creative expression

What was I thinking, handing a 2 1/2 year old markers to color with while I tried to make dinner? She and Owen seemed to be doing so well and they were right in the dining room, all I had to do was lift up my head to see them. Guess I was to intent on peeling my yam and Oona was too quick with the body art. Owen said 'Oohh Mom, Oona's drawing on herself.' in that self-satisfied way that siblings have when they know there about to get their sister/brother in trouble.

As evidenced by the impromptu photo session, I wasn't all that mad. Oona is such a ham, in the one pic I asked her to look sad and she emoted to the hilt for me. Thankfully the markers came off easily with a bath, my kids live for tubby time. I might have been a bit more concerned if she'd drawn on her face with a Sharpie, that would take some serious scrubbing to get off and, even then, she'd probably have marker remnants for a few days.

Today I'm running on 3 hours sleep, all the beautiful spring blooms have caused my throat to itch uncontrollably so I spent a good portion of last night clearing my throat. Can't wait to see what mischief Oona gets into today.

Deep thoughts when taking this picture, I need a new pair of dansko's. I've worn these puppies into the ground.

the farmhouse

Toby took Owen and one of his friends to the Science center on Saturday so Oona and I had a date at the farmhouse. It's a great playground for kids her age, much nicer than the park that's right near us which has a panic in needle park feel to it, there are no needles but plenty of addicts that hang out there. I have a hard time getting pictures of Oona as of late, since she frequently turns her head once I whip out the camera, but that gave this photo sort of a toddler homage to Christina's World feel to it.

Here Oona is really turning up the emotion. She looks like one of the old Holllywood stars swooning on a couch after being turned down by her lover. She's very demanding with me during playtime. Mommy play with me she'll say with a tone of, or else. She is very strong-willed, much more so than me. She loves going to this area under the jungle gym where there's a molded plastic cash register. She likes running a restaurant where she gives out ice cream and french fries to whoever comes to visit here. Then she insists on sleeping and will demand you lie down on the tiny bench and sleep with her, she hasn't demanded any of the other kids to sleep, just me, so far.

I'm positively swooning over the lovely blooms this spring (this isn't the best picture but you get the idea). Last year we had a late freeze and things weren't nearly as colorful so I'm like a kid in a candy store seeing all the lovely buds and blooms. The acidic green of the baby leaves on some trees I just love, such an amazing spring color. That, and when the grass comes back to life, a lovely, lush green. Living in a part of the country where everything is dead and grey for so long you can get positively giddy over the beauty of nature, although I also drank a pot of coffee today so the caffeine could be contributing to my giddiness as well.

yesterday's news

When I'm at the gym, acting like a gerbil on a wheel, except in my case it's a mom on the elliptical, I try to forget about my surroundings by listening to my ipod shuffle and reading, my multi-tasking distractions. I've read a lot of books on the elliptical, which I feel is sacrilegious in a way, but at the same time I think, well they really must be good books if I even exercise while reading them. Anyhow, to cut to the point, I haven't had a book worth reading on the elliptical lately and when that happens I turn to the spinner rack full of magazines that people donate, I bring most of mine once I'm done with them. I used to read all the women's and celebrity oriented rags until I got inundated with all the 'How I survived my ...' the ellipsis being either sex scandal, nude pics, time in rehab, stint in jail, breast implants or fill in the blank with something equally unsavory. How it makes me long for the days when I read about Robert Downey Jr. crawling into some child's bed like Goldilocks. I don't mean to kid about addiction but when Robert Downey Jr. was chasing his demons it was sad because the man has talent. These vapid, reality stars that will do anything to get noticed, would it really be a loss if one of them overdosed? It made me feel squeamish seeing all that exploitive crap on the covers of Health magazine or Self? I expect that from Star but the women's health oriented magazines? Although those magazines aren't really even health oriented anymore, filled with ads for Botox, Juvederm, Alli weight loss and artificial sweeteners. America is really at a cultural nadir.

So then I switched to not so recent issues of Time and Scientific American. Where else, but in a leading story on the chemistry of love, could I find out that scientists use the technical term nonverbal leakage for body language. I'm just dying for an opportunity to use that one. And now, most recently, I've been reading Toby's copies of The Economist because I want to keep my brain from turning to mush, getting older and being a stay at home mom seem to have caused a precipitous drop in my IQ. The Economist is an amazing magazine. I love reading articles like this on the science of religion, and feel that my time is much better spent reading stuff like last week's special report on mobility (how mobile communications affects us in such amazingly diverse ways) than the latest about Britney Spears. But the whole magazine is a bit denser than Time and now I'm starting to notice that I tend to get nauseous if I read too much on the elliptical. Ughhh, getting older sucks. Does this mean there are glasses in my future? Eight months until I'm forty and everything is starting to break down on me, not very encouraging.

Yes, the dishwashing liquid does smell that good. It's the main reason I buy it, well that and it's good for the environment. Frodo is the shadow behind the curtain. My countertops will never be clean as long as these two are around.

the plague

So... on Friday Oona rebounded from her stomach bug in the way only rambunctious, highly spirited children can. I tried to put her down for a nap around one, because surely she must have been tired with her frenetic morning of running all over the place. But within minutes of putting her down I hear slamming her door. I spent a good forty minutes running back and forth to her room to tell her to get in her bed and that she can't get out. I took her stuffed animals away, took a sizable piggy bank out of her pudgy hands, which she had climbed up her dresser to retrieve. I finally caved and set up a port a crib in our bedroom and put her in it thinking that would finally get her to sleep. I was upstairs working on the computer, Oona's cries had stopped after a couple minutes and I assumed she had drifted off to sleep, until I heard her saying she couldn't get the door open while she was playing with the doorknob. I ran downstairs and opened my bedroom to walk into a fog of baby powder. Oona resembled a toddler version of Rip Van Winkle, her hair white with powder. She emptied a full bottle throughout the room, it was on my quilt, in the port a crib, baby powder snow blanketed the alarm clock and everything else on my nightstand. I was so mad at first but quickly saw how funny it was, yet I couldn't laugh in front of her because, knowing Oona, she'd then start dousing stuff in baby powder regularly.

My Friday was exhausting. I took Owen and his friend to karate, Toby usually brings them but I needed a break from Oona for an hour. Although the stresses of watching Owen in karate did little to relax me. The class had broken into groups and this one boy could not stop moving, sticking his tongue out or making faces, grabbing the other kids in the group and trying to talk with them. I try not to be an crazed sports Mom, if Owen's acting up I wait until I catch his eye and then put a finger to my mouth to tell him to quiet down or point at the teacher in order to get him to focus on what's going on but it took all of Owen's concentration not to talk to this boy who's leaning over to stick his face in Owen's. I'm looking around, incredulous, wondering where the parent is, when I realized maybe the boy has autism or some other disorder and he can't control himself, then I felt awful for getting so riled up about it.

When we got home Toby told me that Oona had crawled onto his lap and fallen asleep, I guess all the activity of the day finally wore her out. She was in bed by 7:15.

In other news... my father's biopsy was inconclusive. He's scheduled for another bronchoscopy tomorrow and another lung biopsy in a few weeks. If those tests still come back inconclusive they'll need to do a more invasive surgery to open him up and determine just what the spot on his lung is. Given his lifestyle and recent weight loss it would be pretty remarkable if it wasn't cancer. The more difficult thing, which I've been loathe to write about because it's been so upsetting, is that my father is basically homeless once he's done with his course of antibiotics at the nursing center he's currently at. His sister doesn't want him to move back in with her, which I understand. I was hoping I might be able to get him on disability or social security but that doesn't seem likely. I feel very bad and guilty that I won't let him stay at our house but I can't, if I do I fear he'd be here for years and given his issues I just can't have him live with us. I'm willing to do whatever I can to get him set up in a transitional living program here, if I can find something like that where he can have a place to live and they can try and find a job for him. The hard thing is my Dad doesn't look like a homeless person and doesn't act like one either; he seems incredibly put together until you realize his financial situation and that he doesn't have a place to live. I'm also concerned he'll act elitist about going to a shelter or halfway house since he is a snob. This has been one of the most difficult months for me. I worry what my father's indigent status says about me and my family. I feel it reflects so horribly on who I am as a person and daughter.

waiting for the locusts

As I try to deal with everyday stresses of two kids under six, a Grandma with dementia, a husband that is overwhelmed with work and school stresses of his own, while awaiting the results of my Dad's biopsy, Oona gets the puke bug. I'm on load 4 of vomit laced laundry right now. She started up last night right before midnight. The perplexing thing is when she isn't actually throwing up she acts fine, almost better than normal, like vomiting energizes her and she's even more active than usual. Last night I kept wandering into her room every half hour when she'd cry, in order to tell her she could only have one stuffed animal, the rest were recovering in the washer, or she couldn't have a sippy cup of chocolate milk, no Owen's not getting up, it's the middle of the night and she needs to go back to sleep.

She seemed fine this morning and I gave her a not quite full sippy of water/plum juice and she took two bites of a plain donut. We took Owen to school, got the car washed (the robins had a field day on it) and came home. A friend stopped by to take Oona's crib for their newborn and Oona was bee-bopping between her room and Owen's when all of a sudden she's hurling all over herself and Owen's rug. After the third bath in 12 hours, the friend drove up a couple blocks to the Rite Aid to get some pedi-lyte for us, I put her in her brand new kitty cat pj's and she lay on the sofa watching My Neighbor Totoro, a great film that was loaned to us by a friend. I'm getting myself yet another cup of coffee in order to make it through the day when Oona comes wandering to the kitchen whimpering 'crib', which is never a good sign. I picked her up to hug her, bad idea with an upset stomach, and she puked on me, her pj's and the dining room floor. Time for bath number four.

I got her squeaky clean, again, and put her in her new big girl princess bed - which right now is just a matress on the floor, until I finish working on her antique bedframe. We bought pink sheets with white polka dots for the bed but they were covered in towels to keep them puke free. I was busy showering when I kept hearing her open and shut her bedroom door. This is what I feared about having her in a bed that isn't like a jail in some ways, that a taste of freedom would go to her head. She wanted me to get her books on the dresser, frog on the shelf above the dresser, and dog and pink cat too. I switched on to mean mommy mode and cleared her shelf and dresser, telling her she couldn't have the animals until she stays in her bed. Cruel but effective, she cried two minutes and has been asleep close to an hour now. It's amazing my kids came from the same gene pool. When we put Owen in his bed, at the same age, he might cry about having to go to bed but he never actually left the bed and wandered around the room, it was like an invisible fence was on the bed. He still won't get out of his bed, in order to go the bathroom or for a drink of water, without asking permission from Toby or I. Not so with Oona. I hope her stomach calms down soon, I'm going to run out of towels and sheets before long. But seriously, I hate to have my kids not feeling well, although she's pretty perky for a sick kid. Now it's a waiting game, wondering who in the family will be next and when my personal plague of locusts will arrive.

hillbillyville

My neighborhood is one in a state of flux and I can't figure out if it's up and coming or coming on down and out. Section 8 projects in surrounding Garfield and East Liberty were razed within the past few years and all these displaced people filtered to Morningside (my nieghborhood), Highland Park and Bloomfield (where we used to live, the little Italy of Pittsburgh). I know that within the past 4 years crime and drugs have increased in both Morningside and Bloomfield, but I also see a lot of young couple with kids moving to Morningside. So who knows which way the neighborhood's going to go. Right now it drives me crazy that the park right across the street from me is one where I don't feel comfortable taking my kids because of drugs, garbarge and skanky ass teenagers who sulk and won't move out of the way to let my kids play on the jungle gym, this makes me apoplectic and I fear I will one day be arrested for assaulting some 15 year old with too much attitude.

On friday someone drove into our retaining wall, they had to clear the curb and 4 feet of sidewalk to hit it, which broke numerous stone blocks and shifted the whole wall in front of our house (about 20 feet worth of wall) 4 inches forward. Needless to say they must have screwed up their car pretty badly but didn't bother to leave a note about damaging our property. That would be too much to ask. We live on a corner yet frequently can't park our car anywhere near our house, big pain in the ass with two kids. There are two rentals at the front and side of our home that our filled with hard partying disrespectful scum. The one rental contains some punk who drives a Ford f-150 with a confederate flag bumper sticker, holographic stickers of the nude woman in profile (classy) and, a recent and new favorite, 'imports are like tampons, every pussy needs one'. Somehow he is clueless about oil being imported, and the fact that he probably gets two miles to the gallon in his monster truck must make him the biggest pussy around. Lovely, huh?! Just talking about this stuff makes me so angry and I have to edit the post because I start cursing like a sailor.

breathe

I feel like I'm taking a lot of deep breaths lately. I got back from visiting my Dad Sunday afternoon and was completely wiped out from the weekend. I took Toby's new car (he just got a Chevy Malibu the day before, the union gives him a car allowance but he needed to get an American car that's, for the most part, manufactured in America - no easy task) and drove out by myself Saturday morning. We decided it would be easier for me to go by myself since the kids wouldn't have much to do in a hospital and it's not like a functional family where there's a house they could stay at. The ride out was fine and I stopped at my Aunt's apartment, where my Dad has been living with her for 5 1/2 years, in order to get my Dad's laundry to drop off at a cleaners.

I can't tell you how sad and small and dirty that one bedroom apartment was, the private room my Dad's been staying in at the hospital was larger than the apartment. I guess it's neurotic of me but when I see an unkempt place like that apartment it makes me want to clean the crap out of it, how can anyone feel good about themselves living in such filth? I'm not a chicken soup for the soul type of cook, I'm not nearly confident enough about my culinary skills, but when it comes to emotional stuff I go with what I know I do good, I can clean the shit out of a place. Unfortunately I didn't have the time to work my cleaning magic on the apartment because I wanted to spend the time with my Dad but the squalor of that apartment will pick at my head, torturing me over a missed decades worth of spring cleaning. My Dad looks very thin and sick, his skin hangs off of him and his hard living his caught up with his face in a very cruel way. He was happy to see me and delighted with the travel Scrabble and official Scrabble players dictionary I brought for him. He liked the books I brought him too but Scrabble was the big hit. We played throughout the afternoon and I left around seven when he started dozing off. He's feeling better from the antibiotics they're giving him, intravenously 4 times a day, but he's still easily fatigued and very weak. Today he went in for his lung biopsy and they should have the results in a couple days.

I feel so overwhelmed and ill prepared with how to help my Dad. He's gone from making six figure salaries during the 80s and 90s, when he bought bespoke clothing and didn't want for anything, to essentially being penniless, they've set him up with medicaid in order to put him in a nursing home for the next 3 weeks that he needs to take the iv antibiotics. What happens to him after that? I've left a message with the social worker at the hospital who set him up with a medicaid number and got him into the nursing home, I'm hoping she might be able to help answer some of my questions. I'd like to get him set up in an apartment down here where I can keep an eye on him but I can't pay his way yet he can't financially take care off himself. Even if he gets set up with disability through his social security I'd think it would be best if I was a power of attorney on his finances because due to some most likely deep-rooted psychiatric issue he can't take care of himself. But I'm not sure how feasible this all is since he lives in a different state right now so I don't know if I'll encounter roadblocks moving him to Pittsburgh. And if he does have lung cancer what do I do if he needs hospice, it's all up in the air until I learn more on Thursday. It's hard being an only child through this.

during the tough times I'd like my own pink stuffed monkey to lean on, buzz looks pretty content here

the liars' club

My Dad has long been a teller of tall tales, a bullshitter, master of everything, a braggart. A liar. I was taken in by his lies for way too long, I was pitifully naive. A guy I dated briefly in college saw right through him and wrote a short story (a good one too) about him and I still didn't see him for what he was. It's pathetic really. But once I finally realized just what my Dad was, after college and too many dinners of my Dad getting drunk and loud, pushing booze on me, I wasn't going to be fooled again. I became repulsed by people who deceive with exaggeration and self-promotion, like it makes me want flay them, or at the very least, call them out for being the phonies they are. It's breaks my heart that Dad was insecure enough about himself that he had to adopt this flimsy persona, where he really felt people might think better of him if he was the best at everything. It's so immature, but my Dad isn't dumb and I just wonder what made him hurt so profoundly at such a young age that he had to inure himself against, well life. I tend to be honest to a fault (I was a superintendent at an apartment building once and felt compelled to tell prospective tenants about the recent problem we'd had with flies that made the house look like we were going through the black plague) but it's not like insecurity has escaped me. I've lied too. Usually to spare someone's feelings, most often when my husband asks me what I've had for dinner and I don't want him to scowl at me for either skipping dinner or eating four donuts or some other horrible quantity of junk food and calling it a meal.

the remains of the day

This novel is so beautifully written and incredibly sad. Once I finished reading it I wasn't done, the feelings it brought up stayed with me for days. It's written very cleverly, told from the perspective of Stephens, one of England's last great butlers, a dying breed who takes a rare holiday at the urging of his new American employer. The story unfolds during Stephens travels through the English countryside, on a trip to visit the former housekeeper, Miss Kenton, with flashbacks of his heyday as the butler of Darlington Hall, when he believed that in serving a great man he was doing a greater service to the country. But history hasn't been kind to Lord Darlington, and as Stephens reflects on his past you see the doubts and moral uncertainties that have simmered below the perfectly polished surface that he has presented all these years. To see all that Stephens sacrificed personally in service to Lord Darlington, whose name has been tarnished with his political sympathies between World Wars I and II, is tragic. Stephens essentially gives up his life for his employer. Ishiguro writes of people placed in positions of submissiveness brilliantly, I reviewed his novel Never Let Me Go last year, which deals with a person victimized by circumstance in a different, creepier way. This is by far the stronger book out of the two I've read by Ishiguro. The unrealized love story and subtle slights put upon Stephens by his employer and Lord Darlington's associates is a bitter commentary on class in England during the first half of the twentieth century.