noted and blogged

It ain't all bitching and whining.

2011-11-29T12:04:00.000-05:00

This is the Bean's Thanksgiving art project. It's a turkey, and its feathers name things she's thankful for. She ran out of room so decided to go in a complete circle.

The Peanut's is harder to photograph - it's a paper chain with something she's thankful for written on each link. She included a lot of the same stuff her sister did (they worked on these "secretly" together in the Peanut's room the day before Thanksgiving), but with the chain format's limitless space she was able to add "hospitals, books, water, a bed to sleep in, trees, a nice teacher, [eye]glasses, a nice contrey, animals, love, a nice school, hollidays, a house, my stuft animals."

Why can't people leave people alone, part the nth

2011-11-27T09:39:00.000-05:00

I guess this is as good a place as any for my rant about how Black Friday is emblematic of everything wrong with American culture these days. It isn't enough now that stores have to open at 5:00 AM... now they start at midnight, or even the night of Thanksgiving. So people who work retail have to cut their family holiday short to accommodate our collective lust for competition to buy cheap crap. Yeah yeah, we're grateful, we gorged ourselves to prove it, now get the fuck out of our way or suffer the consequences. Pepper spray is the new elbow to the ribs.

I know that everyone who shops the day after Thanksgiving doesn't behave this way, and I guess I should be thankful that unlike last year, nobody was trampled to death. Still, the whole concept disgusts me. Pffft.

I have some shopping to do today myself, hopefully while Black Friday lovers are still sleeping it off. Not Christmas shopping, which I plan to do only very locally or online this year -- just for groceries. Yet, even with Thanksgiving still visible in the rearview mirror, I can expect to encounter the bells, the bells, the relentless bells.

So I printed out my little notes for the red kettles, politely explaining that my donations go elsewhere while the Salvation Army maintains its position that homosexual people should not only not be allowed to marry, but should be celibate.

Hopefully I won't forget which pocket holds which paper. Both my purposes will be amusingly defeated if the red kettle gets my shopping list, leaving me with a scrap of cheerfully expressed social activism to guide me through the grocery store.

a non-update

2011-11-27T06:44:00.000-05:00

Yes, I am still here, and no, I never did figure out what that ticking was.

November has been... intense. Memorial services for two terrific, accomplished, vibrant and beautiful women. My mother's stay in the hospital for hip replacement surgery and rehab, and my father's stay with us during some of that. A four-day conference of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. Continued construction on the house. Meetings, playdates, parent/teacher conferences, basketball practices, Tuesdays in the school art room, Thursdays in the school library.

Thanksgiving.

All worth writing about, but there is no uninterrupted time for that any more, unless I get up at 5:00 AM, which is how it happened today, but as great as it is to sit at my desk unobserved and undistracted, I could probably have made better use of staying asleep, which I would have if I could have.

Now I hear little feet on their way downstairs, so that's the end of unobserved and undistracted.

I hope your Thanksgivings were all lovely, or, outside the USA, that your November 24ths were just super.

I sense a nap in my near future.

The telltale... what, what, WHAT?

2011-10-26T00:34:00.000-04:00

I was just emptying the dishwasher, while waiting for the teapot to boil. Mounted on the wall to the right of my cooktop is a spice rack Mr. Sandyshoes made for me. On hooks at the bottom of it, I hang spatulas, etc. So I'm hanging up some of these utensils. The kettle whistles, I make my tea, and continue unloading clean dishes while it steeps. At some point I notice a faint ticking sound in the vicinity of the spice rack.

Tick.

What could it be? Who would care? It's barely perceptible.

Tick.

But it bothers me because I don't know what is doing it. I assume it is the spoon I see rocking back and forth on its hook a bit after I hung it up, and I go to steady the spoon.

Tick.

Not the spoon. The tick is coming from higher up, within the spice rack, somewhere between parsley and tarragon (yes, they're alphabetized. Yours aren't?).

Tick.

Maybe the change in humidity from opening the dishwasher just after it finished running is causing the wood of the spice rack to expand against the kitchen wall?

Tick.

I press on the spice rack and hold.

Tick.

Hm. That did seem like kind of a stretch. I've emptied that dishwasher hundreds of times and never noticed this before.

Tick.

The ticking is regular. I'm going to time it.

Tick. One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand,

tick.

Every four seconds. But what? From where?

Tick.

The pepper mill? I take out the pepper mill, hold it to my ear, feeling foolish now, but something is ticking. This is a question with an answer, and I want the answer, even if it's going to make me feel like a dope.

Tick.

Not the pepper mill. In the wall. I go around to the other side of the wall, which is my laundry room.

Tick.

It's even less perceptible here. Definitely on the spice rack side of the wall.

Tick.

Folks, I wish I had an end to this story. Something in my wall is still ticking. Every four seconds. Quietly, but distinctly, ticking.

I predict it will continue through tomorrow, and stop just as Mr. Sandyshoes gets home from his trip. There won't be any point in telling him about it, but I probably will. Uh-huh, he'll say. The spice rack is ticking. Sure thing. Don't worry baby, I'll get right on that.

4th grade homework is impossible

2011-10-20T10:17:00.000-04:00

The Bean's favorite subject is "science." Under that umbrella, her class spends time on various topics in turn. The current unit is about weather, the atmosphere, etc. So she brought home a study guide that has terms she wanted me to quiz her on (humidity, greenhouse effect, front, anemometer...) and questions she should be prepared to answer (what properties can be used to describe air masses? In which layer of the atmosphere does most weather occur?).

I scanned through the guide, making sure I knew everything she was supposed to learn, plus a little extra for discussions. It's cool -- I had forgotten all about the troposphere being called that. So far, so good.

The last bit of her assignment read "Please review the symbols of a weather map and [emphasis mine] be able to predict the weather." And I thought, whoa.

She didn't understand when I told her if she really mastered that last bit she could quit school. I guess some stuff's only funny to parents.

OK, maybe only to me.

This one goes to '11

2011-10-12T23:31:00.000-04:00

In amateur rock bands where individual egos trump balanced sound, often one musician will nudge up the volume on his amp, and in a few minutes another one will do it too, and not to be outdone a third pushes his over the volume of the others, leading the first one to realize he's not loudest any more and crank it up, etc., until everyone is at max volume and nobody can even stand to be in the same room anymore. You expect kids in garage bands to behave this way.

Same thing in Presidential primary elections. Florida moved up its primary more than a month, to January 31st (why?). South Carolina and Nevada had to follow suit (why?) and moved theirs to January 14. Iowa is having its caucus on January 3 (why?). New Hampshire's Secretary of State is now saying he'll move their primary into December 2011 if necessary to maintain first-in-the-nation status and comply with a NH state law that says theirs has to happen a full week before anyone else's (WHY?).

This is so flippin' stupid, and I haven't even gotten into the candidates, about whom humorist Andy Borowitz quips "there are people running for President I would not trust to park my car." Hm. Probably best I don't get into the candidates, except to say that Mitt Romney's inevitability train now appears to be leaving the station before the calendar year is even over.

This is so depressing I may forget to complain about the Christmas decorations already up in department stores.

That's gonna leave a mark

2011-10-11T23:07:00.000-04:00

Help! Police!

2011-10-09T23:14:00.000-04:00

Our town has a weekly newspaper. Like many local weeklies, ours includes selections from the week's police reports. These are always worth reading. Yes, there is sometimes news of real crime (thefts from unlocked cars, mostly) and traffic accidents, but more importantly, we have gems such as these:

A resident from North Shore Boulevard called police at 9:27 PM to report a squirrel in the house. Police contacted the animal control officer. The resident called police back an hour later to say that the squirrel was still in her home and had scratched her. Police suggested that she contact a private company specializing in ridding homes of wildlife.

and

A resident called police at 10:33 PM to report seeing four coyotes wearing dog tags walking in the area of Quaker Meetinghouse Road and Route 130. Police checked the area but did not see any animals. Police determined that the report was unfounded since coyotes do not wear dog tags.

Naturally, friends and family visiting from more cosmopolitan settings grab the local paper as soon as politely possible after arrival. You just never know if a "suspicious person" will turn out to be a Comcast employee, or if maybe a goose will be observed walking down Main Street at dawn, with or without dog tags.

in which kickball isn't just kickball

2011-09-30T23:01:00.000-04:00

The Peanut's 2nd grade teacher is the same terrific person the Bean had that year. We love this teacher. One of the wonderful things she does is to have the children keep a composition notebook in which they write a letter to their parents, and the parents write back on the next page, back and forth throughout the year. I loved my letters from the Bean. They captured her personality and school day moods differently than any other way we communicated, and gave me an avenue to be playful with her, when so much school day life is sucked up by just telling kids to do things/having grown-ups tell you to do things. I've tried to continue her notebook through 3rd grade (she refused) and 4th (I get an occasional note). Maybe we'll do it in pulses, but it's a line of communication I want to keep open. Sometimes a letter does what conversation cannot.

Anyway, this is today's letter from the Peanut, for those who know her and/or would be amused:

Dear Mommy,

I dissected my paere today and it had 5 seeds inside.

We are going to the book fair next Tusday at nine therty. Thank you! Finaly! Choclit cupcakes! I love you Mommy! OK. Bad news. I got another blister on the monkey bars.

I love you!

Peanut

They have been spending the week studying "seeds and how they travel"... hence the pear dissection. Walking to school, the Peanut has held a plastic bag at the ready, gathering whatever seed-related items she could find. Garden string bean, pine cone, seed pod from the iris, all went in the bag. She was so focused on seed hunting that she almost stepped in dog shit. I wish the dog owner had been carrying a plastic bag.

Y'know... occasionally, there will be some discussion on the town level about where/when dogs are allowed to be on various town-owned properties. I always feel for the many responsible dog owners who take care that nobody will likely step in their dog's poop. But all it takes is one pile of dog shit on the freakin' sidewalk to harden my heart and ensure my vote against allowing dogs anywhere. Too bad really. If we could trust people not to be assholes, what a better world this would be.

But I digress. Monkey bars! That Peanut has been a monkey bar fiend for a couple of years now. She spends every possible recess period practicing swinging from end to end and back, and frequently comes home with serious blisters on her palms. The kid won't stop until she bleeds. Then she cries, not just because it hurts, but because she has to take some days off. She has got it in her head that recess is boring, and that the only part of the playground that's any good is the monkey bars, and other than that there's just the dumb ol' field, where some kids play kickball. Why don't you play kickball, too? I asked her. She said that no girls play kickball, but she wants to, and on Monday she is going to do it!

This is brave, because earlier this week a boy asked her why she was playing a baseball-like game with the boys in gym instead of hula hooping with the girls, and she came home pretty upset. It had never even occurred to her that she was the only girl in the game, let alone that there was anything peculiar about it. I couldn't help but remember my first day of middle school, when I sat with the boys at lunchtime because that's who my friends were, and I didn't realize until it was too late what a social gaffe I'd made. Painful, painful stuff. I'm trying to remember that she is not me, now is not then, etc., etc., but I can see how she feels different, and hurts, and I understand completely. It is how I know, too, that no matter how awkward it feels not to, she will never pick up a hula hoop and join the girls just because they are girls and she is one too. She'll pick up a hula hoop when and if she feels like freakin' hula hooping and not before, and if what the boys are doing looks more fun then that's where she'll want to be.

Today, while her sister was at soccer, we took a ball of our own and practiced kickball so she will feel ready. She made me pretend all the other players were on the field with us, and shouted out what they were doing and where we had to run, and whose turn it was to kick, and whether we were tagged out or not. Needless to say I was exhausted before the first inning was up, and when older boys in baseball uniforms showed up to use the field for their practice, I was secretly relieved. (One boy threw a ball to another, overshot him by a fair bit, and my Peanut ran and got the ball. She fired it back to the nearer boy, and her throw was perfect. I couldn't believe it. Made a nice smack into the kid's glove when he caught it, too.)

I really hope her entrance onto the 2nd grade kickball scene goes well. In the meantime, I know what to write about in our letter journal this weekend.

September, ur doin it wrong.

2011-09-28T00:03:00.000-04:00

Yeah right. Being "present in your present" is all well and good when there's crisp, dry air, and sunshine warm enough to comfort but not so hot you're sweating before you burn your first calorie of the day. Not so easy from beneath a damp sticky air mass that hangs like a mouldering blanket over everything for days on end. Late September, and I am running air conditioners just to prevent me from pulling my remaining hair out. Who wants to buy pumpkins in this weather? I ask you.

Actually, it's getting better. I should quit my whining and focus on the fact that in a mere few months, a run of days like this will be an impossible dream. All too soon, there will be cold and damp to complain about.

So, remember Mr. Sandyshoes and I got to spend a few days in Maine at the beginning of the summer? And remember I'd said I was going to plug our hotel, etc.? Of course you don't. But we did that, and I said that. Accordingly:

We stayed at the lovely Blue Nose Inn, a pleasant stroll from central Bar Harbor, with great views of Frenchman Bay. The hotel is attractive and comfortable. There's a hot tub, steam room, and pool, which we used, and exercise equipment, which we didn't. There's a bar and a pianist playing nightly in the "Great Room," which made for an enjoyable nightcap (and when did I become someone who enjoys a "nightcap"? Is this not something one's parents used to do? Sigh.) One evening there was a wine-and-cheese reception hosted by the manager. It was interesting talking with him about the similarities and differences between the tourist-dependent, seasonal economies of Bar Harbor and Cape Cod. Don't ask me why it was interesting, because I can't remember a thing we said; I was on vacation. But I know I enjoyed the conversation, which I could not have had it been dull.

What else? We loved dinner at Cafe This Way. It's a cool setting... tables set up in a converted-garage (though it isn't, I asked) feeling space, full of books and original artwork. Hard to describe. Check their website for pictures (caution: the font is damn near unreadable. Why do people do that?). The food was so good that we went back the next morning for an equally terrific breakfast, and will make a point to revisit it if we're ever in Bar Harbor again.

The day before, we'd had an (eventually) delightful breakfast on the porch at the Two Cats Cafe, though it took a while to get seated, and after that a bizarrely long while before anyone took our order. We waited and waited. I was this close to leaving, but it turned out fine. I guess they were having a tough morning. A lady at the table next to us sent back her coffee because it was too hot, and her pancakes because she thought they were mushy (maybe they were, who knows. Ours were fine). Sent back coffee because it was too hot, though! Can you imagine? Steven Wright had a joke: "This pizza's too hot. I think we should send it back." Restaurant people must just shake their heads sometimes.

Something that amused us in Acadia National Park: We were parked at one of its famous natural features... Thunder Hole, I think, though the tide wasn't right for making the thundering sound it's named for... and, after climbing around on the rocks a bit, came back to the car, ready to move on. A small group of people were gathered behind the car next to ours, pointing at something, and saying things like "ooh! Look! Right in the parking lot!" and we looked in the direction they were pointing, and there was nothing there. Unless... wait, they couldn't mean... that seagull? Ayuh, they did. A whole family of tourists was beside themselves at this incredible wildlife sighting. They all looked sane, but what the? I took a peek at their license plate: Indiana. So I assume this was the morning of the very first day of their very first Maine vacation, and that they'd arrived in darkness the night before... and that they don't have landfills where they come from.

Naturally we had way too much fun pointing out those wily, elusive seagulls to one another on the rest of the trip. I'm told we have them here at home, too. If it's not too humid tomorrow I might try to find one.

Well shoot -- happy equinox!

2011-09-23T18:19:00.000-04:00

I appear to have taken the summer off from blogging. Go figure. Blogging's hard to get to with the family around all. the. time. But now that we have settled into something of a regular schedule again (also, frankly, now that Facebook sort of sucks), I hope to be writing here a bit more. We shall see.

So, what's been happening? Summer happened, and I can hardly remember it already. The girls are back at school... 4th and 2nd grade are proceeding apace, and they both seem to be enjoying it. Classmates are good, teachers are terrific, all is well.

The Peanut did have a moment of shock and dismay this morning. She froze in the middle of clearing her breakfast dishes, and turned to me in sudden horror. "Mommy? Is childhood... is being a child just to get you to be a grownup? Because I don't want to be a grownup, ever!" Her wide blue eyes filled with tears, and she couldn't speak further. When she'd swallowed the lump in her throat she managed to get out that she never wants to have a job and have to get up in the morning and leave her home every day! So I tried to come up with a thousand cool jobs she could have. Peanut! You could have a job designing and building playgrounds! You could work at a toy company, testing toys with groups of kids! You could have a career designing dress-up costumes! You could be a singer, have concerts at night and get up late every day! You could have a job traveling to different places and writing about them! You could collect rocks and dinosaur bones! You could be an actress and pretend all the time! Jobs don't all suck. Lots of people love their jobs (humor her. Heck, humor me. I hope to love paid work someday myself. I'd say "again," but I never loved the kind I did. I really, really hope the Peanut has better luck.).

In the meantime, the Bean was rattling off a thousand reasons why she thinks being a grown-up is going to be the best thing ever. You can drive! You can eat all the treats you want and nobody can tell you you can't! You can go wherever you want! You can read anything! You can decide everything for yourself! And I had to agree... being a grown-up is pretty damn cool, and like her, I was eager for it even as a little girl. Maybe it's a first child thing.

One daughter can't wait for adulthood, eager for everything she'll gain; one cries at the thought of it, sad for everything she'll lose.

So, as the balance on this half of our ceaselessly spinning planet tips once again toward shorter days and longer nights, I wish for my children not to urge it on too fast, nor to mourn its progress too bitterly. I wish it for myself as well, and for you. Be present in your present.

Happy, peaceful Autumn, everyone.

Our Independence Day came early this year... or 9 years late, maybe.

2011-07-04T00:50:00.000-04:00

Mr. Sandyshoes and I just took a trip... on our own. Just us. No offspring. This is something we said we'd do annually, on or around our anniversary each June. Maybe a few days, maybe just an overnight, but certainly, we said, we should get away on our own once a year, even when we have children. We will be the kind of parents who believe our children will need time without us, as we will need time without them, we said.

(Go ahead and laugh. It's OK.)

Well. I couldn't have left the girls with anyone, as babies. They each nursed until 16 months, for one thing, and I'd have been bereft without them, for another. It just didn't feel right until this year. Yes, our oldest is almost 9. Yes, that is a long time not to have had a few days alone with my husband.

Over the years I'd see Facebook posts of friends with more and/or younger children than we have, heading up to Boston overnight or grabbing date time with their spouses here and there. I'd envy these friends a little. You hear all the time that it's important to do things as a couple, to jealously guard that time and MAKE IT HAPPEN or it's likely your marriage will suffer. Yeah yeah, and yeah right. How do they do it, these parents of toddlers who go away alone together? My children were school aged before I'd ever even hired a babysitter for an evening. When the Bean was a babe and I still had a paid job, my parents filled in the child care time between Mr. Sandyshoes leaving for work late and me coming home early. It worked for a while, but when the Peanut was born, there was no way I couldn't be home with them. It was good to be at work, but it was better to be with my girls.

Of course, one income means less money for babysitters, dates, and weekend trips... so it's sort of a reinforcing cycle. And so here we are, with the girls 7 and 8, taking our first time together without them. I don't regret the home time one bit, but now we really should be able to do this every year. The girls are ready, we're ready, and, after all, we're the kind of parents who believe our children need time without us, just as we need time without them... right? Right.

So, this year, Mr. Sandyshoes made the plans secretly, and on our 10th anniversary he emailed me (he was at sea) that -- surprise! -- we would be spending a few days in Maine while the girls stayed with his sister and her family, who live near Boston. Yay! This gave me some time to prepare them for Our Big Trip and Their Big Trip as separate events. They were super-excited and felt All Grown Up.

The Peanut made a brief mention of possibly missing us, then reminded herself she knew our phone numbers, so she'd be OK.

The Bean started making a packing list. I told her I'd made one for them that she was welcome to, and she said no, thanks, she'd do it. Ten minutes later she came to ask for it. Ten minutes after that she said she was going to use my list, because "it looks like you spent a lot of time thinking about it" and it didn't seem to her that I'd forgotten anything. Hee! Oh Bean, after a few hundred trips, you'll get packing lists down to a science as well. I'm actually pleased to have her approval though, she's tough.

Last week we dropped them off and hit the road. Our lucky girls have the best aunt and grown-up cousins ever, and they had the time of their lives playing games and watching movies and doing the swan boats and the Museum of Science and Quincy Market and scootering through Boston Common, and they can blog about that their own selves whenever they want to, but this is MY blog, damnit and WE went to Mount Desert Island, Maine, which was just perfect. In my next post I will plug our hotel and some of the restaurants we went to and share a couple of pictures from Acadia National Park.

In the meantime, happy Independence Day!

Happy Fathers' Day

2011-06-19T12:27:00.000-04:00

For making sure I saw all the Marx Brothers movies; for introducing the concept of taxation while sorting through our Halloween candy; for giving me first crack at the New York Times crossword puzzle all those Sundays; for a bone dry sense of humor that can still stand to be silly; for not letting blindness, illness or infirmity get the best of you; for the gold spray painted coat hanger halo on my angel costume that one year; for all the bad puns (is that redundant?); for the custard-colored 1980 Chrysler LeBaron I drove to California and back; for "giving me away" twice, but never acting like you owned me in the first place; for being my biggest fan, thank you, Dad. Happy Father's Day, and here's to many more.

How's 2012 -- is 2012 good for you?

2011-06-02T11:35:00.001-04:00

We're building an addition on our little Cape Cod house. Contractors will do the things that licenses are required to do, but Mr. Sandyshoes is doing most of the rest himself. You may remember he has a full time job as an oceanographer at a university. Yes, he's on sabbatical this year; but that relieves him of teaching and faculty meetings, not of his research, which continues at a greater pace, if anything. He's actually at sea for a month-ish, as I type.

Getting a building permit was a long, complicated, expensive process, riddled with really, really boring conversations, even though it's my house and I'm supposed to be fascinated (support beams! rebar! sub-slab plumbing! Honestly, all I can manage is a Beavis-like snicker whenever anyone says "double hung.") Eventually the permit was granted and work began. Astute readers may remember my account of the Bean's 8th birthday festivities amid the chaos of a new septic system installation and destruction of our deck and alcove, just days before I left for our short-term move across the country. Good times.

Since then, various, usually pleasant representatives of the Board of Assessors like to come visit. "Hello," I tell them. "It's not done yet." "Oh, OK," they say, "can you give me some idea of your timetable?" I explain about Mr. Sandyshoes and the full time job, and they say gotcha, and everything seems cool. Lather, rinse, repeat.

By the way, there is nothing against the rules about taking a long time to do a permitted project, as long as work is ongoing, which, as the pit o'dirt in front of my soon-to-be-demolished garage makes manifest, it is.

When the most recent emissary came up the driveway this week, clipboard in hand, I came out to greet him as usual. "Hello," I said, cheerfully. "It's not done yet." For some reason, this one seemed kind of annoyed. "Well," he said, gesturing at our foundation, then back at his clipboard, "this doesn't look like an 'addition.' It says here, 'addition.' This just looks like a garage."

Actually, what it looks like is a garage foundation around a pit o'dirt in front of an existing garage, but let's not quibble. What you see there, is what we've got so far. The plans for what it will become are at the Building Department. It's an addition.

I explained about the parts that, looking only at the foundation, you can't deduce will be built. I confirmed his information about our existing house.

After a short, inconclusive silence, he said, "you know, when this is all done, we're going to have to come in and look at your whole house." At which my inner Beavis struck again, but I managed to keep it at "yes, I know."

It's still not done yet.

And, y'know, I'm sorry about that. We are not on a mission to dupe or inconvenience the Board of Assessors. It's just not finished. Believe me, nobody would be happier than I if it were. Summer's going to bring banging of hammers, screeching of power saws, and a spike in ibuprofen consumption. Also, that pit o'dirt isn't nearly as charming as it sounds.

So, you're now reading the blog of an elected official!

2011-05-28T11:39:00.001-04:00

(Whaddya mean, "whose"? Why I oughtta...)

And... that and $2 will get you a medium coffee. But yes! I did win a seat on my local School Committee, and am now getting into the work of being on the local School Committee, about which, as promised, I will not write in specific terms here.

Campaigning, though. That was something. Longtime readers, you know me; you know that ordinarily, I am a bit of a loner, with a self-deprecating sense of humor and quiet, non-confrontational hobbies. I'm just not used to talking so damn much, not to mention being interviewed and photographed and quoted and being in the newspaper and on television (just local cable, but still). For a few weeks, among the other candidates' signs, there were white-on-purple signs with my name on them all over town. People gave up their Saturday mornings to hold these signs and wave to voters. Amazing.

I spoke to everyone: Town Republicans, Town Democrats, the local fish and game club (at which "where's the rest of this moose?" went over like a lead balloon... sigh), gatherings of retirees, gatherings of parents, gatherings of first graders, gatherings of puppies. Everyone. I walked around town knocking on people's doors to talk to them. I talked in coffee shops and grocery stores, playgrounds and parking lots. Wherever a registered voter, or anyone, really, would listen to me, I talked. More importantly, wherever anyone would talk to me, I listened.

I got very tired sometimes, and quite sick of my own voice, and my mouth felt dry a lot. I'm sort of a worrier about health-related things; Mr. Sandyshoes and I joke about that, because it is silly. One night during all this madness I said to him, "what kind of cancer does it mean you have if your mouth is dry all the time?" and he said, basically, "the kind that comes from talking constantly for weeks on end. Now shut up."

If only.

I became necessarily, utterly, reluctantly self-absorbed. At some point during the campaign I was pulling into the grocery store parking lot, and a white-on purple sign caught my eye, and for a split second I thought, "COOL! Who got one of my signs in such an awesome location?!" Then I read the sign, which said "Please return shopping carts here," and I thought, now I have lost my mind.

It became important to get out of town for a couple hours every few days just to clear my head.

At one point Mr. Sandyshoes and the girls decided to take me out to dinner to give me a break from campaigning and talking about the election. We went to a local restaurant and were seated in a booth near the door... and proceeded to campaign and talk about the election with a steady stream of well-wishers who paused to say hello on their way out. It was really lovely. But it was not a break.

How do you feel, people would say -- how do you think it's going? And I felt good, I really did. I was a bit concerned about being in an echo chamber of sorts; the people I spoke to almost always responded positively, but surely somewhere people were responding just as positively to a candidate with a different message, and I had no idea how many. Voters really did seem to want a change on our school board, though, and that's what panned out.

It's now time to get to the real work ahead, which feels just fine to me... and also to get back to writing here, which feels pretty good as well. Thanks for waiting out the hiatus!

a wee bulletin

2011-03-12T14:11:00.000-05:00

Folks, it seems I am running for public office. Not the U.S. Senate or anything, just my town school committee. Hoping to improve my little corner of my little corner of the world.

I mention it because this blog is only semi-anonymous, and it is certainly possible that hoards (humor me) of potential voters would come across and scour it for evidence of my suitability for election. However, I'm going to keep school committee issues out of it. I won't campaign here, and if I'm elected, this site will not be a source of news or information about school committee goings-on. It may have a piece about how it feels to me to run for office (hint: buy stock in Rolaids, friends), but it won't be anything specific. Noted and Blogged will continue to consist of reflections on family life, the news of the day, and whatever else comes along that I feel like writing, such as reviews of movies you've already seen.

We now return to your regularly scheduled program, already in progress.

It's International Women's Day

2011-03-08T00:01:00.001-05:00

Are we equals?

Have I mentioned recently how much I love Daniel Craig? Or, as one of my friends put it on Facebook, "someone needs to send this to Sean Connery."

The video was produced by the Equals coalition, brainchild of Annie Lennox.

What a great thing it will be when those statistics are history.

Local politics: in which we prune a new library branch before it buds (or something)

2011-03-04T16:54:00.001-05:00

Our town's week-to-week governing body, the Board of Selectmen, consists of seven elected volunteers with various, largely non-governmental backgrounds. The ultimate, twice-a-year governing body is Town Meeting, which potentially consists of all registered voters in town. It is cumbersome, unwieldy, and sometimes frustrating, but it's pure democracy. You're a registered voter + you show up = you get to vote on the warrant articles at Town Meeting. Your vote will be disproportionately powerful, too, because not all eligible citizens are registered voters, and further, only a small subset of registered voters actually attend.

It has been amusing to see, over the years, how many candidates for public office have had virtually no history of attending Town Meeting or voting in town elections. I think that takes a special kind of arrogance. But I digress.

Like everywhere else, our town has no extra money these days. Budgets are being cut, cut, cut. It appears we can't afford to maintain, let alone construct, the buildings we need. (Actually, we can't afford not to maintain them, but that ship appears to have sailed. After all, it's so much easier not to spend money, look like a hero, and let the folks elected after you inherit a bigger problem. Anyone who served on previous boards and running for election again now should maybe be asked about this strategy.)

Yet... yet. Sometimes opportunity knocks. There is grant money available from the state to fund part of the construction cost of a new library in our town. The Library Trustees have been working on the plan for quite some time. They have the land. They have the architect. They have the plans. They have this grant opportunity. To be eligible for the grant, they need a vote by Town Meeting to agree to accept the money, should it be offered. To get a Town Meeting vote, the issue has to be on the Town Meeting warrant. To get on the warrant, they had to go through the Board of Selectmen.

And that's where the project died last night. Our Board of Selectmen voted not to allow the presentation of the library idea to Town Meeting, saying a new library is not a priority, and we can't afford one, and the proposed building is "over the top" in any case.

All that may be true. I just don't get why we couldn't have voted on it at Town Meeting, where the idea would pass or fail on its merits after having been considered by more of us who'd be paying for it if it went forward.

Frankly, it would have been a hard sell. Town Meeting is chock full of naysayers to expenditures of any kind. I have serious questions about the project myself, and I consider a robust public library to be a primary indicator of a healthy community. Clearly the Library Trustees faced an uphill battle to get their building project approved by the voters. Why not let them fight it? Why do the proponents not get a say in front of us all? The Selectmen wouldn't have been endorsing the project by allowing that much, and could in fact have spoken against it as private citizens, if they wanted to. They said that it would send the wrong message to approve the Trustees' request for a Town Meeting vote, but what 's wrong with the message, "let the voters choose"?

You're OK... and nobody's going to arrest Mommy.

2011-03-03T22:21:00.000-05:00

Our Peanut had an upsetting Wednesday this week.

At dismissal time, her teacher reminds kids who are in chess club to go to that, while everyone else gets lined up for buses or to be signed out by their grown-up. Yesterday the class had a substitute teacher who didn't mention chess club. The Peanut being the Peanut, and also being 6, forgot that it was Wednesday, and got on the bus to go home. Settling into their seats, another kid asked her, "Hey, where's the Bean?" The Peanut suddenly remembered she was supposed to be at chess club with her sister, got off the bus and came back inside, very upset at almost having let the bus take her away. The Bean found her crying in the hallway, and they both came to the library, where, by happy coincidence, I volunteer on Wednesday afternoons. ("Do you have any books on cobras/war/knock-knock jokes/Yoda/President Taft?" Yes. Yes, we do.)

Once the sobbing calmed down some (you're OK, you're OK...) we went over what to do if she hadn't realized her mistake until the bus had left school. We practiced some what-ifs and recited all the phone numbers she needs to know, and the places she knows she will be safe, and that if she ever finds herself somewhere that I don't think she is, she is to call me right away, etc. Phew.

Later, the Bean and I are making dinner and suddenly the Peanut is in the kitchen in tears again: "Another thing? That happened at school? is that I told Avery that you let me have a sip of your wine! and he said you could be ARRESTED FOR THAT!" Poor kid clung to me as if the cops were at the door.

It's true -- the other day I'd poured myself a glass of wine, and, feeling intensely observed by two pairs of little-girl eyes, offered the offspring a sip. Bean declined -- she'd tasted wine before and didn't care to again (it didn't seem to matter that what she'd tried was a Cabernet and this was a Zinfandel). The Peanut accepted, took a wee sip, and rejected it as "too spicy." That was that, and dinner continued.

Evidently she mentioned it at school the next day and her classmate was horrified. Fortunately he's mistaken. Sure it's against the law to buy alcohol for kids or sell it to them, but a parent is allowed to give her Peanut the occasional sip of a full-bodied red so she can see what it is.

We got into a discussion of why there are laws about alcoholic drinks, what "drunk" means, and that they are never, ever to drive if they've been drinking or to go in a car with anyone who has. No matter where they are, when it is, or if they've been doing something they know was wrong, we will come and get them, and we'll (try to) postpone expressing anger about any wrongdoing.

Seems kind of silly talking to them about this when they're almost 10 years from their learner's permits, but hey. Time goes fast, and I'll never have their ears more completely than I do now. Also there may be fewer of those years than we think. I got loopy on beer at 14 -- a silly one-time thing that didn't become a habit, but still, it happened. At about that same time (though not the same night), I started driving my parents' car around when they went out for the evening. Point being, parents sometimes have less time than we think to have these conversations. We will certainly be repeating a lot of them, but I think it's not too soon to start, if the subject naturally comes up - and even if the primary take-home message is that nobody is going to arrest Mommy.

In the meantime I might also explain, as long as it naturally came up, that the wine was not, in fact "spicy," but had a woodsy and pomegranate-inflected nose, balanced with traces of vanilla, complex red fruit, sandy soil, and cigar wrapper on the palate, with a trace of mineral on the elongated finish. Or something. See what Avery makes of that, kid.

From the department of unfortunate street names

2011-03-01T12:00:00.002-05:00

A man was shot to death in Hyannis on Sunday night. This is, of course, awful, if not out-of-the-blue awful; the man had reportedly been involved in an earlier shooting of someone else, and drug trafficking is possibly involved.

(What, you thought Cape Cod was some kind of haven? Sadly, no - though murder is pretty rare.)

In any event, for me, the shooting is made more cringe-worthy by the name of the street on which it occurred: Fresh Holes Road.

Ouch.

Oscar thoughtzzzzzzzzzzzzz. But see "Inside Job"!

2011-02-28T10:06:00.000-05:00

So, the Oscars last night... boring, am I right? Anne Hathaway was perky, James Franco was almost certainly wasted, and neither of them were clever or funny. You want a younger audience, Academy? Bring the funny. Yeah I know, by "younger" you don't mean me, anymore. But still -- the funny. Bring it. Because last night was a lengthy dispatch from Planet Meh.

I did enjoy Colin Firth's acceptance speech ("I have a feeling my career's just peaked"). Disappointed that Geoffrey Rush didn't get the Supporting Actor nod -- The King's Speech is as good as everyone says -- but since I didn't see The Fighter, for which Christian Bale won it, it's not really an informed opinion. I kind of hate boxing, so I'm slow to get to movies about it even when they're great. I was unimpressed by Melissa Leo's (supporting actress, also for The Fighter) potty mouth -- odd criticism coming from me, as I swear a lot more than strictly necessary myself, but geez, Ms. Leo, have some sense of context, m'kay?

Incidentally I hope Christian Bale's beard is for a role. It's otherwise unforgivable. He is no Jeff Bridges. Behold:

Less incidentally, but I have to put it somewhere, Natalie Portman is all kinds of lovely but I hated her hairstyle. I wore mine like that in 8th grade -- up on one side, hanging limply down on the other. It was 1981, and it was terrible then, too, but it was The Thing. For my daughters' sakes, let's not make it the thing again. Pretty earrings though:

And now The Serious:

Charles Ferguson, accepting his award for Best Documentary, began, "Forgive me, I must start by pointing out that three years after a horrific financial crisis caused by massive fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail, and that's wrong." His movie is Inside Job, which documents the catastrophic financial collapse of 2008. You should see it. Every American, at least, should see it. It will piss you off, and if you're an Obama fan it will disappoint you (meet the new boss, same as the old boss...) but knowledge is better than ignorance. Which is not to say I understand it all -- the vocabulary flies around pretty fast, and I wanted to say "wait, explain the part about subprime mortgages/collateralized debt obligations/credit default swaps again?" I saw it in the theater, but will watch it again at home so I can pause it when I get confused.

Yes, haha, that could be a long night... but unlike last night's Oscars, at least it won't be dull.

Oh wow, cause I would never have thought to use the other side.

2011-02-23T00:36:00.000-05:00

So I was shopping in Target the other day (which I think is now OK to do again since they apologized for giving money to homophobes, or something?) and I was browsing the bed and bath section, when a tag on a hand towel caught my eye. It said "REVERSIBLE!" It was an ordinary hand towel, no printed design, or anything.

Do we need to be specifically told this now, about hand towels?

Right: I am back.

2011-02-19T13:15:00.007-05:00

Everything feels better (and thanks for asking, everyone). Normal is so sweet.

Even when healthy, I get a lot of medical attention in January/February. Annual physical, semi-annual dentist visit, annual eye exam, annual mammogram (DO THIS, LADIES), annual everything seems to fall within the first weeks of the year. Being sick added four (4) more visits to doctors' offices.

I have shelled out a whole lot of copayments lately. It is getting old fast.

The newest medical professional to join my contact list is an otolaryngologist (spell check suggests "paleontologist." Spell check obviously didn't have the month I've had). After all other symptoms had finally subsided, my right ear remained stubbornly clogged. This made me dizzy, headachey, and even more cranky than usual. The primary care doctor tried a few things and then sent me to the ear-nose-throat guy.

This fellow looked up my nose with a flashlight and didn't say "ew." He looked in my ears, and said my right eardrum looked "dull." Dull! And here I thought dermatology was probably the least interesting of the medical specialties. Evidently a not-shiny eardrum is evidence of fluid behind it and why not check my hearing, just in case.

Turns out I can hear grass grow. "You have ears like a teenager," said my new favorite specialist. None of my other parts fit that description any more, so I'll take the compliments where I can.

Hey. I heard that.

ailing again

2011-01-17T05:04:00.000-05:00

Folks, some damn virus is kicking my ass. Again with the sore throat, and now here comes the congestion. I got two discontinuous hours of sleep Saturday night. Last night, four in a row. Progress, I suppose.

I haven't spoken a word aloud since Saturday morning. Throat hurts so much I cringe to think about using it to talk. I'd almost rather drool than swallow, even.

I've been subsisting on apple sauce, chicken soup, and tea. After this is over I will not be drinking green tea for a while. Antioxidants or no, it just doesn't taste that good.

Here's hoping the girls miss out on this one.

2011-01-08T23:21:00.002-05:00

Is it harmless, or is it incendiary?

Reload... take aim... target. That lovely map first appeared in March 2010 -- "Don't retreat... reload!".

Gabrielle Giffords said then that this kind of rhetoric has consequences.

Yes, I know the shooter does not appear to have been a Palin fan.

Still. Does the metaphor, cheerfully thrown around by an elected official, contribute to, sanction, encourage a culture of gun violence as problem-solver?

Further - do people really need to be able to carry concealed weapons in this country?

Is it really such a freakin' big deal to wait a few weeks before you're allowed to buy a gun?

A 9 year-old girl was shot today at that Tuscon supermarket, along with the grown-ups. Her name was Christina, and she went to see the Congresswoman's event because she'd just been elected to her school council. She danced, and played baseball. Now she's dead.

A lot is going to be said about the killed and injured grown-ups. Tonight, I'm thinking about Christina and her family.

Yep, I still read.

2011-01-07T13:32:00.000-05:00

I finally updated the "books on my nightstand" section of the right sidebar. Willard Randall Stearne's biography of George Washington, begone! I was so disappointed in it. After reading David McCullough's wonderful John Adams, I thought it would be cool to read biographies of all the Presidents (in order, natch), and somehow chose this one of Washington. That was over five years ago. It was a poor choice. I'm sure it's well and carefully researched, but it was boring. How can that be?! George Washington's life and times! But yeah. The writing bored me so much that it took half a decade to finish the book. So I should be on to Jefferson, next, but I'm reading Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton first. It's already promising. Lesson learned: don't buy these weighty books in a hurry. Ask for recommendations, and take longer test-drives at the bookstore.

I read a fair bit while we were out west. There were a lot of garden-variety weekdays with the girls in school, Mr. Sandy at work, and with inclement weather and/or too little time for a drive to the mountains or the coast. Some of those days, I headed to the library to read whatever caught my attention.

One strange rainy morning I read The Bell Jar -- Sylvia Plath's semi-autobiographical novel about a young woman's descent into mental illness, her suicide attempt, and her treatment -- in one sitting. Now I wouldn't say don't do that, exactly, but if you do, be sure you're in a resiliently good mood when you start. Particularly if you are a woman who (ahem) sometimes feels she doesn't quite belong where she is, who ever doubts her self-worth, and who is even somewhat prone to dark moods, or who has ever, ever thought of killing herself.

"To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.

How did I know that someday — at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere — the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?"

How, indeed. The lure of the novel is its perspective - the reader is on Esther's path with her, and when she tries to kill herself, it seems almost reasonable. Unnerving in 1963, still unnerving today.

Fear not, I also read fluff. Jennifer Weiner's novels are always fun -- quick, witty reads and good stories. I read Best Friends Forever, about a woman whose childhood pal arrives at her doorstep desperate for her help after decades of estrangement. Wacky adventures naturally ensue. It was entertaining, but to my mind, not her best. If you're new to Jennifer Weiner, start at the beginning, with Good in Bed, a very funny novel about a humiliating break-up and Our Heroine's life afterward, or Goodnight Nobody, in which a mother of toddlers doesn't fit in at all with the perfect mommies in her new town, but becomes obsessed with solving the case when one of the perfect mommies is murdered. At some point I will get Weiner's latest, Fly Away Home. It looks to be a bit different from the others, with a more mature protagonist, and possibly without the once-fat-sensible-heroine/skinny-kooky-friend motif that is becoming just a little bit tired with BFF.

There's more, but hey. That dishwasher's not going to empty itself.

What are you reading?

ailing

2011-01-06T12:18:00.001-05:00

Predictably, I have come down with some version of the illness that the girls had during their school vacation.

I know there are a lot worse things to be suffering from than a sore throat, but damn. I have the worst sore throat I can ever remember. It feels like someone's been at it with a cheese grater.

Drinking hot tea, sucking ice chips or throat drops, gargling salt water - none of it is much relief. Ibuprofen is some help, I guess, because when it wears off during the night I wake up crying. Boo-hoo, me.

More bad news: Swallowing is exceedingly painful, and I'm hungry, goddammit.

Been to the doctor, got antibiotics, so I'm hoping this starts to feel better fast. In the meantime I am canceling appointments, skipping meetings, and communicating via notepad and pencil. It is funny how people whisper or pantomime back to me, even though there's no reason for them to.

On the up side, I feel caught up on sleep.

And -- scene.

2011-01-02T23:41:00.000-05:00

Phew.

Christmas is finally over. It was eventually lovely, and we have some cool new toys to play with. My brother came to visit and that is always a good time. The now-annual Christmas meatloaf (I know, but it's kind of a fancy meatloaf, with sun-dried tomatoes, basil, and provolone cheese, and everyone loves it) was delicious. My cheesecake crust was too thick but nobody complained except me.

May I take a moment for shameless bragging about my daughters? They waited an extra week for our Christmas this year, and even then they didn't wake us up early, and even then they waited patiently to begin opening presents until midday when my parents joined us. They are so good, and I am so appreciative and proud, and I hope they're really listening when I tell them how awesome they are.

I can't remember the last time I got to bed before 2:00 AM. In the two weeks since we got home from the West coast, we've had two major snowstorms and two feverish girls, leaving me two days to do all the gift and food shopping after Mr. Sandyshoes got home. Pre-holiday stress brought to you by the number two. Then we had one Christmas celebration, and, just as I thought I could sleep the sleep of the righteous: one 3:00 AM emergency room visit that same night. It was nothing too awful, and all is now well, just very bad timing for a simple thing to need checking out. This left us one day to recover, and tomorrow: back to school.

I will be busy with a ton of stuff. There are piles of laundry to do, books to shelve, wrapping paper to put away, boxes to flatten, outgrown clothes and toys to donate, papers to file. There are thank-yous to be written and phone calls to be made. There is the 2011 dump (does anyone call it the "transfer station," really?) sticker to be bought and the recycling to be brought there. The calendar is beginning to fill with appointments and meetings and the running "TO DO" list needs updating. I do love an updated TO DO list.

At some point I plan to make a big cup of tea, head down to Sandy Neck, breathe deeply, and watch the waves roll in. Have I mentioned it is good to be home?

Happy New Year, all.

re-entry

2010-12-28T23:01:00.002-05:00

We've been back about a week, and it is great. We arrived in the height of last week's snowstorm (which nobody remembers, after this week's). You know how houses have smells, and you don't notice the smell of your own house unless you've been away? I was relieved to notice that ours smells mostly like... wood. In a nice way, I think. I guess. Anyway the girls went beserk, running around remembering stuff and hollering their discoveries at each other: "LOOK! The play house! The piano! The PINK TOILETS!" (Yes, we have pink toilets... the house was built in the 80s, and we've had more important improvements to make since we bought it in '00, but the pink toilets are SO on our list.) They were especially happy to get in their own little beds. They liked sharing a room out west, but neither of them says they will miss sharing a bed. Evidently the Bean steals the covers.

In the morning we went right to the service station to address the tire pressure warning light that, along with the icy roads, had me stressed out all the way home the day before. I'd put air in the tires, but it kept coming back on. I've been assured that the tires weren't dangerously low and that those warning lights are more trouble than help. It hasn't come on since, so I'm happy to forget all about it.

We next hit the post office to pick up our mail and notify them to resume delivery (incidentally, if you've got an ongoing home improvement project - and who doesn't? - ask the post office for a change of address packet. Inside is a coupon for 10% off at Lowe's, which can be a fair bit if the project is enormous, as ours tend to be. There, don't say Noted & Blogged never gave you anything), and -- what was this sentence about? Oh yes -- then stopped for lunch at The Bee-Hive Tavern. I can't make up my mind about that place. The food is always good, but sometimes I don't get a particularly friendly vibe there, especially if I have the girls along, which I both understand (lots of kids behave badly in restaurants) and resent (mine don't, and I'd appreciate the benefit of the doubt, at least at the front door).

On to the grocery store, which, of course, has been significantly reconfigured in our absence, and will take longer to get through till I've got the new pattern down. We were almost done when the Bean just completely crashed. Out of the blue she said "Mommy I feel terrible," and had a distinct fever. We left right away to get her to bed.

Rest and ibuprofen had her on the mend, but not well enough to go to school on the 23rd. The Peanut was raring to go, though. The last thing she'd done at her west coast school, on the day before winter break there, was wear pajamas to school and watch The Polar Express. She was ecstatic to learn that on the last day before winter break here, her class would be doing the same. Must be a nationwide 1st grade tradition. So she put on her PJs with cupcakes on them, and off we went.

After school she said she was glad to be with her old friends again, but that "it felt like I was famous, and I didn't really like that." I guess they made a huge fuss of her, because the Peanut seems like someone who would dig fame. Anyway that's much better than having her feel lost in the shuffle. She also reported, in detail, what everyone else had on their pajamas. Kids are really interested in other kids' pajamas. I'm sure her classmates went home and told their parents the Peanut has cupcake pajamas.

All in all, getting settled in has not gone as smoothly as I'd hoped. The snow, the girls being sick (the Peanut has since come down with what ailed the Bean), a couple days in a row of constant sibling bickering that had me fit to lose my ever-lovin' mind, unpacking, laundry, a newly broken dishwasher door, and trouble getting to sleep before 2:00 AM... I'm tired. Really tired. And there is still our postponed Christmas -- not my favorite holiday even under normal circumstances -- to prepare for.

The big picture, though, is all good. We are safe, sound, and content -- and tomorrow, we are leaving the house No Matter What. (Please melt, please melt, please melt.)

Oh! Before you go, because you were doubtless wondering, here is the cheesiness that was in my head yesterday:

Today's earworm is a distinct, a-u-t-omatic improvement I think. I love me some artist-formerly-known-as, and boy, did I play this album a lot in its day. This "video" is just the song playing to a still of the album cover, but you get the song anyhow.

A great time-lapse video of the lunar eclipse I didn't see first hand

2010-12-22T23:29:00.000-05:00

It was cloudy here last night so I only heard the music. (Wait, what?)

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse from William Castleman on Vimeo.

Welcome back to New England!

2010-12-21T14:33:00.001-05:00

Do risk your lives driving the icy highway home from Boston! At home, your consolation prizes await: 12" of wet heavy snow in the driveway and a large bottle of maximum strength Advil!

Still, it is so good to be back.

More anon.

Other Kids Suck, part the Nth

2010-12-10T00:25:00.001-05:00

Some little shit of a kid ("Torrey") punched my very own Bean in the stomach today. I think it was more game-gone-too-far than intent to really hurt, but still. He PUNCHED her. In the STOMACH. And it did hurt her, so much that she felt it in her throat. (I swear, give me one minute in a room alone with either or both of his parents, and I'll show them a punch they'll never forget. Oh wait... lead by example... damn. This parenting thing? Hard.)

We will be addressing it with her teacher tomorrow morning. A kid throwing unprovoked punches around in class is worth letting someone know about, I think. I will stand with her, but I want the words to come from her, so she'll be standing up for herself. I see the tears, after school, about a hurtful thing that happened... but I don't see enough indignation, enough HEY! I DIDN'T DESERVE THAT!. She doesn't like to make that kind of noise, but the little rotters of the school world are going to smell out that she won't say anything. I tell her she may never hit first, but she may always hit back, and if she gets in trouble for that it will not be with me. She'll never do it. But I want her to know she has my absolute support to be fierce in protecting herself.

After that happened, she went right to math class, where she is minding her own business, working on her line plot exercise, and a different little shit of a kid ("Grayson"... where do people come up with these names?) bends back a plastic ruler to use it to fling something at her, and of course it snaps into pieces. The Bean doesn't want to tattle so she lets him say they were both goofing around when it broke. Because they were sharing the ruler, they have to replace it. Naturally little Grayson says he won't. So the Bean's very upset because she doesn't want to give up her own ruler (which she wasn't using because she has math with the fourth graders and leaves her own class to go to theirs). Absolutely she will not give up her own ruler. I do wish she had spoken up at the time, but she's writing the teacher a note explaining what happened. Darling Grayson can figure out how to make up for his own behavior. The lesson for the Bean is that if you let yourself be talked into sharing the blame for something you didn't do, you will also be expected to share the consequences.

Third grade: not as easy as it looks.

SOTD

2010-12-09T16:17:00.001-05:00

This video doesn't say "oooh, fun" to me, but hey. It's still the song of the day even though these kids should get off my lawn.

Also: you may have noticed word verification is back, for commenting. I'm sorry to have reinstated it but I was getting an awful lot of spam.

Road trip reflections

2010-12-07T20:42:00.000-05:00

So our west coast adventure is about done and we're winding down, making preparations for the trip home. Back in August, I drove out here and Mr. Sandy flew with the girls. In two weeks I'll fly home with them and a friend will join him to drive the car back.

Though I'm eager to be home sweet home as soon as possible, I'd happily do the drive again. I had such a great time on the way out here. People kept asking if it wouldn't seem less daunting to have a companion along, but I was frankly craving the time alone.

I get so excited for a long road trip! I love to drive, which helps, but beyond that, I often get itchy to see... well, anything different. Where does that road go? What's around that bend? on the other side of those hills? down that valley? What would happen if I turned? kept going? pointed the car west and just didn't stop? Nothing scratches that itch like a drive across a continent. Wheee!

I figured on day 1 I'd get as far into Pennsylvania as I could manage, with a midday stop to see friends in New Jersey.

Now, it doesn't matter if New Jersey is the end of the line, or just the first of many stops in a heady adventure leading all the way to the glorious Oregon coast -- there's no getting around that unlovely bit of I-95 S through Connecticut (the unlovely bits of I-84 through Connecticut are arguably not progress). So I was about 40 minutes into my journey before I was tempted to flip off another driver. This was a BMW driver from New York. I had been driving almost 55 minutes before I was tempted to flip off another other driver. This was also a BMW driver from New York.

Ah, the lure of the open road.

But really... really. There is nothing like crossing the great, gorgeous, rolling American prairie for hours upon hours, and seeing a towering, snow-capped mountain range come into focus out of the far horizon's gray haze. My first strained view of the Beartooth escarpment from the ranch lands of eastern Wyoming brought tears to my eyes. (See, I can't have anyone along for something like that. I have my curmudgeonly reputation to uphold.) What must that sight have felt like from horseback or covered wagon? I just can't get my mind around it. I'm sure many a pioneer diary just left off at the 19th century equivalent of "ho-ly shit."

For the return trip though, it's my turn to fly. That'll be OK. I'll get back sooner, I won't have to cross the Rockies in winter weather, and it will be really fun to see the girls rediscover their own home, which they've missed so much. Maybe they'll be so delighted to see what toys they've forgotten that I can avoid Christmas shopping altogether. Now that would suit my curmudgeonly reputation just fine.

(Oh don't worry, I'll get them Christmas presents. I'm not that big of a Grinch. Yet.)

SOTD

2010-12-06T13:47:00.002-05:00

I don't know why. If I knew why, it wouldn't be the song of the day.

But I found a really cheesy video for it. Behold:

The Peanut's Wish List

2010-12-04T18:26:00.001-05:00

I am working on translating this into an Amazon.com wish list, but interested parties may preview here. Some of this stuff she already has, but has forgotten because she's been away from them (marker set? bead set? Is she kidding me? Our house is full to overflowing with markers and beads). Some things I'm not sure she'd be interested in for long (stick horse? isn't that a toddler thing?), but here it is, typed as received for better or worse. I'm told I shouldn't worry about her spelling, but to be delighted that she loves writing so much...

My Wish list

jump rope (shorte)
any barby
tigre stuft anamle (orang)
loinge juprope
chowe Topazz Fary (ranbow magic)
Prinsses char
Toy car
stick hors
miny computer
toy sord (with case)
toy leesh
D.S.
Diary (kitin)
stuft anaml duck (and duckling)
Webcin (yoonacorn)
miny staplr
math book
toy bote
pinsas ozma dresup
dogy dresup costoom
kitin stuft anamle
markr set
memary mach card game
beed set
dressup hiy heels
batan
Ice age moovy
miny bulatin bord
marbl set
sily bands
toy teliscop

Things I will miss when it's time to head home, part the first

2010-11-07T01:44:00.001-04:00

I love my home. I say that a lot, and I mean it. A lot.

Happily, I love it here, too; I'm going to miss several things about living here. Rather than wait for a comprehensive list to spring from my mind to the keyboard and emerge from these hallowed intertubes crafted, complete and suitably comical for your brief amusement, I figure I'll just post stuff as it occurs to me.

Pause, sip, savor... mmm. Here's what occurs to me first:

I will miss being able to buy wine in grocery stores. They even sell it at Rite Aid here, fer cryin' out loud. Not just the cheap stuff, either, although particularly for wine, even very good ones are much less expensive than at home... by half, in some cases. And cases are what I should be buying, because I'll be back in the land of overpriced "package stores" (= liquor stores. It's a New England thing) before Paul Giamatti can holler "we are NOT drinking Merlot!" (What did he mean by that? I love Merlot.)

A while back there was a ballot question in Massachusetts about allowing supermarkets to sell beer and wine. I honestly can't remember how I voted on it; I do like the idea for its convenience, but I think in the end I was concerned that losing grocery store shelf space to beer and wine would make for fewer choices in the food aisles, which are largely full of mainstream junk as it is. The bigger worry for most people (well, maybe for less selfish people) was what effect (not "impact," goddammit) it would have on the folks who own package stores, who wouldn't be able to compete with prices the big grocery store companies could set.

I don't know how that plays out in places like this. There are wine shops here practically adjacent to supermarkets that sell wine, and neither seems to be suffering for it, but I really don't know. I think that at home, unless being able to sell beer and wine would result in the food stores immediately adding square footage, my concern about allocation of shelf space is valid. Grocery stores here are freakin' huge (about which more later). Wine shops are nice for getting advice and discovering new things, but to stock up on familiar wines, I want to go where they're least expensive. Here in my home-away-from-home, that means one-stop shopping. Bread, milk, eggs, peanut butter, bananas, Pinot Noir, IPA. Cool.

The Massachusetts ballot question failed, so for better or worse, package stores will remain for the foreseeable future. In my home town of some 23,000 people, I can think of at least ten stores that sell wine; probably there are more. My favorite (I would link to it, but its home page appears to have been designed by used car salesmen) has a good sale on the first and third Thursday of the month. Even so, I'm in for some sticker shock on my return.

Do you think it's a good idea for supermarkets to be able to sell beer and wine? How does it work in your neck of the woods?

Yikes

2010-10-20T16:00:00.014-04:00

I just got an email from Barnes & Noble suggesting that I get a jump on my holiday shopping, and oh by the way someone in my life might enjoy reading this:

I can kind of understand their recommendation, because I am a fan of horror fiction, and this cover made me jump. "Spoken from the heart"? The photo shows a creature who might like to remove my beating heart from my chest with her fingernails.

Seriously, does poor Mrs. Bush not look like she vants to suck your blood, here? Who on God's green Earth was her stylist, and does this stylist live above ground? Why didn't anyone SAY something - or was this the best of the options? Good grief, with friends like that, she doesn't need enemies.

But if she has any enemies, they are likely to start wearing garlic.

in which I revisit my brief academic career

2010-10-19T20:59:00.001-04:00

Mr. Sandyshoes, in temporary residence at the excellent Oceanography department here at MWCU, gets seminar announcements from the Geology Department as well. He forwarded one to me today. The advertised lecture was about marine sedimentation, and I thought, what the hell. That's a language I used to speak. I should go.

However, I felt as though I had a neon "IMPOSTER" sign on my forehead. It has been almost twenty years since I was in grad school for geology. From time to time I take out my degree just to remind myself, yep, it happened, and this is a real and true thing that came out of it. Then I shake my head in bafflement, put the official paper back in its official file, and get on with the laundry.

Today, though, I dashed off a flip facebook status about planning to sit in the back row with a pillowcase over my head, checked the online campus map, put on my shades, and headed out.

It's nice to live such a short walk from the university. Sure I was lost within ten minutes, but I was lost inside the right building. I walked the hallways a bit, unconcerned about being a couple minutes late, as arriving after the lights went down would lessen the likelihood of anyone jumping up to point at me and shout "HEY! You don't belong here! You should be at the grocery store!"

I passed classrooms and labs, displays and bulletin boards -- the usual Science Building stuff. One small office I walked by was shared by six grad students, each bent over their desks. The stress was palpable even from the hallway. In that brief moment, I had two strong and conflicting impulses: to shudder -- God, I remember how much that sucks -- and to do this. I'm not proud of that one, but there you go. Schadenfreude. It can be funny. At least I'm pretty sure that twenty years ago, my stressed-out officemates and I would've thought it was funny.

Thus cheered, I entered the seminar room, sidled over to an out-of-the-way seat, and settled in to see if any of it would make sense. Happily, much of it did.

One of the things I've always loved about geology is the vocabulary. So many delicious words! Bioturbation, box cores, piston cores, isotopic dating, concretions. Turbidite. Paleointensity. Worm tube. (Heh heh. I said "worm tube.")

Audience manners, I noted, have not improved over the years. You're going to tuck into a big crunchy apple during a professor's presentation? Seriously? Unless it's a "brown bag" seminar (implying bring your lunch), that seems kind of rude, no?

Something else that hasn't changed: the mid-talk sleepiness. I have never fought so hard to stay awake as during department seminars in grad school. You try everything. Coffee, of course. Also rapid breathing, rapid note taking, blinking, not blinking, pinching yourself. I used to fantasize that if I were made of money, I'd donate a lecture hall to a science department, and include a private room for myself behind it, where I'd put a really comfortable recliner from which I'd watch and listen to talks with complete freedom to close my heavy eyelids any time. The talk could be fascinating, but the dark room, the white noise from the slide projector fan... what? It was the 1990s. They used slide projectors then.

Quit looking at me like that. You have your fantasies, I'll have mine.

Anyway. I understood enough of the talk to be emboldened to attend another one. Maybe I won't even be stealthy about it. But I promise not to bring an apple.

two in a row

2010-10-19T12:24:00.000-04:00

today's earworm

2010-10-18T21:20:00.000-04:00

When I worked as an environmental consultant in Brattleboro, Vermont, there was a young woman in the same office who was having boyfriend trouble. I can't remember the details -- it seemed like there was no kind of trouble I wasn't having myself, in those unhappy days -- but he didn't treat her as well as he ought, and she left him, though it broke her heart to do it.

He made things right, they reunited and eventually married. This was the song they first danced to at their wedding. I'm surprised I remember it actually, as I had a few week-old Bean with me at the wedding who spit up repeatedly, requiring many exits from the reception and three complete changes of clothes, and I could probably have used a change myself by the time the night was through. Those early weeks of nursing are not for the faint of heart.

Anyway, it was a lovely song then, and it's lovely now.

My friend and her husband live in the White Mountains now, own a building company, and have three boys. The youngest are twins. I expect that's not for the faint of heart either.

We're not in close touch any more, but I hope all her days are best days, still.

3rd grade homework

2010-10-17T21:20:00.001-04:00

One of the Bean's current assignments is to "begin saving some interesting items from your recycling box!" Evidently next week they will "create something" from these "interesting items."

I hope and trust that further guidance will follow, or I will be forced to conclude that third grade teachers just like fucking with parents from time to time. Not that I could blame them.

Mr. Sandyshoes is the one with the family full of artists; this is totally his jurisdiction. Naturally, he is away this week.

Ugh. I always hated doing shit like this in school. Styrofoam ball solar systems, shoe box dioramas of life in a covered wagon, ugh, ugh, UGH. Whenever possible, I chose the essay option. I would rather have written a 30 page report on the history of the space program than create a single aluminum foil spaceship.

Also, what "interesting" is there in the recycling bins? It looks to me like she's going to have to make something largely out of wine bottles. I'll do my part by making sure she has enough of them.

house and home

2010-10-11T20:35:00.002-04:00

We are renting a three-story Tudor which sits prettily on a small corner lot with a neat front yard and the back garden made private by dense vegetation between neighbors and a fence on the street side. Thick, tall rhododendrons block the front and side windows. There is an enormous white pine, an herb and flower garden, and a hot tub in the back. The driveway is very narrow. Since the dense hedge of sharp-leaved holly alongside it scratched my arms to ribbons on Day 1, I have decided street parking is the way to go.

It's a very different setting than at home, where we have a neighbor on one side, nothing but woods on the other side and behind, and a treed island in the circle between us and the neighbor across. Here, houses surround houses on streets laid out in a tight grid. Some blocks are charming, some shabby. Everywhere has sidewalks and bike lanes, low speed limits and lots of stop signs. (After a couple of weeks here the Bean asked me, "Mommy, are there really stop signs every 15 feet in this town?" I guess I had been grumbling about it.) The density is nice in some ways -- it certainly feels less wasteful than the acre+ subdivision zoning we're used to, and the neighborhoods have histories which if I lived here, I'd want to get to know -- but not so nice, in others. It's noisier, obviously. I really, really like quiet. I savor it, at home, and when I am home again I am going to savor it all the more.

It is strange, living in someone else's house, with all their stuff. We have settled in, but everything still feels not-quite-right, and we won't be here long enough to make it so.

The girls have been given the third floor as their play space; it's cool to play at the tippy top of the house, and by happy coincidence, that room has the fewest antiques. For a bedroom, they are sharing the one opposite ours on the second floor. They're doubled up in a queen bed. I wasn't sure about that at first, because they have very different getting-to-sleep and waking-up styles. At night, the Bean needs quiet, and the Peanut is almost incapable of quiet; you can guess who's the early bird and who's hard to roust. But they felt strongly about having each other close in this unfamiliar place, and with the other bedrooms on different floors from the master, this seemed the best option. It hasn't been entirely trouble-free, but working things out is good for them, and I think they'll treasure the memory of When We Shared A Room Even Though You Sometimes Drove Me Nuts.

We spend a lot of time in the back of the house, an addition to the original structure, which has a sunroom with the TV/DVD player, and a cozy library where we've set up our desks. Well, Mr. Sandyshoes has the proper desk. I am perching at a corner table. I tried out the desks in the other two studies (yes), but the wireless is strongest here and, well, I need those Daily Show clips to stream smoothly, damnit.

I am still not used to the noises this house makes, or the shadows cast by its big dark furniture and the foliage which seems in constant motion outside the windows. It is impossible to move around quietly through the main part of the house; every floorboard makes a deep squeak. In the darkness, I see movement where there is none, and hear sounds I can't identify from rooms with nobody in them. More than once, very late at night, there has been a kind of brushing sound from the main part of the house while I worked in the library. One night, with the girls long in bed, I walked by a hallway and a light was on that hadn't been on earlier. I turned it off. Next time I walked by, it was on again. The next night it happened again. This was, of course, while Mr. Sandyshoes was back in Massachusetts for a week. Were I easily unnerved, I'd have been pretty unnerved.

I miss my shamelessly huge home theater screen and sound system. Movie-watching is so awesome at home.

I miss the Atlantic; but I love the mountains and big national forests that are everywhere here, and the great Pacific right within reach.

I miss my pantry, clean, bright, and stocked to keep us going through the zombie wars if need be. Paradoxically, in order not to accumulate too much stuff here, I feel like I am shopping all the time.

I do not miss having a bathroom right off my kitchen. Having it down the hall is a really, really nice difference.

I have learned that I do not like dark cabinetry, half-ring dresser drawer pulls, or kitchen counters made of tile, but I do like a Tempur-pedic mattress, a gas fireplace, and a good radio in the kitchen. The kitchen radio seems an obvious thing, but I don't have one at home, and now it's on my wish list. Sadly, I have no hope for a Tempur-pedic of my own, as Mr. Sandyshoes hasn't taken to it. (I won't even comment on a gas fireplace. He wants a wood stove, and I hate them, and round and round we go, but we'll end up with a wood stove.)

He has taken to the hot tub, though, and what's not to love about that? Well, besides the electric bill. I'm not sure I could stomach that part of owning one myself, but as the nights get chillier, soaking in the heat under the stars makes not-quite-right feel just fine, for a while.

unanticipated hiatus

2010-10-08T18:00:00.000-04:00

Fear not reader(s), we are alive and mostly well.

We have been traveling a fair bit around our home-away-from-home, and it is wonderful to spend some time on the west coast.

Still and all, Noted and Blogged has been feeling a tad Lonely and Depressed. I am coming out of it though. No way out but through.

Back soon.

Arrival

2010-09-23T17:02:00.002-04:00

Overdue greetings from MWCUville! (To recap: Mr. Sandyshoes, on sabbatical from his home institution, is visiting a Major West Coast University for the fall semester, so we have all moved out here for a few months). It has taken some time to get used to our home-away-from home. It has taken even longer to get around to writing about it, but now the girls are in school, Mr. Sandy is at work, a routine has happily settled upon us, and Noted and Blogged is back to noting and blogging.

The house we're living in is almost a hundred years old, has three stories plus a finished basement, and is full of nooks and crannies, window seats and little closets. It's a far cry from our own 1980s, basic Cape-style box.

The owners of the house are professors with grown children. They are good-humored, thoughtful people, and I liked them immediately on my arrival last month to officially begin our tenancy. We did a quick tour of the property, me taking notes on how often to water the plants, etc. I really, really don't want to wreck the joint.

Their home is full of antique furniture, Tiffany lamps, Oriental rugs, and walls and walls and walls of bookshelves filled with all the volumes two academic lives can accrue. There are books on feminism, literature, politics, geography, language, history, sociology, poetry. Books in English, French and Arabic. Initial shelf scanning revealed nothing by Stephen King or Carl Hiaasen... maybe there is a "guilty pleasure" shelf to be discovered later. In any case it feels good to be renting from nice people who read a lot.

We wrapped up the tour in the formal living room. Over the mantle, there is a painting of domed dwellings closely gathered on a hillside beneath a burning orange sun. To either side of the painting is elegantly framed Arabic calligraphy, with intricately patterned borders in jewel tones. I haven't the foggiest idea what it says, but it's lovely to look at. The man said gently, "I am from a Muslim country, and this is Arabic writing. If it bothers you, or if you think it might offend your guests, please just set it aside and I will put it back when we return." I was embarrassed for our whole country - this is what it's come to, that he felt he should say that to make me comfortable? I could only shake my head -- of course I wouldn't take it down, it's beautiful. He then showed me some old photographs "of the oasis near the cave where I was born." "It's not every day you meet someone who was born in a cave," I said. He looked at me, smiling. "No," he replied. "Americans do not understand this."

I received the house keys, unloaded boxes from the car, and we shook hands and parted ways. They left for the airport to begin their journey across the globe. I headed north to reunite with Mr. Sandyshoes and the girls where they'd been visiting friends after their flight from Boston. Though it would be another week before we dipped our toes in the chilly Pacific and I declared my trip across the continent officially completed from ocean to ocean, the solo part now did feel complete, from house to house, from home to home-away-from-home.

I know I've been away from the news, but

2010-08-28T01:52:00.000-04:00

what's this I hear about Glenn Beck "reclaiming the civil rights movement"?

The man is crazier than a shithouse rat.

Also, he lies quite a bit. Evidently Fox viewers like that kind of thing? Weird.

For those playing along at home

2010-08-24T08:41:00.001-04:00

Greetings from the Mountain Time zone. Just a quick post to say I am safe and well and so happy to be crossing this great land. With all the visiting and sight-seeing and resting my tired eyes I have just not left time for blogging.

I do have a persistent earworm to pass on this morning:

You're welcome.

Now to Mount Rushmore!

On the road

2010-08-19T09:20:00.000-04:00

I'm off. It is hard to leave my babies, even though they are 8 and 6 and will be just fine with their Daddy. We will all call each other a lot.

Work is in progress to form and pour the foundation walls today as well. It is both unsettling and, frankly, a relief to leave that behind. It's not as though I can competently supervise any of it anyhow.

OK then - to the driver's seat with me! Catch you in a few hundred miles.

Leaving tomorrow

2010-08-18T21:52:00.001-04:00

Packing's done... I think. I hope. There's room in the car if I've forgotten something, but it's a matter of time, now. I'm ready to get going, and don't want to spend the morning loading "one more thing" a dozen times.

Turns out everything I need to wear for four months takes up about three cubic feet. Remarkable. I don't know whether to be proud or embarrassed. I'm a simple dresser and I didn't pack anything fancy. Talking about this trip over dinner with some friends earlier this summer, they asked if I'd started figuring out what to pack yet, and if I was anxious about it. Nah, I said. What do I have to pack? Clothes for fall, right? And how complicated can that be, when all I wear is jeans, turtlenecks and fleece vests?

The girls are a little upset. I haven't taken this long of a trip without them before. I do get away for the occasional long weekend -- Mr. Sandyshoes is very good about accommodating visits to friends on my own -- but not for ten days. This time, when the girls see me again it will be on the other side of the country, after a long flight to a completely unfamiliar place, at the home of people they've never met. It's all feeling pretty momentous to them. Plus, their backyard is wrecked and the driveway's all torn up, and the deck is pulled apart. It must seem like a lot of upheaval. It seems that way to me, and I'm not 6 or 8 years old.

I've told them they can call me as often as they'd like, and say "where are you now?" and Daddy will show them on a map. The Peanut thinks it will be hilarious to call me before I've even turned the corner and ask me where I am. She is planning this and giggling. The Bean isn't finding any of it funny yet, but that will come in due time.

I drove around a bit today, saying a mental farewell to my favorite parts of town -- library, beach, pretty town center. When I return, it will be wintertime, and I'll have missed a Town Meeting (I know, the horror! but I almost never miss one, and this will be a biggie) and two elections (got my absentee ballots though), and many school committee meetings. It is probably for the best that I miss those latter, as I'm starting to feel more frustrated than is useful with all the goings-on of late. I love this town, but I fear the school district is being taken over by Bears of Very Little Brain, and this in a critical budget year. It'll be refreshing to spend time in a place where I know none of the ins and outs of how it's being run, and I won't be there long enough for it to matter anyway. I can stay in the loop online, of course, but it might not hurt to disconnect a bit, either. We'll see if I can manage it.

Right now though, the important thing to manage is not to stay up all night wondering what I've forgotten to pack.

T-2 days

2010-08-17T12:22:00.000-04:00

Can't blog. Packing.

Also: foundation footers being poured today.

Also: have to go to Grandma & Grandad's to deliver houseplants and say farewell. Will try to avoid too much obvious glancing at my watch.

Also: a few pesky errands that couldn't have been done sooner.

I hate this part.

T-5 days

2010-08-14T14:34:00.001-04:00

I AM TYPING TO THE SOUND OF

Sorry. I am typing to the sound of concrete being jackhammered to tiny bits, and asphalt being broken up, and a deck being sawn apart. To build more house, we have to wreck some alcove, some driveway, some deck. Did I mention it's loud? It is freakin' LOUD.

Still, it is a different loud than the half-dozen 8 year-olds made during the Bean's slumber party last night. Good grief girls, why all the screaming? I just don't get it. One friend in particular is a screamer, and my Bean isn't far behind, and holy shit that sound cuts through my skull like a jackhammer cannot. I had them playing outside as much as possible. Mr. Sandyshoes laid out giant tarps across the dirtscape that is our once-lovely backyard (the new septic system went in yesterday and all is well with that) so that there is a bright blue path from the part of the deck that still exists to the girls' play structure. It

...what fresh screeching hell is this? Oh, concrete saw.

... anyway the big blue tarp making a path like that looks like some sort of water park feature. I kind of want to hose it down, dive off the deck and slide like a penguin out into the yard. Needless to say that would end in all kinds of sadness, but it's fun to consider.

The best part of the party, for me, was dinnertime. I made tacos. Kids are supposed to like tacos, but holy crow, kids are also picky eaters. How do they grow, these children that won't eat anything? Anyway, I heard a fair bit of "I don't like taco meat," but I had them try just a tiny scoop on their plates and lo and behold, it wasn't what they thought it would be, and they loved it, and both pleased and embarrassed me by saying so as much as they did. (My advice, which I know you didn't ask for: Don't cook with "flavor packets." They're revolting, filled with salt and MSG and who knows what the hell else, and really no less complicated than adding your own cumin and chili powder.)

Anyway the party went well -- playing outside, sand art on the deck, dinner, cake, presents. We were about to get set up for the movie at that point but the girls were being nuts and Mr. Sandyshoes, because he is awesome, hollered "WHO WANTS TO RUN AROUND THE CIRCLE?!" and dashed out of the house, and they all followed him around our little cul-de-sac a few times, and returned panting and quiet. Heh.

Then the movie (the chihuahua one, but at least I didn't have to watch it again -- pre-screening it was 91 minutes I can never get back), then bedtime. They were set up in the playroom. As the night wore on I made a couple of bad-guy appearances to tell them it was time to sleep, and as far as I can tell it was actually quiet from 11:30 until 7:30 this morning...

...just in time for the excavators to arrive. The noise didn't get really going until just before the parents were due to pick up their girls, so there was some unfortunate overlap. We hollered thank yous and good-byes over the pounding of the jackhammer. Since then I have had some time at my desk while the girls chill out to The Lion King. Any moment my old friend will arrive, frayed from a long drive in Cape Cod-bound summer traffic but hopefully happy to be here.

And yes, I'm still leaving in 5 days, but, you know, hakuna matata.

SOTD

2010-08-14T00:13:00.002-04:00

T- 7 days

2010-08-12T22:54:00.001-04:00

I hit the road for the West Coast in one (1) week. This time next Thursday I will be as far west in Pennsylvania as I can stand to drive in one day. Hopefully at this hour I'll be settled in a comfy hotel room, watching whatever's on cable and browsing the AAA Tour Book for where to stay in Indiana the next night.

However, a few things have to happen before then.

We are having a new septic system installed tomorrow. A hulking yellow excavator sits silent in my torn-up back yard as I type. Early, early, early tomorrow, its cheerful operators will be here to get the job going. They will be cheerful because they started on it today, and it looks like they'll get a jump on the weekend. Their cheer may be short-lived, because Mr. Sandyshoes plans to ask them if the system really needs to be oriented exactly the way they've staked it. Cheer or no, I really, really hope the job goes well, because:

Tomorrow afternoon begins the Bean's slumber party for her 8th birthday (btw, the Bean turned 8). Six other eight year-olds will be here for a crafty activity (why yes, I am doing sand art again... the Bean requested it), dinner (tacos, again by request), cake and presents, a movie (God help me, this might turn out to be Beverly Hills Chihuahua; I tried to sell her on that new documentary about hydrofracking, but no dice), and then they will all go to sleep, right? RIGHT? Anyway sometime between now and when these friends arrive, I have to bake and frost a cake, take the Peanut to get a present, clean the house enough to have everyone sleeping (humor me) on the floor, and tidy it enough to have room for all their stuff. They leave after breakfast on Saturday, which is good timing, because:

A different excavator will be here by then, ready to break ground for the foundation to an addition to our house. Did I mention we have been planning an addition to our house? And that we got the building permit earlier this summer? And that having the building permit means we have to start work within six months? Which means we have to start before we leave for MWCU? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Because that's just how we roll. Haha! In fact, I thought we didn't have quite enough on the calendar, so:

A friend from high school whom I haven't seen in 25 years is coming to visit Saturday - Sunday. It's going to be really great to see him. Sometimes, visits just need to happen no matter what else is going on.

So that's the weekend. I can only look that far ahead at this point. Beyond lies packing, and nobody wants to look there.

SOTD

2010-08-12T08:55:00.001-04:00

No particular reason this song should've been plaguing me at zero-dark-thirty this morning -- I haven't heard it in who knows how long. Still, there it was. And thanks to the Great and Powerful Series of Tubes (RIP Ted Stevens), here it is for you, too! This is a weird little video. The blazer! The turtleneck! The standing basically still on top of a box! The turtleneck!

Holy crow, it's really happening

2010-08-07T00:45:00.000-04:00

A few posts back I mentioned that our family is headed West this fall, to spend a semester at a Major West Coast University where Mr. Sandyshoes will be on sabbatical. Actually, that was way back in March that I mentioned it, and here it is August and we are leaving soon. Whoa.

In the interim, we found housing (important!) in MWCUville, made arrangements for our own house, figured out where the girls will be attending school for the first half of third and first grade, and bit by bit, got details decided on and buttoned up.

For weeks I've been aiming at using up everything in the pantry, and the shelves are looking pretty bare. I'll have to really get creative to leave things as empty as possible. Quinoa and chocolate sauce, anyone? Canned pineapple and navy beans? Come on over, I've got a decent Chardonnay to go with!

Now it is time to think about packing. I hate packing, so I'm prolonging the list-making phase as long as I can. It's weird, for this long of a trip. On one hand we have to bring, well, everything, so it should be a long list. On the other, "everything" is really just clothes/coats/shoes, and some games, scooters for the kids because they take up less space than bikes, a few important files/documents... what am I forgetting? Something obvious, no doubt.

We're bringing a car out. For a while, we thought of taking all of August to drive out there all together, but the timing didn't work. Mr. Sandyshoes is at sea on a research cruise (less lovely than it sounds, but still exciting) and won't be back in time for us to have made it the trip we wanted it to be. So I will drive the car out myself, and rendezvous with Mr. Sandyshoes and the girls at a friends' place, and we'll do a little west coast sightseeing all together before we settle into the house we're renting.

When I tell people I'm about to drive across the country solo, I generally get one of two responses: "Why? Are you insane?" or "oh wow, I wish I could do that!" The are-you-insane camp doesn't like driving and/or solitude, and is overly concerned for my safety. I love both driving and solitude, and while not unconcerned for my safety, I'm not worried about it, either. Common sense + car in good shape + phone + AAA + GPS = I will be fine.

Actually, I am late to the whole GPS-in-the-car thing, though I had a hand-held model way before it was common. I didn't see the need, because I never had any trouble using good old-fashioned maps (except in Boston, where all direction-giving aids, including actual road signs, are, infuriatingly, useless). I know people who got a GPS device, and suddenly can't navigate their own home towns without it. How does that happen? But it is nifty, and probably useful for locating hotels in unfamiliar places, and the little voice will give me something to talk back to. I hear you can download a Darth Vader voice for it. Heh. Give me Patrick Stewart, though. Or Alan Rickman. Oooh, how about Ian McShane as Al Swearengen from Deadwood: "Turn fucking left, or prepare for eternal fucking traffic lights, and the like." That would be awesome, and I will be going through Deadwood...

I digress.

Anyway, I'll be fine. I've always been a very independent person. But you know, you get married, you have children, maybe you quit your paid job... before you know it, that proud independence plays a faint second fiddle to the wife-and-mother part of life. I miss it. This road trip gives me a chance to taste that again, for a little while. Also, I do plain love driving. Which is good, because 3400 miles is a hell of a long way to drive.

In related news, I am delighted to report I have found a travel mug I don't hate. There shall be tea on the road, without styrofoam cups!

Don't judge! Oh wait, do. Do judge.

2010-08-05T23:52:00.002-04:00

Three judges are on my mind today:

1) Elena Kagan, whose confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court makes both history and good sense;

2) Vaughn Walker, who wrote this excellent sentence, among many others, throwing California's shameful Prop 8 out on its ass:

"A private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples is not a proper basis for legislation."

(Read more.)

Also, watch this, though it's got naught to do with Judge Walker:

"Prop 8 - The Musical" starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more... from Jack Black

3) is the judge whose opinion hasn't been requested, but is much needed by our town's school committee. Very long story made very short: Our School Superintendent's contract was renewed through 2013, then an election brought two new members to the school committee. It turned out that the meeting at which the contract was renewed hadn't been properly posted (though it was hardly a secret by any standards), so the newly constituted school committee voted on the contract themselves, and despite a virtual parade of people who wrote in and came to school committee meetings in support of its being renewed, they didn't renew it. Many people in town would still like to hear a decent explanation for this. One of the new committee members says she was provided plenty of reasons by alleged multitudes who spoke to her anonymously, but she gets all sensitive about it if you suggest that maybe that's not quite the way that public input-gathering should work.

Anyhoo, we have now a Superintendent who signed a contract through 2013, believes it to be valid, and plans to stay on, and a School Committee who thinks they fired the Superintendent as of June 2011, and is supposedly going to launch a search for a new Superintendent in the meantime. Um -- awkward! And stupid, don't forget stupid. Because what qualified candidate is going to apply for the job with this going on?

The validity of the contract can only be cleared up by a judge's ruling, so you'd think that the school committee, eager to avoid litigation, would be hurrying into court to seek said ruling, yes? Well, no. It appears they have no interest in having the matter properly adjudicated. They would rather, it seems, see the school district go down in flames of litigation and budget crises. On the one hand, this will continue to be entertaining - pass the popcorn! On the other, it's just small-town politics gone horribly wrong; it's pathetic, and it's the quality of my daughters' schools in the balance. From a parent's perspective, the whole business is utterly discouraging.

1 and 2, though? Good news indeed.

Midsummer

2010-07-28T00:11:00.003-04:00

Well folks, summer on Cape Cod is lovely, and we've been having a thoroughly terrific time of it. Even I have not been especially grumpy, which is really something considering all the summer things I usually find to be grumpy about. Heat, humidity, crowds, mosquitoes, relentless searing sun, blah blah blah. There has been all that, but for whatever reason none of it has bothered me overmuch.

We've been to baseball games, town band concerts, and the County Fair; to birthday parties, family gatherings, and reading group meetings. We've swum in the tidal creek, the lake, the ocean, and various pools. We rode bikes in the town parade on the Fourth of July. We've had a steady stream of guests, and were even sad to see some of them go. We've had lettuce, peas and beans from the garden, cookouts, campfires and s'mores in the backyard and at the beach, and picnics at the Cape Cod Canal, where we watch the boats go by as we eat our dinner. We caught the tail end of the World Cup and dreamed of stretching the word "vuvuzelas" across two triple word score squares.

Oh all right, that last was just me.

Just this week, I have noticed that the girls are starting to get on each other's nerves earlier in the day than usual. That I'm feeling less inspired to mow different patterns into the front lawn, and more inclined to flip off tailgating assholes from New York and Connecticut (New Jersey seems underrepresented this year) than move aside for them.

I know I am nowhere near the end of my rope yet, but I can sense it starting to fray. Hopefully a total unraveling can be avoided altogether, or will at least hold off until Mr. Sandy is back in town. He is intensely, if not frantically (though I just heard him actually swear) preparing for a research cruise, and will shortly be away for a couple of weeks. My shopping list for before his departure consists of non-drowsy formula Dramamine for him, red wine for me.

Stay tuned.

How's your summer going?

SOTD

2010-07-26T22:35:00.000-04:00

Today it was the ballad part of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Specifically, the lyrics "I don't wanna die... I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all..." which have always upset me for some reason, ever since I first heard the song as a kid. I must have had some kind of disturbing dream to have those lines on endless loop for most of the morning. Not a good feeling.

Anyway, video:

SOTD

2010-07-15T11:45:00.000-04:00

Been a while since I subjected you all to my Song of the Day -- that song that somehow manages to be stuck in my head before my eyes are even open in the morning. Some days don't have one, but a lot do, which seems strange to me since I don't go to sleep or wake up to the radio or anything like that, and sometimes I can't remember when I even last heard the song outside my own head.

Anyway, today:

Forgive me for saying so, and I know it's a small thing, but there's got to be a better way.

2010-07-14T17:59:00.003-04:00

For the record, I'm well aware that in the great scheme of things, this is not a big deal; that there are more important things worth complaining about; and that I'm truly, profoundly grateful for my and my family's good health. That said:

Is it just me, or does it seem like every time you go to a doctor's office these days, you have to fill out a new form with your name, address, social security number, birthdate, emergency contact, insurance information, etc. etc.? I'm not talking about visiting a new doctor for the first time. I'm talking about practices where I've been a patient for years -- in one case, over a decade -- and every year when I go for my exam, they hand me a clipboard with a few pages of forms on it, and tell me to just have a seat and fill this out.

Yes, I know that medical information privacy policies change and that the office needs a current signature attesting that, look, they gave it to me, see? and if I don't know what it says, I have no one to blame but myself, right? Right, fine. Give me the new signature sheet, and I'll sign it.

And yes, of course people's addresses, insurance providers, and names do change. I've moved and changed jobs a fair bit myself, and my name has changed three times. Still, these things do sometimes remain the same from one year to the next, no? The date of my birth, in particular, is immutable. I know this, because I'm having no luck muting it.

Oh, office managers, I know the potential for efficiency is there. Consider the nifty little ink stamp you use to save us writing a mere two words when making out the check for our co-payment. So why can't we patients just review the forms your files already contain, and make changes if any are necessary?

Fellow patients, don't bother asking this question, no matter how friendly you are. They can't have that. Just take the clipboard, shut up, and start writing, bitch, because... well, because maybe they're "going to a new system"! or maybe they don't know why it has to be that way but an innovative thought might kill them on the spot! or maybe they're conducting a long-term handwriting analysis, which, by the way, YOU WOULD KNOW ABOUT if you'd read the privacy policy! or maybe they just bloody well feel like having new forms, and in any case, anything they make you fill out is NOTHING compared to what THEY have to do, so JUST. TAKE. A. SEAT.

My Bean and the No Good Very Bad Naptime

2010-07-10T00:02:00.000-04:00

My girls are 7 and 6 and still have "naps." They don't sleep at nap time -- haven't for years -- but it's just an hour in the afternoon during which they go to their rooms and read or play quietly by themselves. They each have a phone in their closet that can buzz the other one (it doesn't work for anything else; it's just a sister-to-sister intercom Mr. Sandy rigged up because he is the Best Daddy in the Universe), so sometimes they sit in their closets and talk to each other. The idea is just to get them some quiet down time each day. Some days they need it more than others.

Yesterday, the Bean was out of sorts by afternoon. We'd had friends visiting us for several fun-filled days, and they'd left that morning, so she was let down and tired. She couldn't sleep at nap time, but couldn't leave the Peanut alone either. I had to go upstairs and scold her for banging on her sister's door. "Knock it off," I said. "WHY DON'T YOU CARE ABOUT ME AT ALL?" she screamed. Sigh. I left that unanswered, except to say we'd talk later -- clearly, nothing was going to come of pursuing it then -- and came back downstairs. When it was time for her to come down, she presented me with a list:

WHEN YOU LEFT, I FELT

hungry

thirsty

tired (but not sleepy)

bored

mad

angry

wanting to go down stairs

sad

poor

mean

wishing

unhelpful

left out

selfish

cruel

and uncomfortable

and last of all; annoying

ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

We fixed hungry and thirsty right away, and a lot of the other stuff just went away. We talked about how not being allowed to bang things doesn't mean she isn't cared for, but she knew that -- just needed to scream something, I guess.

I like the negative emotion inventory. Kind of a mature thing to do, I think.

Chez l'oiseau

2010-06-30T01:06:00.001-04:00

This is cute.

Via.

Woodstock did it first, of course:

What to do, what to do?

2010-06-25T15:39:00.001-04:00

I asked the girls to make me lists of what they'd like to do this summer. The Bean is a born list maker; she even color-coded it, until she forgot to.

[Bean]'s 25 and more Things to do in the Summer

List key: sentence color = gray, activity color = red

B   1. Go to the arcade
      2. Go out for ice cream
E   3. Have a playdate
     4. Play outside
     5. Pack up for our Big Trip
H 6. Go to a playground
      7. Eat outside
A   8. Catch bugs in bugnets
      9. Play in the sandbox
P   10. Make strawberry rhubarb ice cream and pie
     11. Go in the sprinkler
P   12. Go to the pond
     13. Play dressup
Y   14. Pick vegetables
     15. Go hiking in the woods
!    16. Go on a scavenger hunt
     17. Go crazy
     18. Decorate bycicles
     19. Ride bycidles
     20. Be an artist
     21. Go to the library
     22. Go to the movies
     23. Camp at the beach
     24. Go to state park
     25. Make a Haunted House
     26. Be wierd
     27. Be a summerethemist

Peanut doesn't let little things like spelling hold her up. Read hers phonetically.

[Peanut]'s list of this samr ativades

1. spriklr
2. pond
3. ce krem
4. look for ranbows
5. tret from bin [we keep a "treat bin" of all the candy they get here and there]
6. see vokano
7. pik pees
8. eet berries
9. bisikls
10. hav fun!

Oddly, neither of them mentioned doing laundry or mowing the lawn.

Here's how short my wait, what?

2010-06-24T15:31:00.000-04:00

So I open a tab in Firefox and start Pandora, then switch back to a previous tab and look at something else, and when the music starts I jump out of my skin because in the three seconds it takes Pandora to load, I've forgotten that I turned it on.

Missing: One month. Reward for safe return, no questions asked.

2010-06-22T23:04:00.000-04:00

What the heck happened to June?!

There's always a mad rush of things to do at the end of the school year. End-of-year concerts, recitals, plays. Summer activities to be registered for and scheduled. Teacher gifts and birthday presents to be bought or contributed to.

It does seem to be birthday season. Two of the Bean's friends had slumber parties. The first was smallish, just four girls invited. They started around 4:00, had games, dinner, cake, presents, a movie, and went to bed around 10:00 - late for the Bean, but pretty good by slumber party standards. Next day, they had breakfast and a late morning pick-up, at which the Bean was happy and tired. It was a great first sleepover experience. The second one, this past weekend, was for a classmate who invited all the girls in their class and a few more besides. This was a pool party *and* sleepover, starting at noon, going till 8:30 the next day. The Bean had a piano recital that afternoon, so had to join the festivities after the pool part was done (she was disappointed, but I was frankly relieved. She can't swim yet - gah!! - and I don't feel I can leave her at a pool.). Then it was arts and crafts time, then presents, dinner and cake, a movie that started around 9:30 PM, and who knows what else, but nobody was asleep until "between 1:00 and 2:00 in the morning," the Bean reports. At pick up the next day, her eyes were open but her demeanor trancelike. Good times. It's taking a couple days for her to get her sleeping groove back, but she definitely had fun. I'm proud of her. She's a bit younger than her classmates, and a classic introvert as well - despite loving her friends, I think sometimes she has to psych herself up for these things.

Ah, slumber parties. A staple of girlhood I guess, though I don't remember any, myself. I do remember having a friend sleep over in third or fourth grade, and that she freaked out and went home in the middle of the night. Sigh.

The Peanut's social calendar has been densely filled as well. There have been Disney character-themed parties, pinatas, face painting, bouncy houses, minor accidents, and birthday girl meltdowns galore (honestly, I think it's just too much for them sometimes). Her favorite? Being the only girl at a backyard Star Wars birthday party. She's not seen the movies yet, but you'd never know it. When I arrived to pick her up, she was executing some mad Jedi moves with an inflatable light saber. Two little boys were "fighting" her, and she was whirling around between, keeping them both at bay. The force is strong with that one.

And now here we are, already... tomorrow's the last day of school! The Bean wants to go immediately from school to our awesome public library to sign up for their "go green"-themed Summer Reading program. You know, to beat the rush. Hee! The force is strong with that one, too.

And as long as I'm posting syrupy updates about the children:

2010-05-21T14:25:00.001-04:00

The Sandyshoes family are big fans of The Muppet Show. We have never seen Hannah Montana or American Idol, but we have all the old Muppet Shows on DVD and the girls know all the guest stars, many of whom their peers have never even heard of. Dom Deluise, Peter Sellers, Gilda Radner, Valerie Harper, Carol Burnett, George Burns, John Cleese, Dudley Moore, Ethel Merman, and many, many more. Luminaries! Statler and Waldorf heckling Milton Berle... it doesn't get better than that. See for yourself:

The Peanut will often pop a Muppet Show episode in to chill out with when she gets home from school. She has special favorites that she likes to watch again and again and again. She gets to know all the musical numbers, and goes beserk for the Muppet News sketches ("This is a Muppet News Flash: a charter flight carrying the London Symphony Orchestra has been forced to jettison some of the musical instruments [piano falls on newsman].) Good stuff.

In news you'd think unrelated, the other day there was a Kindergarten Author presentation in her classroom. Parents were invited to come by and see their kiddos' writing. The children each had an All About Me booklet in which they'd written and drawn pictures. It listed their names, birthdays, siblings' and pets' names, favorite foods, etc. You get it. One question asked for their favorite song. And on that line, in her kindergarten print, complete with backwards "y" and little curlicues on the tails of some of her letters, my gentle, cheerful, loving Peanut had written:

Welcome To My Nightmare

The teacher's eyes got sort of wide when she read it. I tried to explain about Alice Cooper's guest appearance on The Muppet Show in 1978, but I'm not sure it helped.

Here's the number the Peanut loves so much (not sure why it has the not-Muppet intro, but whatever):

The child is obsessed. She's talking about dying her hair black when she grows up, and she won't have it in a ponytail anymore because "Mommy, then I can't pretend to be Alice Cooper!"

She's a hoot. Welcome to my nightmare... I think you're gonna like it.

Guest post by the Bean

2010-05-20T17:33:00.000-04:00

The Bean's class had a one-paragraph writing assignment last week. Topic: What qualities do you look for in a friend? Why are these qualities important to you for a friendship? Here's what she wrote:

These Qualities usually help me with friendship. Don't look at what they look like, but what is in their heart. If you want a new friend, and you find someone who looks really pretty, don't take her/him as a friend before you know what is in their heart. Because if you have a friend that is mean, you will not be very happy. So if you want a nice friend, look right through them, right into their heart. The best friends are nice friends that help, share, play, and are nice to you. These qualities are very inportant to me. Most of these thing help you choose friends.

Words to live by, even if the x-ray vision aspect is a little creepy.

Oh yes, I care enough.

2010-05-09T00:01:00.001-04:00

Noted and Blogged is a sap-free zone on Hallmark holidays.

When you care enough to hit "send."

when worlds collide

2010-05-01T22:23:00.001-04:00

in which I am 40-something-else

2010-04-28T22:51:00.003-04:00

Concluding Birthday Season I in our family, I am now Even Older. (Doesn't that get on your nerves, when people who aren't remotely elderly talk about how oooollld they are? Mine too. Get off my lawn. Oh wait. OK, I'll get off my own lawn. But I'll be back on it before long, as it's about to need mowing.)

I had a lovely birthday, which started when my lovely husband made sure I was exempted from getting our lovely daughters ready for school. I was supposed to sleep in, but was wide awake at the usual time. Grrrr. He also made me a beautiful chocolate cake, and I can now say definitively that the chocolate frosting recipe on the back of the unsweetened cocoa label is much superior to the one I'd been using for years. Riveting news, I know. But chocolate frosting improvements are always cause for good cheer.

I got a fishing pole and a Nancy Drew book and a Black Eyed Peas CD (the one with the boom-boom-pow song that I can't stop singing. "Them chickens jackin' my style," and stuff!) and Season 3 of The Muppet Show. The Muppet Show makes me very happy. Also a new novel, socks with flamingos on them, and a Life Is Good t-shirt. And it is, folks, it is.

In other news you will be delighted to know that I finally finished the biography of George Washington that I've been reading on and off for FIVE YEARS now. Of which more later. My cat-herding exemption was for one morning only, so I'd better hit the hay.

in which my Peanut is Six and we have a busy but lovely spring break

2010-04-26T22:43:00.002-04:00

Phew. We've been busier than one-armed paperhangers around here.

Last week was school vacation. The Peanut's birthday fell on a weekday, and we had her party on the weekend. I made a small cake for her birthday, and a giant cake for her party. She requested a "sunshine party, with a yellow cake with yellow icing and an orange sun and a big orange 6!" Okey dokey -- as long as she keeps the frosting colors down to two, I can manage. Shopping for presents was also fairly easy, as she'd written up a wish list which included things like a "real purse," and a Zhu Zhu pet (= a battery operated hamster-looking thing that scoots around and makes noises. Definitely a playroom-only toy, and knowing how to make it "sleep" is key). I also got her a cute little watch. The Bean got one on her 6th; it just seems like the right year for it. So, we got presents, party supplies, favors -- all manner of errands got run.

On her birthday itself we went to the public library to get her very own library card. All our library staff are great, and the children's librarian is exceptional. "No, no, Peanut, you have to be six," he told her. "I AM SIX!" she said. "Oh, well, then, you have to come in with your Mom or Dad." "MY MOMMY'S RIGHT HERE!" "Oh, but you have to know how to spell your name... " etc., until eventually she'd proven herself worthy and was presented with her very own wallet-sized card which she had to sign, and a little globe keychain to attach the smaller card to. She was fit to burst with pride from the whole transaction. Have I mentioned how much I love our library?

What else? We had picnics at playgrounds and beaches, and Mr. Sandy took a day off to join us on a trip out to Race Point to look for whales from the beach. We had a wonderful time but didn't see any whales. I still think they were probably all breaching and dancing on their tailfins just around the corner from us.

So it went... and now we are back to our regularly scheduled routine, which is always a pleasure in itself. Next stop, summer vacation!

They say you can't judge a book by its cover, but I think you can judge a town, or a school, by its library.

2010-04-12T01:24:00.001-04:00

This week is National Library Week, in which we celebrate libraries and librarians, and their contributions to our communities.  Environmentalists say every day is Earth Day; I say true dat, and also, every week is library week. I spend a lot of time in libraries.

In my daughters' school library, parent volunteers have always been helpful for checking books in and out, shelving them, putting books in order when they aren't, and rescuing books that have been mis-shelved and might as well be lost to anybody looking for them in their correct place. This year, we're not just helpful, we are essential free labor.

Thanks to (somehow unanticipated) cuts in state funding and decisions by the Superintendent about what jobs to cut in turn, the library aides in each of our K-8 schools were laid off before Christmas. Our school of some 900 kids now has just one person to manage the circulation and condition of the entire collection. She's supposed to do this on top of teaching research skills to each of the classes that come in at their assigned times and helping the children that drop in individually or in small groups throughout the day. I can tell you it's impossible. My volunteer day is a typical one. There's already a library class in session when I arrive in the morning, and two more classes of 22 or so kids each come in and out before I finish at noon. There are projects for each of them; sixth graders might be doing reports on Presidents, fourth graders on constellations, and second grade might be hearing a story and learning how to find fiction they like. Each kid puts a couple of books in the return cart on their way in. Each kid checks out a couple of books on their way out. A few will need speaking to about overdue or missing items. Several ask for help finding what they're looking for. ("Do you have any books on dinosaurs/Greek myths/kittens/Star Wars/raising cattle/Tom Brady/origami/Uganda/the moon?" I have more or less memorized the entire Dewey Decimal system.) There just aren't enough minutes in the school day for the librarian to do all she does personally with the students and completely handle the circulation and shelving of books. We volunteers fill some of the gap.

The Bean volunteers in the library too. After hearing me talk about the district's budget problems,* she tried hard to come up with a way to help out. (She wanted to give her school principal her tooth fairy money, because the school needed it more than she did. How do you explain that a dollar won't help the school one bit, even if it represents her whole heart?) We decided that because she especially loves the library, we would help there together. So once a week, the Peanut and I join her after school. Bean shelves series fiction and easy readers, I make a dent in the nonfiction, and the Peanut disappears somewhere with a book of her own (heck, this wasn't her idea). When it's time to head home, the Bean's pride is palpable, and the return cart is in better shape for the next day. We're doing what we can.

Public libraries have been in the news around here lately because municipal budgets, like school budgets, are stretched impossibly thin. Boston is looking at closing several of its branch libraries. My Cape Cod town will likely cut public library employee hours (if not entire jobs) and reduce its operating hours.

Adding insult to injury, our public library is also recovering from its basement having badly flooded. We had a crazy lot of rain this March, and groundwater is high. The library basement rooms are used for meetings and programs and story times and a children's play center and lots more besides. They'd just had new carpet installed, and it's all ruined. They pumped out the water and it came in again. It'll be weeks before the space is usable.

I visit the town library often, maybe twice a week, to exchange our stack of children's books for different ones, and hunt down the novels my book groups are reading plus whatever looks interesting besides. We borrow DVDs and audiobooks as well. Lots of families do all that and more. The library's a busy, busy place.

People more eloquent than I are going to talk a lot this week about how libraries are the heart of their communities. I think that's true. Libraries house all we know about ourselves, the world, and beyond. Public libraries ensure that all this is available to everyone. It is an awesome, venerable function, because, as a free society, we value that. Don't we?

Maybe not. Last week on Cape Cod's local news and talk station, a morning show discussion began of the proposed library closings in Boston, and I heard one ignoramus host say to the other that she thinks libraries are "obsolete, because you can always go to a bookstore." Yes! She thinks that because you can browse at a bookstore without buying anything, that's functionally the same as having a public library. And of all the stupid ignorant things I've heard from that silly twit's mouth since someone thought it was a good idea to pay her to squawk into a microphone, that beat all. Well, I thought. Here, at last, will come the callers telling her what a dope she is. But no. In came the calls wondering yeah, why do we need libraries, anyway? Stupid libraries. Stupid, money-needing libraries.

Oh. My. God. I had to turn it off.

This is what we're up against, friends and supporters of public libraries: people who think Barnes & Noble is an effective substitute.

Looks like we do need National Library Week.

*probably wondering aloud why we've laid off all the library aides, yet maintain a high school ice hockey program which has made local headlines for 1) the bad behavior of its players and fans and 2) the girls' and boys' teams not having equal facilites (illegal, btw, and I'll give you one guess which team got the short end of that stick).

An Easter joke, without warranty, expressed or implied

2010-04-04T00:01:00.002-04:00

Q. What did Jesus say when He went to the disco and found He couldn't dance?

A. "Help! I've risen and I can't get down!"

waiting it out

2010-04-01T16:00:00.001-04:00

This morning, as I was up in the predawn taking even more ibuprofen for the abdominal and lower back pain I've been having a few days each month for thirty years now and which neither medical science nor any hoople-headed alternative seems able to alleviate, I mistook the actual sunrise for a reflection of the light over my stove. Really. It's been gloomy out for so long that I didn't recognize that bright yellow light I saw just over the horizon out my east-facing window. It took me fully a minute to realize it was the sun.

No matter. It had disappeared again within the half hour, and the girls and I walked to school in a chilly damp wind under the usual gray sky.

The weekend's looking to be gorgeous though, and could we ever use it.

Upcoming Sandyshoes family adventure!

2010-03-29T17:30:00.001-04:00

Change is afoot!

As friends and longtime readers know, Mr. Sandy is an oceanographer. Every few years he's eligible for a sabbatical, i.e., to do oceanography somewhere else, provided they'll give him a desk and a phone and he'll agree to be collaborative, generally friendly and useful, a fine reflection on his home institution, etc. etc. At any rate, he'll be on sabbatical for the upcoming academic year, and so will the whole Sandyshoes family, by extension. We will spend the fall semester at a university I will call for blogging's sake MWCU, for Major West Coast University. (I'd have foregone the "M," but since there really is a WCU, I thought I'd spare people stumbling on this blog when searching for that school.)

Yes, I said West Coast! Yippeeeee! We will be crossing our great nation this summer and settling for a few months in a college town 3200 or so miles away. (My favorite segment of the Google Maps directions, if not of the actual drive: "merge onto I-80 W. 1007 miles.") I love crossing our great nation, I love the west coast, and I love college towns, and I'm really, really glad for the opportunity to have all those things in my life again. MWCUville is within easy reach of many things Cape Cod has not: Big university! Pacific Ocean (and lots of public access to it)! Mountains! Enormous trees! Friends who have already abandoned Cape Cod for the west coast! Reasonably placed, reasonably sized street signs! Decent Mexican and Chinese food!

The reality of all this has not quite kicked in. There's so much to be arranged before we go. Housing is a big concern; the sooner we get an address on that end, the more excited I'll be about it (vs. stressed, which I'll begin to feel the longer we don't find a place). Preparations have begun - I'm shedding and shifting volunteer obligations here, and won't be looking for paid work locally until our return*. I've stopped replacing pantry items as I use them (my pantry is usually stocked for the apocalypse, so it isn't too soon to think about this). There will be medical and dental checkups and absentee ballots and school registration and mail forwarding and subscription holds and countless other administrative things to see to.

And then there's the trip out, itself, to plan! So much to see -- Yellowstone? Yosemite? Great Salt Lake? Rocky Mountains? World's Largest Ball of Twine?

Stay tuned, won't you?

*Notwithstanding all the predictions that we'll love it out there so much that we won't so much as look back, the plan is to come back home.

OMG I never finished that paper! Oh wait, yes I did. 20 YEARS AGO.

2010-03-22T22:33:00.003-04:00

So I dreamed, once again, that I had failed to write my thesis/complete an assignment/pass a class in graduate school, and never finished my degree. And once again, finding consciousness through the thick fog of that tiresome anxiety, I had to remind myself that the degree has been mine almost two decades now, and at this point, nobody's going to call to rescind it, and even so, who the fuck cares? I have children of my own sleeping down the hall. I have years of professional experience behind me. I'm a home-owning, tax-paying, advice-giving, issue-voting, blog-writing, major appliance-buying, opinion-spouting, child-rearing grownup for heaven's sake, and not intimidated by much anymore, at that. Except, evidently, in my sleep.

So I'm wondering: How old do I have to be not to have these stupid school-related anxiety dreams? Is there some internal switch I can flip that'll turn them off - or will I wake occasionally as a little old grandmother, momentarily convinced that I still have to turn in some wretched paper or exam? Because if I can just convince my subconscious that, yo, I am too dang old to still be pulling this crap on myself, then that would be one aspect of the tedious midlife crisis I could happily embrace.

And just like that:

2010-03-19T12:57:00.000-04:00

The sun is shining, the temperature's in the 60s F, the crocuses are up, the grass is greening and the birds are singing. It's glorious, and so restorative for everyone who's been feeling so deeply sun deprived. Soon we'll be waving a "no thanks" to the bus and walking to school again. Taking more steps -- better for everyone.

Spring on Cape Cod -- yahoooo!

(And just because it might kill me to be unrelentingly positive, a cautionary note: Do check for ticks after you've been outside. They're already out.)

yawn

2010-03-12T09:01:00.003-05:00

I feel like I didn't sleep at all last night, but went to bed and watched movies till dawn. I had very bizarre dreams that I can't repeat, fraught with disturbing imagery and emotion. Suffice to say that Dr. Freud would nod knowingly, and the sooner I forget them altogether, the better.

There were some less unsettling dreams as well, one of which co-starred George Clooney, but, sadly, is rated G. In it, we were riding in the back of a limousine together. I was the writer/creator of a high profile dramatic television series, and he was, well, George Clooney. We weren't working together, just sharing a ride to the same work-related destination. The limo was cruising alongside either the Cape Cod Canal, or the Connecticut River; there's a riverside stretch of country road in Hadley, Massachusetts that turns up in my dreams a lot, it might've been there. Our conversation was easy and pleasant, as between friends who've worked in the same business for many years. We got where we were going and said seeya. I proceeded to go see a tedious children's play in which none of the actors spoke in a voice over a whisper, and I thought, "oh God, not another one of these."

And... that was it. George Clooney appears in my dreams, and that was it. Just another mommy dream, with its wistfulness for paths not taken. If you're going to have a George Clooney dream, folks, make it more interesting than that one, mkay?

Kids are so weird

2010-03-11T13:23:00.000-05:00

As I type, the Bean is running around the yard with an umbrella, yelling "CALL A DOCTOR! CALL A DOCTOR!" at the top of her lungs. It isn't raining, and she's in no need of medical attention.

Meanwhile the Peanut is upstairs in the bathroom in tears. She got a new toothbrush today but she can't stand the thought of throwing away the old one. "Will it go to the dump? I don't want it to get burned!" That's the down side of loving everything, I guess.

ch-ch-ch-changes to the blog

2010-03-07T12:01:00.004-05:00

Just some housekeeping notes.

First, welcome new readers! I try not to check my sitemeter obsessively, but I have noticed some new activity of late and I'm glad you're here, even if you were referred by a list of Blogs That Suck Eggs, or something. Browse the archives -- it's riveting stuff in there, I tell ya. Pipe up in the comments if you're so inclined.

Longtime readers may notice I have changed some stuff on the sidebar. The "I post about" section is now a "cloud," not a list. The more posts I have in a category, the bigger its font in the cloud. Nifty, eh? I especially like that it now appears to contain a category called "things that suck this blog."

My blogroll has been expanded to include more of the things I'm actually reading lately, some of which I just discovered. Here's a rundown of the latest additions: Dr. Grumpy is a new find - he's a neurologist who blogs about "the insanity of [his] medical practice and the stupidity of everyday life." Good stuff. He had me at "Grumpy." Bad Astronomy is a great source of information about astronomy and many other things, with a focus on debunking hoople-headed anti-science (creationists, Jenny McCarthy fans, and climate change deniers beware). The Deal With Disability is written by a person with cerebral palsy who documents the bizarre ways people treat her because of it. Obama Foodorama is a shameless-fawning-over-the-POTUS-&-FLOTUS blog with a gastronomic slant -- everything from food policy information to menus for state dinners and such. Rational Moms speaks for itself. Kraftomatic, you have to see to believe - my very funny friend Marian finds kooky stuff on etsy and posts it for your enjoyment. Media Matters and Politifact.com are good reality check sites if you feel like you're going insane hearing people say wildly untrue and/or inconsistent things on the news and/or Capitol Hill. Sociological Images is commentary about myriad subtle (and not so) visual influences on society, for better or worse. Floating Sheep I just found this morning - it's a geography blog (holla!) of maps of various social phenomena based on data from Google, making my inner geographer very happy indeed. Also the authors are hawt, and anyone who names their blog "floating sheep" is worth paying attention to. Chez Sven and Bob's Outer Cape Blog are written by residents of Wellfleet and Eastham, respectively, and have some beautiful pictures and news of goings-on on outer Cape Cod. The Sandwich Broadsider is a local news outlet with an Upper Cape focus. In the Valley has pictures of the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, one of my favorite parts of the world. I lived there for a dozen or so years and still get homesick for it sometimes. Finally, Evil Beet Gossip is pure guilty pleasure. You're welcome.

There aren't many personal/life blogs in the list - though the few that I do read (and these, I love) are still there, and I'm always up for a new one if you have a recommendation. I don't read many blogs like my own, because unless the writing is good and the authors are people I especially connect with, they bore me after a bit. Which would be a fair criticism of this blog too, I suppose. Say it ain't so!

Anyhow, click away, folks, and let me know if there's anything I should be linking to that I haven't.

Nut free - oh, we should be so lucky!

2010-03-05T07:09:00.004-05:00

There are several kids in my girls' school who have severe allergies to peanuts. Severe, as in life-threatening. If one of these kids inhales dust from a peanut being shelled or eaten nearby, or contacts oils from someone's peanut butter and jelly sandwich, they can go into anaphylaxis, which can kill them. Kill them. Their parents are are not making this up.

The school had restricted what foods were allowable in certain classrooms, and set up a "nut-free" table for these children to be able to eat their lunch safely in the cafeteria. These compromise measures weren't enough. Pistachio shells were found on the chairs of the nut free lunch table. A substitute teacher munched on a bag of peanuts within feet of a child with a life-threatening allergy to their dust. These and other violations, and some serious reactions experienced by children, led the school administration to declare this school to be Nut Free. No peanuts or peanut products are allowed. Not for snack, not for lunch, not in baked goods for sales or celebrations. No more. Not worth the risk.

When that news came out, I thought two things: "oh phew," for my friends with severely allergic children, and "oh no," for my PB&J-loving Bean, who'd been eating no-salt-no-sugar peanut butter and fruit spread sandwiches almost every single school day of her life (note to parents who scorn PB&J for lunch as nutritionally equivalent to Sugar Pops for breakfast: it isn't necessarily so). I was hard pressed to come up with a healthy alternative (bologna? um, no.) So I posted a cry for help on Facebook, and within a half hour, had several viable alternatives. We went with sunflower seed butter, which looks and spreads just like peanut butter. The Bean was unconvinced. She narrowed her eyes in suspicion, examined the jar, and agreed to try a tiny bite before she'd reject it outright. And the verdict was: "Yup, that's fine." Crisis averted, back to lunch packing as usual. Now her only problem is explaining to well-meaning adults in school that she isn't eating peanut butter in defiance of the new rule, but that it's really sunflower seed butter.

Wait a minute, you say? Who would defy the new rule, when children's lives are at stake?

Well, according to an article in our local weekly paper, one such person is an actual member of our School Committee, who reportedly stated that if she were a parent of a child at our school, she would send in peanut butter anyway, and presumably wouldn't trouble herself over the risk it posed to any other children. Unless the report has it wrong, what we have here is a School Committee member essentially giving the finger to both school administration and parents. Yikes. Many voting parents now trust she won't be running for re-election when her term's up.

Some parents (not the ones with allergic kids, mind you) have expressed concern that a nut ban won't help allergic children cope with living in the "real world," and that because the kids will someday have to get apartments, go to college, etc., banning nuts to help prevent their death from anaphylaxis in elementary school is doing them no favors. Now, I'm sure that the parents of kids with allergies are truly touched by this heartwarming thought for their children's well-being. However, fear not, concerned parents! The children will be grownups when they get their own apartments! What they need now is just a safe place to learn to read, so they'll understand the lease. (And spare us the charade. If you're pissed off because you can't send your own kid to school with a peanut butter sandwich, say so if you must, and own it. Don't dress up your objections as some kind of concern for the allergic children. Nobody's buying it.)

At a meeting to discuss the new policy, someone suggested that the allergic kids be made to eat their lunch in the nurse's office. The idea would be merely misguided (the social implications are unacceptable), had it not been put forward by a person running for election to the School Committee. Indeed. This person made a point of saying that she understands allergies because she's been a respiratory therapist for a gazillion years, and then suggested that healthy children eat in the nurse's office. Where, you know, sick kids go before they're sent home. You'd think that might have occurred to her, being a respiratory therapist and all.

Another objection that gets thrown around a lot (and was voiced with the requisite sneer by the "let 'em eat alone" School Committee candidate) comes in the form of the "where does it stop?" meme. Do we ban fragrances, these people say? Flowers? Tide laundry detergent, if anyone's allergic to that? Again, common sense appears to be in short supply. The peanut issue is life-threatening. Nobody's suggesting we ban Tide because some kids get a rash from it. Life-threatening. It seems a pretty simple distinction.

I don't understand the hostility this issue has brought out in people. I don't understand the "we shouldn't have to accommodate blah blah blah" mentality, that attitude of entitlement -- "it's not my problem so I shouldn't have to change a thing." Why shouldn't we make accommodations -- isn't it the right thing to do? Wouldn't you want the school community to come together to support you if it were your kid in this situation? The lack of empathy is blowing me away. It's been said that empathy should go both ways, and I admit I'm having kind of a problem with that. I just don't see those of us whose kids aren't allergic to nuts as aggrieved parties. We're lucky, is what we are, and we should help make school safe for everyone.

Will a nut ban make our school perfectly safe for kids allergic to nuts? Of course not. But it will go a long way to reducing incidents they've had there in recent months, and those have got to stop. I support the majority of families in our community, who are taking this in stride and not squawking to reporters and talk radio blowhards about how wronged they feel they've been. Peanuts endanger some kids' lives? Then of course we won't send nuts to school. It's a no-brainer -- and by the way, kids get that. It's grownups who have a problem with it.

At any rate, kudos to the school administration for sticking to their decision, and for assuring people that the nut ban is in effect for as long as there are severely allergic kids in the school. Nobody seems to understand why, but it appears that severe food allergies are becoming more common. The issue is not going away. I do hope that as a community we can leave behind "why should I have to help with this?" and move toward "what can I do to help with this?". That's the lesson I want my daughters to take from it.

Question of the Day

2010-03-01T10:53:00.000-05:00

"When there's a two-hour snow delay, what time does school start?"

I'm going to assume the parent who asked this one had not yet had their coffee. Lord knows I've asked dumber things before mine.

Give me liberty, or... actually, just give me liberty. Please.

2010-02-24T21:26:00.002-05:00

So, last week was school vacation. For the last few days of the break, we had seven (7) overnight guests at the Sandyshoes house. I don't have a huge house, so it was sort of an ambitious undertaking, but it went quite well. The guests are lovely people and we were happy to have them stay with us.

As happens after hosting houseguests, I have extra sheets and towels to wash, in addition to the regular household laundry, which I do all on Mondays because I hate having it drawn out for the whole week.

Sunday night, for the first time in -- 3 years? 4 years? ever? -- the Peanut wet her bed. So, more sheets need washing, plus PJs, a duvet cover, mattress pad, and a down comforter. Not good fun, but not a big deal, until: Monday morning, my washing machine was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the bearings.

Monday afternoon, Mr. Sandy wished me luck and left for the west coast, to hobnob with his fellow oceanographers at an annual conference.

With nothing to lose, I kept running the washer until it truly blew its innards. Laundry sorting became triage, as every load could have been its last. I got a fair bit done until it well and truly quit, which it of course did mid-cycle, and refuses to pump out. So I have a load of wet soapy sheets in there. Not bad though, and we did get 10 years out of it, which I'm told is unusual these days, although why that should be I don't know. Are new machines crap, or do people just abuse them? Whatever. We need a new one.

As of Monday evening we appeared to be in good shape. Most of the laundry was done, the rest could wait until we get a new machine after Mr. Sandy gets back. With a husband like him, I don't go hiring people to install things. So, not a big deal, until: This morning at 4:30 the Peanut wet her bed again. Now I have mattress pad, sheets, PJs, duvet, comforter to wash again -- and no washer.

I gave her a bath and put her to sleep in the Bean's bed, and the Bean in with me. Going back to sleep I didn't feel right. Stomach thing coming on? I tried to chalk it up to being woken from a deep sleep, but you know how you can just tell... ugh.

Kids off to school on time this morning but I am feeling wretched, though trying to deny it. A bowl of Cheerios later I know for sure I have a stomach thing. Cancelled yoga, cancelled piano (oh I know, boo hoo). Back to bed with an alarm set to meet the Peanut's bus midday. For some reason I still thought that an hour's nap would make it all better; it didn't. Feeling really weak, I drove up the street to pick her up, with a plastic bag on the passenger seat Just In Case. Back home, immediately to the couch. I heard the Peanut pulling a stool around the kitchen gathering ingredients for making her own PB&J for lunch ("Mommy I can spread but not cut... is it OK if it isn't in little squares?"). Then she put blankets over me, and popped The Lion King in the VCR. We set an alarm to wake me to meet the Bean's bus. I fell asleep sobbing for loving her so much and feeling so bad.

I had some crazy-ass dreams of floods and car accidents in the front yard, and someone riding a wheelchair into my living room and hollering that my game of Monopoly is actually hers, and who knows what else.

Then we drove up the street again to get the Bean, because I still didn't think I could walk the 500 feet, or whatever it is. Peanut said I seemed a little better to her, which is frankly not saying much, but it's better than nothing. Somehow I manage to help the Bean "build a weather instrument" for her homework. My stomach feels rotten and my head hurts. Need to drink some water.

Later I hear a cry of dismay from the Peanut's room - for the first time since learning to use the toilet, she's wet her pants (and, naturally, the carpet). So add more pee-soaked clothing to the growing pile. But of greater concern, I now think there's something really amiss with her. The on-call nurse says to give her a bath with a cup of white vinegar in it -- although she doesn't know why this would help -- and bring her in to the office in the morning.

So that's our plan. White vinegar in the bathwater, check. Dirty laundry accumulating in a pile until I can think straight about how to deal with it, check. Get the Peanut to the doctor to see what's up with her bladder. Drink some water and get myself to bed again, and hope to feel better in the morning. Somewhere in there I fed the girls dinner. One advantage to having had a ton of houseguests is that I now have plenty of delicious leftovers.

In I-wish-it-weren't-related news, there is a laundromat opening in our town soon. I drove by it today, hoping it was ready for business. Signs are up... LIBERTY LAUNDRY, with an American flag/Statue of Liberty theme (give us your soiled?)... and the washers appear to be in, but the sign on the door still says COMING SOON. Not soon enough for me, maybe, but I'm glad to see this business in town. When I first moved here in '99, I didn't have a washer/dryer in my apartment, and though I usually brought it to the soon-to-be-Mr.-Sandy's house, there was a laundromat in town I could use in a pinch. It's since gone out of business, and I've been wondering what people do. LIBERTY LAUNDRY (I think you have to say it in all caps like that) to the rescue.

Anyhoo. Here's hoping for a dry overnight for the Peanut, and a settled stomach and decent energy level by the morning for me. That'll feel like liberty enough.

I guess I took a month off - but only from blogging.

2010-02-23T21:57:00.000-05:00

Hey there, reader(s). Sorry to leave you with kind of a downer of a post back on 1/21. I hadn't intended to go on blogging hiatus -- it just happened. Mostly for good reasons, the first of which is that I seem to have gotten myself back in the habit of using my treadmill in the mornings, which means I have to -- have to -- get to bed earlier than I had been, and that cuts into blogging time until I work it into the day some other way.

I have absolutely no excuse not to exercise regularly. When Mr. Sandy finished our basement, he built me a little room specifically for the treadmill and yoga mat. I painted it a nice light purple that I love, and I have a TV and DVD player set up in there, and it's perfect. But as much as I enjoy the feeling of accomplishment that even my paltry workouts bring, that's not enough motivation to do them. I have yet to experience these legendary endorphin releases that exercise fans say make them feel so great. What motivates me is the satisfaction of it being my routine to put my own health first in the day. I like to be up before I have to explain to anyone what I'm doing or how long I'm going to be and that I won't hear them if they try to talk to me from another room (another awesome thing about my exercise room is that it's well-insulated. I put the TV volume pretty loud to hear it over the 'mill, and it doesn't bother anyone else in the house). I like to be done with the exercise chore -- maybe someday it won't feel like a chore, but I'm a long way from there yet -- before facing the rest of the day.

Also, exercise time is TV series time. That's how I got started with The Sopranos a while back. I never had HBO, so the show was already long over by the time I started watching it on DVD, but I was totally hooked, from the first episode's very first note of opening music. So hooked that one evening, unable to wait another 10 hours to see what happened in the episode I'd started that morning, I brought the DVD up from the exercise room to finish watching it. Mr. Sandy walked past, and then he was hooked, and from then on we watched The Sopranos together ("wanna watch someone get whacked?" we'd say). Which was good fun, but I still needed something to watch from the treadmill. So this resurgence of morning exercise has meant looking for a new series to get hooked on, and to guard jealously against Mr. Sandy getting hooked on as well.

I started with The Wire. While I appreciated the excellent writing and some charismatic performances, after three episodes I was thoroughly bored with the Baltimore drug/crime scene, and there didn't appear to be any other facets to the show. One of the reasons Sopranos was soooo goooood is that it was a dense, dense drama, covering all kinds of ground at once. The Wire was a yawn by comparison.

Then I tried True Blood, which has an intriguing premise (with the invention of synthetic blood, vampires come out to live openly among us), but -- and this is an odd criticism, coming from me -- it's kind of gross, actually. I don't like the opening with all the crazy religious fanatic imagery, and the baby in Ku Klux Klan garb, and the insects, or whateverthehell. Bon Temps, LA looks like sweaty backwoods hell on Earth. And though we're supposed to like them, I find something unappealing about the gap-toothed, telepathic Sookie Stackhouse (really?) and her pasty vampire Bill. The other characters, particularly Sookie's piggish, dumb-as-dirt brother, aren't going to carry it for me either. Oh, and the sex? As much as I'm a big fan of male nudity and not put off by explicitness, the vibe of this show is hella creepy for 6:00 AM. I'm only a few episodes into it, and I gather things get more interesting later as more people get killed and the characters' supernatural traits come more into play. So maybe I'm not done with it, but for now I'm not loving True Blood.

However! I think I have hit paydirt with Deadwood, the HBO series about the South Dakota town of that name during the peak of the gold rush. It's set in 1876, before the Dakota territory was formally annexed to the United States, so there's no law there and everything's crazy. Timothy Olyphant plays Seth Bullock, a former marshal come with his partner to open a hardware business catering to prospecters. Keith Carradine is Wild Bill Hickock, and you can't take your eyes off him. Ian McShane is chilling as Al Swearengen, who owns the saloon and most everything and everyone else in town. Evil dude. The supporting characters -- my favorite is Calamity Jane -- have depth and interest as well. The whole thing is well-written, beautifully set, crude, tense, and compelling, and Mr. Sandy is not going to get a glimpse of it.

So now I'm off to bed again. I go up at 10:00, read till 10:30, then I'm up at 6:00 to see who's being fed to Mr. Wu's Deadwood pigs.

Life is good.

Comfort in the everyday

2010-01-21T16:53:00.000-05:00

So it's been a bad news week. I realize many people, including some whose opinions I respect, are delighted with the results of our little election on Tuesday. I'm not among them. I'm disappointed in the outcome, disappointed in a mediocre campaign by a lackluster candidate, disappointed that it appears Massachusetts has largely decided that obstructionism is the best idea we've got to offer.

On the other hand, I've already got health insurance, so screw you, nation. Scott Brown "believes in a culture of family, patriotism and freedom." What could go wrong?

And Haiti -- oh, Haiti. I sent money -- please, you send money too. Choose a good avenue and send what you're able to send. But I can't, I just can't, watch the CNN coverage of people having limbs amputated with only ibuprofen for their pain.

Instead, during this morning's news browsing, I watched the CNN "coverage" of a woman who has planned her family's dinners a year in advance. (Where does CNN find these people? Why does CNN find these people?) Yes indeed, she's planned what she'll make for dinner for the next 365 days. It doesn't appear she sat up drinking on New Year's Eve to get it all done for 2010, either. (Imagine January and February replete with well-balanced menus and weekend time blocked out for making home-baked treats, March and April with briefer notations and some ditto marks, and May - December with "BOURBON" and "LEFTOVERS" scrawled across them.) No indeed. CNN showed her cleanly printed calendar for the year, with the name of an entree in a nice font on the square for each day.

A year! People give me a hard time for planning four or five days ahead. This woman's got color-coded lists cross-referenced to her calendar, the whole nine yards. I kind of admire it. I have some pretty involved lists of my own -- for example, there is Recipes To Try, color coded by primary ingredient. My cookbooks are big three-ring binders, one for meat-based dishes, one for fish and meatless dishes, one for recipes I haven't tried yet. Each is divided further - chicken, pork, beef, fish, pasta, soups, etc., and alphabetized within sections (natch). I have another binder for baking, subdivided into sections of alphabetized recipes for cakes, cookies, pies, bars, breads... yeah, baby. I plan meals by going through the sections sequentially, flagging the next recipe in order after I've made the current one, alternating meat and meatless dishes and adjusting the sequence so as not to have too much soup in a row, or something. Coming up: pasta with spinach, tomatoes, and gorgonzola sauce; herbed chicken and dumplings; fish stew; cashew sweet & sour pork.

What? You're giving me that look, I can tell. Take my word for it, this is a lovely, joyous process for a cook of my personality type. But laying it all out a year in advance? Dude, that's sick. But only because it would deprive me of revisiting my lists every few days, and the lists, they love to be visited. Especially in upsetting times.

Unenrolled, not yet voted, and never so popular as I am right now.

2010-01-19T08:51:00.001-05:00

I will not enroll in either of our nation's major political parties. This makes me very popular at election times. By the way, we're having an election in Massachusetts today, had you heard?

Over the past few days I have had three phone calls from an organization called SEIU that I neither belong to nor know much about. Some kind of union. Its representatives have ranged from insulting to gracious. I have had two phone calls from the American Federation of Teachers, to which Mr. Sandyshoes, a university prof, belongs by default, and whose unread publications fill our recycling basket. I've had two robo-calls from Scott Brown, and two from his daughter, whose opinion matters -- why? One robo-call from Martha Coakley, and one call from a live person from her campaign. I'm polite to live callers from campaigns; most of them seem like nice people. I've had two robo-calls from Bill Clinton, one from Joe Biden, one from Therese Murray, President of our State Senate, and one from Vicky Kennedy, the late Senator's widow.

I had a robo-call from the President of the United States. Him, I put on speakerphone so the girls could hear. Were he an actor (pause here for Republican snickering), I'd pay to hear him read the phone book. Him, and Patrick Stewart, and possibly Alan Rickman. Still, I don't like it when the POTUS makes calls like this.

I had a shameless, repugnant, anti-choice push poll call from Scott Brown supporters. Of all the calls I received, none could have swayed my vote, had I still been undecided, except this one -- and not in the direction they'd have liked.

I must say I've enjoyed the resurrection of Scott Brown's nude photo shoot for Cosmopolitan magazine, from back when he was a law student. Seriously, I have no problem with that. Except, had Martha Coakley posed similarly in her grad school days, does anybody doubt her career would've been finished before it started? So wait, maybe I have a big problem with that.

I'm headed out now to vote for Martha Coakley and urge you to do the same, if you can. Looking forward to sinking into obscurity again on my return home.

Mr. President, you may, as always, call to consult on other matters, but on this, I am done hearing from you, ok? OK.

Edited to add: two more calls from Scott Brown and one from Martha Coakley's sister, I think? (again, whose opinion matters -- why?) since I posted the above. Sheesh! Mere hours now till this is all over either way.

in which my Bean is being impossible and I could really use a break

2010-01-15T11:22:00.000-05:00

I'm having a tough time with the Bean.

She's 7 1/2, and she's insane. She nitpicks and fusses and bitches and whines about every damn thing, and pouts and yells and cries when you tell her to quit it. Then the next minute she is over the top silly, laughing this screamy, giddy, crazy laugh that goes through my skull like an ice pick.

There is no middle ground. She is hell to be around.

This morning, the n-thousandth thing she bitched about before we even got down to breakfast was that her sister didn't put the toothpaste back exactly where she wanted it. And I said, "you know Bean, if you want to spend your whole life feeling upset about things that don't matter, you're off to a great start" and walked out of the bathroom. And she said in the empty bathroom, "and if you want to spend your whole life yelling at me, you're off to a good start."

Good one, Bean. Except: I hadn't yelled at her. It had taken every ounce of restraint I can muster before my first cup of tea, but I had not yelled at her. Believe me, if I'm yelling at you, you bloody well know it.

I sent her to her room. Because not only do I not want to spend my whole life "yelling" at her, I don't want to spend one lousy minute yelling at her. She could stay in there all goddamn day as far as I cared, in that moment. Shoot, she can stay in there till she's 18 and then move the hell out and quit making everyone else miserable.

The Peanut and I came down and made breakfast, and before long the Bean called down to ask if she could join us. "Are you ready to be around people?" I said. She was. She came down and helped get breakfast and apologized for what she'd said. All was well for maybe 20 minutes, and then silliness mode kicked in full force, and she's making nonsense noises and screaming that laugh again.

I can't stand it. I have sent both girls outside, and I will throw something out the back door for lunch. They will need to learn to pee in the woods.

(Why aren't they in school? It's a "professional development" day for teachers, so we have a four day weekend with MLK Jr. day on Monday. Didn't we just have Christmas vacation? Yes. Isn't February vacation in just a few weeks? Yes.)

And please, nobody say "just wait till she's a teenager, ha, ha." Though it may give you some kind of joy, it's obnoxious and completely unhelpful.

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful

2010-01-06T10:55:00.001-05:00

Hot damn, folks, the lovely caprice bellefleur, author of caprice's glob ("not just for the dyslexic"), has honored me with a "Beautiful Blogger" award, which I am delighted to accept despite not feeling particularly beautiful of late. Sometimes it's good to be wrong. Thank you, caprice!

Some responsibilities come with this honor:

Thank the person who chose me -- check.
Link to her site -- done.
Put the award on my blog -- voila.
List seven interesting things about myself -- done, without warranty, expressed or implied.
Choose seven other people to be Beautiful Bloggers -- fo' shizzle.

Seven (arguably not so) interesting things about me (with apologies to longtime readers if I have mentioned these things before):

1. It calms me to put things in alphabetical or numeric order. "Shelf reading" at libraries -- going through a shelf of books and reordering them as needed -- puts me into a sort of trance.

2. Sometimes I crave silence so much that conversation seems almost to cause physical pain. I was talking about this with some friends last night (most unpainfully), and I'm relieved to know I'm not alone in this.

3. I have an M.S. in Geology. The longer ago it gets, the more strange this fact seems to me. I was never especially good at geology, though I loved it, and the field trips were awesome, and geologists are some of the coolest people in the whole wide world.

4. I'm a little bit good at a lot of things, but sometimes I wish I had one big talent, y'know?

5. I once punched a Coast Guard cadet in the face, knocking him right to the ground. He deserved it.

6. I follow more celebrity goings-on than you'd think. Can you believe it, about Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon?

7. I went to summer camp as a teenager and despite behaving badly enough to almost get kicked out more than once, I remember being there as some of the best times of my life. I wish I could take back some of the stupid stuff I did, but whachagonnado.

Here are some people I'd nominate as Beautiful Bloggers. (Don't do the award thingy if you don't want to, folks, just consider yourselves admired!)

Maria of Just Eat Your Cupcake is a distinctly beautiful blogger with a distinctly beautiful blog.

Major Bedhead and This New Place are two of my favorite blog reads, and beautiful bloggers, both.

Can I just say here how lovely it is to feel connected to your lives and stories even though we've not even met? If any of you stopped blogging -- well, don't make me come over there. I'd miss you, is all. And if it feels weird that I say that, just ignore me and keep on typing.

Jill of Charming and Delightful should add "beautiful" to her many accolades.

Sue of As Cape Cod Turns is a beautiful blogger on a beautiful peninsula.

I don't think Mon of My Montana Blu reads this blog anymore, but she should consider herself a beautiful blogger regardless.

And seventh? You, babe. You're looking especially beautiful in this light.

There now... still hate me?

Just once, in a very blue moon

2009-12-31T22:18:00.000-05:00

A quick post to wave out the month, the year, the decade. I am delighted that this New Year's Eve coincides with a "blue moon" -- a thirteenth full moon in a year (which happens because the lunar cycle is 29ish days and our calendar months have mostly more days than that. Same way you sometimes get three biweekly paydays in a month).

I will be making some changes to the blog in the New Year. I've started getting a lot of spam in the comments -- especially on the older posts, it's getting insane -- and it's taking too much of my time to reject and/or delete them. So I think that beginning soon, I'll have to implement that word verification thingy. I will continue to accept anonymous comments because some of my favorite readers post anonymously (though it would help distinguish you from other anonymous commenters if you used a consistent initial, or something). I do hope you won't stop commenting for the sake of the word verification. I have little enough feedback as it is. Sniffle.

So - My very best to each of you, friends in person and online, and who comment, or who don't. I hope your holidays were all joyous, and that having them over with is joyous, and that the New Year brings you all good things. Here's to a blue moon and a new decade -- second chances and fresh beginnings.

Obligatory spending, I mean merriment, chapter the nth

2009-12-14T09:29:00.005-05:00

There's an editorial in today's Cape Cod Times about giving gifts to teachers. In brief: it says that some people go nuts with teacher gifts this time of year, but that gifts more than $50 in value to public employees, including teachers, are actually illegal.

I wish I'd seen this a month ago. Before Thanksgiving break, the mother of one of the Bean's classmates sent a notice home to all the parents saying that she sells Arbonne products (I won't provide a link, but it's skin care stuff), and that she thought it would be a great idea if every family in the class gave her some money ("$10-$20 would be great") so that she could fill a basket with some of these products for the teacher. We were instructed to call her if we didn't want to participate.

This little missive got on my nerves. First of all, coming in mid-November, it seemed like too soon to be getting on the whole buy-buy-buy treadmill that is Christmas in America. Second, how nice that this person saw a business opportunity for herself, but come on, $10-20/family? Really? We're going to give the classroom teacher a $200-$400 gift from your business? It just seemed wrong somehow.

Now I know why. According to the CCTimes piece, it doesn't matter if people pool their money, if the gift is worth more than $50, it's not legal.

The day the note came home, I left the enterprising parent a message saying no thanks, I didn't want to play. Probably there isn't much point in calling her again now to say, "oh by the way, it's against the law."

Still, what to do for teacher gifts? I just can't imagine anyone wants another World's Greatest Teacher mug/notepad/Christmas ornament/candle/fridge magnet/landfill fodder du jour, and frankly, most people need cookies like they need a hole in the head. I usually give a $15 gift card to a local bookstore with a note from the child whose teacher it is. Teachers are often people who like to read, and if not, it's an easy thing to give away. Seems to me the note from the child is the important part anyway, but what do I know. If I were more savvy about these things I'd be in business for myself.

Separate cells please! And make mine padded.

2009-12-11T10:09:00.005-05:00

I'm angry with my daughters today.

Last night I went out to a party. With Mr. Sandyshoes hobnobbing with his fellow wizards on the other side of the continent, I hired a babysitter for a few hours so that I could attend. The girls were fed, teeth and hair brushed, in their pajamas and ready for bed when Christine arrived. They had 45 minutes to subject the poor girl to Uno or Sorry or Chinese Checkers, then they were to head upstairs for a story and then lights out.

After leaving my number and destination on the message board, a quick orientation to the TV controls for Christine and kisses and good-nights for the girls, I was out the door.

Party party. Lovely! However, I discovered that hiring a babysitter makes for internal meter-ticking and ka-CHING! sounds that drown out festive chit-chat, and that no $5 martini can subdue. I was also reluctant to get a teenage sitter in trouble by keeping her out late on a school night. So I skipped my usual routine of closing the bar and herding the party along to one that stays open later, and left after just a couple hours.

Home again, I asked the typical parent-to-babysitter question: How did it go?

"Well..." Christine began, "they were tired."

Uh-oh.

The long and short of it is that they were snippy and fighting all evening. They fought over the game, and were threatened with earlier bedtime. They fought over whose room in which to read the story, and ended up using my room, to which I had deliberately left the door closed. You know, to signify Do Not Go In Here. My room was a pre-party change of clothes MESS and I really, really did not want it in play.

Story completed, Christine was led to believe that the Bean is allowed to read with a flashlight for half an hour after bedtime. This sounds plausible and I can't fault Christine for going for it. The best lies have some truth to them, and Bean does sometimes get to do this. However, she knows absolutely damn well it doesn't happen on a school night. Wily little sneak.

Also, at some point the Bean told Christine she wishes she were an only child. I'm actually partly glad she did, because when I respond in the way that mothers do when one of their lovely offspring tells them this, I'm sure it falls on deaf ears. Such gentle words of wisdom about why not having a sister isn't as good as having one might have more influence coming from the intriguing, young and lovely Christine. (Admittedly, my own words of wisdom have become somewhat less gentle in the months since this complaint was first made, though I do manage to say "if you're feeling cranky, play by yourself" instead of "Really? Too fucking bad.") So it's good that the Bean got some feedback on that line of thought from a source other than her mother. But it still pisses me off that she pulls that peevish brat crap.

I don't know precisely what role the Peanut played in all this drama, but I know it takes two to fight, and that Peanut knows just what buttons to push to bring out the worst in her sister. I'm angry with both of them. I'm taking away the game they were fighting over, and they won't be allowed to play with each other at all today.

They'll be sad, they'll say they're sorry and that they won't do it again. But it won't work. As anyone with a sibling or more than one child knows, this bickering isn't going away. At what point am I perpetuating my anger to no purpose? One of the wonderful things about children is how quickly they let go. We plodding adults are always being encouraged to Live In The Moment, blah blah blah. Kids don't need reminding.

I don't want to be angry with them anymore. I don't want to take away their games or keep them apart. I do want them to stay the hell out of my room when the door's closed and not to behave like sneaky whining brats when a babysitter comes. Sigh.

(As usual, The Onion hits the nail on the head. Hee!)

I hear/The secrets that you keep...

2009-12-07T11:24:00.004-05:00

I've written a little bit before about sharing a bed with my daughters. This isn't a routine thing. They've never been inclined (or encouraged) to join us in the middle of the night -- I'll go to them for a bit, if there's a scary storm or something -- or to come romp on our bed in the morning and fall back asleep there. We have been very successful with a Play Quietly In Your Room Until We Are Awake rule. But when we're traveling, it sometimes makes most sense to put one grownup and one child in each of a hotel room's two queen size beds, and at home, if Mr. Sandyshoes is away, I let the girls take turns sleeping in my bed with me.

Last night was the Peanut's turn. At bedtime she hauled in her gear and unpacked: feather and fleece pillows, fleece blanket with duckie, "taggie" blanket, stuffed lambie, stuffed doggies, and her music box. It is a good thing I have a King sized bed.

She arranged everything and fell asleep in no more time than it usually takes her. When I came to bed myself, I saw the taggie blanket had been draped carefully over lambie, and doggie was under the pillow. Peanut often sleeps on her back, limbs out like a capital X, but to my happy surprise, she was on her side and there was plenty of room for me.

We had a peaceful slumber until zero-dark thirty, when she hollered: "NO! You're looking at my cards!" Pause. "I said DON'T!!" We have been playing a lot of Uno at our house lately, so I assume this outburst was directed at her sister. I don't look at her cards, I swear. Yeeesh. Back to sleep.

When we woke at a decent hour, I asked if she remembered any of her dreams. Big smile, then "I dreamed of a bunny eating an apple pie." She had no memory of having loudly relived any injustices suffered during card games. It cracked her up to hear what she'd said.

My college roommate once sat straight up in bed and pronounced "I am a fine connoisseur of hams," then lay right back down and continued sleeping. That's probably the oddest thing I've heard of anyone saying in their sleep. Especially funny because she's Jewish, though not practicing. (Evidently.)

I don't think I talk much in my sleep anymore. I occasionally have crazy animal attack dreams, and thrash and holler until I wake myself. Mr. Sandyshoes has gotten as used to these as a person could be expected to, I guess. It's just what happens sometimes. I keep thinking I'll run out of animals because it's never the same species twice. Weirdest one (though not by far the most violent) was a deer chewing on my elbow.

What are you saying in your sleep?

I am now obligated to leave you with this primo bit of mid-80s pop culture. The hair, the hair!

NY Senator Diane Savino speaking truth to power

2009-12-04T15:45:00.002-05:00

A disappointing vote by the New York State Senate. Who'd have thought that New York and Maine would have so much to learn from Iowa?

But here's hoping we haven't heard the last of Diane Savino:

Y'all are NUTS.

2009-11-27T23:57:00.002-05:00

I have a crazy number of friends... by which I mean, way more than one... who WILLINGLY got up and went Christmas shopping before 6:00 this morning with crowds of other insane people. They did this on purpose! They were happy about it!

I'm sorry, but to my mind, something is really, really wrong with that.

Me? I slept late, played some board games, made turkey soup, listened to some Monty Python songs, watched some Marx Brothers, watched some rain out the window, watched some James Bond. Laid low, took it easy. Wouldn't change a thing.

Do you do the Black Friday madness? Do you like it? Please to explain.

Curse you, NPR! Well, sort of.

2009-11-25T08:45:00.005-05:00

So I've recently made a change to my morning routine -- one that improves my mood, broadens my horizons, accentuates the positive, eliminates the negative, etc. etc.: When I turn on my bathroom radio, I don't listen to the whining, sneering blowhards on local commercial talk radio any more. I put their station on for the top-of-the-hour news and weather, then switch to NPR's Cape and Islands affiliate for the end of their local newscast (the self-proclaimed Cape Cod news station devotes so little time to actual news that you can listen to their entire newscast, switch stations, and still catch some of WCAI's) and then NPR's "Morning Edition."

I don't miss the local blowhards one bit. They are always annoying, and frequently stupid, and there is just no sense starting the day listening to them. Changing the station has been a good thing all 'round.

Today, Morning Edition had coverage of the White House state dinner for the Prime Minister of India. What a night that must've been! So I'm listening to the President's and Prime Minister's toasts, and to the reporting about the event (it was held in a giant tent with a transparent ceiling! which made me think of Hogwarts. Excellent.) The segment wrapped up, and my attention turned to getting the girls up-dressed-brushed.

The next thing my ear caught was some music between stories, or part of a story, I don't know. This is dreadful, awful, evil music. One wee measure of this song will plant the whole awful mess in my head for days. DAYS! If I even hear words that remind me of this song, I must immediately and with whatever mental strength I have left focus hard on something else -- anything else, to prevent this invasive, fast-growing, carnivorous vine of a tune from taking hold of my poor brain.

NPR played this song at my most vulnerable moment. I hadn't had my tea. I hadn't even dried my hair. My defenses were down and I was struck head-on. And now, friends, I am consumed with the fire of vengeance. I shall use this mighty blog (humor me) to perpetuate and amplify this horror, with video!

GAH!! The cheesiness, it burns! And yet, I can't look away. (Did that clarinet player wink?) And neither can you! And I bet you'll be singing that godforsaken song hours, maybe days from now, because NOTHING CAN ERASE IT.

MWAHAHAHAHA!

And yet, even with this poison in my veins, I still have no regrets about the station change. That this is still progress shows just how bad the local blowhards are. Were. So long, blowhards.

On the day that you were born...

People watching: oil change edition.

2009-11-20T13:29:00.009-05:00

As the person in charge of car maintenance for a two-Toyota family -- they never break, if well maintained -- I spend a fair bit of time in the service area waiting rooms of my local dealership. Some folks like to drop off their cars and pick them up later. For me, each oil change represents a chance to do some uninterrupted reading/writing/to-do-list updating. An opportunity to spend an hour without being asked for anything is not one to miss, even if it is in a waiting room.

I generally prefer the waiting area with tables, but this morning the man who sat down next to me smelled so bad that I had to move. Really. I imagined this memo:

TO: Revolting person who just sat down
FROM: The person you just sat down next to, who would really rather be minding her own business

RE: malodorousness

Sir: I regret to inform you that you stink. Yes, I said, YOU STINK. Would it have killed you to wash this morning? Really? How about brushing your teeth? Mouth breathers need to pay extra attention to that little chore, you know.

Ew,
Sandy.

But because there's no good way to say any of that, I moved to the other room, which is usually intolerable because of a blaring television. Last time I was there, Regis and Kelly were screeching from the TV. Their guests were two English women whose self-appointed job it is to tell people what they ought to be wearing in order to look less like ordinary schlumps, and more like tarted-up schlumps with bunions and staggering dry cleaning bills. One of the examples shown of the fashion horrors these preening bitches had witnessed on the streets of Manhattan that very morning -- they were still recovering! -- was a woman wearing the exact same shoes that I had on my own feet as I stood at the coffee/tea counter beneath the infernal screen. Fuck you, English fashion police bitches, I thought. And fuck you, Regis and Kelly. My shoes are cute. Granted, they are maybe more appropriate for Cape Cod than Times Square, but still. Get stuffed.

Television sucks. I digress.

Thankfully, nobody had yet turned on the TV when I sat down this morning. We were all readers or writers, waiting for our cars. Hurray! So I got to work.

After a few moments a gangly woman with long stringy black hair clomped in on chunky square-heeled boots. She had the pigeon-toed, hunched posture of the self-consciously tall and broad shouldered. She wore skinny black leggings under a giant purple shirt, and her makeup was a tad clownish. Although she was about my own age, there was an affected carelessness about her that you'd associate more with teenagers. She definitely stood out in a room full of jeans and windbreakers.

Now, I like watching people, but sometimes what I like better is watching other people watch people. There was an unabashed observer, a casually well-dressed woman of about 60, in the waiting room this morning. (Well dressed, I say, except that she had one of those Coach handbags with a metallic gold strap and that big Coach "C" logo all over it. I hate those bags. Their primary purpose is to broadcast "Look! I have enough money to buy one of these hideously overpriced bags covered in the letter C!") The Observer had a good seat next to the coffee machine, and everyone who approached it got a most thorough once-over. Peering over reading glasses, she looked each of us over slowly, from hair to shoes and back up, staring as we took our seats. You could all but see her judgments pass across her forehead as she made them: some approval, some dismissal, quite a bit of disdain, some horror.

Her horror at the awkward, clomping woman in purple was poorly concealed. Lip curled in distaste, eyes wide, she didn't just do a double take and look away, but stared unrelentingly. I stared at her staring. I wanted her to know she was busted in her snottiness. She never looked my way, though. I suppose I had already been assessed and (I'm guessing) dismissed. Clomper clomped off with her coffee into the room with Smelly McStinkypants. The Observer went back to her novel. I went back to my writing.

Who should moments later appear to my wondering eyes but a dead ringer for George Costanza's mother, who, to my delight, scowled at everyone and sighed a big "well, what can you expect" sigh. I turned to The Observer, watched her take in this woman's plump countenance, her orange hair in newly set curls, her archly pencilled, agitated brows, her brown polyester stretch pants, her cheap shoes. The Observer registered predictable disdain. Mrs. Costanza sighed some more, got herself a blueberry muffin and sat down next to me.

The next woman to join us was carrying the brown version of that stupid "C" bag. This one actually rated a twitchy little smile of approval from The Observer. Acceptable. Her own kind.

As my name was called to pay up and get the heck out of there, in came a woman in a huge, safety-orange puffy coat and bright red lipstick. The Observer glared at the coat as the woman peeled it off and announced to us all that she was SOAKED to the SKIN, it's as if NOAH and the FLOOD are UPON US!

"As long as it isn't snow," grumbled Mrs. Costanza, scowling at her muffin.

Hee!

The vaccine scene

2009-11-18T08:37:00.003-05:00

Well, I probably shouldn't type this out loud, but the Sandyshoes family has thus far managed to avoid the flu, swine and otherwise. The vaccine situation has been frustrating. I will never understand the whole business of how flu shots -- just seasonal flu, mind -- are distributed to pediatricians' offices and thence to our kids. They tell me to call in October. Last year when I called in October, they said oh, we won't have any flu vaccine until mid-November. This year when I called in October, they had already held three vaccination clinics and were completely out of vaccine. So how am I supposed to know when they have it? Telepathy? Should I start making daily calls in August? It's effing ridiculous.

Yes, I understand that every year's flu is a different virus, so a new vaccine has to be developed, tested, manufactured, preserved, packaged, distributed, etc., and that every place doesn't get delivery at the same time. But, but! The at-risk population numbers don't change that much year to year. The equipment for manufacturing vaccine doesn't have to be re-invented every year. The distribution mechanisms are the same. It's not like any given flu season is the First Time Ever. Yet every year, there's the big mystery... when will the vaccine come? How much will there be? The doctors' offices don't know. The health departments don't know. Who DOES know?

Here on the end-user side of things, we are clearly on our own. The doctor's office is no help at all. Fend for yourselves, families! So we keep our ears and eyes open for sources. We'll pay cash if we have to. We'll drive miles away to clinics we've never been to before, clinics with no direct phone line to reach anyone who can tell us if there's any vaccine actually on hand. (CVS Minute Clinic, I'm looking at you. I tried to call the specific location "nearest" me, but the only number available is the national one. Without knowing what location I was even talking about the national number person told me "there was a delivery of flu vaccine at 2:00." "Really?" I asked her. "Every Minute Clinic in the country got a delivery at 2:00? Is that Eastern Standard Time?")

Add the H1N1 vaccine into the mix this year, and with the undersupply, and the long lines, and people going nuts for every imaginable reason (there's been hysteria about whether or not it's safe, and hysteria about whether we'll be able to get it at all. So which is it, folks -- are we scared because Big Bad Government is going to inject us with we know not what? or because we won't be able to get this poison into our veins soon enough?), you just have to use common sense and hope for the best. We wash our hands, we get enough rest, we cover our coughs, we use hand sanitizer, all that.

Meanwhile, the buzz all over town is about how many kids are sick. School attendance has dropped to levels not usually seen till flu season peaks in January/February. Parents are sending hand sanitizer into classrooms by the gallon. School nurses are being very cautious: The Peanut got sent home with a "fever" one day last week. Her face was flushed and felt warm, and I got the call to come get her. I'd been at the school all morning for something else, so I knew it was especially hot in the building that day, and that the Peanut's cheeks flush at the slightest over-warmth... still, I took her home, feeling perfectly well, if very confused at having been whisked to the nurse's office. "Mommy, they think I have SWINE FLU?!" I took her temperature every hour, and it never got over 97. Still, better safe than potentially infecting everyone else.

Turns out that the girls will be able to get the H1N1 vaccine via nasal mist today. Earlier this week, parents in town got a robo-call from the Superintendent of Schools saying vaccine is available from the Town Department of Health, whom we should call to make an appointment to receive it -- and which was, of course, closed at the time of the robo-call. Anticipating not being able to get through on the phone the next morning, Mr. Sandyshoes was on their doorstep as they opened for the day (not me, I had yoga. Yay! of which more later). There were people lined up before he even got there. The nurse said that indeed, the phone was ringing off the hook -- she'd just got off the line with someone who was railing that NOBODY should be vaccinated, and who didn't want to send her kid to school with other children that had been recently vaccinated. Really. So where do you go from there? How do you answer someone who is that emotionally committed to believing the vaccine is dangerous? As Mr. Sandyshoes said, these are the people you later hear about in the news, whose children have died on their living room couches for lack of medical attention.

Immunity is A Good Thing, folks. Get some if you can. And use good sense, in any case.

(For more reasoned discussion of the anti-vax hoopla, check out the discussions at rationalmoms.com).

Waste paper much?

2009-11-09T12:48:00.002-05:00

Number of items I bought at Stop & Shop this morning: 10
Length of my receipt: 36.5 inches.

Ridiculous.

A wee heartbreak

2009-10-22T12:38:00.006-04:00

The Peanut spent yesterday afternoon and evening digging through her bin of markers and drawing little orange pumpkin faces on pages from one of those pocket-sized spiral notebooks. Each one was different, and on each, she wrote one of her classmates' names. She counted carefully to be sure she hadn't forgotten anybody. Then she clipped them together and put them in her frog backpack, and today, she was going to hand them out to everyone.

When I met her bus after school, she waved to her friends as always, and as always on the walk back to the house, I said, "so Peanut! Tell me all about it! Did you learn anything today?" And she said "Yes, but Mommy, nobody wanted my pumpkin faces, Sienna drew all over hers, and I had to throw some of them away, because nobody wanted them! I worked so hard on them, and nobody wanted them!" And she cried and cried in my arms as I whispered "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," and fought back tears myself.

I hate other kids. I hate them.*

And I know that they just didn't understand that the Peanut was giving them a piece of her heart, and that it's a lot to expect of a kindergartner to say thank you when a friend gives them a little piece of paper that seems meaningless. But my heart breaks to think of the Peanut watching her classmates reject or wreck these little gifts, and bringing the rest of them to the trash.

Did you learn anything today, indeed.

It was, at least, good timing for something like this. Peanut's best friend Gina -- who kept her little paper pumpkin face -- is over to play. Her Mom brought her over just as Peanut and I were wiping our tears. The girls took off running immediately, and the pumpkin face fiasco is suddenly ancient history. As I write, they are zooming around the yard like maniacs in between bites of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (that'd be no-salt-no-sugar peanut butter and all fruit jelly on wheat bread, because I am That Mom) and sips of chocolate milk. We're going to make lemon cheese bars (they're better than they sound) and they can eat them at the top of the play gym and then scream their little heads off coming down the slide.

She'll forget about it, or get it in perspective, and bounce right back. Me? I'm still sad. Sad to see her realize that she can't just wear her love for everyone on her sleeve and receive it back in kind. My heart broke for the Bean when it happened to her in Kindergarten, and it's breaking for the Peanut now. It's a chip out of their innocence -- just a sad, sad feeling, for a parent who cares about that sort of thing in a world where plenty don't.

*no, not really. But still.

Things that are always around when you don't need them but are somehow hard to find when you do

2009-10-15T22:01:00.000-04:00

pens or pencils
matches
shallots
Chap stick
nail files
massage therapists
scrap paper
backs of earrings
quarters
gas stations
receipts
sunglasses
offspring
vacuum cleaner bags
little packets of ketchup/mustard/mayo/relish
napkins, in the car
complete thoughts