Patriotic Duty, Part II

I may not have mentioned this before, but Leelo's preschool just happens to rent its space from our church. This means that, while I am hiding from all the little monsters during my ten minute work break, I can hang out in the social hall and browse through the flyers. This opportunity is what made me realize how little I am doing about my political concerns. Plus they have stacks of free Kerry bumperstickers!

Anyhow. Jo's comments a few days ago from an anonymous conservative got me wondering what personal freedoms that nameless person considers dispensable. Are people truly so cowed by The Terrorist Threat that they consider privacy battering rams such as the Patriot Act and Section 215 tolerable? What do you think?

Consider what the ACLU has to say about it.

And if you think they're flag-burning freaks, consider the Quaker perspective.

Patriotic Duty, Part I

I haven't been doing enough to further the cause of getting Mr. Bush kicked the fuck out of office. So, today's posts will be political. I will release them one at a time so you don't get overwhelmed, because I'd really like you to try to read them all, and discuss.

Firstly, I'd like to thank Mr. Norton for capsulizing something that's been making my skin itch uncontrollably for years, namely how Bush and Co. get away with unrepentant, uncontrolled, malicious spin while their opponents almost never do. I'm hoping that Kerry learns to take his gloves off a bit--I don't want to see him stooping to his combatant's level, but I hope he addresses the spin issue directly, so the public can at least consider exactly how they've been and will continue to be fucked under his tarnished aegis.

Also, in terms of my own efforts, I've just realized that my parents will be visiting during the weekend before the election, and will be driving home and voting immediately afterwards. We might be able to work on them while they're here.

Let the Hardcore Nesting Begin

This is day number 210
You're 30! weeks! pregnant!
Your baby's age since conception is 196 days / 28 weeks
There are 70 days until your due date! (25.0% to go)

What this means to those of you who've ever spied and coveted something in my house: now is the time to ask for it. Everything must go! Three big bags already went out the door today.

Yes, I Read People

I don't subscribe, but it is my first trash-read choice whilst detained in any medical or therapeutic lobby. I know I'm not alone, but am not asking anyone to out themself.

Why do I read it? I dunno. Pretty, sparkly clothes mostly. And even they couldn't ignore the excellent Persepolis. It never really seems to get nasty, like the slime mold that is Us. Plus, it's brainless, and brainless interludes are critical to maintaining my energy reserves.

I appreciate its being mindless and silly. Unless they try to do some real journalism, such as this week's (9/27) article covering the autism and mercury/Thimerasol controversy. Then it is as putrid as any of its competitors.

At first I thought the reporters were doing an even-handed job, featuring quotes from and pictures of families whose children had regressed after receiving their vaccinations, and describing how these people were trying to do the best they could by their children but were demanding more research. More research! Yeah!

Then the article slid right down into fearmongering and misinformation territory. Specifically:

-Sweden discontinued Thimerasol use in 1993 but autism rates have continued to accelerate. So, maybe it wasn't the Thimerasol. I'm open to that. But there was no mention of research implicating the MMR and Hepatitis B vaccines themselves, no mention of genetic susceptibilities, no mention that More Research is Needed.

-Pediatrician X had a patient who died of complications from measles because he wasn't vaccinated. His parents will never forgive themselves. Perhaps. But there was no mention that measles is now so rare that most pediatricians wouldn't recognize the symptoms if they bit them on the ass, and no mention of why parents would make such a difficult decision--for instance, having a contraindicatory family history of neurological or immunodeficieny issues. Also no mention that, specifically because of vaccinations, measles may have mutated into a much more virulent form.

-Thimerasol is still included in some vaccines such as flu shots, but the amount is less than you'd get in a can of albacore tuna. It is safe. First of all, I've never heard of anyone mainlining albacore tuna--gastrointestinal absorption and direct injection are somewhat different processes. Second, this is the same fucking tuna that has been vilified in the news lately. You know, the one that pregnant women shouldn't eat at all, that children shouldn't eat more than once every three weeks, that adults shouldn't eat more than once weekly.

So, I guess we sad, proud families with autistic children should just suck it up. And the rest of you, don't worry about vaccines and environmental mercury. You're totally safe! People Magazine says so.

And What Do You Drive?

Today's mightiest chuckle so far came from watching the most sugar-fearing and natural fiber-wearing mom I've ever met speed by me in her gas-guzzling SUV. Which gets a crappy combined 17 MPG. Even the behemoth Acura MDX gets 19!

Both my current and planned-for-vehicles get 21. That's not stellar, like the 28 of my beloved old Plymouth Horizon, but at least it's not in the you're-going-to-hell-you-selfish-bastard red zone.

What I want to know is why a 2004 Prius only gets 55, when a 1997 Geo Metro gets 49. Granted, there are size and weight differences, but it seems to me that the gap should be much, much wider.

Ever wondered about how badly your vehicle is messing with the environment? Check out this excellent site: http://www.fueleconomy.gov

In Gratitude

Right about this point in Iz's pregnancy is when I got put on bed rest. For ten fucking weeks. Due to pre-term labor.

I contest that I did not bring it on by flying to Atalanta and partying with Dee and Giddy for several days, but rather that it was brought on by the stress of getting slammed with several emergency writing projects at work right after I stepped off the plane. Of course, if I hadn't gone to GA the projects wouldn't have started stacking up and toppling over, but hey.

Anyhow, the bottom line is that stress and pregnancy are a bad mix for me. Hence this list:

Thank you to Jo and Manny, who took Leelo and Iz for a big chunk of yesterday so I could sit calmly and firmly on the couch, watching a middling movie and attending to some soothing, months-old mending.

Thank you in advance to Badger, who has offered to come and work with Iz on some homework this afternoon so that any Spanish knots can be untangled on the fly, rather than via jarring gaps as I desperately paw through a Spanish/English dictionary.

Thank you to Seymour, who took time he did not have to empty the litterbox this morning.

Thank you to Godfather M, who accompanied the kids and me to Doula A's salon so that A could actually attend to the hacking of my parti-color locks.

Thank you to Emsie, who had us three over to her jewel box of an apartment in SoMa, and pitched in amiably with the Leelo and Iz wrangling at the nearby park and Ferry Building.

Thanks to Babysitter Cece, who sat on Leelo so I could take Iz to a gymnastics party without having to wrestle our enthusiastic boy out of all the out-of-bounds areas the entire time.

And, finally, thank you to the invisible forces that influenced the mom hosting the gymnastics party, and made her tell Jo and me that we could drop our girls off, giving us almost two whole hours of complete freedom to go eat The World's Best Chinese Food.

I would not have survived Seymour's conference weekend without all this help. I'm still mostly holding on by my nails and teeth.

Semi-related somewhat distasteful postscript: If you're going to eat a large portion of chili-flake tofu for both lunch and dinner, remember that you did so before wiping yourself the next day and completely freaking out for a split second, thinking that you're seeing vaginal blood.

It Is 10:48 P.M.

And Leelo has been screeching, bouncing, and otherwise staying up for 90 minutes now. So far he has only stripped jammies and diaper off once. I just want to farking go to bed, but can't until he's down as one never knows what he will do if left alone--tear the doors off the cabinet of art supplies? Climb up onto my dresser and eat the organs from Iz's anatomy model? Get into the bathtub and turn the water on while fully dressed?

I will be grateful when this conference is over and Seymour's days do not end with him returning home at midnight and then leaving the house before 7 A.M.

Good news from this ungrateful, moany wretch--the friends who were supposed to come over tomorrow afternoon had a scheduling hiccup, and won't be visiting after all. I am both disappointed and relieved. However as I had made a special trip to Giddyap Girlie Creamery in The City this afternoon, I am now stuck with large quantities of spectacular cheeses...what to do, what to do?

When You Are Really Tired

You leave a bag of "to be composted" foodscraps on the porch and then forget about it until the next morning, when you realize that the raccoons sure as hell didn't forget about it and now your porch is covered with slimy rotty vegetable bits.

You deny that you are tired and take the kids up to many fun places in the city, then return home and realize that you are so tired and sore and stiff that you could care less whether the kids watch TV until bedtime, or have baths, or brush teeth. Especially since they fell asleep in the car on the way home and will be up until midnight anyhow.

You mindlessly trawl awful sites like this, and then chuckle over entries such as:

i have two daughters--sapp*hire dea*nna and amet*hyst b'ela*nna. my husband is a sttar trrek fan so we compromised with the girls having
star trek middle names. i name my daughters after my two favorite gemstones and they both are truly precious to us.

And, ideally, at some point tonight, you sleep.

Speedy Blathery Snatches From the Past 48 Hours

Crazy crazy crazy! I am tired.

Wednesday night we had babysitting. Seymour went biking, I went to dinner. The restaurant did not have the foie gras advertised by their online menu (and let that be a source-verification lesson to you all!), but they did have something equally morally questionable and iron-rich: a veal porterhouse. With mashed potatoes and a truffled cream sauce. I could hear my hemoglobin sighing with delight.

I returned home to a very flustered Babysitter Cece. Iz had accidentally locked them out of the house once, and then decided that her spy-kid-like re-entry through the kitchen window was so exciting that she pulled it on Cece two more times--once while Leelo just had escaped into the house ahead of them.

Thankfully Iz was in bed by the time I returned, so I didn't have to kill her. Cece was too kind to tell me to take a strap to her and made excuses for her instead. And I do understand how thrilling it must have been for her to have that kind of adventure. But we are having ongoing discussions about the danger she put everyone in, she is not to see any friends for two days, and she had to write Cece a heartfelt note of apology.

Plus I let her know that, in the Olden Days, had I done such a thing I would have experienced a spanking so severe that I wouldn't have been able to sit for days. I think that got through if nothing else did.

Bad Moms Coffee. Sigh. Happiness. Although Badger was not there.

Then Iz went to our local dentist for the first time. And, awwww, she has her first cavity! It'll get filled next week.

The dentist gave her the most excellent bag of tricks. A timer (hourglassish) to help gauge how long to brush her teeth, those pink pills that reveal any remaining plaque, a tongue scraper, multicolored dental floss, etc.

The dentist took one look in our girl's mouth, and, seeing the intense lower jaw crowding that made her first adult tooth push out two baby teeth to get through, reacted with the expected "oh, my!"

Apparently our girl told the dentist that she "didn't have a photographic memory, but it's still pretty good."

Yeah. That must be why, when I turned off The Offspring's "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" mid-song, she sang the rest of a truncated line even though she's only heard the song in its entirety two or three times (she usually loops the "Uno Dos Tres Quatro Cinco Cinco Seis" part, ignoring the rest). Thankfully its expletive count is rather low compared to most of their songs--the only violation is "ass."

Leelo's got The Ramones' "Mama's Boy" chorus down. He sings it all the time, and asks me to do it too--although I must pat his tummy when it's my turn. He also has his own version, "Izzy's Boy."

His speech therapy session went well yesterday afternoon. They're working on adjectives (big/little etc.). She remarked upon how changed he is from the boy she started working with 18 months ago. I hope hope hope so.

In order to boost my iron levels, I made sloppy joes for dinner last night. From scratch! They were farking awesome once I tweaked the recipe and added a buttload of Sriracha. But this meant that the kids spent a good hour force-watching TV so I could cook. I'm trying to figure out when else during the week I'm going to get any real cooking done as Thursday is Iz's only homework-free day (although she still has a mandatory book-a-night reading assignment that we sign off on every day).

The wonder that is TeeVo continues to deliver much in the way of interesting laundry-time viewing material.

That remake movie, The Riing? When are people going to figure out that disjointed enigmas are insufficient substitutes for good storytelling? Although the sequence where the girl crawled through the TV screen is going to keep me sleeping fitfully for many nights.

Actually I've been sleeping fitfully since I started taking those supplements daily. Sweating at night and such. WTF? I am normally an excellent sleeper. I don't need additional stamina drains at this point and so am hoping it's an adjustment phase.

Like most people, I am semi-obsessed by remote archipelagoes and so have been watching documentaries on the Aleutians. I should know better, but still always imagined them as wildlife, particularly avian, wonderlands. In fact Seymour and I have talked about a birding expedition to both them and the neighboring Pribilofs, for years. Who wouldn't want to see eiders in the wild?

I don't want to go into the depressing details, but the Aleutians, their people, and wildlife were severely fucked up by WWII Japanese and American resettlements, occupations, and conflicts. Shredded by thousands of troops. War debris cleanups are recent and ongoing. Nuclear testing. Overfishing. Now I'm really depressed and will stop.

This morning both Seymour and I had alarm malfunctions. Our double redundancy system obviously needs review.

His workplace is hosting the annual international conference for his type of business for the next five days, so we won't be seeing him until Wednesday or so.

Leelo's school went well this morning. Our boy learned how to climb up into and back out of the school fort's trap-door style entry by observing another child. Very encouraging.

I spent Leelo's school time going to the chiropractor (aaaaah!), talking to the good doctor's spouse/admin about vaccination options, attempting to be helpful at Iz's school but instead wasting reams of state-underfunded copy paper and shamefacedly taking the job to CaupyMat and paying for it myself, and then meeting poofy little snuggly Milton!

I am leaving several things out but you do understand that even a life as boring as mine can be a logistical nightmare.

Now I must go water all those pots of plants littering my yard and porches. I'm supposed to do this every-other-daily during the summer, but am finding finding the time increasingly challenging. I will be adopting out as many plants as I can before the thirdling arrives, but the too many of them have touching stories attached and couldn't possibly be given away. This one was given to me by dear Sukie shortly before she died, this was on the altar at cousin D.'s funeral, this showed up on our doorstep when Iz was born, when Leelo was born, at Iz's welcoming ceremony, at Leelo's ceremony, Iz grew this herself from scratch, this is the first plant of this variety that I didn't kill...you understand.

Every other plant is going, though. As I must, to get Iz from school and then relieve Therapist F of Leelo duty and then take Iz to ballet. Have a good weekend.

Stupid

Okay...so if you're pregnant and already exhausted and anemic and nauseated and the iron pills don't seem to be doing anything at all yet then you should not be the one to volunteer to fill your preschool work morning by pushing three sobbing toddlers in an unwieldy stroller contraption all the way around the block. I am so tired that I'm going to barf. Leelo and Iz, let's see what's on TeeVo!

Oh For Fuck's Sake

Last night was the first parent meeting for Leelo's preschool.

These mandatory three-hour meetings happen twice monthly. The local adult school partially funds the preschool (tuition is cheap cheap cheap!); in return we must put in a set number of hours of parent education to keep our good standing and cashflow.

Everyone was kind and earnest, in keeping with my previous experience and school tradition. They were very friendly and welcoming about Supervisor M's handouts describing Leelo and his background and our goals and how to interact with him in class.

But then we did the "get to know you" section of the show. Teacher K had us talk about who we are, why we chose Iron Gate, and, for fun, what food we eat when no one is looking. We chatted about our answers with a partner, and then our partner got to tell the class all about us.

As we went 'round the room, I found the food answers increasingly silly. In my mind, a food you eat when no one is looking is something horrible or nasty or weird. Apparently at Iron Gate, where sugar of any kind is forbidden, the worst possible horrible nasty food is either chocolate, ice cream, or Cheetos. One person--I must get to know her better--admitted to a hankering for McDickwad's chicken sandwiches.

I went last. My answer was the morally bankrupt foie gras. Everyone in the room gasped. Exactly, people. I wouldn't eat it in front of you, just as you would only eat your chocolate late at night, with all the shutters closed, sitting on your bed of nails and wearing your hairshirt.

Then we talked about food allergies. I said that we didn't feed Leelo chocolate or citrus because it makes him crazy, but that as Therapist F would be monitoring his food intake, they wouldn't need to worry. This let to a collective titter about how they would NEVER allow chocolate at Iron Gate anyhow, so it wasn't really an issue. Give me a break.

My approach to our kids' food is that they eat good, wholesome fare most of the time. But if they want to cut loose with an occasional soda or donut, more power to them. They know that these foods are special treats. I don't want them to end up like me, eating Lucky Charms cereal for every meal of every day in college just because I was denied it for the 17 years beforehand.

It was also funny to hear everyone else's reasons for choosing the school. They all cited the Sense of Community! and the nurturing environment. I was amused to hear Scarlett list this as well, when in fact she chose the school because I told her to. Then it was my turn. I said I chose Iron Gate because the kids don't have to be potty-trained. I wonder if these people will ever talk to me again.

Fuck 'em for now. I have made a 6:30 reservation at a local restaurant featuring foie gras terrine as an appetizer, and several chocolate desserts. I wish Seymour had time to come with me, as we've been completely parallel for more than two weeks and I miss him (don't tell him I wrote that!), but he is coming off a hard-core weekend of solo dad-dom and so is running off into the mountains with his new biking friend.