Sad About Dad, Very Very Sad

Sad About Dad, Very Very Sad

My mom just sent out the latest on my dad. He had quintuple bypass surgery on his heart five years ago and has been battling leukemia for more than a year. Please think good thoughts.

Just to let you know that Dad isn't doing as well as we had hoped. He
is very short of breath, no energy, and having angina again like before his
bypass. We saw the Oncologist today and he is starting him on Procrit, a
red cell booster as he is so anemic. It will take about 6 weeks to show
improvement. His white count is still way too high so he is upping the chemo
pill. We are supposed to meet Auntie M and Uncle Adolf in Florida the 1st week of
March so will see how it all pans out. If the procrit doesn't do the job of
relieving his anemia he will have to start on regular blood transfusions.
He sees the cardiologist on Monday and now has a stenotic aortic valve.
Poor guy, he didn't need that. He may need surgery again but with all the
other risks, who knows if they will consider him a candidate. I will let
you know more about that after the visit on Monday. He is still working [limo driver] and
continues to enjoy that and I think it is good for him to keep it up. Will
let you know what the cardiologist says next week.

If anyone knows how to make blood donations in someone's name, please let me know. Also if anyone wants to make a blood donation in his name, thank you thank you thank you and please contact me.

Technorati Tags: leukemia, donating blood, anemia

The Window of Baby-Girl Dressing Opportunity is Closing

The Window of Baby-Girl Dressing Opportunity is Closing

Closeup of Outlandish Mali Outfit
Originally uploaded by Squid Rosenberg.

This is what happens when a normally sane person realizes that her walking dress-up baby doll may be forming her own sartorial opinions, soon.

Buried by Backlog

Buried by Backlog

Here is the thing about having the holidays and Iz's birthday and four solid weeks of relatives and friends visiting coinciding with one's husband needing to work late and one's children forgetting how to sleep before 11 PM and being on the team to start up a Special Ed PTA and unrelenting ant invasions and helming an intense phase of the remodeling process and working at a co-op nursery school: My real life gets backlogged.

This means that I am doing a shitty job of keeping on top of the things that really matter to me: Leelo's program, being a good partner, being a thoughtful parent, being an available friend, and correspondence.

While I have friends who manage schedules like mine in double portions and topped with even more crappity crap--while working--I have realized that trying to keep up with the superbeings in my life is not realistic for a mere mortal.

Here are the sanity solutions I am working on right now:

Recruiting mediocre friends
Everyone I know, everyone I love is far too capable. It makes me look and feel bad.

Nuclear holidays
We are not going anywhere next Christmas or Thanksgiving. People can come visit us in small controlled doses.

Putting Mali to preschool pasture
No Iron Gate for Mali next year. I love the school, but can't commit the time without committing myself--especially next year when and if we really do build our house. It's drop-kick drop-off Montessori preschool for you, my wee barnacle.

Any other suggestions are welcome, or stories of your own successes. Don't worry, I won't begin actively seeking mundane types for another week or so, so you're safe to contribute--for now.

Technorati Tags: complaining, parenting

Iz Rules the (Spelling) World

Iz Rules the (Spelling) World

*brace yourself for some extreme bragging*

Iz came in third in the spelling bee. Third among 240 3rd - 5th graders, third among the twelve classroom reps who competed today. The first and second placers were in 5th grade, so that means she beat the entire 3rd and 4th grades, and 96% of the 5th grade. And she is the youngest student in a school populated by some of the smartest kids in town.

Her teacher called me during the school day (this has never happened before) to let me know how proud the teachers were of Iz. The teacher said that the audience was cheering and hollering each time Iz got up because our girl was "...so little and cute and smart."

Iz is feeling pretty damn good about herself, I must say. And I supported her right to brag to me all afternoon long. Later on we had a conversation about how she was fully justified in declaring herself an excellent speller--if asked or provoked--but that random and tangential bragging would be a social irritant.

I guess I can stop worrying about whether or not she's really ready for her school. I could write down all sorts of additional qualifications or reservations but instead will settle for simply being really fucking proud.

Technorati Tags: Iz, spelling, spelling bee

Happy Birthday Iz

Happy Birthday Iz

Our oldest turned eight (8!) years old yesterday, which she celebrated with sushi and a haircut, bomp bomp.

And that's all I have to say until I can finish digging myself out from under the fuckedupedness resulting from upgrading both Blogger and Ecto and having both tools (term intentional) shit on me. And if anyone knows how to get this barnacle of a Blogger banner off my site, please let me know. I spent five precious minutes going through settings and cruising the Blogger Help site, and found no information whatsoever.

Our House Design Got Approved! Sort of!

Our House Design Got Approved! Sort of!

Apologies for excluding the most important point from the last post's house design ramblings. We got approved! Conditionally, that is. As I recently wrote to Ep:

It's conditionally approved, pending approval (verbal already given) from the CDF (Fire) with regards to both design and grading; future approval of our grading plan (we've been told it will be no problem but it is a separate meeting); walkpath/easment exchange approval which is still waiting for the sewer re-survey to be submitted (tracking down surveyor, no idea why he hasn't resubmitted already) before it can go up for its second Board of Supervisors meeting for approval, perhaps next month; assuming no one appeals as they have 4 - 6 weeks to do so but an official appeal costs $400. So, approved but conditional.

Both bored and confused? Me too. Basically, it would be silly in a moderate-to-low risk way to start big-ticket next steps like designing the construction documents, but we feel safe enough to initiate fun next-step tasks like selecting appliances. I'm going to be eBaying like it's 2001, baby. There is absolutely no reason anyone should walk into an appliance showroom and pay retail when your friend The Internet is willing to help. Reconditioned is the way to go.

Time to go get Mr. Leelo. I haven't been able to write much about him because he is having such a tough time recently and thinking about it too much makes me cry, but he is still the world's cutest little mop-head and snuggler and I am grateful to Babysitter K for watching Mali this morning so I can go spend some one-on-one time with Leelo before today's Leelo team meeting. He loves that.

I do wonder if Leelo would be doing better if he was an only child with a less-busy mom. How's that for a rider on an otherwise innocuous post about stupid house stuff!

My Daughter the Stellar Spellar!

My Daughter the Stellar Spellar!

This is the sort of thing that gives me hives (*cough*), proud as I am: Iz beat out the 39 other kids in her class for the honor of representing them in the school-wide 3rd - 5th grade spelling bee. And she wants me to come watch the competition next week. Gaaaah!

I am nervous about attending because I can't tolerate tension. I almost threw up yesterday during the Design Review meeting.

• Not because our house project was the last one on the agenda and we had to wait 3.5 hours to be heard and I hadn't calculated that into my paper-thin babysitting coverage--Seymour went home for a bit, and Marroqui kindly agreed to watch Leelo and Iz instead of cleaning.


• Not because Mali attended the meeting with me--she slept for two hours, let me read her a couple of books, was placated with a brownie that one of the architects brought, and then Seymour arrived just as our hearing started and played with her.


• Not because our neighbor Nad showed up out of the goodness of his heart to support us and then waited the entire time when he should have been at work.


• Not because, what with the primary architect and project manager having first driven the first leg of their two-hour round trip just to be at the meeting and then having to sit quietly for three hours, I might as well have walked to the nearest ATM, extracted $20 bills every few minutes, and handed them to anyone who walked by.

Well, maybe my nausea drew from all of those things--but what made me really want to barf was watching the two projects before us explode. All sorts of neighbors showed up to brawl with each other over sight lines and privacy and views being blocked, and houses being almost as big as the additions they themselves built a few years beforehand. It was awful to be in the same room.

(My thought is that ideally I would like people to respect each other's wishes and tastes, and that I like neighborhoods to be somewhat architecturally cohesive--but that unless your neighbor's proposal violates an existing code, then you are SOL and it's none of your business. You signed away your right to protest non-code issues when you bought the fucking place. But I am tired and grouchy and think it's deplorable when people get the house they want and then try to deny others the same.)

Anyhow. I don't know if I will be able to go to the spelling bee and watch cute kids compete without vomiting. I played chess with Iz on Sunday and it took all my willpower plus a few sharp words from Seymour to keep me from bolting mid-game. (I got my butt whomped anyhow.)

While I've been good (I think) about encouraging Iz to consider that she has already won the first level--which is damn cool--and that it is good to learn how to both win and lose graciously, and to remember that she has already won a school-wide 3rd - 5th grade competition (poetry slam), she is still freaking out a bit. I wonder which one of us is closer to losing it. I hope it's me.

Technorati Tags: Iz, spelling, spelling bee

Warning: Brain May Explode Tomorrow

Warning: Brain May Explode Tomorrow

Yay, first day back to school, post-winter break! I have been ready to drop-kick my darling children back to class since, oh, Monday December 25th. So tired already due to overload that, I have discovered, is not all that interesting even to people who happen to be my mother. Regardless, I am not quite sure if I'm going to make it through tomorrow without redecorating our walls with jellied brains. Cross your fingers for me.

• 7:45 Get all kids dressed fed and out the door by this time as Seymour has agreed to both drive Leelo to school and do Iz's carpool because
• 8:00 Meet with Fire Dept. so they can see our revised plans that will allow our house to not burn down as much in the case of a fire and whose approval we cannot go to Design Review without
• 9:00 Work Iron Gate with Mali
• 11:30 Iron Gate is over. Hope to God that JM doesn't have any problems picking up Leelo from school and bringing him to Iron Gate along with her daughter Alyx (Alyx's sister Clara is in Mali's class)
• 12:00 Pillage The Hole for foodstuffs as it is my once-yearly duty to provide food for the Iron Gate night class and I'm sure as fuck not cooking anything. I have faith in my good taste where purchased treats are concerned, and will not feel guilty that I chose to buy rather than bake. Feel grateful that co-feeders are JP and LB, both of whom know what to do.
• 12:30 Leelo speech therapy with Sage after two weeks off
• 1:00 Drive home and prep Leelo for session with Therapist L. Maybe lunch for me and Mali? Ensure that Mali doesn't fall asleep, too--I need her to nap later. Call CS to ensure that she will be picking up Iz from school and keeping her for a bit.
• 1:30 Leelo Home Therapy Session with Therapist L.
• 1:45 Drive downtown and hope like hell that Mali chooses to sleep now as I haven't been able to find anyone to mind her during the
• 2:00 Design Review down at the County offices. This is the big meeting: if we get approval, we get to build. If the neighbor who--as we just found out last week--has five square feet of yard underlying our driveway chooses to come and make a stink despite the fact that we offered to show them our plans/chat with them several times over the last week, then we could have a delay. Ignorant derailing dickheads are always a possibility even though we put notices in all our neighbors' mailboxes inviting them to an open house this weekend for anyone who wanted to see our plans or model or ask questions about our intentions.
• 3:30 Hope that the DR doesn't last until now otherwise I'll have to send Seymour home to watch Leelo as this is when Therapist L gets out and I've not been able to find anyone to watch Leelo either and it's not as though I can just ask someone randomly as my son had been assaulting everyone who comes near him during the last two weeks.
• 4:00 Marroqui arrives to clean house. Which I don't see how I'm supposed to tidy beforehand unless I do it now and I am exhausted. Someone ideally will go get Iz at some point.
• 5:00 Prep Iron Gate food, feed kids, fill hip flask.
• 6:30 Babysitter K arrives to watch kids so I can go set up for Iron Gate night class as Seymour needs to work
• 7:00 Iron Gate night class. I am soooo bringing my computer!
• 10:00 Class over. Go home, hope like hell that all the kids are asleep and that I can go right to bed.

Axed Glasses

Axed Glasses

After almost six years of patch- and glasses-based vision therapy to correct her exotropia, Iz gets to lose the specs that Leelo destroyed three months ago anyhow.

My oldest was so thrilled after the ophthalmologist's proclamation that she didn't start nagging me with unreasonable demands for almost five minutes!

In other news, the fine folks from Amphigory wrote to let us know that Iz is now the youngest person in their Special Effects hair dye examples gallery (scroll down). Since she's not the youngest person I know about, it may be time to start colorizing Mali's 'do so as to secure our family's position.

Technorati Tags: complaining, exotropia, Iz, parenting, raising girls

Autism Is: Puppies and Unicorns That Shit All Over You

Autism Is: Puppies and Unicorns That Shit All Over You

Seeing as Leelo's gone through three outfits so far today (all while I was at a birthday tea with Iz and her also-Caprican grandmother, poor Seymour), this link is very timely. Via SW on my local SNK Yahoo! Group:

The Crappy Life of the Autism Mom.

It's been a rough couple of weeks over here at Leelo's house. Too busy to detail it at the moment, so I'll just add a new tag to my quiver, to balance the "autism acceptance" one I use during Leelo's better weeks. Right now, autism sucks.

Technorati Tags: autism, autistic, autism sucks

Want Another Hit?

Want Another Hit?

Our main holidaze 2006 gifts to friends and family were mix CD's. I really like this year's set and feel very comfortable telling anyone who doesn't to fuck right off.

This year's mix is remarkable for being contemporary--almost every song is from the last two years. About half of the tunes were sent my way by Seymour; a few of the others came via Captain Blog and Skip and SJ, and the rest fell through the cracks of my cave's ceiling and onto my head. Not everyone got the same set, but the core was:

Sweep Down Early ~ The Innocence Mission
Cordial Invitation ~ Giant Drag
C + F ~ Sam Prekop
The River Shade ~ Radar Bros.
Happy ~ Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins
Former Hero ~ Heikki
Just a Thought ~ Gnarls Barkley
Crazy (Live Lounge) ~ Nelly Furtado
Jack Soul Brasileiro ~ Lenine
Veneno ~ Luis Vargas
Beykat ~ Youssou N'Dour
Lazy Lover ~ Brazilian Girls
A Waltz for a Night ~ Julie Delpy
Prelude In A ~ The Innocence Mission
Dawn ~ Various Artists

Julie Delpy's song is not really that great, but if you've seen her perform the original version in its original context, then you know that the only two other cases in which desperately inappropriate love has reached such cathartic heights were "BSG's Unfinished Business," and Buffy's "Smashed." I do believe people take smack to feel the way I felt after those three shows, and that song is as close as I'm going to get for now. At least until Seymour gets home from another late late night at work...

Technorati Tags: Battlestar Galactica, longing, love, mix CD