Room to Breathe

What a momentous weekend!

Celia turned 10 months! I would post a recent picture but I've been distracted because:

Viva lost her top front tooth! She was excited, if a little unsure, because some spoilsport 5^th grader at school told her "The Tooth Fairy is actually your mom." I was happy to honestly be able to tell her I have never snuck into her room to take her tooth and leave money under her pillow. (I leave that to Daddy since I generally fall asleep while waiting for Viva to fall asleep on such occasions.) I would post a picture of her newly revised smile, but I haven't had a minute because:

We found a house! And we've been approved to rent it! Thank you, thank you, everyone, for sending all your good wishes and good vibes our way. There are many simply wonderful things about this house:

• It is about the same square footage as our current house, but costs substantially less. I mean, way less. I mean, like cuts our housing costs by one-quarter.
• It sits on a 14,000 square foot lot. No, that's not a typo. It's huge, especially by LA standards. The backyard goes on forever, and it's completely gated, and it's flat! Perfect for playing soccer, tag, whatever.
• The house itself has three bedrooms and three baths, and comes with all appliances including a restaurant-grade six-burner stove. I admit to being a little intimidated by the stove, although the owner says, "On Thanksgiving, you can cook a turkey and a ham at the same time, and cook your pies – all on the same day!" That sounds a little ambitious, wouldn't you say?
• The neighborhood seems to be a very nice diverse mix of ages and racial/ethnic backgrounds: you got your Hispanic, African-American, South Asian and Asian all very well-represented on the same street, and young families with kids live side-by-side with elderly types.
• There's an elementary school down the block, which makes it a safe school zone (note that the accompanying link is not for our specific neighborhood school, but it’s still a good explanation). The park right next to the school is well-patrolled as well as being locked at night. There’s also a sheriff living right around the corner.
• It's not a cut-through to anywhere – the street curves around in a "C," taking you around the block right back to the main street from which it comes. That, combined with the speed humps peppered along, means there's no speeding through the neighborhood.
• It's less than a mile from Target! And Trader Joe's!
• The shower stall in the master suite is 5' by 5' and has three shower heads. And a separate Jacuzzi tub. "There is a danger that we could get spoiled by this house," I said to Sweet Dub this weekend. It is a little crazy. I like that the house is very modest from the outside. (Ah, that New England Puritan streak rears its ugly head at the most unexpected times.)
• It's a slightly longer commute, but still no freeway driving.
• We can get a dog. Since Viva has been asking for a puppy almost every day since she was about three, this is very welcome news. Not something that will happen right away, but fun to think about.
• Two of Dub's closest friends (who he's known since junior high) live less than five minutes away. One has two girls, ages 7 and 3, and the other has a 9-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter. Viva has known them all her life, so it is pretty much Insta-Playdate City.

We are officially moving next weekend, although the house is now vacant and we are cleared to move in at any time. We spent much of this weekend sorting, cleaning, and packing. I am relieved to have packed about half of my kitchen, which is usually one of the most time-consuming jobs. Any box which is labeled "kitchen - not everyday" can happily sit for a few weeks without being unpacked, and seeing as they don't get much use anyway, my giant roasting pan, blender, and slow-cooker will be none the wiser.

Posting may be lighter than usual (I know, how is that even possible?) over the next couple of weeks due to the moving mayhem.

And, exhale.

P.S. Apologies if you see multiple RSS-feed updates. Something is funky with the spacing so I had to keep going back to try and fix it after it already published.

P.P.S. I had to go back and tinker with the HTML again. Sorry. Something is just not sitting right with the Blogger temperament.

P.P.P.S. Ah. I just discovered that Blogger thinks I am typing this whole post as a table. Yeah, but I'm not, see?

Sick and Tired

Like many Americans, I’m confused about the health care reform legislation currently taking form in Washington. I understand that one of the main goals with this reform is to provide insurance for people who don’t have it/can’t afford it. What I’m not seeing clearly spelled out (and admittedly, perhaps my work-life demands are getting in the way of me researching this properly) is: what about those of us who have insurance but the insurance is crappy? As in, the premiums increase every year, the deductible increases every year, the amount of coinsurance increases every year, and yet if anything you get less care?

Right now in the Blah Blah’s employer-provided coverage, we pay insurance premiums and then we also have a $500 deductible apiece, on top of which we each have to pay 20% of any medical costs beyond that, up to $3,500 per year per individual or $5,000 per family. What that means is that if we had serious medical problems we’d have to pay up to $2,000 in deductibles, plus $5,000 in coinsurance out of pocket. There is also a lifetime cap but I haven’t yet paid attention to that because our insurance carrier changes almost every year as costs go up and the company negotiates with various carriers to get the best deal.

Now, the insurance premiums are no joke either. At my job to pay for yourself and a family you can expect to pay some $1,800 for premiums per month. The company will pay your premiums, but not those of your family. Fortunately for me, Sweet Dub’s job offers a better deal on insurance and will actually pay for part of the premium, so I’m covered through his employer rather than my own. I realize we are privileged because we both have jobs that offer insurance, but it sure doesn’t feel like I’m getting what we’re paying for when even with insurance, I’ve paid over $7,000 out of pocket this year for having a baby in October and having her end up in the NICU.

Yes, at least we have insurance, but I fight with the insurance company at least once every couple months. The latest thing we’re dickering about is me having a mammogram. Isn’t it recommended that women age 40 and over have an annual mammogram? (Answer: why, yes – yes it is!) Particularly if they (like me) have a history of breast cancer in their family, or (like me) have had a suspicious lump biopsied in the past. And yet, I’m having to fight with my insurance company over whether I have coverage for this procedure, which was recommended by my primary care physician and my gynecologist. They want me to pay 300 bucks and some change for this screening.

I’ve been trying to get caught up on the health insurance reform storm, I swear I have. I have heard so many horror stories of people who are uninsured, and as we’ve seen with the recent Remote Area Medical Foundation visit in Inglewood, which wrapped up yesterday, there is a huge need for free and/or affordable medical care here in my own neck of the woods. But I want some reassurance that those of us who are “insured” are also going to get some help. Am I missing something?

Not funny, and yet it is.

My grandmother is in poor health. She will be having a lung biopsy later this week because a recent scan showed what looks like lesions on her lungs. She is on some pain medication and sleeps much of the time, and when she is awake she is pretty out of it.

Recently my 6-year-old nephew, who lives in the same house as my grandmother and mom (yes, four generations under one roof – it’s like a sitcom but not at all funny), made a little bird out of beads. My sister Lola told him it was beautiful and asked if she could have it. He replied that he had made it specially for Nanna (my grandmother has always had a thing for birds). He was a little shy about giving it to her, but he mustered up his resolve and knocked on her bedroom door.

“Here, Nanna,” he said. “I made this for you.”

“Oh, isn’t that nice,” my grandmother said. “Did you know I’m going into the hospital?”

“Yeah,” T said. “You can take this with you—“

“They’re going to stick a knife in my neck!” my grandmother said.*

Well, that shouldn’t give him nightmares at all. Thanks for sharing, Nanna!

* My understanding is that they are going to go through her throat rather than open up her chest. This is the less invasive procedure, probably due to her age. I am concerned either way about post-procedure infection but I am trying not to think about it and I am not getting a whole lot of info from my mom, which is par for the course. Mainly because she doesn’t like to talk about it in front of my grandmother because it agitates her. This is why email was invented. Why don’t people understand?

On the move. Yeah, again.

“Your life is like a bad comedy,” the real estate agent said as she was showing us a place on Saturday.

It’s not feeling very funny right now. Let’s recap: about a year ago, our then-landlord contacted us and apologetically stated that he and his wife were getting divorced, and that he knew it was horrible timing since we were expecting a new baby, but that he would like his house back. I was 7.5 months pregnant. We found another place and, one week after getting out of the hospital from my C-section, we moved to our current rental house.

Now, our current landlord has approached us with the wonderful news that he and his wife are expecting. How exciting! Oh, and guess what – they want their house back. They’re happy to let us out of our lease early if we can find something and get the heck out.

Both times, this hasn’t given us enough time to find a place to buy, even if we were in the position to do so. This has been a rough year financially. You remember that we thought we could pay more in rent because it would be offset by having Viva in public school and not having to pay private school tuition. Oh, you remember how well that worked out. And we’re also now paying for daycare for Miss Celie. Our rate of saving has slowed down dramatically.

And moving is expensive. You have to put down deposits, you have to rent a truck, you have to pay installation fees for cable/satellite, the phone, etc. Not to mention you have to pack up all your crap.

Things are dark over here in my little corner of the universe. It will pass. We will find a place. We might manage to stay in this new place until we can afford to buy something. Think good thoughts.

Let the wild rumpus start!

It's officially August and you know what that means…it's my birthday month! Huzzah! I proudly celebrate my soon-to-be 41 years on this planet.   I discovered today that it is Barack Obama's birthday today (I don't know how that escaped me before). I did not realize he was a fellow Leo, but now it all makes sense.   As we were passing the CNN building in Hollywood this morning, I noted the date on their ticker on the outside of the building and blurted out, "Hey! It's only a week from my birthday!" I got that excited feeling in my stomach – so funny that it's such an automatic reflex.     Viva said, "It is? We're celebrating your birthday this weekend, then. What do you want to do?"   Hmm. I don't know. I'm taking Monday off and getting a facial and maybe going for a walk on the beach and then browsing around a bookstore and then sitting in a café and reading a new book and listening to the iPod until it's time to go pick up Cily from day care. On my actual birthday, I imagine we will go out to eat after work (yes, I'm going to work on my birthday, I know).   One of my favorite birthday memories is of having a birthday party at the park by the Charles River in Boston when I turned 6. My mom made me a cool cake with a swimming pool on the top and little tiny babies with swimsuits she made by winding embroidery thread around to cover them strategically. I remember the diving board was made out of a piece of gum. I would like that kind of party. A little picnic by the water, with a paper tablecloth and party hats. Maybe not a piñata this time around. Maybe just a little bit of a rumpus?   Let the games begin…

Scatterisms

BADNESS I am super stressed, so much so that I experienced my first migraine recently. I would have given anything not to reach that milestone.   The pressure is on at work, we owe some ridiculous amount of money in taxes, my laptop has just given up the ghost, and the baby is once again teething and thus not sleeping well and thus neither am I. I am exhausted and took the day off yesterday to recoup. I went to the hardware store*, to the library**, to Macy's***, to the car wash, and finally to treat myself and get a pedicure. Hmm, wonder why I'm still kind of tired?   This will pass. It's just a rough patch.   GOODNESS On the positive side, Viva is loving camp and really enjoying her summer. Despite liberal applications of sunscreen, she is nearly as dark brown as her daddy. Her goal is to be darker than he is by the end of the summer. (Again, the competitive streak rears its head.) Recently I was lotioning her after her bath and I noticed that while I think of her as a little lanky thing, she is really muscular. Her thighs are just solid muscle. I mentioned this to Sweet Dub and he said, "She's swimming for an hour every day. If I did that, I'd be in great shape too!" Oh, yeah. So there's that.   Cily is, aside from the teething, off and running – well, crawling. And pulling up to stand. And cruising on the couch. And patting my arm ever so gently and sweetly when I pick her up out of her crib, as if to reassure herself that I am there. She also likes to jam a few fingers into my mouth to inspect my teeth, usually at inopportune times. She is also, I am pretty sure, The Loudest Baby on Earth. She makes noise in her sleep, constantly, and practically every minute that she's awake, if she's not chewing something, she's telling the world her every thought in minute detail or blowing raspberries.   As for me, I am investigating a creative outlet, and I can't say more about it because I don't want to jinx myself. But I'm tentatively putting my toes in.   STRANGENESS Seen just today, on my morning drive in: An old man shuffling down Fountain Ave. wearing a Santa Claus hat with elves all over it. Just hear those sleigh bells ringin, they're jing-jing-jinglin…   A teenager wearing a Superman shirt and cape, with Superman pajama pants, walking purposefully up Cahuenga Blvd. At least he wasn't wearing superhero tights. I just don't need to see that. At the same time, I don't know that he's going to be taken seriously by anyone in his fight against crime in light blue pajama pants with superheroes printed on them, so that worries me a little.      * Had to buy some screws because our dishwasher door fell off. So yeah, part of my relaxing day was spent shoving and screwing the door back together, on the dirty floor of my filthy kitchen which really needs washing.   ** Three times in one day. The first two times I drove around and around looking for a parking spot with no luck, and finally I walked over there with the baby in the stroller after picking her up from day care. I had library books on hold and it was the last day I could go get them. Of course. But the good news is, I picked up Pippi Longstocking, and Viva LOVES it. I love it when I introduce something I love to somebody I love and they get it. How could you not love Pippi and Mr. Nilsson? And Villa Villekulla? Sweet Dub was so excited-slash-nostalgic that he began searching for the DVDs online immediately.   *** For a bra fitting, which was mortifying and completely useless because the Macy's Lingerie Fitter measured me WRONG. She kept trying to get me to go with a smaller bra, and then when I tried on the sizes she was pushing on me, I was spilling out of them. What the dilly? I realized that she was hung up on band size, which is why my bras aren't fitting me correctly, but she was getting my cup size wrong. I went with her band measurement and with the cup size I have been wearing all along, and I am much more comfortable and the girls look great. End of ridiculous story.

Perspective

Every now and then I think I just want to chuck it all and go live in a cabin somewhere. Recently Sweet Dub and I were both having one of those days, and I said we should sell everything we own (which isn’t much) and take the kids and travel for a year. Live on the beach or something. It all sounds very romantic unless you are homeless already, in which case you would probably want to throw something at my head or poke me with a sawed-off car antenna or something.

Sweet Dub vetoed that idea on the grounds that we are city folk and used to a certain level of comfort. And then today I read this post from Rachel, who up and moved to India some time ago and writes about her adventures there with her superstar husband and her four kids.

In case you are too lazy to click, all you need to know are two words: amoebic dysentery.

I think I’ll stay here. It’s not so bad, right?

Skip Gates Update

When I posted about the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. arrest yesterday, I hesitated before I began writing because I didn't have all the facts yet, and thought maybe I was responding a bit hastily. But the facts of the case that were already published hither and yon on the Internet seemed pretty damning, and not toward Skip Gates. So what the hell, I went ahead and came down pretty squarely on his side.   But now, more information has come out, and guess what? It's worse. I can't access Blogger at this moment so I can't quote my original post, but I believe the scenario I was imagining had a harried professor returning to his home, a few blocks from the university, to maybe have lunch (it was lunchtime), go to the bathroom and perhaps pick up some materials for any appointments he had later in the afternoon. I imagined he was kind of stressed and in a hurry and then made more so by finding he couldn't get into his home.   Oh, but the truth is so much more. MORE.    He was returning from the airport in a livery car after spending a week in China working on a PBS documentary. How criminal! Finding his front door had been damaged while he was away, he went around to the back, let himself in that way, and then he and the driver worked together to open the front door. A white female neighbor called the police because she saw two black men trying to enter the house by force (a true assessment). When the police arrived, the driver was gone, and Skip was in the house calling Harvard Real Estate about the damage to his door. One plausible reason the door might be damaged is that someone tried to break in while he was away - and yet no one called about that. Hmm. Odd.   So yeah. Interesting.   Of course, the best take on this that I have yet seen comes from Angry Black Bitch. Hey, guess what? She's kind of angry about it. Angry, and simultaneously cracking my shit up. For me, that's a winning combination.   Prof. Gates says this experience had led him to consider conducting research on race and criminal justice. More power to him. Make lemons out of lemonade, I say!

I'm Playing the Race Card!

How nuts is this?

Harvard Professor Arrested

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 20 (UPI) -- A prominent black Harvard professor is facing disorderly conduct charges after his arrest while trying to get into his own home in Cambridge, Mass., police say. Continued…

Well-known black Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. locked himself out of his own house one fine afternoon a few days ago and was trying to get back in. A neighbor saw him trying to open the door and called the police. By the time they arrived, he was already inside his house and was able to provide ID corroborating who he was. The Cambridge police then arrested him, apparently because he was being “loud and tumultuous!”

Can you imagine? You lock yourself out of your house. It’s around lunchtime. You’re hungry, maybe you need to go to the bathroom, maybe you left some crucial notes inside the house and you need to get going to a class or a presentation. You are frustrated. You go around the house trying to figure out a way in. While you are in the midst of this process, you become increasingly frustrated. Perhaps you curse a little bit, bang your fist against the door, slam your body against the door.

Have you ever been locked out? I have, and that’s pretty much my reaction.

But wait, somehow you actually get inside the house. What a relief! Pour yourself a cool drink, make your way down the hall to use the toilet and – suddenly, you are confronted by the police. In your house! What the hell? You are a prominent Harvard scholar, nearly 60, and you happen to be African-American. The police tell you they had a report of a breaking and entering and they ask for your identification. You are in your own home! This reignites your frustration, which spills over into a belligerent attitude toward the cops, which is not well-received. You are thinking to yourself, all my fucking accomplishments and people still just see a n---er.

Whoo, the fury.

I don’t know if at that point he knew that a neighbor had called it in. But that could only make it worse. I mean, someone is watching your house closely enough that they think someone is breaking in, but apparently in your daily comings and goings, year in and year out, they haven’t looked at you closely enough that as a neighbor, they realize it’s your own house you’re trying to get into?

You know, I realize Los Angeles is not the bastion of racial equality, but stories like this sure make me glad I don’t live in the Boston area anymore.

Interested to hear more on this as it develops…

More Than Skin Deep

Is my baby too white?

I am not talking about the actual baby, Cily, who is in point of fact, rather fair-complexioned. I am talking about Miss Viva, my firstborn baby, she of the gorgeous brown skin which seems to glow from within.

Viva goes to a multiracial, multicultural private school during the year (it doesn’t bill itself as such, but that is one of the reasons we chose it). Most of her closest school friends are boys, and many of them are black. When we got together recently with four other families – including the boys and their younger sisters – Sweet Dub noticed that all of the kids sounded the same. They have this kind of California middle-class accent. “You can tell none of those kids are from the ‘hood,” he said.

“Well, no, they’re not,” I said.

“Poor Viva,” he said, laughing. His mom says that when she takes Viva to see relatives from out of town (Texas), they all comment on how “proper” (not-Texan?) she speaks. “I guess my mom is right, but what’s wrong with that?” he said. “At least she’s not coming home from school dancing the Stank Leg.”

As my grandma would say, “Whoo, chile – let me tell yuh.” One of our friends, K, has a daughter a year older than Viva. Started out in private preschool and then in kindergarten moved to a public school in Baldwin Hills, a predominantly black area of LA. She came home from school one day and showed her mom she had learned how to do the Stank Leg on the play yard. “Thank you, LAUSD,” K said sarcastically. Oh man, I was falling over laughing. Thank God I’m old and don’t have to keep up with this mess. If I was 16 I would have to know how to do the Stank Leg!

(By the way, apparently to do the Stank Leg all you have to do is act like you got a cramp in your leg and lean. What on earth?)

The bookend to this is that last week Viva came home from camp, which skews considerably less multiculti than (but just as solidly middle to upper-middle class as) her school, and started singing “to the left, to the left,” and pulling some Beyonce moves. I shot a questioning look at Sweet Dub and he grinned. “You know what? The white kids taught her that,” he said to me, out of earshot.

Well, of course, because she certainly isn’t learning it at home. That must be because we are not letting Viva listen to any black music*, according to his mom. She has come to this conclusion because as she says, Viva dances like a white girl (!!). You know how Viva dances? She dances like a 6-year-old who wants to be a rock star, which is what she is.

So again, is my baby too white?

Or asked another way, is she not “black enough”?

What makes me nuts about all this (oh God, where to begin?) is this implication that we are making Viva into an Oreo, a sell-out, that we are somehow (deliberately!) whitewashing her. You know what? Sorry, but I don’t buy it. At the end of the day, my child is a black girl. Regardless of what she sounds like or how she moves, that is what people see.

I think about how I was raised, in a predominantly white lower-middle-class neighborhood, with a “mulatto”/mixed-race/light-skinned or whatever-you-call-her mom and a white stepfather, and I know that baggage from my upbringing automatically makes me defensive in this regard. I was not white enough for the white kids in my neighborhood, despite being light enough to “pass.” I was not dark enough for the black kids in the junior high I was bussed to – one girl constantly picked fights with me because, as she said, “You think you’re cute.” (It was junior high! I was in my awkward phase! I totally did not think I was cute.) But as I know now, this says more about them than it does about me.

And I know that this is true, too with Viva. She is a happy kid. She is proud of being brown. She knows she’s pretty and smart and strong and fast and that she’s very creative with an incredible imagination. She is pretty tough and self-confident. Sometimes she cares what people say about her and sometimes not (especially when she knows it’s not true). My mother-in-law grew up in a different time, when she wasn’t made to feel proud of being brown, and then lived through the Civil Rights Era, when she was told to say it loud, she’s black and she’s proud. It’s complicated. I think she is still struggling with reconciling these two things.

Viva can be, if she wants, a black girl rocker. She’s leaning toward electric guitar. I think that would be cool. And if she’s a black girl rocker who happens to speak “proper,” where’s the harm in that?


* Completely untrue. We listen to a variety of music but as Sweet Dub says, “We can’t listen to hip-hop** in front of her!” The stuff we listen to (and we don’t listen to the same artists) has some pretty strong language – profanity and the like - and some of it is sexual, which even if it’s couched euphemistically I don’t want Viva singing along to. That is a post in and of itself and I’ll get back to it someday.

** And it’s not just hip-hop. Okay, I’ll stop.

All Roads Lead To…

I am in the midst of writing a progress report on a program that my non-profit has been piloting county-wide. I've been motoring along quite well but then hit a roadblock, so I go online and Google the program. After bypassing two links from the county which I’d browsed through previously and rejected for not having much information, the third link takes me to…my own company’s website, which contains a summary of the program…written by me. CRAP!

P.S., I Also Heart This

Probably one of the best writings on marriage I have read. Amen, sister.

Once in a Blue Moon

It's been a while since I posted, and I don't know where to start, so let's just dive in, shall we?   Off We Go   We were off for a week in the tremendous, incredibly gorgeous, pictures-don't-do-it-justice Maui at the end of June. Highlights of the trip: Cily's first two teeth made their appearance (and continue to torture her and by extension, the rest of us, but that's a different story), Viva jumped off a boat and went snorkeling in the open ocean with sea turtles and schools of fish, I caught up on my sleep and read a whole book, and Sweet Dub took 800 million pictures, none of which I have managed to upload yet. Oh, and rainbows. Scads of them, because it was periodically rainy while we were there. You know, rainbows have become kind of cliché, but when you actually see one arcing across a pale gray sky, flanked by silhouetted palm trees and a gentle drizzle as the sun struggles through, it's kind of mystical.   And We're Back   Other highlights: since our return, Cily has said her first word ("Da-da," of course) and has begun self-feeding*, and Viva has started camp, which she love love loves. Have I mentioned that she loves it? The camp director stopped me during drop-off on the second day to tell me what an amazing athlete she is and how she is really competitive. I fully concur on both points. In fact, we have frequent conversations with Viva about the importance of good sportsmanship, with mixed results. She hates to lose, at pretty much anything. The likelihood of her flying into a rage is inextricably linked to her level of fatigue. She seems to handle losing better (say, at a game of Crazy Eights) when she is well-rested and fresh, and she actually makes it sound sincere when she says, "Good game," followed by, "Let's play again," so she can try and beat you.   Bad Mama Blah   Oh, Viva. She is at a phase when things are difficult and sometimes I have to force myself to list her good qualities so I don't flip out and strangle her. She is a wonderful child – so bright and so sweet and so loving – and yet there are times when she just throws all that to hell and chooses the side of Darkness. We are the meanest parents ever: Sweet Dub because he won't just let her win every game they play, and me because – well, I have many failings, but currently the biggest one is that I won't buy her sugary cereal. It is So Unfair that her cousins get to eat it Every Day and she has to eat things like Gorilla Munch or Honey Nut Cheerios (that is the sweetest I will go) or God forbid, regular Cheerios.   I am a horrible person, and yet Viva wants to be with me all the time. It is kind of exhausting, God love her.   Inhale, exhale, be patient. I do love her so.   Grease is the Word   Something about vacation made my skin break out. Was it the "Faces" sunblock? Was it the daily free greasy bacon and eggs at the Ohana Bar and Grill? Who knows, but I am having horrible flashbacks to adolescence, and now I have all kinds of '80s music skimming through my head. At the moment, this is taking the form of Billy Idol dancing with himself. Let's sink another drink, 'cause it'll give me time to thi-hink… Does anyone remember Pernox? My grandmother swore by it back in the day and insisted I scrub my face raw.   In hindsight, the benefit of having somewhat oily/combination skin is that at 40, I am not wrinkly and I'm not obsessed with Botox. Do you care? No, probably not, and thus ends one of the most self-absorbed ruminations ever.   * The self-feeding is a post in and of itself, and lands with a solid thump in the land of Over-thinking It Mommy Blogging, so I don't know if I want to go there. Long story short: Cily can't abide anyone coming at her with a spoon. With my fantastic expertise in all Internetly things, I did an exhaustive, three-entire-minutes search and discovered Baby Led Weaning. Huzzah! And all was well in the Kingdom of Blah. Baby feeds herself table food, eats what she wants, as much as she wants, and the jars of organic baby food languish on the shelf. And they all lived happily ever after.

It is To Laugh.

I may have mentioned that my 84-year-old grandmother was hospitalized a few weeks ago. Turns out she had pneumonia, and other ailments which we won’t detail here. Of interest is the bill she just got from the hospital for her three-day stay. The bill, my friends, was for $31,000 and some change. Here now I paraphrase for you the conversation my grandmother recently had with the billing specialist:

Grandma: Hello, yes, this is Mrs. C___ and I’m calling about my bill. It says here that I owe the hospital thirty-one thousand dollars.

Smooth Operator: Let’s see here, Mrs. C___. Yes, I’m showing that you do indeed owe the hospital thirty-one thousand dollars. Is there anything else I can help you with?

Grandma: Well, I don’t have thirty-one thousand dollars. And I have insurance, so I don’t understand what this bill is all about.

Smooth Operator: Well, ma’am, we tried to bill your insurance carrier, Blue Cross, but they refused to pay.

Grandma: I don’t have Blue Cross. I have PacifiCare.

Smooth Operator: Oh. Duuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…


Oh my God. Health reform now, health reform NOW. For heaven’s sake!

Economic Downturn Hits Home

We had layoffs at work yesterday. One person in my department, a really good friend, got laid off. She handled it amazingly well (far better than I would have in her place), was very gracious and professional. Stayed until 7:30 to tie up some loose ends and then wrote a very moving farewell email message.

I am really fricking depressed. I pulled into my garage after work and sat there crying for a few minutes. I wish I could say that made me feel better, but it didn’t.

There’s more, but I can’t.

UPDATED TO ADD: Trying to stay positive, have emailed all my professional contacts to get the word out and help her find a job. Still sucks.

Vague and All Over the Place

That was a very long hiatus.* For those of you who might be concerned, nothing was wrong aside from the everyday life with an infant (sickness every other week! Explosive foul-smelling poop! Curse you, gastrointestinal skullduggery!) and craziness at work. Seriously, taking work home and working until 1 AM and then the baby waking up at 5? Not my favorite thing ever. Probably one of my least faves. Yeah.

Yesterday was the culmination of weeks of work (mostly not mine, despite what the previous paragraph may lead you to believe) on a huge event at my job. There was a lot of sugar and caffeine to get us going, and then a lot of rich catered food afterward to thank all of us for working so hard. Today, I feel really “fat,” and I put fat in quotes because I know I’m not actually fat but I feel bloated and just – I don’t know, overdone. I don’t look cute today, my clothes don’t fit right, etc.

For lunch, I decided to have a salad and iced tea while working at my desk (I know, stop me, I’m crazy! What will I do next?). And I was feeling pretty good about that, typing away, until I heard a buzzing noise and turned and saw a fly in my food. I am on the third floor of a high rise with windows that don’t open. How on earth?

That ruined everything. I picked out a whole section of the salad where the fly had landed, along with a good 1-inch diameter around it. It’s my favorite salad. I went out of my way to get it. I managed to eat most of the rest of it. Nonetheless, now I’m feeling a little queasy. Damn you, Musca domestica!

Time for a little Internetly investigatin’! A brief search reveals that the common house fly is “often a carrier of diseases, such as typhoid fever, cholera, dysentery, and anthrax. The fly transmits diseases by carrying disease organisms onto food. It picks up disease organisms on its leg hairs or eats them and then regurgitates them onto food (in the process of liquefying solid food).”

Oh my precious God. I think I just threw up a little in my throat.

In other world news, Sweet Dub is out of town for a few days for business. His job has really accelerated and one of the reasons I have been so busy is that he has been so busy. At any rate, it’s weird being home without him (more on that in another post – I feel like I am a much worse parent when he is gone). But one benefit to him being away is that both kids sleep with me in a big snuggly warm pile when he is gone. There are few things on my all-time List of Wonderfulments that are better than sleeping in between my two girls, with Cily’s forehead pressed right up under my nose, and my legs entangled with Viva’s. Ah, the love.

I envisioned this time as a great opportunity for Sweet Dub to get some time to himself, which I don’t begrudge him in the least. Nonetheless, in the morning, I’m packing up the kids and driving to Palm Springs to join Sweet Dub in the hotel (with multiple pools! And room service! And miniature golf on site!). He says he misses us. He says he wants to drive home tonight and pack us up and take us back with him. He is sad and lonely. I laughed at him when he called this morning at 6 to say all this. “I wish I had time to miss you,” I teased.

But you know? I have a feeling that I would feel the same way, waking up alone. And I just realized he’s never spent a night away from Cily since we brought her home from the hospital. Maybe he’s going through withdrawal.

What do you think, Cily?


Yes, definitely.

* In retrospect, not really. It felt like I hadn't posted in a couple of weeks, and then I discovered that I had. So...I think the sleep deprivation is translating into general absent-mindedness, which in the overall scheme of things is, I think, kind of a lovable trait, yes?

A Change Is Gonna Come?

So busy at work, so tired at home, so not blogging either way.   But then I read about this, the latest in a string of racist hoaxes thrown together by the likes of Susan Smith, Chuck Stuart, and most recently Ashley Todd (how quickly we forget).   Wow. I love Post-Racial America. Thank God we've gotten past all that uncomfortable racial mess.   I have so much more to say but I'm having trouble concentrating. Why do some people think it's a good idea to have a conference call on speakerphone with someone on a cell phone (which means both sides have to scream to be heard) in their office and not close the door?   Will try to update later.

Cheap Entertainment

I'm moblogging today. I think.   Just a quickie. Overheard while Viva was trying to distract Cily from crying (teething, teething, OH THE PAIN):   Viva [singing energetically]: Oh Celia my Celia Lou, how much I do love you, you're smarter than a monkey, smarter than a sock, you're smarter than my mom who's an astroNAUT...   I think I'm an astroNOT. And I'm pleased that Viva thinks her sister is smarter than a piece of clothing.

Gratuitous Cuteness

Hey, guess what? My “newborn” will be seven months old tomorrow. She’s awesome:

I like to squish her and kiss her and all sorts of unspeakably embarrassing things. My voice gets very very high, because that makes her laugh. Here is what she is doing now: lots of talking (even in her sleep), rolling over, sitting up on her own for increasingly longer periods of seconds, grabbing everything within reach, and screaming with frustration when she’s on her stomach – because she clearly wants to crawl, even if she doesn’t know what that is. She adores her big sister, and if I haven’t mentioned it yet, let me say how impressed I am with how much Viva loves her baby. A few weeks ago, we assembled the long-awaited crib and located it in Viva’s room, and now – minor miracle – Cily spends most of the night there. Viva is thrilled, because now it's two in one room and two in the other* (until the 4 AM feeding. I am lazy and cold and sleepy at 4 AM. Did you know that baby experts consider sleeping 5 hours straight “sleeping through the night”? Yeah. What do they know?). Viva wants Cily in her room. She wants her in her bath:

She wants to read bedtime stories with her, and sing to her, and she wants to watch the NBA playoffs with her:

At any rate, as we all know, babies grow. And they grow quickly. And we're all just enjoying having her around, so small and warm and sweet-smelling. So huggy. She bounces into little spasms when she sees me, and beams. It is like a drug. I have to be around her. As does Viva. And her daddy? Also has a pretty bad case of Wrapped Around Her Little Finger. Seven months? Pretty damn near perfect.

* You know, she likes things to be even. And fair. And prior to Cily, Viva would often protest loudly that it was unfair that Dub and I got to sleep together, while she had to sleep in her room all alone. Now all is right with the world...for five minutes.

Hair Advice, Please!

[Before we begin, apologies: last week I was out of the blogosphere for family issues. Early in the week, I got a call from daycare that my little one had pinkeye, which is highly contagious, so I had to keep her out of daycare for a bit, and then on Thursday my grandma was taken to the hospital with what turned out to be pneumonia, so I was out of town/away from the computer Friday and Saturday as well. Highlight of the trip: I arrive at the hospital with my sister and all of our kids. It has taken 4 hours since I got to town to get all the kids together and get to the hospital. I am trying to remain on an even keel. Less than 60 seconds into the hospital room, my grandmother says: “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were two months pregnant.” WHAT? Who says that? What does it even mean?! How can anyone look two months pregnant?! But, I digress.]

I have several things I want to write about, but what is most urgent is this: my current hair routine with Viva is that I wash her hair on Sunday, comb it out and oil it and style it for the week. She sleeps with a sleep cap, so most mornings I just have to oil it a bit, smooth back the edges and maybe tighten a few twists here and there – put in different color clips or barrettes and she’s good to go. A few years ago I went to Snapaholics.com and at the time they had elasticized sleep caps for sale. These basically look like a cloth swim cap – machine washable and hold up well, but I would like to order more. Ay, there’s the rub. Snapaholics no longer carries them! AAAAAGH!

I emailed them just now to find out what happened. Doubly frustrated because the owner went through some monstrous move and the website was down for some time, so I was happy to log on this morning and see it was up – but no sleep caps! Of course I then went online to see if there is anywhere else that carries them and I came across this concept: using stretchy book covers for the same purpose (you put them on and then knot at the nape of the neck). I guess it would work. It seems a little strange, but I guess it would work.

Any other ideas? I’ve tried bandannas but even when they are clipped to her head, Viva is such an active sleeper that they come off.

Thanking you in advance…