you are what you eat with

The day started out as usual, the baby calling to me from his crib, swaying and babbling like a drunkard, falling over and then climbing up again with a smile and a wave. There was the relay of the cereal boxes to the table and the discovery of the dead mouse in the dining room, though Emily, having vanished under the bed for the morning was not willing to take credit.

But on this day, all this normalcy couldn't stave off the weight of knowing: we'd be going to the dentist. Isaac had a check up and cleaning scheduled and like all our other appointments – eye exams, physicals for school – we were trying to get them all up-to-date before the end of the year when Mike's job and, thus, our insurance coverage runs out.

I didn't have any particular reason to dread the dentist really, on my behalf or Isaac's, except for the fact that like with most any visit to a western “specialist,” we'd be temporarily sucked into their world where, overwrought with everything dental, we'd thrash and spin until they released us again to the larger world unscathed to the naked eye.

I miss our pediatric dentist in Monterey. He had a son Isaac's age. He spoke quietly and often said things I almost agreed with.

On this day, that started out so typically, we find ourselves at a place where the staff speaks in the forced and predictable cadence of people who are trying to sound kid-friendly, but really have no interest in anyone shorter than their shoulder. Everything that is said to Isaac, naturally, is actually for my benefit and comes out in patronizing tones that imply we have not done everything humanly possibly to optimize our son's oral health and by extension that we are horrid, horrid people and even worse parents.

The hygenist continues to interrupt me while I try to read the annual issue on whether MFA programs are affective in the writer's magazine that gets all its advertising money from MFA programs, to show me a tiny dark spot on my son's molar. “That's a tooth to watch!” she says more than once. And, after I try again to return to my magazine (Can writing be taught??), “I'm just going to show mom one more thing on this side.” It's my cue to get the hell up and look – look at what I've let happen!

“Mmm-hmm,” I try as a show of concern. And Isaac with his perfect public demeanor, says nothing, just opens and closes obediently.

If it is under these conditions that I must write, then so be it. And so, I am drafting this essay real time as the passive-agressive hygenist berates me with her sighs and hums.

Chipper, faux kid-friendly hygenists' names are required to be things like Maricella, Kayla, and Leanna. The final “a” is important. Like the upturn in a smile, the circles over the I's when you are writing your name and the last name of the boy you have a crush on over and over again on your folder in high school chemistry class.

Isaac lost the two teeth that flank his upper front teeth ages ago and the replacements have not yet seen fit to grow in. This situation, as you might imagine, is impossible to bear – if you are Maricella or Kayla or Sienna or Vivianna. I might find it impossible to bear wearing scrubs with Tweety Bird on them, but there you have it.

She convinces me to do x-rays (that damn finite stretch of insurance) to see what's going on up in the gum line. Before she goes to take them though, she spells out all the tragic ways in which my son's teeth will ruin his mouth and his life. She recommends (strongly) what I've come to think of as preemptive braces to “help the teeth come down.” If, in fact, they are even there (gasp). When I ask for more information on the real implications of such a situation and the option of waiting as opposed to vomiting big bucks to spell out to my seven-year-old in orthodontia just how unacceptable and imperfect he is, she offers “He's going to look like he's missing two teeth.” To which I reply, very slowly, “That's because. He's. Missing. Two teeth.”

“I have a referral right here for you. We'll email over the digital x-ray today,” she says by way of response.

Release me, oh great goddess of orthodontia (who is married, by pure coincidence, of course, to our dental deity), out into my sordid world of dead mice and cereal. I have nothing for your altar.

my current obsessions / god complex redux

After 14 years I am still in the throes of learning what it means to be close to an engineer – someone with that kind of precision running through his veins, uber-focus, odd-world-out kind of mentality – and now, due to no choice of my own, I have run into another being so strange as to fill my mind with question after question, so bizarre as to boggle my every fiber and cause me to obsess about why he does what he does. The mysteries of Edward Cullen have nothing on this guy.

I am speaking, of course, about the masked one, who scrubs up to his elbows, the one with the steadiest hands, the beast known as (Say it!...Out loud...) Surgeon. (How long have you been cutting people open? ... A while.)

I am constantly thinking about the man who will perform the operation on Rhys. He is my age. He is personable (I'm told a rarity among his kind) and handsome. When we speak his name among nurses and other doctors, they sparkle like Hollywood vampires in the sun, clearly enamored of this person. When I finally met him I stared hard – looking for the trail of magical pixie dust in his wake, listening for the sound of the clouds parting and hymns of the chorus of angels to begin.

What possessed – and I do mean possessed – him to take up this profession? (I actually asked him and he told me some tired answer about seeing the difference made in people's lives, blah blah blah.) But, really, what is in him that brought him to medicine and then, to the freakish specialization of children's surgery? Is this the result of a happy childhood in which he learned he could do anything? Or a tortured one which taught him he must push as hard as he can to do better, be more perfect, and haunts him still?

What does he do in his free time? Does he have free time? What will he eat for breakfast the morning before he cuts open my perfect baby? What will he eat for lunch afterwards? Will he remember to look at his name on the chart or will it simply be another tiny body he must fix? Why does he think it normal to go to work and pick up a scalpel? Why does he shrug when I ask him details about ideal weights and ages for this to be done? How does he feel when things go well? When they don't?

When I flub my job, verbs fall flat or phrases fail to find a foothold in your mind's imagination. And for him?

Two weeks before Project Insanity in which I offer up my Rhys to surgery at Children's Hospital Boston. Escape is a very necessary tool at this point. And so, if you had told me a week ago that I would reach a time in my life when I would spend what small wakeful free time I have disappearing into a laughable fantasy world where a girl goes to her prom with a vampire, I would have said you were nuts. But thanks to a friend's suggestion (Yes, I blame you, Nicole!), there I go. Werewolves, baseball-playing vampires, armies of the newly undead, I embrace it all, while I place my faith in another kind of creature which to me doesn't seem all that different with regard to his rumored super-human abilities.

Days Twenty-Seven - Twenty-Nine: Illinois & Indiana

Disclaimer: Some day this will be more than a chronology of whining. But for now, here is something since I have internet right now and am behind in my li'l storying. Mike said I should. If you don't like it, blame him; it always works for me.

My due date is September 3. In a couple short months, I will be the recipient of an inordinate amount of unsolicited advice. Put a hat on that baby. Take the hat off that baby. When they X, you should always Y. Wait til junior high! It's just around the corner. I know this is coming. So, allow me the honor of bestowing my own unsolicited parenting advice now. Here it is: You must learn to fight well with your partner in front of your children. You will think you are doing them a favor by never fighting in front of them. But then, circumstances will change.

You will find yourself in a van in week five of a cross-country trip.

With a cat in the back, 97 degrees and no air conditioning. 

Or you will find yourself in a booth at a restaurant somewhere you thought was Pennsylvania, but turns out to be Maryland, staring at yet another crap menu of deep fried cheese and no fruit where no one, believe me, will ask you whether you want the green salad or the fries with that, because the only option is potato chips, and where the kids on smoke break from the kitchen hanging out by the back door think it's really cool that you're on the road from California and you look at them, pimply and blowing smoke out their noses, their fingers probably stained yellow and wrinkly from washing potato chip grease off all those plates and you think, Yeah, you try it, asshole, you just try it. And you will not have the option of not fighting. There will be no option. And you will be stuck with each other. All of you. And you will have to live with this. So you better know how to do it.

Ah, but I'm getting way ahead of myself again.

Iowa stunk. Now, pay attention. I told you I found good food there and we even got our first “Howl” there.

Hard to say though if he really knew what the heck the bumper sticker was talking about or if he just felt like howling. (more on the bumper sticker another time...)

No, I mean stunk. Like hold your nose those cows are livin' too close together kind of stunk. Ew. So, despite my food triumphs there, despite the local morning show gardening advice segment playing on the TV above another charming hotel “breakfast” (“I have various weeds in my yard. What should I do?”), despite “Cow Appreciation Day” at the Iowa City Children's Museum, despite the fact that it was the first day in forever that the winds died down, despite the wifi at interstate rest stops and the maintenance man in the final one for I-80 that tip-toed around the building with Isaac to show him the baby ground squirrel, we left.

We crossed a by-now rather well-behaved Mississippi River into Illinois.

The Johnson-Sauk State Recreational Area had a lake, trees, a round barn (the devil hides in the corners), and 90 degree weather, 85 percent humidity... at 9:00 p.m.

We bailed. Repacked and drove 6 miles back on the road we came in on to the hotel. I wish I could share with you that it fell somewhere in the list of more amusingly named lodging options. We'd seen the Settle Inn. The Sleep Inn. And, of course, the AmericInn. Alas, it was only a Best Western.

There was a wedding party in town – though we were hard-pressed to figure out where the “town” was. We got the last available room. Small, barefooted little girls in white dresses scuttled around the hallways giggling. This would do fine. I needed sleep.

In the morning everyone checked out but us. I had convinced my husband that we needed a rest day. Let this be a lesson to you - this is what happens when you don't stay longer in the places that are cool. You end up having to hang out in other places.

At the restaurant in town the next day we could spot the other outsider easily. A blonde/grey-haired man in his fifties wearing a Lady GaGa shirt whom we suspected belonged to the Honda with the New York plates parked out front sat eating some of that yum salad bar fare I mentioned in the last post. It was the last day for the “Annawan Fun Days,” though it was announced to us that we'd pretty much missed it, but for the beer garden and the hacky sack contest. Sometimes you just can't win, eh?

The states were starting to come fast and furious for us now, baby. We dove into Indiana and it's 97 degree predicted temperatures.

80 East is a nightmare of construction and semis. It is easily 100 degrees on this highway. We are stopped dead in three narrow lanes of traffic. Emily is panting. We are all ready to join her. I begin to cry out of helplessness. Mike takes the next exit and we drive through random neighborhoods in the general direction of out.

Then, we are 6 miles from our exit. From all accounts, it will be a lovely place called Potato Creek State Park. There will be boat rentals for the lake, shade, a playground. Isaac is asleep, a rarity. He has not done at all the things I thought he would on this trip in the van—draw, create postcards, read, make up games. He has sat, asking how much longer; he has watched some DVDs.

Suddenly, there is a bang from the back of the van, a sound that feels like part of the engine must have exploded. We wobble to the shoulder and thank goodness there is one. The engine is still attached and functioning; it's a blown tire. Mike declines the prospect of lying in the right lane of 94East to change it, and so we need to call AAA or Geico. Oh what the hell, let them race. Mike is on his phone to Geico, while I call AAA. We are “premium” members. This against my better judgment. While it had been known to save us 7, even 8 whole bucks on hotel rooms on this voyage, I remain highly skeptical of these roadside heroes. You can read about my last preggo/AAA adventure here.

I speak to someone named Clark about where we are (eastbound, mile marker 33, approaching Michigan City, Indiana) and what he can do about it. He is tapping, typing, hemming and hawing. Finally: “I think you might be in a different part of Indiana than I can help you with.” Uh-huh. If only I were in a different part of Indiana, the part that was Ohio and less than ninety-f-ing-seven degrees! WTF??!??

“Let me transfer you. It will take two minutes.” Two minutes I will never have back.

Clark, Clark, Clark. You are no Superman. “How's Geico doing?” I call to Mike.

We are in relative shade, though the thistles are lashing my legs. We've brought Emily out with us in the carrier. Isaac is calmly inspecting wildflowers and leaves. 

“Thank you for calling AAA roadside service, how may I help you?” And I know immediately. This person knows nothing about my last call. I am starting over again. I rat out Clark and then grumpily start in again – the AAA number, the issue at hand, the location...

“And what might he have meant by a 'different' part of Indiana?? I mean y'all are somewhere random anyway. That was a crock!”

“I'm in Michigan, ma'am.”

“Exactly. That counts as random.”

“Make, model and year of your vehicle?”

“'81 VW Vanagon.”

“Color?”

“White. As opposed to all the other '81 VW Vanagons with blown out tires at mile marker 33 on I-94 East right now.”

An hour later our spare is in place. My hat off to the man who did in fact lie in the right lane of 94 East to change it for us. He, of course, has nothing to do with AAA. He's with the local tow company.

Way too long later we arrive at Potato Creek State Park and find the camping kiosk. “That'll be $17.34...(wha?)... $2.66 is your change.” Did we just pull up to the Wendy's drive through window when I wasn't looking?

I'm thinking tolls in Indiana must cost something like $4.09.

you can overhaul the healthcare system, but you can't take the dumb-ass out of the insurance companies

I received this in the mail recently. They even took the time and money to translate their idiocy many times over so they could be cross-cultural morons. Click to make bigger.

There's a hole in my bucket, Dear Liza

Once, in a previous rental, we had to have some plumbing done. My landlady was a rather suspicious person. And a little crazy. She lived half a continent away from our place, thank god, but insisted we call her and have her on the phone while the work was being done. I dutifully phoned when the workman arrived. “Does he look smart?” she asked. I held the receiver away from my ear and folded my hand over my face, my head hung, then returned it to the crook of my neck. “Very,” I told her. Perhaps she thought I could peer into the bathroom and spot the hint of a diploma tucked into the crack above his jeans. Or maybe she kept one of those ancient metal instruments in the shed that measured the size of a skull. I had just never noticed it there next to our box of Halloween lights and my upstairs neighbor's hibachi.

There was no doubt she was a nut case, with more than a small margin of elitist thrown in. At least, that was my view at the time. Then today happened. And the washing machine repairman happened, who arrived an hour earlier than we'd agreed interrupting my jet-lagged son's attempt at a nap and stared into the tub of grey water standing in my washer to ask, “It won't drain?” and her question seemed pretty relevant.

I could surely win the crazy landlord contest. But this time, we lucked out. The couple that owns our house seem normal, pleasant even. We send each other Christmas cards. Things are good. So when Simon told me his buddy didn't have time to come until Monday, I was okay with that. And then when he told me, no, wait, he can make it after all, at 4:00, I said great.

I had just finished reading Isaac a nice relaxing tale of fast-running meat-eating dinosaurs, when the banging began. The religious peddlers have nothing on this guy – pounding on the door like the place was on fire. I could have easily ignored him. Denial is something we carefully cultivate in my family. But then Isaac got all whiny-ass on me, “Mama, I don't like that noise!” What noise? The sound of a forest of logs being repeatedly pummeled into the castle door? So I was forced to get up and let him in.

I showed him to the culprit in question and informed him I needed to return to my child. That's when he came out with his brilliant statement about the lack of drainage at which point I confirmed for him the issue and promptly closed him in the garage. He called me out again, twice. The first time to inform me that before he could do anything we'd have to get the water out and the second time to inform me that before he could do anything we'd have to get the water out. That second time would have been about when I stepped backwards in bare feet into a pile of fresh cat vomit. Nap was so far going well.

After we parted with the joy of knowing that Monday we'd see each other again, I miraculously managed to get Isaac to sleep with reassurances that on Monday he could watch the “worker guy” fix the bloody machine. Before drifting off, Isaac wanted to know how we'd get the water out. “With a bucket, (Dear Liza).” “Then we can water the plants with it!!” he announced. And I knew right away. I'm raising an optimist. He has his father to blame for this.

So there I was, wasting a perfectly good nap time scooping water into a bucket that, yes, had a hole in it as it turned out, and tossing it into the backyard which by now was decorated with my family's underwear since the wind had blown down the clothes hanger containing the load of laundry that had had the misfortune of getting stuck in the cycle that never ended. That never ended. Never ended. Never ended. Ended. Ended. Ended...

dollar store book part II

I'm still reading this book and laughing so hard I could rupture something.

What you need:

Photocopier
Scissors
18- or 20-gauge tin
Rubber cement
Aviation snips
Drill and drill bits
Jeweler's saw
File
Abrasive scrubbing pad
Hacksaw
2 feet of copper pipe
Soldering gun or propane torch
Spray enamel
Large glass jewels
Scrap of red glass
Epoxy glue

...If you're like me, maybe you're looking at this list thinking "What You Need...to Escape Alcatraz?" In fact, it's all you need to make a whimsical cat craft for your garden, silies!

the dollar store and messing with the parent market

This post was originally going to be part of an updated books sidebar for the blog, but I quickly realized it needed its own post.

File it under Lessons from the Dollar Store. There are always reasons. There are always reasons something is being sold at the dollar store, for a dollar. The end.

We may credit Obama for re-inventing hope, but truly, people, it's been there all along. So full of hope is the human race, that time after time, we *hope* the spatula we buy at the dollar store will not break in the first week we have it. We *hope* the socks we get there will feel like cottony clouds and outlive the tired feet they cradle.

File it under people screwing with the market niche for parents.

Perhaps it goes without saying that Mike and I have little time together these days, that the precious few dates we get, we must savor, revel in, that the average day sees us say not more than a sentence to each other that doesn't involve our offspring and ends us in exhausted heaps. This would clearly explain why we found ourselves recently, together, without our son, at the Dollar Store. As part of this intimate and fulfilling journey, we discovered a book. It's called Making Crafts from Your Kids' Art by Valerie Van Arsdale Shrader. We debated over it. Hemmed and hawed and wondered if we'd employ the know-how hidden within the colorful volume, until we looked at each other and exchanged those fateful words: “It's only a dollar!”

Come to find out, there was a reason.

My first clue was the lists of things you needed for each project. Some started out with things like

graphics software program
color laser printer

Whoah. Hold up. Um. Well, okay. I guess. I mean, which graphics program? Nevermind, 'kay, sure. Then, just to reassure you, the list would continue this way

scissors
glue

Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. I get it. Well, heh-heh, can't do much without a computer these days, can ya? And look, here we are: scissors and glue, ah, the comforting world of crafts. Then it would go on to

color photocopier

Whaa? Well, you say, still wanting to make sense out of what you've come upon, no problem. That's what those monster stationery stores are all about – I can just pack up my scissors and glue and head on down to the self-serve color copier! I'm with the program. No sweat.

In following projects, however, certain items would steal my balance without warning. Beside things like “paper” and “Popsicle sticks” came other things, like band saws, or, plain metal lunch boxes. Huh?

Things really heated up once I got to the “picture sweater” - a child-sized sweater stitched with the charming landscape your child drew and signed with her name. It wasn't so much the items on the list that got me, but what wasn't mentioned. The list of what to have goes something like this:

simple sweater pattern
yarn
knitting needles
graph paper
colored pencils

She forgets to kick in that you might also need THE ABILITY TO KNIT.

In keeping with its good cop/bad cop attitude, the book departs from the sweater to show how to get your kid's drawings onto normal-ish things like wrapping paper and post cards. Then it comes out with this one: the clay tile project. I'll reproduce the actual list of “ingredients” here followed by my editorial comments.

What You Need – sadly, I can't quite recreate the cheery font of this line.

Photocopier – alright.
low-fire red clay – can manage.
rolling pin (optional) – got it.
fettling knife – no idea what this is, but reasonably confident I could find out.
Plastic – uh...? more direction, please.
Slips, in colors to match the artwork – like the kind we used to wear under dresses? I hope the artwork is white, black and taupe.
Paintbrushes – with ya.
Pencil or sharp tool – this causes me some nervous laughter, but, okay...
loop tool - ??? I might still have that plastic loop for making cool ponytails that I bought years and years ago from the “As Seen On TV” store.
low-fire glazes – okay, there is likely a source for these around.
Kiln - WTF?????????????????????????

I could go on to other examples, but I think you probably get the idea. This chick's next book is going to be titled Walk To Anywhere In the World! (If You Have the Time).