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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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:

1. Thank the person who chose me -- check.
2. Link to her site -- done.
3. Put the award on my blog -- voila.
   
4. List seven interesting things about myself -- done, without warranty, expressed or implied.
   
5. 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

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

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.

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...

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

Ridiculous.

A wee heartbreak

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

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

This post is toned down a notch from what I wanted to say after it happened.

A kid on a playground grabbed my daughter so hard that he left gouges in her arm. Asked how this came about, the woman watching him said, "oh, Todd needs redirecting sometimes, he's a special needs child, so we redirected him, and it's fine now."

Well, no, actually. It is not fine now.

I don't give a rat's skinny ass how "special" this kid's "needs" are. My girls have the evidently not-so-special need not to be injured by other children on playgrounds, and I'm sorry, but that trumps whatever he's got. Insensitive? Hell yes. My sensitivity ends where my daughters' safety begins. Call it whatever you like, but keep your kid's hands off my girls, or you'll experience a "redirection" you will never forget.

Have a nice day now.

I don't get it.

Roman Polanski drugged and raped a child.

Why is anyone -- ANYone -- upset that this is a serious punishable offense?

We're not talking blow-job-from-consenting-adult, censure and move on.

He drugged. And raped. A child.

Harrison Ford? Whoopi Goldberg? I love you both, but STFU.