big plans for 2007

I had resolutions this year that I've already messed up on, big surprise since I don't do well with pressure.
the obvious...
1. exercise - some Pittsburghers might consider me tiny but by Manhattan standards I'm downright chubby. I plan on joining a gym, but today, when I was planning to go try out the gym and the drop off daycare at the gym (my main worry with joining a gym is that the daycare there is good enough so my worrying about Oona is minimal) Oona is sick, so it's another sedentary day for me
2. eat healthier - which I WILL do once I've polished off all the yummy cookies and cheese in the household, don't worry I'm not eating the cheese and cookies at the same time
and the not so obvious...
3. take my vitamins and get fish oil supplements - need to buy fish oil and get past the whole fishstick burps from taking fish oil
4. no going onto People.com or reading those tabloid magazines unless I'm in the check out line - I've done well with this so far (all of two days!) but my People.com addiction has been replaced by Youtube. Below are a few of my favorites

Stephen Colbert interviews Eleanor Holmes-Norton. I have spent way too much time the past couple of days watching clips from The Colbert Report but we don't have cable so that's my excuse.
Stephen Colbert vs Morning Talk Shows
Kevin Spacey on SNL
Jon Stewart on Crossfire
Bush impression

Owen's favorite songs, a list totally unrelated to my new year's resolutions
this song by Of Montreal... very funny, catchy song and your kids will enjoy the video
No Sleep Till Brooklyn - Beastie Boys
My Humps - Black Eyed Peas... yes I'm a bad Mommy
Business - Eminem... such a very bad Mommy!
All You Want by Dido (Owen calls this 'pretty girl music')

christmas joy update

Sorry I haven't had a chance to write yet during the holidays. I don't know what made me think that being at home during the holidays would make things easier. Toby made an amazing Christmas dinner - turkey AND prime rib and all the assorted fixings to go with both. My culinary contribution was a couple quiches and some chocolate chip cookies (of course, I'm always happy to oblige when it comes to sweets). My Grandma had a wonderful time too and she can't stop singing Toby's praises, she's totally amazed that he does so much cooking, I guess it would be pretty rare to find a man that helps that much with the cooking and kids from her generation. We spent Christmas Eve at Toby's brother's.

The doodlepad that Owen got for Christmas was the hit of the party but Oona wasn't too pleased when her cousin wouldn't share the stylus. But Oona was thrilled with the phone that Owen got her. How she loves talking on her various toy phones, I don't know where she gets this as I'm frequently uncomfortable talking on the phone, I'm okay if I'm by myself but I can get very self conscious talking on the phone in public or in front of others, I just can't relax and, well, talk uninhibitedly.

The past couple of Christmases have been wonderful because Owen gets so excited about every present he opens. He's so grateful for everything too. He'd pull out clothes and hold them up to his face for me to take a pciture 'Look Mommy camo pants!' This coat my Mom got him was one of Toby's favorites, he looks like he should be joining Marlon Brando on the waterfront. One of Owen's favorite gifts was this Owen coffee cup that Santa got him. Poor thing when I handed him his stocking in the morning the cup fell out and hit him right in the face.

(what's the story) morning glory?

Leave it to me to catch on to how wonderful Oasis is 10 years after their heyday. I feel like I missed some pivotal part of the nineties. I love love love this album and it's made me want to get more of their music. Oh and all the mythical controversy of this band; sibling rivalry of biblical proportions, substance abuse, regular bouts of pugilism, I have become an internet stalker of all things Oasis-related. Fortunately there's Wikipedia and Youtube which seem to facilitate internet obsessions.

I'm totally taken by their piss and vinegar attitude. This quote I got from Wikipedia showcases it perfectly... Later, (Noel) Gallagher became one of the more vocal skeptics in regards to the intended impact of Live 8, citing his belief that rock stars are not as influencing over world leaders as popular culture may believe. His explanation was "Correct me if I'm wrong, but are they hoping that one of these guys from the G8 is on a quick 15-minute break at Gleneagles and sees Annie Lennox singing "Sweet Dreams" and thinks, 'Fuck me, she might have a point there, you know? And Keane doing "Somewhere Only We Know" and some Japanese businessman going, 'Aw, look at him… we should really fucking drop that debt, you know.' It's not going to happen, is it?"

festival of lights

On Sunday we took my Grandma out to an estate called Hartwood Acres where they hold a festival of lights every year for the holidays. It’s a windy, 3 ½ mile drive through the property and there are all these elaborate light displays and a couple LSD flashback inducing tunnels of lights. There's also a few sponsor light displays, yuck can't they be happy enough with a tasteful sign at the end? In the beginning Owen got all excited, 'That's the news display!' pointing at the blue 4 logo for WTAE. One section has elaborate light displays for the twelve days of Christmas, we didn’t catch on to it last year until we saw the three hens standing in front of the Eiffel tower. So we had the whole family packed up in the new car, one of the reason’s we got it since it can seat six, me in the last row, the kids in the middle and Toby and Grandma up front. My grandma is in an assisted living facility for people with age-related memory problems like Alzheimer’s and dementia, she is very sharp for someone closing in on 92 but her short term memory, especially keeping track of time, is just shot. So throughout the whole 45 minute drive my Grandma kept asking Toby ‘how much longer is it?’ or ‘have you ever been to this before?’ or ‘are we almost through?’ while Owen kept lamenting, ‘this is gonna take forever.’ Oona just looked out the window and pointed at everything and the kids, Owen's laments aside, were so good Grandma kept forgetting they were even in the car. Poor Toby really handled everything well. He never loses his patience or gets annoyed by my Grandma constantly repeating things. I felt awful in the back seat thinking it was a bad idea to bring Grandma there because it was in the early evening and she tends to be worse as it closes in on evening and maybe all the lights in the dark and the repetition, I was worried it might have been like torture for her, not knowing if minutes or hours had passed. But when we dropped her off and I took her to her room she kept talking about how nice it all was and that she was just amazed by the sheer size of it and today when I stopped in to see her the hairdresser there said she kept talking about going to see the lights – so I guess it was all worth it in the end.

owen contemplates Streptococcus pneumoniae

Last week on the way to visit my Grandma Owen asked about antibacterial soap. So during the twenty-minute drive I’m trying to explain antibacterial soaps, Darwinism and how resistant strains of bacteria could one day wipe out humanity. What is wrong with me that I would get on this tangent about antibacterial soaps with a 4 year old? Owen is scared of monsters and various tricks of his imagination and I add super strains of bacteria to his list of worries.

will oona's hair ever grow?

Why did I think it would be less stressful to stay at home for the holidays? Granted we don't need to drive all over Pennsylvania and I don't need to panic about being on the highways in the snow but now I get to panic about everyone coming over here for Christmas dinner. I've already bought paper plates, cups and napkins - completely tacky I know but my dishpan hands, which at this point are so rough I snagged the silk on a couple of ties I was looking at for Toby (didn't purchase those) and we don't have a dishwasher, aside from me, so paper it is. We still have to figure out what to cook, Toby's was thinking of cooking a goose but since he's the only gourmand in the crowd I think that would be a bit of a waste. I didn't order enough holiday cards to send out so I've got to figure out something for the remaining dozen people on my list - aghhh.

I went to meet with Owen's teacher last week for another parent teacher conference. The first conference was a home visit where Miss S- and her assistant, the kindly but unhelpful, Mr. G- came over and I proceeded to go on about Toby playing Grand Theft Auto on the Xbox... don't even ask. Toby was like, are you trying to make me out to be a total gangster parent? Did you tell him I also studied Philosophy? Yes, I did because I felt so bad of the picture I portrayed of him at the Xbox. Oh well... So at this more recent conference, Miss S- mentioned that Owen told Mr. G- he believed in God out of the blue and I tried to explain why he said that. I mentioned that Toby's an atheist and his parents are religious, his Mom, in particular, is pretty conservative on her religious views. So one day Owen & I drove by a church and he asked me about 'the building with the Xes on it' and me, being me, I totally over-explained it and got into other religions as well, but was trying to impress upon him a very open-minded view of God and religion. Basically that no one religion is better than another and the concept of what God is can be unique to each person. But then I mentioned that Toby wanted to get him a t-shirt that said ‘God is dead’ and Miss S- just looked at me, thinking no doubt that poor Owen is doomed with parents like us. I don’t mean to make Toby out to be an Xbox playing, God hating heathen I think what happens is I start talking about things Toby has done or said that I think are funny- like he wanted to get Owen a t shirt saying ‘God is dead– Nietzsche, Nietzsche is dead – God’ which is funny and totally understandable coming from an atheist and a philosopher, but midway into explaining something I realize that what I’m about to say probably isn’t appropriate for the audience I’m talking to and I cut myself off but then whatever I’ve said so far just sounds awful.

I'll sign off with my heathen moment... not when I was experiencing maternal brain fog and corrected Toby by saying that Jesus was Santa's son, but when I went to Owen's school. They were having a holiday gift sale at his school in order to raise money for field trips and I went over with Oona to help him pick out some gifts for the family. Well, Oona has reached a stage of development where she screeches and arches her back wildly if she's in any area that she believes she should be allowed to walk in, so I put her down and within two seconds she yanked a tiny glass ball off the decorative tree in front of the cashier. I muttered Christ under my breath while trying to get the decoration out of her tight fist and let's just say that the cashier was none too pleased that I just said Christ in front of a bunch of 4 year olds.

holidaze

Saturday was my birthday and, as an adult, having a birthday that falls anywhere between Thanksgiving and New Year's just sucks. I can't even say it's all about that other guy's birthday, not BradPitt but Jesus, because it doesn't seem to be about him either. All I see is compulsive consumption; buying presents people can probably live without, going into debt, gaining holiday weight, maybe weathering a hangover or two and you come into the new year bleary eyed, bloated and broke.

I had a bit of a Sixteen Candles moment this weekend. My Mother-in-law forgot my birthday - sounds like the title of some self-help book "My Mother-in-law forgot my Birthday: How to make nice when you want to raise Hell." I told Toby maybe I'll get more money out of her because she'll feel contrite for her oversight but I don't think that's gonna happen now that Toby told her just that the other night. She wanted to talk to me after Toby informed her that she missed my birthday. When I took the phone she went on about how she had just celebrated their friend Steve Coral's birthday the other day and she celebrated her Mom's birthday Friday but she didn't even have me written down on her calendar. I know Toby's Mom tends to lack an internal editor, she just sort of says what she thinks and God help the feelings that might get hurt, but even though I know that about her, saying all that just made me feel worse, like I was somehow to blame for not being memorable enough. I just said I was surprised because I thought my birthday would be pretty easy to remember since it's the day before her Mother's (wouldn't you think?!) but that I knew it's easy to forget things when everyone is so busy with holiday stuff.

Which brings me to the other Sagittarian who had a birthday, Brad Pitt. I look at the photo of them in front of Fallingwater and I'm struck by a few things...

1. Does Angelina Jolie ever look bad or frumpy? I had wanted to get a winter white coat this year (yes, I'm finally thinking of retiring my Burton snowboard coat which I have had for nine, yes nine, years) but thought better of it since I have children. I imagined it quickly becoming soiled with various food & Oona body fluid stains, and I have twenty pounds I could stand to lose so winter white would read like this on me.

2. Do Angelina & Brad realize the VIP treatment they got at Fallingwater? They were allowed to have lunch in the living room, so I'm assuming they sat on some furniture, and they had a fire going in the living room. When we took a tour of Fallingwater this fall I was reprimanded for having a large purse and told to keep it in front of me at all times so I didn't bump anything, they're so hyper-vigilant that no one touch any of the original furnishings. But I'd rather they get the VIP treatment as opposed to say all the vapid dingbats (Britney, Paris, Lindsay ...) that get press and preferential treatment. At least Angelina & Brad do stuff with their fame, use it as a catalyst for philanthropy and possibly, hopefully, inspire others to make a positive change in the World.

3. That house looks amazing in all the different seasons. It really is a wondrous place BUT when I was on the tour all I could think was 'this place is beautiful and I could never live here with kids.' The wall of the balcony on the second floor came up to just above my knee. When I looked over the wall I had to crouch down because I started experiencing vertigo. (Truth be told, during the first week we had our new car I was experiencing vertigo when I drove it down steep parts on the highways out here. I had to get used to being up higher in a vehicle.) Am I the only freaky parent that has visited Fallingwater and shuddered envisioning their toddler falling off the balcony to the hard, slick rocks far below? I just looked up Fallingwater in my favorite reference resource, Wikipedia, and learned of structural problems inherent in the design, thank God I didn't visit the home before 2002!

So I'll come full circle and end with ruminations about this past birthday... I got my haircut, which was good. Owen said I looked silly, which wasn't great but it was a predictable response from a boy seeing his Mom suddenly look different. I've got to put any expectations of my 'big day' aside but putting expectations aside can be so hard even with the best intentions. I got some yummy desserts from Whole Foods for my birthday after enjoying a perfect bacon, cheeseburger with my favorite people (my family) and my favorite beer a Black & Tan, that got me very buzzed. I just don't drink that much anymore, I love to have a beer or glass of red wine every once in a while but nowadays all the alcohol does to me is make me very sleepy. So I'm 38... a year older, more tired, have some aches that I wish I didn't, still a nutcase with worrying, but overall happy and healthy.

what I'm grateful for

Today was one of those long, long days.The kids got up early, Oona didn’t nap for more than an hour, rather than her usual three, and by the end of the day I was convinced Owen’s sole purpose in life was to drive me crazy. He was so ornery today. At one point this afternoon I had so had it with Owen’s sassing me and ignoring me when I told him not to do things, that he’d go ahead and do looking right at me, that I ordered him up to his room. He refused to go, lying on the floor defiant (his version of a sit in to protest demanding Mom’s?), so I picked up all 38 pounds of him up and carried him up to his room where I said in a calm but stern voice ‘you’re staying up here for awhile.’ For once today he listened, I could ear him playing with his Playmobil castle, staging battle with various knights & barbarians for half an hour. Poor Toby’s sick the day before his accounting final, apparently the teacher is one of those pompous, professors from hell who like to go on and on about how brilliant and driven they were back in the day ‘getting degrees from Harvard and MIT at the same time blah, blah, blah.’ So he came home from his review and punctured our tire on the stupid metal ‘curb keeper’ sticking out of the curb in front of our house. Of course nothing is opened today that can meet our needs for the new tire, we can’t buy Goodyear tires because they’re on strike and Toby works for the International union representing those strikers. So I already have so much to look forward to tomorrow, hanging out at the car dealer's with Oona - who’s walking, curious and won’t be stopped.

And I thought last Sunday was bad ... when we went with Travis & Nicole (Toby’s brother & his wife) and their daughter, to get Christmas trees and wound up with nothing but a trip to the ER. We drove half an hour out to this godforsaken mall sprawl area right before the airport (Ikea! Walmart! Kohls! if it’s crappy and throughout the country it’s here) where we stopped to get brunch at Cracker Barrel. Three hours later we emerged and Nicole said that the Christmas tree farm was still about forty minutes further out. I talked to Toby outside and we both agreed it was crazy to try and go to this tree farm with Oona fussy, it was late afternoon and would be getting dark by the time we would get out there and then we’d have to drive over an hour back home – forget it. So we scrapped our whole plan for the day and went back to Travis and Nicole’s house. So within two minutes of being in their living room Oona fell and clocked her head on the leg of their coffee table. Oona was very upset for a few minutes and at first the hit looked bad, like it had indented where she struck the table leg. But it turned out to be a very minor goose egg and scrape on the side of her forehead… just in time for pictures.

Yes, the main purpose of the day and going to the Christmas tree farm was to get picturesque photos of the 3 grandchildren for Toby’s Mom to proudly show of to family and friends. So I’m trying to get a good shot of the three of them but my niece and Oona switch off on crying and squirming off the couch, while Owen makes goofy faces for the camera. Once Travis and Nicole returned and were able to assist in making crazy faces to get the kids attention we finally got a decent shot. Of course we didn’t leave their house before Oona hit her head again on a dresser upstairs and then got whacked in the forehead with a safety gate which Owen slammed so hard it swung back through the lock. We were lamenting poor Oona’s tough day at her Aunt & Uncle’s and thought nothing more of it until we put her to bed and she threw up a half hour later. I called our doctor’s office and knew my concern was warranted when the answering service put my call right through (you usually have to wait close to an hour for them to get back to you) to the triage nurse who told me that I should take her to the ER given that she struck her head more than once.

So Oona and I head to the ER and I’m freaking out every time I glance in the rear view mirror and see her staring off blankly without blinking. I’d grab her foot and shake it to make sure she was alright. When we got in the ER I was nervous they’d interrogate me about her injury to see if I had abused her. I know they have to do that with some injuries and totally understand why, but just the other day someone asked if Oona was a boy or girl, while she’s in a pink floral snowsuit and I blurted out ‘It’s a boy.’ I thought I might uncontrollably implicate myself somehow. Fortunately, I had nothing to stress over. After recounting to the nurse practitioner how Oona hit her head three times I said, ‘I sound like an awful mother.’ And she immediately replied, ‘nothing of the sort.’ Whew! We waited over two hours for Oona to get a head CT. By the time they finally called us it was close to 11; Oona hadn’t napped all day and I was confining her to her stroller because she was so tired and when she tries to walk when she’s tired she’s like a clumsy drunk, I didn’t want her hitting her head anymore – at one point while waiting in the exam room with her I let her stand near the mirror because she likes giving herself kisses but then she started banging her head against the mirror. My worry is like a vampire, just sucking the life right out of me. Just as Oona started screeching uncontrollably a nurse came to get us and we went to get Oona’s CT. She had to lay on a table where her head’s placed in a semicircular cushion. I laid on top of her and they raised the table up and guided Oona’s head to the center of the CT machine. If you haven’t had a CT before check this out. They can be scary even for an adult because the machine is so large and loud. Poor Oona’s eyes were getting larger and larger as the red lights blinked on her head and something in the machine started spinning around with great speed. She looked at me and made the saddest little face before trying to escape but I kept my body on hers and stilled her head with my hands on her neck and chin. The technicians were cooing little niceties to Oona ‘what a pretty baby’, ‘such long lashes’ but you could barely hear what they were saying over the machine’s loud whir. The good thing was the scan went quickly and the results came quickly too. She was fine, we were allowed to leave and Oona was asleep before we pulled out of the hospital.

It was a long drawn out Sunday, the beginning to an exhausting week of working on a rush order for a client I freelance for. But I can make up a week’s worth of not sleeping much, a day wasted, visiting that hospital (one of the 10 best children’s hospitals in the country) I can’t ignore how lucky I am that Oona was okay. The four times I’ve been to that hospital for Owen or Oona the worst thing that happened was an x-ray that showed Owen had pneumonia when he was 2 1/2. Not fun for a little boy, but not life-threatening either, after a couple days of antibiotics he was back to his usual self. I’m so grateful for the everyday miracle of my children’s lives and their health.

hello december

Owen’s class pictures came back yesterday. We had to pay for the photos ahead of time, I guess because no one in their right mind would buy them once we finally got to see what the pictures are like. I love my dear little boy and think he looks wonderful no matter what, but all the children have the same, slightly terrified, fake smile. Clearly whoever got stuck with the gig of class photographer for D— school is no fledgling Annie Leibovitz, who knows, maybe they’re more influenced by Diane Arbus. Along with his pictures came a note that some child in his class has lice so now I have to examine his head with a magnifying glass in bright light (which, since we’ve bought fluorescents, doesn’t seem to exist in our house) to search for possible sesame seed sized eggs. Just reading the list of what you have to do if your child does in fact have lice – all clothes in hot water wash followed hot dryer cycle (goodbye wool sweater, hello felt!); vacuum carpet, mattresses and furniture thoroughly; boil combs and other hair accessories for two minutes or use 1 part bleach to 10 parts water solution; anything that can’t be cleaned by the above methods must be sealed off in plastic bags for 30 days… my God, my scalp itches fiercely just at the thought of this.
Lately Owen keeps saying how he is a mean and stupid boy, ‘the stupidest boy in the whole World.’ Toby and I both insist he is nothing of the sort. He’s our son so we’re admittedly biased, but Owen is a wonderfully kind and gentle boy. He’s very thoughtful, and quite bright for his age, which can be problematic because Toby and I then tend to talk to him and expect things of him that aren’t realistic for a four year old. Well, last night Toby learned just where Owen was getting this ‘I’m the stupidest boy in the whole World’ complex. One of the girls he likes to play with, Q-, told him that he’s the stupidest boy in the whole classroom. Just hearing that made me bristle, I wanted to throttle this 4 year old – I know that isn’t very mature on my part but it kills me to see my children hurt or slighted in any way, typical Mother Bear behavior. Toby and I both talked to Owen and made sure he realized that he is in fact a very smart boy and to not listen to people when they say things that hurt his feelings. Toby told him to ask Q— if she can read, because Owen can. I told him to say that’s not true (when they say nasty things) and to tell the person that what they’re saying is mean.
When Owen first started pre-k I was over the moon. He goes full time, 6 hours every day, and after a long summer of not always successful bartering with a 4 year old over our daily activities I wanted to shout from our rooftop (which I would never do because it’s a mansard roof and has a very steep pitch) ‘I’m free!!’ I knew Owen craved that learning experience and interaction with his peers so I figured this new step in our lives was best for both of us. But he’s growing up, and seeing those changes, how the outside world and other people affect him, make me want to hold him close to keep all the grit of reality away from him. I realize that I’m waaay too protective with both my kids. If I had my way I’d hold Owen’s hand across the street and walk him to school until he’s in college. I see these other mothers, less anxiety prone, who let their children run down the sidewalks fifty feet away from them, who don’t have a compulsion to do a sweep of a room on entry to make sure there are no choking hazards that their toddler could get pudgy little hands on. I am so envious on one hand and so horribly judgmental on the other. Ambivalence is a feeling that I think, at times, is almost instinctual for me – no wonder I’m always so tired. I trust my children but I don’t trust our World. Especially now. Our country is so fast and easily distracted, technologically driven and culturally vapid. My soul aches for a kinder, gentler, more mindful time but what’s the answer?
Didn’t mean to leave this post on a downer, maybe the schizophrenic weather here is affecting me.

appetite for destruction

What has happened to my darling, docile daughter? She has mastered walking and morphed, seemingly overnight, into a stubborn she-devil. It’s crazy to see how radically her personality has changed now that she can get into everything. She naps less, she wakes early, every waking moment must be spent exploring. Maybe all those months that I thought she was so sweet natured and calm she was just watching, biding her time for this moment when she could toddle into all the big no’s of the house. The cabinet under the sink where all the cleaning supplies are, most are earth friendly but they could still do a number on Oona. When I put a pressure gate up to block the kitchen off Oona falls on the floor wailing for a while before calming rising and teething on the gate in protest. Stairs? I must climb them. Electrical outlet? My fingers need to go there. The tv cabinet? You can’t shut all those wonderful buttons and knobs away from me. Oh, what else... The kitty litter, the kitties water bowl, basically anything kitty related. For that matter, anything put just out of her reach. She will lean, stretch, kick, grunt, scream in protest. She’ll do her darnedest to reach the object placed in the ‘no Oona zone’. She loves to knock at the gate leg table in our living room, trying to shake it hard enough to topple the light sitting on top. But her absolute favorite activity these days is to pull books off our bookcases in the living room. Toby thinks it’s wonderful. He’s convinced that she’s a bibliophile at 14 months and will be reading before she’s two. He fails to notice the look of glee when she tears a book off the shelf and throws it on the ground. She’s just looking to destroy any sense of order in the house (currently there isn’t much) the same way she loves to ransack anything that Owen is involved with – legos, blocks, game, it doesn’t matter she’s reached the destruction milestone. My day is spent two steps behind her hunched over and ready to turn her towards safety, relishing those calm moments when she wants to smother me in kisses. I don’t remember Owen being so headstrong. Oh God, when does this end or is this just the beginning of a whole new reality?

Well, I've received my first negative comment for one of the posts I put up, regarding the craft show I participated in - you can check it out here. I had written a long post, which was a response to this anonymous commenter, but then thought better of it and just placed it in the comments section of that post. We'll see if anonymous, which I think is a pretty weak thing to do, if you're going to criticize someone have the nerve to put your name down, checks back on the post. Honestly, now that craft show has come and gone I don't think it's worth spending any more time on it. I had a bad day, I wrote, It's over! But since it's my blog I get to have the last word or, in the case of blogs, comment.

our thankgiving surprise

About a month after Lily died I started thinking about getting a new cat and discovered the British shorthair online. I thought they were so cute with their plush coat, full cheeks and their mouth looks as though they're smiling. Toby had no problem with us getting one as long as they were under $500, which I thought they would be. After contacting a breeder in New York, there are none in Pennsylvania, I found out they cost $1,000, which seems very pricey for any sort of domestic pet especially when so many animals need homes. So I put off getting a cat and appreciated the little things, there were no longer trace bits of litter and cat hair everywhere. I no longer found thrown up hairballs on the floor.

Well, that reprieve was short-lived. Toby’s parents live out on what ostensibly could be called a farm, they have close to 200 acres all to themselves (I’ll save my tirade about being out in the middle of nowhere with the closest rural hospital, that surely is behind in medical advances, being twenty minutes away for another post). They have a regular cattery out there because Toby’s Dad can’t turn away a stray cat and he won’t kill them, which is what many out in that area do when confronted with stray cats. In fact he offers them plentiful food and a couple nice shelters for the cats to stay warm in during the winter months. So we wound up with two of the stray kitties, tentatively named Frodo (the dark grey one) and Sam (the light grey tabby) but we still have to find out what sex kitties we have – pretty sure that Frodo is a boy but Sam might be a girl. Yes, I took in two cats and named them after Lord of the Rings characters, Owen was pushing for naming them both Princess Kitty so Frodo and Sam seemed pretty good names by comparison. I’m explaining this impulsive decision on the fact that I threw my back out on Tuesday and have been pretty doped up on muscle relaxants since then so my judgment was obviously impaired. I’m sure once I get the bill for all their shots and getting them fixed/spayed I’ll be brought back to reality, but they are so cute, fuzzy & lovable. We have yet to get our digital camera back from being repaired so I have to rely on the photo booth on our computer for poor quality pictures.

on the road

Driving home today from running errands with Oona I came up a narrow road along the side of a big hill right before home, the way I usually do. I'm always commenting to Toby that I don't like driving the road because it is narrow and so many people cross the solid yellow line and drive in both lanes hogging the road. Well, lo and behold, I'm a quarter of the way up the hill when down comes one of those super-sized SUVs and the guy is driving in the middle of the road using up both lanes. I've slowed down waiting for him to either move back into his lane or contemplating whether I should drive into the hilly brush on my side when he looks up from punching numbers in his cell phone and swerves into his lane about 8 feet before hitting me head on. So it got me thinking about when I first learned to drive. I loved, absolutely thrilled to get in a car and drive around. My friend Christina and I did this frequently when we had all of our driver's permits, in fact I think we even snuck out a couple of times before we had permits. So, suffice it to say that I loved to drive. Even after I was involved in a nasty car accident my senior year of High School, which left me shook up a bit, I still didn't get freaked out about driving. I drove from NJ to San Diego in 4 days by myself so I didn't have a problem with speed or highways. No. The thing that started the end of the affair between me and the road was when I was driving back East from California. I drove from LA to San Francisco. Up to Crater Lake in Oregon and then Portland. From Portland to Seattle and then I finally decided to head East instead investigating British Columbia. I crossed the Cascades in Washington without chains on my Volvo when there was a ton of snow and I was skidding like crazy, still I loved the whole driving experience.

The beginning of the end was after a long day driving through Montana. It had all started out so nicely. I was staying in a bed & breakfast in Great Falls, Montana which I had visited because my ex-boyfriend, whom I was still friendly with, and I both l liked Richard Ford's 'Rock Springs' and one of the stories in the collections was 'Great Falls'. What an awesome double entendre name for a town! The woman who ran the bed & breakfast was so sweet, she had never been to either coast, I thinkshe might never have been outside Montana. But she was kind, she made me French toast and gave me a hug before leaving, saying that she would pray for me on my ride home. I had a great day driving through Montana, it was sunny and not too cold for the Northwest in November, they day really showcased all the beauty of that state. By early evening I had crossed into Wyoming and after an hour, I was thinking I'd need to stop for the night soon. I pulled into the fast lane to pass someone when before I knew it my car was sliding backwards across the highway’s lanes and down snowy hill. It all happened in a few seconds but my thinking slowed to such a point, I heard myself saying in my head 'Uh oh, I think I'm going to die.' Then the car stopped halfway down the hill, I could still hear Tom Waits singing, if you can call what he does that, in my tape deck and I popped out 'Bone Machine' and haven't really been able to appreciate Tom Waits since - just a bad connection in my head. A bunch of cars stopped and a man offered me a ride to his house at the nearest exit, this being 1992 before cell phones were big. Since it was also the Northwest? Midwest? (not sure where the delineation is) the nearest exit was about 20 minutes away. It was funny, the first thing he said when helping me up the snowy hill was 'you should have mittens on in this weather.' It was oddly touching in a way. I was 23 at the time and should have been concerned about kidnapping or rape but back then my mind didn’t worry that way. He drove me to his home where his wife was tending to their baby, called a garage for me and they were able to get my car back to the road and tow it to his house without incident. The car was in perfect shape.

I stayed in a hotel in town overnight, not nearly as nice as the bed & breakfast of last night, a small paneled room with thin walls, so I could hear the next door ‘neighbors’ talking about hunting in the morning, and a black and white tv with awful reception. I got up early and started out on the road a little wary but after a couple hours I was feeling my driving confidence returning. Then wouldn’t you know it, my car did a 360 and skidded into the wide grassy median dividing traffic. How could this have happened again?! But once again I was pleasantly surprised by how many cars stopped right away to help me. By now you’re probably thinking ‘she’s a god-awful driver’ which I was thinking as well, until a trucker stopped to help me and he wiped out on stepping out of his cab. A very nice older gentleman who had been hunting that morning and had shot a deer offered me a ride to the nearest exit, this time a half an hour away, in his white truck, with the cold and bloody doe in the bed behind us. He was a retired schoolteacher and was so gracious, he invited me to his home for Thanksgiving the next day but I demurred not wanting to intrude on his family’s celebration, I wound up having chili at the hotel I stayed in. As he drove us along toward the exit his trucked almost skidded off the road a few times and when we got to the garage they said I’d have to wait awhile, since a dozen cars had gone off in the same area as me. Apparently I had hit black ice twice. Black ice is virtually undetectable on a highway and is extremely slick, apparently more slick than your typical run of the mill ice. Black ice is noted for making for extremely treacherous driving conditions. I white knuckled the rest of the trip back to New Jersey so nervous that I could feel the car skidding underneath me at the slightest wind or turn in the road. My hands would ache at the end of the day from gripping the steering wheel so tightly. Thus my love affair with driving was ending.

The final straw in liking to drive was when I drove down to Austin, TX on my own and got caught in a thunderstorm that came on so sudden & fierce, apparently they call them gulley washers down there, I couldn’t see out of my car windows at all and, yes, this happened while I was driving on I-40! Remarkably, I was able to pull off the highway onto a stretch of land and wait it out and until it calmed down to a normal drizzle.

Since having children I feel so responsible for their safety I don’t even want to chance being on the road in inclement weather, which, in my mind, means anything heavier than a few drops of precipitation in the air. Any steep drop off or vertiginous expanse of road will make me blubber and plead for my life while I’m on it, as either a driver or passenger. Irresponsible drivers; the speed demons like I used to be, the people on their cell phone or blackberry, basically paying attention to anything but driving, are anathema to me. The followers of the ‘Pittsburgh left’ (essentially believing that turning left has the right of way over those going in a straight line) those that pass me on the right and speed through the red light I stopped for (another common occurrence here in Pittsburgh) I spit at their feet and wish them horrible, protracted deaths. How dare they put my precious cargo at risk?! I have violent, angry, kick-filled dreams where I exact my vengeance on these menaces to the road. The irony that I now loathe driving and there is a Nascar driver with the same, very rare, last name is not lost on me.

adding insult to injury

Well I somehow forgot to put in my craft show tirade (traumatic repression perhaps?) that all the cloche customers would put their spare bags, food and garbage on my table. They would also borrow my mirror when the cloche lady's mirror was being used, to see how they looked in their cloches. Some ladies were polite enough to at least feign interest in my jewelry before dropping a bracelet like a hot potato in order to snag a free space at the cloche table. Talk about being made to feel nonexistent! Maybe I should start a links I loathe list and put Handmade Arcade there? It's not their fault though, just a really horrible craft show experience. But I have to think positive, at least I sold something!

how the craft show was like logan's run

A few of you might be privy to the fact that I participated in a craft show this past Saturday; the Handmade Arcade, of which there is a link in my 'links I love' list. My Mom even came out to help me with the craft show because I figured I could use her help. I participated in the Handmade Arcade a couple years ago and thought it might be nice to have an extra hand in case things got busy or if I needed to go the bathroom or wanted to take a look at the other vendors stuff. When I last participated in this craft show I was placed next to two women who make very cute handmade monster stuffies, friend or foe, that sold out a couple hours before the show ended. This year I was placed next to a woman who makes very sweet hats, from now on to be referred to as cloches because that's a better description of what they are, out of recycled sweaters. You can check out what I'm talking about at www.giantdwarfdesign.com. I bought one of her cloches when she was selling them a couple years ago. Well, I seem to be a good luck charm to whatever vendor is placed near me because the cloche lady was selling her stuff at such a breakneck pace you would have thought she had invented the cloche. How did I do? Well it was two hours before I sold anything, by which time I was quite morose and had already snapped at my Mom who was only trying to help me. I wound up selling 5 items for a grand total of $135, which doesn't begin to cover all the money I spent on beads, gold and sterling silver findings, however it does cover the $45 entrance fee for the show, and the money I spent on bags, boxes and stickers. My Mom, being a Mom, would say stuff under her breath like - 'the overhead for those hats must be nothing', 'she's priced them very high', 'that's something you can only really sell in the winter' and 'well, you could always make something just like that and just not use a flower'. I know she was just trying to make me feel better but I was starting to seethe with frustration over all the time and effort I put into making 60 plus pieces of jewelry and making cute little price stickers for everything and it was all for naught. Yes, the overhead on a recycled sweater cloche is probably all of $2 tops, so she was making a tidy $33 profit, although I'm overlooking her time spent making the hats. But she's found her perfect niche for craft sales. She's very hip looking with a lovely red bob that perfectly showcases her cloches and, what's more, she's great a saleswoman. She'll help place a cloche on the potential buyer to make sure it's on just so and then she deliberates with the customer over which cloche looks best - the purple with the blue flower or the fuschia with a pink flower? She has other cute items that she sells as well but the flower cloches are like the crack of the craft show - you could see people all over wearing them. The people that bought my stuff were older women, the Mom of one vendor, or men buying gifts for their mothers, so my stuff seems to appeal to the 50 plus demographic. I had Toby pick up my Mom early just because I couldn't stand to have her around while I was moping from my lack of sales. When Toby came to pick me up at 6:30 I was about ready to bawl but he refused to let me throw my own pity party. He just kept shaking his head saying 'It's not that your jewelry isn't good, this is the completely wrong market for it.' He kept writing off the craft show as a bunch of hippies and people who don't bathe, maybe a small portion of the customers. He also said that he didn't understand why I would participate in a show run by hipsters because I hate people like that anyway - I don't like snobby, elitist hipsters who won't deign to talk to non-hipsters like myself. So long post short ... I don't think I'll be participating in another Handmade Arcade since I seem to have eclipsed the vendor age and I don't think I fit the hipster/indie profile anymore, if I ever did. Hopefully Toby will be able to sell my jewelry to the women at work, who seem to love my jewelry, they bought almost everything I made last year. Yes, Toby works for the United Steelworkers, they aren't the Seventh Avenue crowd, but if they appreciate what I make I really can't complain.

so much for vanity

Okay, so I put up a picture of myself and now that I'm looking at it online I have no idea how I comfortably put my hand in that position. It now looks to me like someone else is trying to hold my chin up for me but at the time of the photo taking I swear that it was both comfortable, I'm all about comfort, and done without too much thought. Weird. So now it looks like I'm sort of benignly hovering over my blog watching what I'm writing and discreetly thinking, 'Well, if that's what you really think go ahead and knock yourself out.' I actually took this picture from our computer's 'photo booth' some freebie on our mac that has been totally addictive for everyone but Oona, just give her another year or two.

This was one of the few pictures where it wasn't too obvious how crooked my nose is. Most of you know that I got my nose fixed back in college. I never liked my nose much, I thought it was sort of wide, and when I got x-rays taken of it the doctor told me that my nose had been broken a few times. No real surprise given that I've had a basketball, football and volleyball all collide with my nose at various times in my youth. Although I was pretty athletic I don't seem to have been terribly adept when it came to sports involving balls. Overall I was happy with how my nose turned out once it was fixed. I tended to get pretty heavy nosebleeds on the side where the septum had been really messed up, I guess they had to do a lot of corrective scraping, which makes me cringe to think of it. But, nosebleeds aside, the surgery was worth it, I could breathe a lot better once my nose had been fixed. Until I had kids. I can't even count the number of times Owen and Oona have headbutted me right in the nose, okay maybe I could count the times, probably 6 or 7. The downside is my kids skulls whack my nose with such force it literally brings tears to my eyes and I've bled on more than one occasion. God only knows, if I hadn't had the surgery I'd probably resemble Jack LaMotta by now. I can't see myself going for a second nose job though, unless I go through 6 or seven more headbutts to my nose, then we'll see. For now I'll just try to avoid straight on photos.

Below are some outtakes from a recent photo booth session with Owen, with boys it's all about the funny faces.

mrs catastrophe mom

I took Owen to a birthday party at a farm about a month ago and we went down a giant slide there. As soon as I climbed up the ladder and reached the look out deck (yes, it was that large) I got a bird's eye view of the slide and my stomach dropped. I was thinking 'oh no' visions of myself flying off the track of the Alpine Slide at Action Park in the 80's, landing scraped and bruised on the hay bale 'bumpers'. But I'm trying not to make Owen as big a chicken as myself, now that I'm older and see the potential risks in things as mundane as crossing the street. So I sat on the potato sack, put Owen between my legs, held him tightly with my whole body and shoved off. We hurtled down fast, at times lifting periously close to the outer edges of the slide, but we stayed in and got spit out on the very hard and muddy ground at the end of the slide. Trying to get up I felt all of my 37 years, my ass was instantly aching from the six foot skid across the ground. We got ourselves up, brushed off the mud and Owen looked at me, so sweet and serious. He said to me in a low voice 'I don't want to go on that slide again.' So we climbed up the hill and I reassured him that we didn't need to go on it again and that I knew how he felt. I thought nothing more of it until I saw him in profile and noticed the large, angry welt on the side of his face. Poor Owen wound up with a nasty scrape across his one cheek, I guess it was the result of a friction burn against the edge of the slide. Of course, I immediately felt guilty. Did I somehow inadvertently push poor Owen's face against the edge of the slide in order to keep us from flying out of it? Was he victimized as a result of my avoiding injury? I only had two tiny little burns on my wrist. Then I was wincing at the thought of the large screws & bold I'd noticed on the lookout deck that were used to hold the parts of the slide together. Thank God he hadn't scraped his cheek on one of those. And then I start thinking about necrotizing fasciitis (flesh eating disease), not the path most Mother's minds would take I know. But I'm recalling the story in Atul Gawande's 'Complications' about the man that DIED as a result of necrotizing fasciitis that started from a rug burn on the side of his torso. I'm sucked into the black hole of my negative thinking imagining the surgeries to try and save my son, the time in a hyperbaric chamber to and heal him but all for naught. My children seem to have afflicted me with an acute case of hypochondria by proxy. My mind loves to ruminate and torture me, no matter how hard I try to distract myself with normal thoughts, about the worst case scenario of any illness or injury that happens to my kids. When I say something to Toby and he shakes his head saying 'Honey, do you really worry about that?' I know that my thinking isn't typical. I'm not an idiot, I've known my thinking isn't the norm for quite awhile.

long lash envy

This is an creatively cropped picture of Oona and I, taken seconds before Oona swatted the camera out of my hand and the camera broke. Thank God I thought to get an extended warranty. Toby didn't think it was necessary but since I'm the eternal worrier, a pessimist who sees everything that can go wrong in the World, I opted for the year of free service. What I didn't know until I brought my camera in for repair is that it will take 6 weeks to get my camera back and it's not like they offer you a loaner camera in the interim. What am I going to do?! I arrived late to the digital camera world but as soon as I got my camera I knew I'd never be able to turn back to standard film cameras again. When you're primarily taking pictures of your children you can easily go through rolls of film in order to get a good shot. I'm even considering getting another digital camera, although I haven't told Toby this yet. I feel completely adrift and have to cull through old images for blog-worthy pics of my sweet little acorns.
I can't believe how pretty Oona is. How did she wind up with such long lashes, girls are rarely blessed with naturally thick long lashes? As you can see by my one eye I was not blessed in that way, Toby must have passed that gene along. It is so horribly vain of me but when I hold up Oona to look in the mirror I can't stand to look at myself next to her. I look old and try to place the exact date that I slipped into appearing middle aged - maybe six weeks after my son was born? When I realized that breastfeeding isn't a magic bullet for dropping the baby weight and that getting a good night's sleep is a vital part of my otherwise nonexistent beauty regimen.

zealotry & bad tv

Here's Owen getting sucked into the religous cult that is The Backyardigans and Oona trying to resist its powerful allure. Talk about shitty TV! We only have basic access cable, in order to get reception for the public networks and Owen is totally fine and content with PBS. BUT his cousin, who's all of 1, loves The Backyardigans and Owen's Aunt told his Grammy that Owen likes to watch The Backyardigans at their house so, lo and behold, come Halloween we got 'The Backyardigans - It's Geat to Be a Ghost' filled with such classic songs as 'A Pirate Says Arr'. Me being the complete bitchy Mom that I am wanted Grammy to return the DVD because I think The Backyardigans are crap and would rather Owen has a DVD of something he and I can watch together (Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Facotry - Gene Wilder version) but I seem to be the only one who thinks I'm not being completely selfish in wanting to keep this insipid animated feature out of the home.

Top five reasons to keep the backyardigans out of the house
1. there is a character named Uniqua in it
2. the animation is very poor for very many animators contributing to this travesty
3. the songs are annoying in that bad jingle can't get it out of your head way
4. this show is not working on a deeper level so that adults can enjoy it as well, the way all the Pixar films do brilliantly
5. did I mention the character named Uniqua?

Granted there are plenty of other shows that grate on me as well- hello! Jay Jay the Jet Plane, The Wiggles and Caillou (o mon dieu, if people want to take issue with the French I only understand it in that they gave us Caillou). I guess the thing that really bothered me with The Backyardigans was that I thought I had made my disdain for the show pretty clear on a number of occasions what with my eye rolling, groaning, and asking if we could please put something else on. Not very grown up on my part but you try sitting through a half hour of that stuff. So when this DVD was given to Owen as a gift I saw it as a passive agressive dig at me, which, hey, maybe I'm reading too much into it, it was probably unintentional but I'm sure I'm not the first one to read more into something than there is. I did keep the DVD for him. It gets played, infrequently so far, thank God,when I'm making dinner.

before the bath

Here's an edited version of a pic I had up for a short time. I was worried pervs might get off on my son naked but then thought only one person reads this blog so why worry. But then that one person lovingly suggested that maybe I should worry so I've put virtual undies on my son to make the pic less risky. The whole reason for this post was to show the size of my two kids. I just can't believe the size of Oona, she's 3 years younger and all of 1o pounds lighter? She looks like a contented elephant seal in this picture (I've put a picture of said seal for reference). This is Oona just after her bath and Owen just before his. He likes to run around naked in circles on the bed while flapping his arms and screaming 'I'm a flying pigster', don't know why it's pigster and not pig I just am glad that he's yet to fall off the bed and seriously injure himself because right now with Toby renovating the third floor, our bedroom looks like something out of Sanford and Son. He dutifully calms down and plays gently with Oona while I dry her and she just bounces her head to the rhythm that is her big brother and smiles, Owen is a superhero in her eyes.

sisyphus & dishpan hands

I love my children dearly. Really, I do. But there are times when the menial tasks that I do being a stay at home Mom take a herculean effort and I feel like I get nowhere and just want to throw a tantrum, like Owen is prone to when he's overtired, inarticulate and frustrated that I can't meet his needs. As the weather gets colder my skin gets drier and we don't have a dishwasher so I wind up doing the dishes at least four times a day and the skin on my hands, particularly the left hand or 'soaker' of the two, looks like someone took a lemon zester to my knuckles. Every knuckle is cracked and bleeding and the skin between my fingers is sloughing off like skin from a bad sunburn. I slather my hands in heavy lotion AND vaseline every night but damn if it's mending my dishpan hands. I do have rubber gloves that I could use, but it's hard for me to get a proper grip on the dishes then, everything is so slippery. My being the none too nimble one, I have broken more than one glass just moving it from the sink to the drying rack. Toby graciously helped with the dishes last night and I was very thankful but what do I do during the week, start using paper plates and plastic forks and make every meal an indoor picnic? I'd feel too much guilt over the landfill that would be accumulating my waste due to laziness and cracked hands. Unlike Sisyphus I don't have a rock to push for eternity but, until my children enter college, I have all the household mom related labor. My labor isn't in vain like Sisyphus but, at times, it can chip away at any notion of self-worth. On those bad days when you're feeling a lot less than supermom, flipping through the pages of some celebrity rag envying the artifice of the perfect starmom, until your knuckle starts bleeding again!

new wheels

We got a new 'crossover' car last week and I'm soo happy with our purchase. It took a little getting used to, after driving for years in compact cars to be so high up and in such a spacious car, I felt like I was driving a school bus the first few days. Now I absolutely love it! The Freestyle handles really well, has top safety ratings, gets good gas mileage for the type of vehichle it is (a car that seats 6, auto companies have to get with the program and make more hybrids!) and the stereo system is great (our civic had all of am/fm radio but I shouldn't knock it since it was a freebie car). Learning to parallel park this car is a challenge, but I'm up for it, given I've gotten the appropriate mix of sleep and caffeine in my system.

Trick or Treat

Owen's favorite treat of Halloween 2006, a glow stick he found on the sidewalk. Oona is so entranced by her big brother, he can do no wrong in her eyes.


Oona, the ultimate lovebug


Owen my happy little dragon, even though he was a little unhappy returning from trick or treating with Dad because everyone kept saying what a cute dinosaur he was.


My minions run off to gather candy for me. Just kidding, Oona stayed in because it was cold and rainy. I'm kidding about the minon part too, I'm the subordinate of the house, except when it comes to dessert : )

Hydrangeas

Here are some close ups hydrangeas from one bush in the corner of our front yard. I can't believe how much variety in color there was on one bush. Unfortunately the other two hydrangea bushes didn't bloom at all. I think I didn't prune them properly, but that didn't seem to have any adverse effect on this bush. Oh well, maybe next year for the other two.

Oona, the burgeoning fashionista

Here's Oona in her new snowsuit, courtesy of her Grandma Cat, which I absolutely love. It's so bright and happy, just like her. And it's Hanna Andersson, one of Oona's pricier pieces of clothing - so it better last forever and get a good price when I sell it a couple years from now. She's using a wipe on the dirty old hand me down chair - can't say I blame her but a fire torch might be more useful on that crappy piece of furniture. I should be thankful that my in-laws gave us the chair and sofa, they were Toby's Nanny and Pappy's and we got the furniture after they died. The sofa and chair are very comfy, it's a big plus to have a sofa that Toby can actually lie down on without his feet hanging off of one end. It's just that they are so ugly, and not even ugly in a cool way just plain godawful ugliness.


Uh oh, there's Oona going into her favorite cupboard. The one that contains the bunch of yummy Belgian chocolate we got from Toby's host parents when they visited a couple weeks back, of which the supply has rapidly dwindled thanks to yours truly. I just love this little skirt that I got Oona at H&M. I think the cats with balloons on their tails is so kitschy and I love the bright colors, this seems to be a theme with me. I bought her another top that matches the skirt but it's even louder color wise; purple & pink stripes with an orange, pink, purple and white heart on it. I even bought orange, purple & pink striped tights to go with the outfit but I think she might meet the color saturation limit with all 3 articles of clothing on at the same time. Who knows? I know she doesn't look too hip in this but it's a comfy outfit and my Grandma loves to see Oona in the skirt, which looks a bit like a fifties poodle skirt. Oh this shot also gives me yet another thing to complain about in our house - don't you just love how the veneer on the side of the cabinet is a totally different color than the cabinet itself?! In our kitchen there are two cabinets with veneers too dark and this too light veneer. I don't know how the previous tenants didn't notice this but then I reflect back on all the amenities they brought to this home - the twister sized polka dots painted on the kitchen walls and the lovely cloud vanity in our upstairs bathroom. I guess I should be thankful they weren't more industrious with respect to home renovations.

List of books I'd love to read, once I have time

1. A million Little Pieces by James Frey - So much controversy! A 'memoir' that a recovering addict wrote. I'm not offended or surprised that the guy exaggerates or lies in certain instances. I think that's par for the course with a former addict in recovery. I know Oprah was embarrassed by this one and had to shame him publicly on TV which I think is rather petty. It's not like he was writing for the NY Times or like he lied about weapons of mass destruction to America. How many people in the government lie to us on a daily basis - and I'd say those lies are more like to have detrimental consequences than James Frey's memoir. Let's give this poor guy a break. See how compelling this book is and I haven't even read it yet?!

2. Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs - awesome title, although I'm more of a 'walking with erasers' girl. need to read this before seeing the movie, shouldn't be too hard since having kids I catch every movie I want to see once it's out on DVD

3. Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie- provocative but I'm going to need to be very alert and not in my fuzzy mother-induced brain mush mode which I seem to have been in since, oh I guess since Owen was born four years ago. Maybe I'll read it after taking smart pills, saw some article in Scientific American about some such pills - imagine?!

4. Any/all of Dickens and Dostoevsky - would probably have to be incarcerated in order to get around to these two. But I do feel like something is missing in my life having not read either of them

5. anything by William Faulkner - see #3 about needing smart pills before reading

6. Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl - this girl is supposed to be the new hot young thing in literature

7. White Teeth and On Beauty by Zadie Smith - sigh, another precocious, attractive, successful author

8. Devil in the White City by Erik Larson - murder? magic? madness? I should be running out the door to buy this one

9. Atonement & Saturday by Ian McEwan - love his early works that I've read

10. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathon Safran Foer - heard good things about this spry young author too, God I'm starting to sound like my Grandma

11. And finally, Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts which I bought my husband years ago and which he really enjoyed but when will I find time to read a 936 page book. I'd have to go on a major crime spree that gives me ten years in one of those 'genteel' prisons in order to get around to this one as well as those written by Dostoevsky and Dickens

sleep deprivation inebriation

I'm so overwhelmingly exhausted with watching two children, doing the domestic stuff attached to being a stay at home Mom, while trying to make jewelry for an upcoming craft show I'm in and visit my Grandmother a few times a week. I don't know how I'm able to still be semi-literate at this point. And my son wants a new fish and cat since our fish Orca died a couple months ago, our neighbors dog and hermit crab (named crabby owen in honor of my son) died the same day as Orca. Poor Lily held on a few more weeks and then she died too. I just don't think I can handle a new cat and fish, since I will be handling cleaning and feeding these two, until after my Grandmother passes. Until I'm well rested I think I've reached nuture overload. Sad to say that the only times I've gotten a great amount of sleep have been the two times I went to the ER for mysterious stomach pain and vomiting. The residents would look at me baffled and somewhat annoyed that none of the medications to curb vomiting helped me. Like it's all a sick ploy for attention on my part. But when they'd notice how much pain I was in when these awful pains gripped my belly, like someone was stabbing me with a knife made of acid, they gave me Demerol. YUM! That demerol would let me drop off into a blissful sleep where I couldn't feel the pain anymore. And both times I got to stay in the hospital for an additional day for testing, which wasn't so fun, but I managed to cram a ton of sleep into those 36 hours. And they never did figure out what was wrong with me. I guess that's my poor person's version of a get away spa.

Grand Opening!

Here's Oona rocking a Carol Brady look. All that's missing is a shag hairstyle but poor Oona is a bit challenged in the hair department, like her Mom that way. At this point in Oona's development it's all about stretch pants. She received a pair of jeans for her 1st birthday which I had to return they dug into her belly so horribly. I figure she has a lifetime to try and squeeze herself into too tight jeans if she wants, at this stage in her young life it should be about comfort.

My first official post, how monumental! My Grandmother moved to Pittsburgh last week. My Mother came to the tough decision to move her closer to family, that would be me, so that I can visit her a few times a week to check on her and make sure she's doing okay. I say this decision was difficult because she was met with much resistance on the part of her two sisters and feels that her relationships with them will never be the same as a result. It's sad really because she was only trying to do what was best for her Mother and I can't really understand her sisters objections - don't they want their Mom to be visited by a family member 2 to 3 times a week rather than 4 times a month? Isn't it beneficial to have someone 15 minutes away rather than a plane flight away? My grandmother is 91 and since Grandpa died back in March she's been hasn't been doing so well. She gets very lonely and is having problems with dementia - she took a test which said her results would qualify as a positive diagnosis of Alzhiemer's except for the fact that she's older than 99.9% of the test subjects so her results aren't as clear cut. I think that given her age she's doing remarkably well. She does repeat herself a lot asking how old my children are or what is my husband's name but I don't mind telling her again and again - being a Mom to a 4 year old and 1 year old I'm used to repeating myself a lot. The difficult thing I come across is not knowing what to say or ask of Grandma and the others at this assisted living facility that specializes in dementia and Alzhiemer's. I went to visit her last night for their Oktoberfest party and I was going to ask the lady next to my Grandmother how long she's been at Sunrise but then thought better of it as my Grandmother moved in last Wednesday and already thinks she's been there 3 or 4 months. My Grandmother, such a formal proper lady, has become obsessed over her urinary incontinence due to a prolapsed bladder. It's something she talks about constantly and she insists on wearing pantyliners rather than resorting to Poise pads or, God forbid, Depends diapers. When I came into her room yesterday she had used a pantyliner to stick up a note (rather ingenious really) on her closet asking the staff to 'please not remove any clothing from this closet for laundering'. I have to hand it to her, she didn't have any tape in her room so it was a good way to post the note but I think of how proper and modest my grandmother used to be - she'd be mortified at anyone even seeing her pantyliner much less having it taped on her closet. Oh well, I know it was worth it moving her here just to see the smile on her face when she sees Oona & Owen. Everybody at Sunrise gets so elated when they see children. And to think the place my aunts were going to put Grandma in would have isolated her from family the first month and asked that family visits be kept to a minimum - it's complete quackery. Alright time to step off my gerontology soapbox and get my son from Pre-k.