats shoes. and i love shoes.

7) boo quote. after explaining that a sign stating 'no minors' meant that nobody under 21 years old could sit at the bar, he pipes up with 'i think you have to be 100 years old to sit there.' 'oh,' i said, 'so am i old enough?' 'no, mommy, you're nowhere near one hundred years old. you're only halfway there.' thanks, kiddo!!

mystery

gee, as soon as it was the day to leave my hometown after our week-long thanksgiving trip, that horrible pressure disappeared....

it struck boodad and i as funny that when we lived in manassas, going to rhode island was enjoyable enough to consider moving to the providence region (if only there were sufficient tech jobs). however, now that we're in portland, rhode island once again feels like the sleepy little hamlet that i ached to get out of as a teen.

there was also plenty of passive-agressive stuff to deal with, like my mother's insistence on giving me turn-by-turn driving directions when tooling around my old neighborhood. and my parents' out-of-control packratism. i truly, truly fear what will happen when, hopefully many years from now, i am called upon to clear out their house. my mom can't seem to grasp the concept of throwing anything out, or ceasing to accumulate multiples of things that aren't even in use. case in point, her 'sewing room'. it does indeed contain a sewing machine and a serger, as well as a cabinet full of fabrics that she bought while i was in grade school. however, nobody can get to these items, because there are bags and bags of paperwork, old newspaper articles, magazines and god-knows-what filling the floorspace. i have cleared out that room two times on previous visits, so i don't know how it reaccumulates all this gunk. in their bathroom, they have added an additional shelf for the multitudes of lavender and lily of the valley scented powders, bubble baths and body lotions that she's amassed - very few of which have ever been opened. my dad's office and the basement, both of which were bedrooms of mine at various points, are similarly deserving of enter-at-your-own-risk warning signs. i was hoping to dig into an old box of photos during this trip, but couldn't manouver in the basement at all.

we stayed in a hotel and rented a car, and it was worth every penny.

on a completely different note: someone has come up with a scent called in the library. eau de kickstool et dewey!

get. it. out.

magically, the day after the last midwives' appointment, i started feeling very uncomfortable. lots of pressure and it feels like something/someone is heading down. it hurts, but it's not contractions. of course, this started the day i flew out of town for thanksgiving. i'm in new england right now, and not returning to portland until tomorrow night. the ultrasound is the next day. so a little part of me is hoping that i get told 'we can't let you go on much further, this baby comes out next week' or something like that. not another whole month.

carrying too much

last night i dreamed that i was in school again, and i was trying to carry my stuff and a friend's stuff and i just couldn't do it.

today i got told at my midwifery appointment that the baby seems a bit big for the projected due date, and i need an ultrasound to figure out the size and position. this may adjust the due date up, but i don't know by how much.

also, today a very spur-of-the-moment bid we made on a house was accepted. i saw this house when i was getting out of my hair appointment saturday, and was curious enough to look it up. we toured it with our agents later in the afternoon and put a bid on it that evening. the sellers want to close dec 15. we're planning to stay in our current house and move s-l-o-w-l-y and then put this house on the market in april or may. but yeah, a lot to do with a new baby. so we have a little more paperwork to do tonight, and may run out there again to look at phone jacks and electric plugs and things - the inspection will be done while we're gone, and this is a new house that is just being finished - we want to ask for plugs and jacks exactly where we want them.

oh yeah, and i have to pack, too. and i have a parent-teacher conference in 45 minutes. and i'd like to nap. me, carry too much?

i give up on the rawk

only i could go to a $10 show and have it cost me almost $90.

breakdown:

made arrangements to go to show with friend. since the venue's website doesn't list box office hours, and i don't want to ping back and forth between various sides of town all afternoon, i decide to buy the tickets in advance online. so, two tickets plus service charge = $27. total rip, i know, i just get anxious that we'd get there and have it sold out.

friend calls in late afternoon; her girlfriend is quite ill due to bad seafood reaction. no biggie.

call another friend, who happens to be going to the show with housemates. great, he offers to buy the second ticket off me. except his housemates have a no-opening-band-because-we're-too-cool thing, and the band i'm there to see is the second of three playing and i don't want to stay for the headliner because i'm working tomorrow. arranged that he would call when they get to the venue, although this is now becoming if they go to the venue. of course, no call.

get out of show, which was good but eh.... it's my 5th time seeing them. they're getting crisper in their playing and i kinda like it messier. (as i said to the drummer last time, 'what the hell is wrong? i can hear what you're saying after your set, that's not supposed to happen.') get back to car. and yes, i will admit that i saw the 'no parking, loading zone' where i was, but it was at a theatre whose parking lot was completely empty - so i figured no loading was going to be done. i also figured being very close when very pregnant was worth risking a ticket - maybe a $25 fine? turns out that the theatre doing no loading at the time doesn't matter to the police - there's a $60 parking ticket on my windshield. (ps. could you at least use those funds towards answering your 'drug house hotline' at nonabsurd hours? like when i call at 9 pm on a saturday because my next-to-next door neighbors are dealing, and find out you're not taking calls until 6:30 am on monday, and 911 won't dispatch because the money exchanges are happening inside the house?) at least i warned the guy who almost took my space when i left that he'd likely get a ticket too if he stayed.

oh, and add the $2 diet coke. $89 for a ten dollar show. i give up.

screwed priorities weekend

so this weekend there's a few things that i "should" be doing:

- i should be going to orycon to hear guest of honor cory doctorow speak tomorrow. also, i should have gone to see him speak at PSU thursday, but had no sitter and i'm guessing having a 5-yr-old sit through a talk on copyright issues is asking for disaster.

- i should hit the gem fair and restock on some beads.

- i'm working on sunday so these activities would have to happen saturday.

however, life gets in the way:

- i missed a hair appointment on thursday morning because it was a little more important to talk with a contractor about my sometimes-wet basement. i had to reschedule for saturday, noon, which means i won't be able to get from southeast to downtown by the time of cory's reading. (also, i noticed he's not on the booksigning/autograph schedule at all. hmpfh.)

- i'm trying not to spend oodles of money right before our trip back home for thanksgiving, and bead shows tend to be 'spendy for me. i'm also not so critically short on anything that would make it worth walking into a giant convention room of temptation.

so, saturday is haircut day, and at night i'm rawking out to dirty on purpose at the doug fir. wheee! beatrice, get yer earplugs on.

yeah, baby!

i have figured out when the baby will be born.

my ultrasounds say jan 4, my midwives say jan 14. but thanks to a jaunt into town today, i realized the magic date will be jan 8.

why?

because on that date this man will be in portland:


and so i'm imagining that this will be done by 7:30 pm, in time for Mr. Manilow to make his 8 PM Rose Garden show, having already performed the valiant deed of belting out LOOKS LIKE WE MADE IT!!! as Beatrice's head pops out.

how 'bout it, Barry?

storybook dream

during last night's dream i was at work at the library, but not in the usual way things happen there. i had to photocopy the reference desk schedule, but someone started it ahead of me and had screwed up by making it on the wrong size of paper and making way too many copies. and then we were all in a meeting, but we were sitting on the floor and i kept being bothered by the antics of a couple of coworkers who were tumbling around. (shades of boo's kindergarten?) everyone was dressed in black polo shirts and sweatpants, and the content of the meeting was banal. in my annoyance and boredom i grabbed a book of fairy tales and was surprised to find that i could pluck the delicate, fluffy clothing out of it, and put it on. i started wearing layered tutu-ish pink skirts and embroidered jackets straight from the book. there were little notes in the book from my english grandmother encouraging me to find these things, as well as some large cut-glass bottles of perfumes and a pair of shoes that looked like lampworked glass bottles. "have you done something sparkly?", my grandmother had written on top of one of the pages.

who knew, i'm cinderella.

may i have an exception, please?

good news: husband starts great new job at end of this month.

kinda good news: much better health insurance starting dec 1.

but there's a glitch: new health insurance does not have current midwives' practice or hospital where we intend to deliver in their network.

so i am: calling the hospital billing people trying to figure out if which makes more sense: paying more out of pocket, or switching providers and hospitals when i'm 8 months pregnant.

what i'd like: permission to have just one beer, please?


update: have talked to very helpful benefits person at hospital. they're adjusting my rates to come closer to what i'd pay if the hospital was in-network. (and actually, i think this will wind up being less than my current crapola insurance's in-network deal!)

new question: may i have a glass of champagne to celebrate the relief?

a fine author

my son's kindergarten class has a lot of worksheet assignments. one is to read a book (they have buckets at their tables to choose from, including math, science, and poetry), then draw a picture based on the book, copy the title, and write a very brief description of the picture - even if it's a word or two, and they're encouraged to look through the book for words to use. sometimes this kind of exercise is done free-form, where they're making up the story instead of reading a book.

a couple of days ago my son came home with a sheet, and the 'words' he wrote were just jibberish. he hadn't copied the title in any legible way, and the writing below the picture was equally inscrutible. we told him we knew he could do better - especially since we've seen him copy words when he's wanted to write them. he said he was told it was 'okay'. the problem stems from the wide range of abilities in the class - there are several kids who are completely new to writing, and they get told it's okay to copy down a couple of letters, but those who are more capable don't necessarily get pushed to do more. we told him we wanted to see better work from him, since we knew he could do it.

so yesterday he comes home with a free-form story picture. i think from the picture he was trying to describe going trick-or-treating with his friend, felix. the four lines of writing space were filled up, although the bottom three were jibberish again (he told us they say "blahdeblahblah"). the first line? "I WENT POOP."

a fine author.

artichoke epiphany

i loves artichokes. but i hate the prep work: getting the stem trimmed is no problem, but trimming the tops requires something like a hacksaw, and then there's prying the little central hairs out.

so this evening, i tried a new solution. i trimmed the stems, and then boiled 'em whole. when ready, i took them out, sliced them in half - much easier with more tender cooked leaves - and then it was easier to scoop out the hairy centers. also, they look a bit more elegant, and would make a great presentation with some kind of stuffing.

a book!!

i picked up douglas coupland's jPod, um, because it was on the recent books shelf and the cover looked interesting. i haven't read coupland before, despite being in 'that age group.' i'm liking it quite a bit, in fact waking up in the middle of the night to read more. first thing that's clicked for me in a while.

in other lit fronts, orycon - the annual oregon scifi convention - is coming in a few weeks with featured guest cory doctorow. YIPPEEE I'M HAVIN A GEEK ATTACK!

more funky dreams

the night before last, i dreamed that i kept getting stuck in places because of my belly. i'd try to get out of an aisle, or around some chairs, or past some obstacle and my belly would just get stuck.

last night, i dreamed that i had taken boo to a home depot for something (although it looked more like a furniture store) and realized the next day that i had left my purse there. i must have had my keys in my pocket so i could drive home. when we looked around the store we found the bag where i had left it, but it was disheveled and i found that my wallet had been stripped of cash, license and cards. i freaked out and tried to get a sales associate to help me but about five of them listened to half a sentence and walked away. i was getting more and more hysterical. i didn't notice that i was frightening boo and he ran off. eventually i went to customer service for help - by that point doubly hysterical because i saw that boo wasn't with me anymore - and they let me use their phone to call the issuing banks for the cards and the DMV. (the customer service desk looked more like a bank teller's counter.) my husband dropped by to ask what was taking so long, and i told him to find nathan. meanwhile, a woman with about 5 kids was next to me and her kids kept climbing on me and interrupting the calls i was trying to make. i gave up when i asked them to please stop interferring and the mom's reply was 'so what?'. i went to sit in a lobby area and make the calls from my cell phone, but the kids followed me and continued to climb on me. i was just about resigned to staying at wit's end. husband came back with boo. i left and went home with them.

i woke up feeling so lousy that in my dream, i had placed more emphasis on the stupid bank cards than on my son.

D-i-Yogurt

about a week ago i bought a yogurt maker. i'm a sucker for kitchen appliances - bread machine, check; ice cream maker, check; rice cooker, check; various crock pots, blenders, choppers - check. (no fancy kitchen aid mixer yet, but that's probably more of a matter of no counter or storage space.)

right now i'm making my third batch of yogurt. what i like about this system is that it makes up little reusable single-serve containers, which was always my downfall about getting plain yogurt in the past. i'd have very good nutritional intentions and buy a large carton of plain yogurt, and it would sit ignored in my fridge until it had to get remandered to the science experiment pile. so i'd get the small containers of flavored stuff, and then feel guilty about all those containers if they weren't recyclable. (in manassas, they recycle plastics #1 and #2, but here in portland they do curbside recycling for "plastic containers that have a neck" and the yogurt tubs have to go elsewhere. portland recycles a lot of materials but not everything goes curbside.)

anyway, i've been enjoying the results, even if the machine is only capable of making plain yogurt. i've tried with 2% milk and whole milk and can't say i've noticed much difference. part of me wants to try with goat milk but that's probably something better left until after the pregnancy. or maybe not, since the milk needs to be heated first. it is an exercise in patience, as it takes nine hours in the machine after setting it up and another 3 hours or so in the fridge - boo's curiousity about the process waned significantly when he realized how long it takes, and how the visuals aren't so exciting. but he has been eating more yogurt, as have i. so i'm guessing this machine will pay for itself in.... let's see, 8 yogurts per homemade batch versus a buck a pop for storebought - two more batches! (not figuring in the cost of milk because we buy 2-3 gallons a week as it is.) not bad at all.

all the wrong things

today i took a break from helping at boo's school. when i first got home i napped for a couple of hours. then, instead of doing the two things i needed to do today - clearing out the upstairs bedroom for the crib and dresser arriving tomorrow afternoon, and practicing my sarangi before tomorrow morning's lesson - i cleaned out the very junky junk drawer in my kitchen, and started reorganizing stuff in my basement. which means, it's into the evening and i still need to practice and to clear out the bedroom. the bedroom is inhabited by the remains of my jewelry-making stuff, most of which went into a secretary desk in the living room, and my computer/office stuff, which really has no place to go - hence the mental block in getting it cleared out, because i simply don't know what to do with it other than shove it in a closet, which just means i'll have to move it again in the future. i was hoping we'd get our basement finished by now - which would have included at least a desk's worth of space for me - but my husband is pretty much refusing to spend any time/effort/money on it.

on the bright side, i have hired a cleaning service, and they start next week - but now i'm facing that pressure to clean the house top-to-bottom before they get here.

gargh.

buddhamachines

in an attempt to find some way of masking the traffic noise that starts around 5 am on our busy street....

er, scratch that.

using road noise as an excuse to try these little hipster electronic toys, i ordered two buddha machines. there's a website that barely explains them at http://fm3.com.cn/buddhamachine.htm, and they're available through forced exposure. basically, they randomly drone through nine ambient loops. why two? because i'm not quite as cool as brian eno, and he's got 8 or 9 of them.

i've got them set up and next to each other. they're very simple to operate - put in batteries, click on volume wheel, and if you want to switch loops there's a little button on the side. one is nice; two creates a nice complementary soundscape. not the best sound quality in the world - there are headphone ports but i can't imagine wanting to hear it that way. there's also a DC 4.5v input, although no cords were included. they come in a bunch of colors and forced exposure sent me a red and a raspberry one. (they don't offer a color choice.) boo has already claimed the raspberry one for himself and thinks we should get two more.

the fm3 site doesn't show the box these come in, which is kind of a shame because they're delightful. they're powder blue with pink lotuses all over them. they look like large asian candy boxes. i don't know if i'll eventually unscrew one to see if there really is a little buddha figure inside, as the website's diagram shows.

i wonder if the baby would find these restful for naptime. wonder if this means the kid will grow up makin' music for airports.

i should've figured this out

i spent the past 2 mornings helping in the kindergarten classroom, as the usual assistant has been out. yesterday was particularly, erm, eventful as it was me and a substitute for the morning. i wound up sending a kindergartener to the principal's office, but it turns out they're quite familiar with this student's behavior crapola already.

i've started being a little too busy for coffee on tuesday mornings because i don't want to be around all the negativity projected by DM. well, that and being affronted by the 'you have no clue' attitude she hands out. i mentioned that particular conversation to the teacher, because i fear that DM's trying to rile people up during these coffee mornings and i just want no part of it any more. and it turns out.... all those 'we should have this and this in the classroom, and do this activity, yadda yadda' that she throws at the teacher.... the teacher tells her to go ahead and implement it, and DM doesn't follow through on it. and apparently, DM is now picking on the cafeteria staff, despite the fact that her kids don't eat cafeteria food. and frankly, they're doing a fairly difficult job on the budget they're provided and yet they're offering a salad bar and not a bad selection of stuff.

today i'm helping with library time, and after that i'm stopping by the principal's office to express support for the teacher.

fifteen years later

yesterday, before i left for work, boodad said the one thing i'd never thought he'd say.

"want to go to india next year? like, in december?"

he's never expressed any desire to go, in fact quite the opposite. but, at long last, he's back in correspondence with his father and his dad wants to see the grandkids.

sure, there are logistical funpoints like.... 20+ hours of travel with 2 kids, one of which will be almost a year old, and erm, not potty-trained so how do they deal with that in india anyway, and the closest airport is not serviced by airlines that i'd choose to fly on, but heck. i'm excited enough that i was researching airlines while it was quiet at the desk yesterday.

it's been 15 years since i was in india.

slacka mom

(title in honor of my r-droppin' new england background)

so there's a group of the kindergarten moms who tend to hang out after drop-off in the mornings, go to the playground with the kiddies after school, and get coffee once a week. i'm happy to be in that group, as i know few people around here. but prospect of this morning's coffee meet was filling me with dread.

why?

one of the moms has made it her mission to express deep dissastifaction with how things are going at the school. and saying that you're actually okay with things, as i am, warrants you a "but i'm an educator and you're not so of course you have no idea." quite literally.

well, i have been paying close attention to what my kid asks about after school and on the weekends, and his inquiries are becoming more sophisticated. he's writing more words independently, whereas before he was confident in writing his name on his own but wanted our guidance on all other words. he's bringing home worksheets that show good processing of some basic math and literacy concepts, and he's repeating rhythm structures and written notes (something that i never did in public school music classes OR in 8 years in a well-regarded chorus) from music class. and this is after one month in a school with a new K-6 population, a new magent curriculum, and 27 K students of abilties ranging from can't-write-a-letter to egads-my-handwriting-doesn't-look-like-a-grownup's. i think things are going well.

dissastisfied mom (DM) thinks that the kids are not getting enough hands-on science. the point of the program at this point, however, is more literacy-based, and the science will be coming in future months. DM asks why they can't do 'simple' things like bring in a pumpkin and ask the kids to guess how much it weighs. oh yeah? ever ask a little kid how old they think you are? or how tall or heavy someone is? this is not a concept that kids at that age have any grasp on, and bringing in something like this without a contextual unit on weights and measurements just makes it a very random guessing game. my feeling is that the kids need to learn to process things like, say, how to read and write numbers before measurements mean much to them.

DM is also unhappy with how the teacher (and the principal) deals with the small group of kids with repeated behavior issues. basically, they are given a warning, then they are removed from the group until they calm down, and if that doesn't work they are sent to the 1-2 grade class next door (the first and second graders share a class because there are so few of them). any work they miss due to misbehavior is done while the rest of the class has 'choosing' - a free period to work on puzzles, building, arts or other activities. DM and another of the moms think that these kids need more warmth and attention. problem was, when DM and other moms stayed in the classroom, the behavior issues got worse because these kids essentially got rewarded for being disruptive. i know that the intentions are good - the behavior issues are going hand-in-hand with socioeconomic and non-involved parent stereotypes and so it's hard not to feel for the lack of warmth these kids are getting on the homefront - but i agree with the teacher that it does these kids no favor to have an inconsistent message about classroom expectations. "but she could use more of a carrot with them," DM argues. having choosing time restored is a carrot. and what about the kids who are not having problems? should they essentially be punished because they're getting only standard treatment for appropriate behavior instead of extra pats on the head for meeting basic expectations? doesn't this teach this handful of kids that just doing what everyone is supposed to do is spectacular for them, and nothing else is really expected of them?

but, you know, my master's is in library science, so i have no fuckin' clue what i'm talking about. right.

oh well

this was about to be a post about how i finally have a day off, but it looks like that's not happening. got called for a shift this afternoon/evening, but husband isn't sure he can pick kid up at 5:30. gargh. so now i'm waiting for him to call me back so i can call work back....

some notes and thoughts accumulated since last post:

do you think we could learn from the amish? last week's incident was as horrible as it gets, and yet they're not angry. there is no talk to retribution, or changing their ways, and 30 members of the community showed up at the gunman's funeral. most of us would be wrapping our schools in barbed wire and metal detectors and boiling with the urge for revenge.

can anyone in portland make decent challah? the loaf i got from new seasons (not baked by them) was just plain foul, and another loaf i tried from a bakery on hawthorne was sweet but too cakeishly heavy.

i'm in a reading slump, at least for books. it's magazine time. recently picked up an issue of brain, child (brainchildmag.com) and am liking it immensely - smart parenting without the preachiness found in mothering. i've also started a subscription to good magazine (goodmagazine.com) because it looks so darn well-intentioned, and the subscription price is being donated to a charity of my choice. my only fear is how many magazines i've subscribed to in the past that have folded - rescue, george, mirabella, new eden... i feel like a publisher's kiss of death.

more on magazines: i got the kid subscriptions to your big backyard (published by national wildlife foundation, available at nwf.org/shopping. it's the younger version of ranger rick.), spider and click (both published by carus, available at cricketmag.com; spider is literary and click is science-based). boo always gets a bit upset when the mail isn't for him, and all three of the magazines i've subscribed to for him are commercial-free and right on his reading level. (readers with younger kids: both carus and the nwf have magazines for even younger kids, too.) it's nice to see that the publishers have started to accomodate kids of various reading levels. i don't remember there being younger versions of ranger rick or cricket when i was a kid. one magazine i do remember was a consumers' union publication called zillions, which aimed to teach grade-schoolers how to use their money wisely and how to avoid being scammed by marketing. so badly needed now, but it hasn't been around for years.

weirdest thing i've been asked lately: at doctors office for sinus problems - "are you sexually active?," to which i pointed to my rather rotund middle and said, "um, yeahhh...".

husband called back, has meeting too late this afternoon to make a kid-pickup possible. he's not convinced that i'm not upset about this. however, i am completely happy to have a day off, as i've had shifts the past three days and was clinging on to the hope of having nothing responsible to accomplish today.

so today's tasks are: book airline tickets home for thanksgiving, call cleaning services for estimates, watch tony takitani before returning it to library, practice sarangi, drink pot of tea (check) and play with cats.

sarangi lesson went well

it's awfully nice to be told that even though i've barely played the sarangi i brought back from india 14 years ago in that expanse of time, i'm not really a beginner.

the teacher uses a slightly different hold on the bow than i'm used to, which will take some retraining on my part. also, time to build up the cuticles again - on a sarangi, the strings are not held down like a violin but pressed against from the side; my new teacher is okay with using the nail, the cuticle or the finger just above the nail but i was trained to use the cuticle. after almost an hour of playing, my left hand was vibrating slightly and my cuticles were definitely sore.

and of course, i need to practice practice.

the teacher also gives suzuki-style lessons on guitar and violin for young children; i'm taking boo with me in a couple of weeks to see if he's interested in picking something up.

jeepers i've been busy

so this has been my week:

sunday - work
monday - clean house, get estimate on replacing basement windows, get call to work on wed & thurs, take kid to playground. catch something sinusy.
tuesday - try to get over sinus thing, continue cleaning house, get another estimate on windows
wednesday - work
thursday - work, see doctor for sinus thing (including getting snipped at by reception for being five minutes late, which was due to printer freezing up computer while trying to print out directions to office plus arguing with kid that yes we really need to go, then waiting an hour for my appointment anyway), do volunteer laundry for kid's classroom
today - sarangi lesson. actually found someone in the area who teaches this! call chosen company to start process on basement windows. might check out home improvement show at convention center, although we're trying to finish basement on the cheap and these shows always roll out the top-shelf stuff.
saturday - work, maybe attend indian dance performance afterwards if the kid is interested.
sunday - off, but feel guilty about not doing anything about high holy days. although i'm exempt from fasting this year anyway, woohoo pregnancy.


i'm flipping tired. next week i have another insane week of two days volunteering with school's library, two weekdays of work plus working both saturday and sunday. i am clinging on to a nonscheduled thursday like it's nobody's business. (don't know when i'll be able to schedule sarangi lesson, though.)

also, the exploding plastic board has been nigh-incomprehensible to me for about a week.

important parenting milestone

my son has his first whoopee cushion.

in fact, he chose this over (yet another) toy train.

right now he is attempting to prank his grandparents over the phone with it.

target managed to do it

yes, tarjhay has made my shitlist for having a stupid, stupid policy.

last week was their 'baby sale', so i went in to get a carseat/stroller combo and a pack and play. once in the store, i chose a different carseat/stroller combo than i originally intended to buy - it was less bulky, less gender-specfic, and about $40 cheaper than the other set - without being on sale. and yes, i will say i was cheerfully helped by a couple of associates - the combo wouldn't fit in a shopping cart, so they loaded a flat cart for me (combo is also unwieldy when you have a huge belly), wheeled it up to the register, and helped me put it in my car.

i remember seeing something odd about the listing on the combo i purchased, so i brought it up on target's website a couple of days later. and then i see that the combo i've paid $99 for is now $69. i fire up the printer, document the new price, and head over to the store.

that's when i get told that it is not at $69 at the store, it's still $99, so i can't have a price adjustment.

problem in my view is that the website says "$69.99," and right underneath that says "also in stores." both in nice red text. nothing indicating that this is a web-only special. excuse of target store supervisor and person from 1-877 number: "prices may vary by location," in much smaller print a good distance from the price. also, i would only be entitled to a price adjustment if the item was in the weekly printed flyer, which this wasn't. (does this mean if the physical item in the store had a lower price than last week, but wasn't in the circular, no price adjustment??)

target, don't be stupid. don't encourage your customers to use your website for product research and then not match prices on items available online and instores. it sets up your customers to be disappointed, it sets your store associates for confrontations on a pretty dumb policy, and in general it just leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

i am in big, big trouble

yesterday when picking the kid up from kindergarten, i was holding the 3-month-old brother of one of his classmates while the baby's mom was carrying something into the school.

"mom! you had the baby while i was in school!"

um, no honey, this is your friend's little brother. the baby is still in my belly. (oh, to have delivery go that fast....)

"i want her to come out right now."

um, no honey, you don't, because she'd be very sick if she did.

"mom, you cannot hold other babies until beatrice comes out."

sigh.

a little less fussy today, in fact we had a delightful post-school visit to the science museum and then to the grocery store ("what if they don't have alphabet noodles? then we'll have to twist the noodles into letters by hand!"), then home to make alphabet soup and cheesy bread. boo decided it was not just dinner but a surprise party for daddy.

first things first

here's boo on his first day of school:


he doesn't look it, but he's excited and in a good mood. i'm the one holding back tears. he's been enjoying his days in kindergarten, but since he's only been to a few one-week programs this summer he's not quite getting the concept that he'll be going for several months.

the first couple of days he came back tired and wanted to come home right afterwards, have a snack, and stay quiet. toward the end of the week he was ready to go on some adventures after school.

next week 'the mommies' will start having coffee together, so hopefully after-school playdates may be arranged. we're also considering starting him on an allowance system, as he otherwise asks for new toys on a pretty ridiculously frequent basis and we'd like him to get to connect this more with behavior and 'earning'. maybe the other families are doing something similar.

other bits: i've had two days of training at my new job, and my first day behind the desk will be this upcoming sunday. so far it looks good. i've already splurged on two pairs of comfy shoes and a nice (readable!) watch; the sum of which is more than i'll probably earn in a month. so who needs an allowance, really?

i've had a hard time making jewelry i'm happy with lately. i gave myself last week off but will get back to it this week.

busy busy week

the kid started kindergarten this week. i started a new job. in fact, getting ready to go back to job right now. more later!

another customer service shout-out

hey kids, are you like me? do you like office supplies and things that make you feel organized?

well, i'm starting an on-call position next week in which i could be working regular or children's reference at two branches, on a sporadic schedule. so it was time to get a datebook.

thanks to outblushoutblush, a nifty site i visit daily for eyecandy, i found rusell and hazel. outblush had listed a little magnetic bird that sits on your desk and keeps paperclips in order. when i visted the site, i saw the r&h specializes in datebooks and planners in put-together kits. franklin covey for the chic, per se.

so i ordered a (surprise) orange minidate book and smartset, and some pockets to fit in the binder. got the confirmation email right away, and noted the bit about 'you will receive another email when your order is in transit. meanwhile, you can check on the status of your order at.... (long url).' small problem with the status check: r&h uses yahoo's shopping platform, and if you're not logged into a yahoo account when you place the order, it can't go back and find the status. and after a week, no in-transit email arrived, so this morning i called r&h to enquire.

friendly person on phone couldn't see a shipping status for my order and conferred with colleague. they suspected their fulfillment company hadn't sent it out because they were printing the 2007/2008 calendar tags and were going to start sending orders with the new tags shortly. oh, i said, i was hoping to get this soon because i'm starting a new job next week. they promptly offered to send my order with the 2006/7 tags, refund the shipping, and get it to me by monday. i'm happy with that.

about fifteen minutes later my phone rings. it's r&h, they have found my order and tracked it, and it should be arriving today - which it did.

nice packaging! sleek and simple like apple's. all products banded together, fronted by a thank you note, and wrapped in a sheet of tissue paper. i just spent a few delightful moments filling out calendar pages until the end of the year.

c'mon, if you read my blog you're likely to be as big a geek as i am about nifty office supplies.

Oh Qwest

I remember on my mac
DSL dead - no getting it back
shadows of a LAN,
the wifi is no-go
trying to reboot
the light stays off so
calling Qwest, expect delay
said they'd send a guy on Labor Day
thought it was a lie like Comcast would give me
I never realized how happy you'd make me
oh Qwest
well you came and you fixed without faking
even on Labor Day oh Qwest,
well you tested and found the bad cabling
and rerouted today, oh Qwest
Comcast would have wasted time
And claimed that all the fault was mine
caught up in bad customer service
frustration in my mind but you did right by us
oh Qwest,
well you came and you fixed without wasting
and you even came early oh Qwest,
well you stopped my DSL from shaking
and I need you today.....

Qwest, after many times of being blown off by Comcast when I've had tech issues, you not only:
1) admitted the problem was with our line, and not our doing
2) had a repair tech available on a holiday
3) had a tech who showed up early
4) had a tech who solved the problem that day, and replaced our phone jack just because it was old - not because it was the problem

Qwest, THIS ONE'S FOR YOU, WHEREVER YOU ARRRRRE.....

You earned a Golden Barry!

little impressive thing, or one more mac-fan post

i just saw something nifty. i was syncing my mac mini and my cell phone so that my mac had the phone's current contacts list, as it's likely that boodad and i will be changing to local numbers on our phones this weekend or sometime soon. syncing via bluetooth is a pretty nice feature. anyway, i noticed that the little sync progress panel showed the correct model of my phone - not just a generic cell phone icon.

no, i don't know if windows does the same thing, as none of our windows boxes has bluetooth. but anyway.

now i'm off to sync my iPod with iCal.... iYiyiyiyi.

gum update

there is a cartoon of a guy throwing a spear inside the gum package. i kid you not.

subtle, eh?

okay, so sometimes i like to chew gum. inner 12-year-old, freudian whatevers, yadda yadda. usually i like orbit's citrusmint, since it's got a nice slim package and tastes kinda like orange tictacs. but i saw this new brand at the grocery today and decided to give it a try.

haven't busted it open yet, but the package... um... well, looks like condoms. two people confirmed this right off the bat without prompting. and while searching for an image of the package, i found this lovely ad that's apparently in print. what is this, manly gum? will the next ad be about safe pleasurable oral gratification?

not getting into it

after about 2 months of waiting, christopher moore's 'a dirty job' finally came off my request list and into my library bag. (yes, i am geeky enough to have a bag reserved for library items. it has pictures of dick and jane all over it.)

i'm over 150 pages into it, but i'm not sure i'm *into* it. i like the humor in it, but that's all that is keeping my interest. the plot isn't grabbing me. this is my first moore book, and i've read reviews of this and other titles that made it seem like he'd be a more satisfying read than this. instead, it's reading kinda like a gimmick, like (dodges tomato-projectiles) a lemony snicket for grownups.

i have a 30-page rule, in which i give a book thirty pages to warrant interest in reading more. this is certainly past this point, and i'm over a third through it now. i also know that if i change my mind and decide i do want to finish it, but it goes back to the library in the meanwhile, it's a long time before i'll be able to check it out again. that's about the only compelling reason to continue at this point. no, there is no rule that says if i read more than 30 pages, i must finish the book.

one of the blurbs on the book jacket compares moore to tom robbins. i've been through all the tom robbins books, up until last year's 'wild ducks flying backwards'. maybe i just don't need any moore... erm, more.

SPLAT!

i just ended the 'reference test' part of a two-stage interview by not noticing that my foot had fallen asleep, getting out of my chair, and falling down in front of the recruitment manager.

wonder if that is an omen.

magnus mills = genius

i've just finished reading my third book by magnus mills, and i intend to track down his other works. so far i've read 'the scheme for full employment', 'explorers of the new century', and 'three to see the king.'

these are short works, perhaps novellas would be more accurate, but they're all exceedingly good. he has a black sense of humor - i am tempted to say it reminds me of jonathan swift, but it's been ages since i read swift. makes me want to pick up some swift, too, to see how much influence was there.

i want you to want me

yesterday i got called for interviews with two (count 'em, two) library systems.

one of *those* parents

my friend marty, a schoolteacher in dallas, recently accused me of being one of *those* parents. and well, time to face facts: i probably am.

i applied to switch boo to a new magnet school today. this school is changing from a middle school to K-8, with focuses (focii?) on arts and science & technology. i spoke with the vice principal today, toured the space, asked about the curriculum and library, and asked about the plans for the program in following years. there are some very interesting interdisciplinary and interage programs, plus a partnership with Portland State University for science instruction.

frankly, there are two compelling reasons to make the switch: the school that he's enrolled in as his 'neighborhood school' is pretty far from home - more than twice the distance from this school. it's also (albeit improving) "strong" school with an emphasis on reading. that sounds nice, but the snarky side of me suspects that schools focus on reading when the parents of their students aren't doing it at home. not a problem for a librarian's kid, eh?

the veep also told me about afterschool enrichment programs, such as music, dance, art and additonal science sessions. this is a plus, as i had already been researching music and language classes for him. (he wants to learn spanish. no, hindi. no, spanish, no, hindi.)

soooo.... yep, marty, i'm one of *them*. i might even put the kid in a one-week afternoon soccer camp next week, making me a *soccer mom*. it's a program with british coaches, though, so do i technically qualify as a footie mum?

and in the not-quite-breaking-news department: second ultrasound today confirms it's a girl. wheeee! however, boodad and i finally figured out what the boy name would have been. and no, there will be no #3 to try it out.

the new sesame street muppet blows.

Abby Cadabby is the new Sesame Street muppet.

She's been on for eight minutes and I want to strangle her, and whoever designed her. For starters: she has flat eyes, rendering her expressionless. She's also got a more annoying voice than Elmo, if that's possible.

I really love Sesame Street and the Muppet Workshop, but this is ridiculous. It's Disney-esque. I'm several yards away from my bedroom, where the TV is on, and all I can hear is *twinkle!* *twinkle!* sound effects.

Supposedly this is Sesame's way of providing a strong female role?

At least Nathan's Sesame-watching days will be coming to an end in a few weeks.

Also, I feel sorry for any kid named Abby, because you know this is what they'll be called from here on out.

library thang!

it's not a job, it's a lifestyle.

the doohickey on the left is from librarything.com. pretty nifty. found it by glancing at fellow mad-skillz librarian jblend's blog.

apparently, it's furniture day

today the order from dania arrived.

this was kind of a sticky wicket, as i had ordered it when boo and i had gone in to check out the store last week. there were dining chairs that i really liked and found comfortable, and a nifty boo-bed that had drawers and cabinet space underneath.

slight mistake - forgot to tell boodad about it. so he pipes up with, "sure, let's go back to the store this weekend and check out the dining chairs and bed before we order it." which would have been okay, since the furniture wasn't arriving until the following friday, and if he hated it i could cancel the order before anything came to the house. but of course, us being us, we didn't get around to it last weekend. hmmm.

went to knitting thursday night, intending to 'fess up afterwards. meanwhile, boodad had been looking through the bank records and noticed a rather large purchase at dania. oops. 'fessing time was upon me.

this morning the chairs and bed arrive. i didn't expect the chairs to require assembly. but i'm more nonplussed that the bed's assembly, which i was anticipating, wasn't part of the delivery. but heck, i have mastered many an allen wrench courtesy the big swedish wonderland; i can surely handle this.

i put together two chairs, leaving two in the box in case boodad wanted to return them. then set upstairs to tackle the bed.

unpacked everything. put all the screws, nuts, doohickeys and whatamathings in order. laid out the pieces according to diagram. started malleting, screwdriving and wrenching my darndest, paying extra attention to the directions as i'm slightly baby-brained at the moment and prone to missing details. read twice, screw once, to slightly amend this old house's proverb.

i get the core of the underbed together, and then i have to flip it to put the big side panels on. and that's when i hear a *crack*. there is a piece running the length of the bed, but only about 2" high, and made out of MDF that is supposed to be a crucial supporting piece. yes, soooo crucial that the danish wonderlords only pegged it to the core section - it doesn't get screwed into place until the side panels go on. flipping the core - and yes, i did try to see if things could be aligned without flipping first, and no they couldn't - caused the MDF to split at all five pegged points.

i tried glueing the points back, and then realized there was still no way to get all the connecting points on the side panels and the core to fit together correctly. at this point i think my kid may have picked up some bad vocab from me.

so tomorrow, boodad will indeed get to see the inside of dania, as we intend to return this hulk of MDF. as he put it, a couple of jumps from nathan and it would all be over.

later in the evening, there is a knock on my front door. it is the woman who lives two doors down. that house, and the one next to us, have quieted recently after a period of... ummm... seemingly large and loud amounts of commercial traffic, presumably pharmaceutical. she tells me that she is moving out of portland this weekend, selling her house, and needs to get rid of furniture, would we be interested? there are lots of 'i made mistakes but now these people are gone and i want to move on with my life' kinds of comments. ai yi. anyway, i go over, mainly to be polite, and also figuring that i would be saying no. however, she has a dresser set that isn't bad at all - and happens to be the kind of thing i've been looking for to replace our not-enough-storage pieces of bedroom furniture. (unfortunately for boo, this is my bedroom, not his.) so i ask boodad, he's okay with it, we settle on a price and the pieces are brought over.

to be honest, the only thing i don't like are the pulls, and one is missing. so i'm looking online at some nice 4" cup-shaped pulls, and i'm realizing that buying them - at least from restoration hardware (yeah, yeah, i will wind up at lowe's like a normal person, don't worry) - may cost as much as the whole set costs us. oops, again, but i'm in no rush to do this right now anyway.

boo has crashed on one of the futons downstairs. poor little guy. it was hard for him to see mommy and daddy getting new stuff in their bedroom while the bed he really wanted is in a not-quite-together heap in the middle of his room.

puzzled

since i have a little more spare time in my days, i've taken to doing the puzzles in the comics pages of the oregonian.

sudoku? bring it on.
word search? heck yeah.
crossword puzzle? if i feel like it, sure.
jumble? .....

the jumble is that puzzle with four scrambled words, a cartoon, and a punch line for the cartoon that is formed from selected letters of the descrambled words. and i can't do it for the life of me.

why?

the scrambled words are always presented as phonetic possibilities. and since i love picking up new languages, my brain just kinda accepts the scrambles as new words. burmia? verip? wish i knew what they meant in their native languages.

chutzpah

we're trying to see if we can switch boo's elementary school, as there are several others nearby with better scores. i've been advised that although we're past the school choice deadline, we may still be able to do this. so i called the schools we're interested in, to find out if there was available kindergarten space. the portland school district has an interesting feature on their schools' phones. i called 4 elementary schools today, and none of the lines were answered. however, after a few rings i got a message saying that i could either stay on the line, or leave a message - for 95 cents.

it irked me that i should have to pay to have a public institution call me back. however, having worked in a public place myself, i'm aware of the fact that some people call constantly about inappropriate things. perhaps the fee is to keep the schools' voicemail boxes from overflowing. so, although it just seemed wrong, i left messages at all four schools. four bucks is a tiny investment in my kid's education, i told myself.

no calls back.

sorry, but if you're going to have the 'nads to ask callers to pay for the opportunity to leave a message, and the only thing you allow on these messages are names and phone numbers, then call back, or refund the fee.

wait til he figures out this is a desirable effect

"mom, i have to get new underwear. i'm getting bigger all the time and this underwear is too tight. see? it makes my private parts look like a mountain."