I have no qualms in telling you that I photoshop the hell out of most of my pictures, at least when the photo calls for it and I allow myself this wonderful method of procrastination (which is what I'm doing because there is a baseball game on when I'm supposed to be watching House, why? it's not even the Pirates, so I don't know why a new episode of House got preempted. Anyhoodle, up top is a new banner for fall pending any better shots I might take when we go to get pumpkins this weekend. I love this tree in Highland Park, the thing is in my mind's eye I'm able to block out the surrounding tress and focus on the beauty of this one, not so easy even with photoshop. And I'm totally annoyed that the upper left hand corner is burnt out.


The biggest reason I photoshop is to try and recapture the light in my photos, it never looks like it does to my eye, try as I might fiddling with the various modes on my camera. On fall days like today the leaves almost glow, the way they're lit by the sun and I wanted to show that but can't do it justice. My absolute favorite light play in fall is when it's grey and rainy but the leaves look lit, amazing but I've never come close to recreating that effect.


Mais non. Oona, my breathen, told me that she doesn't like fall, the horror. On the way to Ikea yesterday, when I was pointing out the amazing colors of the trees by the side of the road she let out this bombshell, in a deep, well for a four year old deep, foreboding voice. She had her arms crossed over her chest and said that she didn't like fall; she doesn't like the leaves off the trees and the punched leaves (the brown ones) which, she says, look like they've been bruised.

name the song

you'll never watch your life slide out of view,
and dance and drink and screw,
because there's nothing else to do.

Oh my God, they just summed up my twenties - kidding.

hint: it's on my ipod shuffle so it's a song that is good for dancing/exercising to.
No googling to get the answer!

Personal record for posts in one night, I'm just a blogging fool. Actually I'm procrastinating from doing any home renovation projects that beckon; my bare windows, the stripped doors to hang, the paint waiting to be put on walls & trim. Not tonight. I was daydreaming, thinking that I'm going to get pumpkins next weekend with Toby & the kids, we can't go this one because Toby has to go out of town for work on Sunday. Anyhoo I was thought maybe I should wear something like this. How much flipping therapy do think this poor child will need having a trollop like this for a mother. The thing is, take out those implants, bring her hair back to a natural shade, scrape off 90% of the makeup and put her in sneakers & for God's sake an actual top and she'd probably look pretty, at the very least appropriate for pumpkin picking. Oh but this is Hollywood pumpkin picking, what am I thinking, I guess heels and stripper tops are de rigueur. In these photos this woman looks terrifying and I wonder what sort of psychiatric disorder she sufffers from to need attention from paparazzi that badly, my guess is narcissistic personality disorder. I used to poke fun at the Left Behind series of books Toby's Mom, Aunt & cousin read, never to their faces, but I found the whole series, well funny, especially when the video game of the Left Behind series was spoofed on the Daily Show (which I've spent the past hour trying to get a link to but it's been removed from everywhere). But looking at magazines in the checkout at the grocery and the crap on tv, I'm wondering if the rapture has already occurred .

sibling rivalry

Being an only child I really feel ill equipped to deal with some of the routine struggles that occur daily with children. The constant fights and jockeying for my attention, then the tears when I show I don't love them as much as the other. I don't know how to handle it, brush it off? ignore it? I usually wind up explaining, to Owen, that he should be nicer to Oona because she basically worships him and will do pretty much anything he wants to do, she's like the ultimate playmate for him. But he frequently can't be bothered to play with the likes of her, especially in my presence, or God forbid, if I ask him to try and get along with her. Are most first borns the hothouse flower of the family? I'm sure I'm to blame having fussed over him too much, pruned him into this high maintenance despot who whines his every command. But Oona is like those weedy flowers that break concrete. Owen can tease, taunt, pick, and hit but if Oona wants she can easily overthrow him.

I can't read this book and I was so looking forward to it coming out. Lorrie Moore hasn't written a book in eleven years, my hopes were unbelievably high, but I just can't do it. I'm on page 50 and it feels forced to me. I want to like it, really I do, but my head and heart just aren't caught up in the story. I feel like I've let Lorrie Moore down or she's let me down, are we breaking up as a reading couple or just going through some tough times. I'm having trouble reading much of anything lately. I am way too scattered. I just can't focus enough for it. The home renovations, my Grandma, my separation, the economy, my finances . I just try to stay busy until I go to sleep and then I wake up and do it all again. I miss books. Michael Chabon has a new collection of essays out that I'm dying to read, if my mind was on 'reader' mode. I start worrying about lead paint exposure or maybe I have ADD, but I think it's something much more pedestrian, stress.

happy october

It's my favorite month! So I give you this link of Terry Gross interviewing Michael Chabon, another man who makes me all gooey inside. Okay, but this is not the most flattering picture of him, he looks sort of jaundiced or the orange saturation on the photo has got to be calmed down. Honestly though, if you listen to his interview what's not to love; he's bright, funny, engaging and also so kind. Needless to say I'm a total fan. So my dream man is a little bit Michael Chabon, and a little bit Atul Gawande, couple bits of Tim Roth, Hugh Laurie and Gary Oldman, with a dash of Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart and Rick Gervais, oh, and a sprinkle of Nick Drake on top, the non suicidal part please. More is up but I'm scattered right now. I cleaned another house yesterday and went through another vacuum bag, man I'm just working the dust out of every nook and cranny. My back has been acting up since yesterday morning, when Oona threw a fit and I then had to lug the 22 pound vacuum a 1/4 acre to the house I was cleaning. The people are so nice though and the house is amazing. It's the perfect job for a compulsive interior decor voyeur. When I lived in Park Slope how I loved to take evening walks and look at the homes through the windows. The real irony with my recent foray into housecleaning is that my own home looks beyond bad, there is crap piled up on every available flat surface on the first floor. But I've got two dear friends from out of state coming to visit this weekend, I'm so excited I'm like Hammy on caffeine, so I've got to start cleaning up soon. But not tonight I'm beat.

show don't tell

The place I cleaned yesterday was really dusty. How dusty was it? Well let's just say I started with an empty vacuum bag.


And this is what I ended up with.


Yes, I did exceed the maximum fill line. I had to vacuum the dust off my brush attachment when it would clog with dust, which happened at least a dozen times. Thank God I got my vacuum fixed at Sweeper World (I highly recommend the store for locals) last week, it was ready for anything!

keeping it real

Okay Kristi because you were so complimentary in my last post I immediately was chagrined because I totally retouched myself before putting the picture up. I got rid of a lot of hyperpigmentation on my cheek and lightened the darkness and boney hollow look around my eye. So here's the unretouched version, the look the same small but if you click on them when they're enlarged there's a big difference. The healing brush in PhotoShop is amazing! I want a healing brush for my life. Maybe that could be my power if I was a superhero, Owen and I talk about this a lot, what power we would want. Whenever I come into some money, be it powerball or charity, I'm running to the dermatologist for Fraxel and I'm getting these shoes in olive. Even in my wildest dreams I have to be practical with a 2 3/4" wedge heel because I know I can't do anything higher.

I mentioned to Kristi in a comment that I want to look like one of these Garnet Hill fantasy moms, on the left here. Whenever I get the Garnet Hill catalog I'm so excited but at the same time I know I'll be so disappointed. Margot Kidder's daughter wrote an article in Vogue a couple months ago and one line stayed with me. Comparison is lethal to contentment. Are there Moms who don't compare themselves to others constantly? I mean aside from Angelina Jolie? On another note, catalogs where kids are props to women's fashion sort of crack me up in their creepiness. I like to imagine the model storming off to swig a red bull & chain smoke after the picture was taken.

But, I seriously covet so many of the clothes in Garnet Hill and Boden, where I found this cheeky monkey, in her green beret and cute polka dot scarf. Is she going to let her hubby take care of the kids while she stands there and strikes a skinny ass pose. How can you give birth to two children and have hips that narrow?! What Mom would honestly look that serene and well rested without medication involved. And the whole family is so matchy matchy. I don't know, I think Boden might be a little too colorful for me. I like the stuff for girls over the stuff for women.

But, I do think Boden wins for creepiest kid as prop award. They seem to favor cropping their faces off with the background. Was half of a young boy's face really necessary to sell this henley? What do you think is going on here? No, Jasper. Mummy has had enough of the playdates and piano lessons and soccer and for fuck's sake chess club?! It's my turn now and I'm going on this hayride solo, well except for the flask of gin I've got tucked in my hot pink pants! Just be a dear Jasper and let Mummy have her moment.

growing pains

Oona turned four yesterday. We had a party at my house and my body is still trying to recover from it. Toby's family came over, like they did for Owen's party too, and let's just say I wind up feeling incredibly ill at ease in my own home. Add to that a bunch of kids screaming and tearing up my son's room, I tried to prep the room before the party, removing curtains and curtain rods (one was ripped out of the wall at a New Year's party) taking clothes out of the closet, because there is no door to the closet and I didn't want clothes all over the place. But they wound up ripping the sheets off the bed and taking the mattress off the boxspring? This is one of the many times when I just feel out of place. I really like all the parents and their children but I seem to be the only one who has a problem with this, and it's so lonely!

Oona acted like a typical, newly minted four year old; on a roller coaster of loud excitement, testing the bounds of bossiness and devolving to tears over minor transgressions, for the most part on my behalf, in trying to get her to behave, crazy Mom that I am. The past two weeks she has been uninviting Owen and I from her party (originally we were going to have it at Toby's) and Owen was ready for us to stay home together, cunning boy he's always looking for a time with Toby or I just to himself. My GI system has been a wreck today. Owen was a little upset that I had to cancel our plans to go see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs but I've spent the day running to the bathroom. Owen was kind enough to ask how my diarrhea was doing while we were at Panera, I said he didn't want to talk about that too loudly at a place that sells food but it was okay at the point, thanks for asking.

Oona got a lot of great creative presents that I had fun with once Oona, and then Owen tired of them. We colored a purse for Oona and painted a tea set today. Oona took this picture of me putting her Madeline paper doll together, I like how my hall looks in the background, it's still not done yet.

Me and the kids after the party. It's nice that I really tried to make myself presentable for the big day. I ran around in my pj's cleaning for the party, changed and stuck a bobby pin in my hair and this is me bobby pinless before cleaning up after the party. I called back the brownie man and told him I wouldn't be cleaning his place, that I was going to stay local. He sounded put out. I wish I had an alternative, insensitive House type self that could say 'Bake your own f*cking brownies!'

That House - Id would be helpful in so many situations. They put my Grandma on Levaquin, an antibiotic used to treat life-threatening infections because God knows we can't have the 94 year old woman on hospice for the past year die?! This is something that my Mom gets annoyed with me about. The whole situation is awkward because she's the POA and I'm the future nurse who sees Grandma most often and, being curious and questioning things constantly, I find myself at odds with what's going on with her care. Like... why give someone on hospice antibiotics? My Mom won't question it, just thinks 'they' know best and gets snippy with me saying it would be cruel to just kill her, while sort of implying those are my intentions. She has said outright You can't just kill her Kim. And then I feel mad and guilty and bad. I thought the whole mission behind hospice is comfort when a person is dying. My Grandma has had at least 4 rounds of antibiotics since being on hospice and it seems more like aggressive treatment to keep a dying person alive. She has to die somehow. I'd like it to be comfortably and not this drawn out piece by piece tragedy. I start thinking a lot of this treatment might be more about money than what would be best for my Grandmother, which at this point I feel is to let her go. She's between this life and the next. She's so tired, she always says that, but she'll never complain about hurting (I think that would be unseemly in her mind) and she spends a lot of time living in the past, the streets of her youth and family that were important to her when she was young. I don't know if there's a God or a heaven after this life but when I hear her I just want her to join the life she's talking about; where her Mom and my Grandpa are, she wants to join them, she keeps saying her room isn't where she lives and she's waiting for them (her dead relatives/loved ones) to get her. There's a little booklet hospice gives out to family when a loved one is first put on hospice, it talks about the natural part of the dying process. One thing it stresses is that those close to death lose interest in food and stop eating and that it is not cruel for a person to starve in this way. That it is crueler to force feed a person ready to die. But where my Grandma is they do everything but tube feed a person. They have mechanized meals (i.e. mush) that care managers will spoon feed the more severe patients. They'll give my Grandmother Boost drinks and energy bars between meals and she'll say she's not hungry but you get a polite person with dementia and they'll fold and eat what you put in front of them pretty quickly. It creates a big strain with my Mom and I. It makes me very very mad about the treatment of the elderly, in general, with dementia issues, specifically. I get mad enough to want to get a master's in public health after getting my nursing degree so I can figure out a way to design a humane assisted living facility that will keep the patient's needs paramount over money. I'm ready to email Dr. Gawande and have him present my argument in a much more palatable, meaning intelligent, articulate, non-person-going-postal, way.

i love destruction

It just doesn't get more boysy than this interesting picture that Owen drew in the care center while I was at the gym. He really is a sensitive soul, last night we went out for sushi dinner with Toby, since he's been traveling for work an unable to see the kids during the week. Owen started crying in the middle of dinner but he wouldn't tell us what about. Later he told me it was because he was thinking how great everything was and then he started thinking about dying. We got some ice cream (my mainstay, a three scoop sundae of chocolate chip, mint chocolate chip and coffee ice cream with hot fudge, dry malt and whipped cream, so wrong yet so right) and as I was pulling out into the street I let out a monstrous burp. Oona and Owen started laughing really hard for a long time and then Owen started bawling because he was laughing so much he thought he might throw up. He spent the rest of the ride alternately laughing and crying when he started to laugh. It's sort of odd to feel bad for him because he's so much like me and then there's Oona who is the sweetest little thing but totally ready to take on the world. I don't worry about her nearly as much. Owen's the people pleaser, Oona wants people to please her. She's not nasty, she just knows what she wants and is definitely going to get it the way she looks at people with her large brown eyes and demure cat swallowed the canary smile. I was going to start reading Generation Kill but I can barely read these days my mind is so tangled so I bought Lorrie Moore's latest as a treat, if there's anything I'm dying to read it's that. We'll see if I can calm myself enough to focus.

at your service

Well I've decided to market my borderline OCD ways when it comes to cleaning and branch out into cleaning peoples houses for money. I just tackled my first house today, although it was more like it tackling me. The problem with being extra fastidious is that I don't know when to stop. I've got to learn how to triage the situation because I could seriously have spent five hours just cleaning the bathrooms. Hexagonal floor tile, which I love, but the grout can get really dirty and it was all I could do not to run home and get something to remedy the situation. Instead I said that I'd be able to do that as a special job if the woman liked my work and would like that done some day. It's a lovely house I cleaned but man is that house big! Enormous with a lot of dust catchers and wicker (which is a major dust catcher). I also did the stuff most people probably overlook, I'm thinking, like clean the baseboards and behind the massive tv on the third floor which was dust bunny central. I was there five and half hours and still could have cleaned more, oh probably 3 hours more. I looked awful by the end of it because my pants are a size too large and after wearing them and doing a lot of stuff they stretch out to two sizes too large. So I was constantly hiking up my pants. Meanwhile, I wore a tank top (with a cardigan but that got tossed off five minutes into the job) that stretched out and started hanging precipitously low, like I was the Cricket (strip joint two neighborhoods over from me) version of a maid. She gave me a ten dollar tip and it sounded like she wants me to come back in three weeks. If I can get enough of these where I've got one or two each week I'd be doing pretty well. But I met with a potential client this morning, this man lives in a suburb further out from me. He chain smokes and he has his Dad living there, who also chain smokes - Dad mentioned that the place needs a woman's touch. He's wanting a lot of cleaning done, plus laundry and he mentioned that his daughter, who used to do the cleaning, would bake brownies for him and that a neighbor did that as well when she cleaned for him. I was thinking, don't make me have to bake on top of this. Then he mentioned that my hourly wage was on the high side but maybe we could work something out. Hmmmm. Oh and the house is very dusty (two heavy smokers will do that) with dust catchers galore. At one point he asked if his home smelled like old age, because of his father. I said no it just smelled like smoke to me. I don't know if I can do that one regularly, it's seriously so smoky I feel like I could develop emphysema just cleaning the place. We'll see how bad the deep cleaning is. I'm wondering if I should put a sign up at the gym and branch out into the Fox Chapel homes, I'd love to see the inside of some of those places, but I'm thinking they probably have salaried cleaning help. Maybe I should watch Friends with Money and Gosford Park this weekend to get into the spirit of things.

fatigue

Being tired is something I've been complaining about to doctors for I don't know how long. A long, long time it seems. And after reading The Itch last week it made me wonder if it might be my perception about tiredness that's making me tired, which also makes me wonder if people who look physically tired complain more about fatigue then those that naturally look bright eyed and bushy-tailed, and do I look tired? But then I look at the things going on in my life, which seems to resemble a bag of popcorn thrown up in the air, and then I think, well, maybe I have a right to be a bit tired. I mean I'll joke about my home renovations being ADD inspired but seriously, my half bath is still gutted (since April), I'm still in the middle of stripping the doors, did the baseboards and door frames of the hallway on the second floor and am now contemplating the third floor, still need to touch up hallway paint and trim and am toying with the idea of doing venetian plaster to soften the blue (Brittany blue is lovely but looks very BLUE at night). Let's see, thinking of venetian plaster in Oona's room and if that works my bedroom and Owen's bedroom too (it's supposed to be very forgiving to old, imperfect plaster walls so if I can hack it I'll probably venetian plaster everything). Bought all new gutters/downspouts and painted them for the roofers/brickpointers to hang tomorrow. Um, I stripped the window frame on the back porch window and started the front window, which is going to be tricky with the dentil molding between the main window and the transom. Have yet to finish the front porch, I need to patch the concrete in areas where it's cracked or there are holes, there are many, and then seal it with something (not paint!) to withstand the weather. I thought I might wallpaper the small room on the third floor to see how difficult it is since I'm thinking of the wallpaper above for the ceilings in the 1st and 2nd floor hallways and then adding crown molding. Plus, don't even get me started on the visions for the floors, kitchen and two bathrooms. This must be some form of something psychiatric and pathological. I'm also thinking of making the kids new bedspreads and window treatments and I still need to study for that damn clep and just thinking of this all makes me want to sleep for two days or get my hands on some sort of amphetamine and lately I feel this way all the time. I feel like taffy being pulled in multiple different directions and I can't even think straight. I'll post pictures when stuff is finished, if it ever will be finished with my exacting standards. I'm trying to get part time work cleaning houses, I got my first client today. She talked about wanting to clean the white haxagonal tiles in her bathroom and I almost got giddy saying I'd be happy to take on extra jobs like that. Seriously, that is so wrong, but the woman was very nice and decided to still go with me.

let's keep the human in humane

Does anyone else find the term illegal alien completely dehumanizing? And why are we making that issue so divisive with the whole health care reform debate, it seems like a bit of a red herring? And when did America lose its manners? Shouting 'you lie' at the president during his address is inexcusable but so is the annoying, republican playing on his blackberry while Obama is speaking.

memory care

I am really getting close to drop kicking the nurses at the facility my Grandma is at. To say they are patronizing would be doing a disservice to the snooty help that looks down their noses at you (if you're like me, and arrive in baggy jeans, no makeup and barely managed bedhead) at fancy pants stores to browse. I went to visit Grandma today and found her in the wrong wing trying to find her room and determined to get enough money for bus fare. She would not stop talking about Qunicey Avenue in Kearney, where she grew up, and that she just got back from church and Grandpa went to the funeral of a friend who'd died but she couldn't attend and she had to go to her grandparents house and she was very upset that she couldn't remember the name of a certain street. She got on a tear about this, two of the care managers said she'd been trying to get bus money all morning, which is not common behavior for her. Yeah, she has dementia and gets very forgetful but she usually just keeps asking where I live, how far away it is from her, or the ages of my children. I felt she was getting agitated because she wouldn't stop with the talk about Kearney and bus money and she kept trying to get me to give her another quarter for the bus ride. One of the care managers came in and, I guess, tried to placate her by lying to her but I don't feel right doing that. She has dementia but that doesn't mean she's dumb. She usually can see the logical fallacies in what the people who try to calm her down by lying are saying. I tried to explain again and again that we were too far away from Kearney and that it would cost a lot more than .50 to take the bus there. I also kept mentioning, in as gentle a manner as possible, that the people she wanted to see were no longer living. But it makes me feel so bad for her, I don't know if that's the right tactic to take, if it's hurtful to keep telling her these people in her family are dead, but I just can't lie to her, it seems condescending and disrespectful. Okay, I will lie when she wants a drink, which I'd give her but she can't have it with her medications, and tell her that the ginger ale/apple juice/grape juice she's drinking is wine. That will calm her down and she never questioned it. But we only used to do that when she came to my house or went out to dinner with us. It didn't seem like a lie that can need others piled on to perpetuate the myth.

I asked one of the care managers to call the nurse because my Grandma, who's had anxiety forever and has been taking ativan for at least 30 years, has a prn (she can get another ativan when necessary) and since I see her regularly and she isn't like this regularly I thought the situation might warrant it. The nurse comes in after awhile and I'm immediately thinking 'oh no' because the first impression did not go over well. There is one nurse on staff there who is excellent, she's attentive, empathetic, not full of herself, basically everything you want in a nurse. This nurse blew in looking more like she'd be one of those scornful women looking down her nose at me at Barneys. I explained that my Grandma wasn't usually like this and she seemed agitated. Her response was that I should redirect her by taking her to town hall for the activities that were going on there. I told her that my Grandma is agoraphobic, for the most part she won't do public stuff, aside from meals, unless she's with a family member. So she doesn't really redirect by being put in social situations. So then the nurse gives this smarmy smile and sits down across from my Grandma and starts lying to her; saying that we can't go to Kearney today the buses, trolleys, what have you, none of them are working and I just sit there hating myself for just sitting there. But even the lies won't steer Grandma off of needing the bus fare to go to Kearney so the nurse goes on about how my Grandma's family loves her very much and she doesn't ever have to worry about money while she's living there. The rates in benign neglect are going up to close to $200 a day, mind you. The nurse then tells me it's a part of the disease and that giving her another ativan won't cure her, that she's only to have that when she seems agitated. My Grandma isn't an Alzheimer's patient that, when she's agitated, is going to get violent or pull down her pants or start screaming obscenities, all of which I've seen happen before. I told her that I'm aware that it won't cure her and tried to explain what I thought of the situation; that .5 ativan twice a day for 30 plus years could make it sort of ineffective when she gets extremely anxious and won't stop wanting to get that bus to Kearney and keeps wringing her thin hands and hanging her head on her chest with a sigh when they tell her she is unable to get the bus today. She was exhausted but she couldn't give up her thought of needing to get to Kearney and I just thought that the extra ativan might be enough of a push to get her in bed to nap before lunch, which she usually does anyway. My Grandma is so flipping polite, even in her exhausted, anxious state she wouldn't think of letting me help her into her bed to rest because then where would I sleep? And this is when nurses and other staff will say they have a room right down the hall from her. Seriously, I can wind up leaving there feeling like I have Alzheimer's.

Something that I've been told before by nurses in the field of dementia care is that it's often harder on the family than the patient and that the patient won't remember what's happened, those episodes of extreme agitation or anxiety but I don't know that I believe that. How can they know that for sure, it would seem to me those episodes could become a palimpsest, that she doesn't quite know what happened but a trace of dread remains. I hate seeing her so upset like that.