Trustee No More

I am thrilled to report that I lost about 20 pounds yesterday. Don't worry about my health: this was a combination of figurative weight loss and non-biological weight, including files and emotional burdens.

On January 19, my three year term as a subdivision trustee finally ended. Wahoo!!!

I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I volunteered. I was just at a meeting, and no one else wanted to do it, and I felt like everyone was looking around waiting for someone to volunteer, so I foolishly piped up.

"How much time is required?"

"Oh, very little! This is a quiet little subdivision; usually there's not much to do."

Inevitably, I volunteered. And it turns out that I sucked as a trustee.

I got nothing in the way of initiation or training as a trustee, so I spent my first year with no responsibilities except to listen to people whine and complain about how tall so-and-so's grass is this week and whether the tarp over the car in that carport is a violation of the restriction indenture. Occasionally I had to write a letter politely asking someone to paint a shed or remove yard waste. That's when I realized that I really don't care about those things, except perhaps in extreme situations.

In my second year things got worse. One of the other two trustees really liked the power and control of being a trustee, I suspect, and was happy to do all the work himself to maintain that control. Fine by me! When his mother died and he sank into a depression, he was unreachable much of the time. This left me with lots of legitimate resident complaints and no clue how to address them. Where's the annual assessment notice? Are we having the subdivision garage sale this year? The trustees of the adjoining neighborhood want payment for shared landscaping expenses. Gah! Clumsily, I began figuring out what needed doing and how I might do it.

In my third year, I was just counting down the days. I knew what to do and was doing it responsibly (mailing out assessment notices, writing and mailing a newsletter, contacting residents and trustees of our plat and the adjoining one about various issues, reminding people about the annual meeting, and so forth) but a new trial was sent for me in the guise of the new trustee, a retired man who has long been very active in subdivision affairs.

This dude seemed to be of the contingent that disparages the young whippersnapper new residents - those of us who aren't the original owners of our 50-year-old homes - and our lazy approach to subdivision trustee-ism (the depressed former trustee is about my age). So from the outset we have a dynamic where I feel like he's judging me and am feeling defensive about my accomplishments and performance. And his wife is sick, which is probably affecting him as well. I try to be sympathetic to that, but it's hard. Here are a couple of sample e-mail exchanges (irrelevant bits removed).

This was one of our very first interactions, sort of a get-to-know-you exercise. He wanted us to contact neighbors and contacts in the county government to follow up on rumors that someone was considering building a fence for which he hadn't personally been contacted for permission:

Sarahlynn: It is my opinion, given the description of the duties of the neighborhood trustees in the subdivision indentures, that it is not the role of the trustees to approve or deny proposed new building projects, as long as said projects do not violate any local building codes or subdivision indentures.

Older Trustee (OT): I think that we can not function effectively as the Board of Trustees under existing conditions. I do not understand our problem. Please tell us how you think we can cooperate. If we fail to continue to serve as Trustees and other homeowners do not volunteer, St. Louis County will appoint a Board of Trustees.

Nearly a year later, this was from one of our last interactions:

OT: My wife is very ill, and I am spending a lot of time with her at doctor's visits and testing labs. I don't know how much time I will have for Trustee functions. {snip} Please tell me the plans for the Annual Meeting.

Sarahlynn: I will be happy to send out the mailing this weekend, so that you can have more time with your wife. The annual meeting will be at the usual date and time, and {Neighbor Name} has offered to host again this year.

OT: Thanks for your kind offer to mail the trash newsletter. {snip boring bit about our waste management contract} I think that all the plans for the Annual Meeting should be discussed jointly by all of the Trustees before you make any decisions about them. We would sincerely like to hear your opinions. You don't seem interested in ours. We may not all agree with your thinking, e.g: date, time, place.

Sarahlynn: The meeting time and date are specified for us in the Restriction Indenture {extremely boring citation}. To date, I have had one subdivision resident volunteer to host the annual meeting at his home. Unless either of you would prefer host, or have been approached by another resident requesting hosting responsibilities, I recommend that we proceed with the resident who has so offered.

Argh. Dealing with this sort of crap was much more tolerable when I got paid for it. It's not very fun to do for free when it's a cause I don't much care about. So, I'm thrilled to be done. And I now know for sure that a career in politics is not for me!

Regardless, I'm done! And, if you actually read that whole, boring post, you can celebrate because you relived the experience with me, and you're done too! Let's eat Rotel cheese dip together!

Why Do We Even Have Cold Medicine?

This is a continuation of my erratic series of posts tackling the really controversial issues in our society. (Note the sarcasm.) Praise God, we're all healthy here right now.

But I really am annoyed about cold medicine. I prefer not to take it, myself. I believe that my body is producing all the excess snot because it's trying to clear out the virus. I believe that if I suffer few a few bad days, I'll be through with the cold sooner. But sometimes that's not an option. Sometimes, I really really just need to sleep or function at a higher level, and I've been known to take a little cold medicine on those occasions.

It's worse with my kids. They don't understand what's going on when they're sick, and they can't force themselves to sleep when they feel awful. Nor can they do some of the things I do to help when I have a bad cold, like sipping on scalding hot water or sucking on sugar free hard candy as I try to fall asleep with a tickle in my throat.

We're so so fortunate that both girls have been healthy this year (knock wood!). But there have been times when Ellie's had such a bad cold that she can't breathe well, such a bad cough that she can't sleep for days and nights at a time.

It's easy for "officials" to say that children don't need cold medicine, but if they don't, do adults? Why are we expecting more of our youngest children than we expect of ourselves? I hope that no one involved in this decision by the FDA allows themselves any OTC cold medicines for the next several years as an act of penance.

I don't care that some studies show little improvement of symptoms with some cold medicines; I know what does work for my child. I know what I can safely give her that will help dry out her nose or quiet her coughing for a few hours so that she can sleep at night.

Because these risks they speak of? When we you really drill down into it, it turns out that the risks are mostly from parents over-dosing their kids. Parents don't realize that there's Tylenol in Tylenol Cold & Cough and double up doses of both. Yeah, that's terrible and dangerous and it sucks.

But the answer isn't to get rid of the medicines! It's better packaging, better education, better front-line training by pediatricians, etc.

Because it's not like removing medicines from the shelves is going to make things better. When parents are exhausted in the middle of the night, some are going to reach for their own cold and cough remedies to help their kids sleep. And that is absolutely not safe.

And if they come around later, trying to take away my Concentrated Infant Motrin Drops (Dye-Free) I'll pop 'em in the nose. You try living with a teething toddler whose pain you know you can sooth with a little droplet of ibuprofen. She looks up at you with this betrayal in her eyes, which are clearly saying, "Why are you doing this to me, Mommy? It hurts! Make it better!" It makes me much more understanding of the grandparents who reminisce about rubbing brandy onto babies' gums.

There's no evidence that these oral drugs actually ease cold symptoms in children so young - some studies suggest they do no good at all. And while serious side effects are fairly rare, they do occur. Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year reported that more than 1,500 babies and toddlers wound up in emergency rooms over a two-year period because of the drugs.

"It's one thing if you're curing cancer, but we're talking about a self-limiting illness," said Sharfstein. "If there's really no evidence of benefit, you don't want to risk the rare problem. Then you're left with tragedy that you can't justify."

. . .

Last October, CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reported that the cold and cough medicine industry admitted that 92 deaths were connected to combination cold medicines - but claimed 79 of them were due to misuse or overdose.

Health groups acknowledge that while low doses of cold medicine don't usually endanger an individual child, the bigger risk is unintentional overdose. For example, the same decongestants, cough suppressants and antihistamines are in multiple products, so using more than one to address different symptoms - or having multiple caregivers administer doses - can quickly add up. Also, children's medicines are supposed to be measured with the dropper or measuring cap that comes with each product, not an inaccurate kitchen teaspoon.

What Year Do You Belong In?

Oh, alas. The Keatons must have done me in.

You Belong in 1983

Wild, over the top, and just a little bit cheesy. You're colorful at night - and successful during the day.

What Year Do You Belong In?

For the record, I was nine.

This Round's On Me

Paul's an elder at our church. For those not familiar with the PCUSA style of government, the similarities between it and the U.S. version of a representative democracy aren't entirely coincidental. Elders are a little bit like senators, and the session committees are where a lot of the work of running a church is handled (Building and Grounds, Mission and Outreach, Finance, Evangelism, Youth and Family, etc.).

Anyway, there was a session meeting tonight and one item for discussion was a change in church policy so that - with prior pastor, business administrator, and clerk of session authorization - wine would be permitted in the church for a specific event. Examples given were for wedding parties and receptions and the occasional formal dinner hosted in the new fellowship hall.

I am very uncomfortable with this, and still trying to put my thoughts in order. What better place to hash them out?

Why am I so opposed, when I am not a teetotaller?

1) People bring alcohol to weddings anyway, of course. I'm sure lots of brides and grooms are swigging from flasks before walking down the aisle. Doing so illicitly feels different to me than doing so with church approbation. In my opinion, marriage is not something to be undertaken with the assistance of "liquid courage." If such is required, perhaps the timing for this marriage is not right? Others' opinions may vary, but should the church be in the business of endorsing that?

2) I am uncomfortable with the role alcohol plays in our society. "Partying" is used synonymously with getting loaded, and is apparently impossible without alcohol (or drugs). Binge drinking is glorified and commonly referenced, just listen in immediately following any college exam or during high school lunchroom discussions.

"I had a rough day; I need a drink," is such a common sentiment that it's unremarkable, except that, when you think about it, it's a little horrifying. Your day was so bad that you need an addictive and mind-altering substance? You need it? Perhaps this is cause for some concern?

A nice dinner isn't a nice dinner without wine, a party isn't a party without cocktails (or a keg, depending on your friends), a celebration just really isn't without the titillating promise of booze.

We don't even use wine with communion at our church. Why do we want to open ourselves up to these sorts of societal and moral, let alone legal concerns? What is gained? What is lost? I don't see the benefit. I can drink pretty much anywhere else; I don't need to do so at church.

I'm not sure I've made any sense of the muddle in my head about this yet, or put my finger on what's really making me uncomfortable. Perhaps your comments will help. So, let me have it!

"Super" Tuesday

The longest primary season ever is nearing its (de facto) close, a mere 9 months before the general election. Groan. This process is so painful! I hope that someone somewhere reads Anna Quindlen's article about making the primary and convention process meaningful again.

Four years ago, I watched every single primary debate. This year, I haven't watched a single one. Burned out. Still. But I do need to know who to vote for on February 5th.

So I was excited when a friend sent me this link to Minnesota Public Radio's Choose Your Candidate quiz. I found it interesting and educational to take, was surprised by my results, and am beginning to get a little more excited about the election now. All good things!

At the very least, my results narrowed down which party's ballot I should request:
Hillary Clinton 26.0
John Edwards 24.0
Barack Obama 24.0
Dennis Kucinich 22.0
. . .
Fred Thompson 1.0
My results were slightly different the second time I took the quiz, though the order was the same. I answered the same way, but weighted my answers slightly differently. This was a very interesting exercise.

While I'm talking about politics, did you all catch the thing about Huckabee's son hanging a dog and then-Gov. Huckabee leaning on police and prosecutors to ignore it? Good.

In My Own Skin

Living with me, I imagine, is a little like living with a cactus. I'm a bit prickly (but really tender inside! juicy delicious!) and it helps to have a thick skin.

Living with Paul is a little like living with someone who's suffered terrible burns over most of his body. Everything hurts, infections c'mon in, and and what's left of his skin is very thin.

This is why we need therapy!

Perhaps what we need instead are regular spa treatments for me (to pluck out all those quills, of course) and, well, therapy for Paul. Heh.

Edited to add: This is not meant to imply that things are going poorly. They're not! I think it's good that we're aware of our issues. I need to remember to be gentler, more considerate with Paul. And he is increasingly able to laugh at himself when he sees that his initial reaction is out of proportion to the situation. Yay, therapy! Also, our therapist has been on medical leave for nearly 2 months and we're beginning to feel the strain a little. Humor helps.

Bucket List

No, not the movie, the St. Louis Bloggers January Carnival. My recent not-cancer freak-out threw this one into bold relief for me:

Sarahlynn's To Do Before I Die List:
1) Watch my kids grown up healthy and happy.
The End.

Since I'm trending a bit contrary, my other would-like-tos include:

• Have my whole house organized, top to bottom, with no Monica Closet. Not even a Monica Drawer. Just once, just for a few minutes, just to see what it feels like.
• Publish a good book, to good reviews and sales.
• Find a miracle cure for my feet so that I can rollerblade again.
• While I'm at it, find a miracle cure for cancer. And world hunger. And so forth.
• Have sex with Taye Diggs and his identical twin brother.

What? What?!

OK, well, I don't like New Year's Resolutions and I don't like Bucket Lists, so I don't play nicely with either. My mind just doesn't naturally think in superlatives like, what's my favorite book/movie/song/color? What do I most want to do before I die?

There's a lot of stuff I want to do before I die. There's a lot of stuff I want to do before Easter. There's a lot of stuff I want to do before bed tonight.

But last Sunday, I did "ask" my Sunday School class make some sort of New Year's Resolutions, because the lesson suggested that we do so.

We Believe that our lives are pieces of God's plan. What can we do in our immediate futures to help imagine our eternal lives in God's presence?

Ah, this exercise I like better. It's far less morbid!

• I can practice saying, "Yes."
  
• And I can stop waiting for the question, looking instead for opportunities to volunteer in ways that make a significant contribution without inspiring me to feel resentful or overwhelmed.
  
• I can continue the practice I began working so hard on last year, involving compassion and understanding.

On these, I've already begun. About these, I already feel hopeful.

And, in the end, I think they're more important and valuable both to me and to others than worrying about when I'll die, or where I'll travel, or even the state of my half-organized basement storage closet.

Note To Self

My doctor doesn't think that I'm dying of cancer.

I went to see him about the mysterious blister on the underside of one of my breasts that doesn't seem to be healing well. When added to the terrible itchiness, brief flirtations with mastitis, and alarmist emails, well . . .

It turns out that I probably have dry skin, irritating nursing bras, and a burn on the underside of one of my breasts from sleeping on a heating pad turned up too high to help with a (normal, typical) clogged duct.

He thinks it's healing fine, and will send me to see someone else if it still looks ugly in a couple more weeks. (It has started healing better over the last couple of days, and the increased pain I think is a good sign of feeling actually returning to the burned area. The only weird thing was that it didn't hurt at the time, probably because I was feverish and sleeping. I am an idiot.) And since my itchy skin is much, much better with the new moisturizer I'm using, I'm inclined to believe him about the cancer.

Whew.

Here's where I went wrong with the doctor's appointment. "I need to find a babysitter; what a pain," I thought when the doctor's first available appointment was at an inconvenient time for Paul to be away from work. Then I remembered, "Hey, I'm in a babysitting co-op!"

I made one call, which didn't immediately pan out perfectly. And I hate the phone and go to great lengths to avoid it.

"Hey, again," I thought. "This is a short visit. I'll just take Ada with me. Everyone will love seeing the baby I was pregnant with this time last year. She can sit on my left knee while the doctor fiddles with my right breast. Much easier!"

See what I mean by great lengths?

This is how it actually played out. I arrived on time (yay!) but neglected to think about the fact that the doctor's practice had split/moved, plus it was a new calendar year, plus we have new insurance. So I had to occupy Ada while filling out a lot of paperwork.

Ada loves books. I packed 7 of her favorites, and she wasn't interested in a single one of them. Of course. So after the paperwork, I spent the next 10 hours (or minutes, whatever) bouncing up and down, singing, dancing, whooshing around the tiny waiting area, letting her touch the doorstop, blinds, magazines, etc.

Finally (after a wait that would have been too brief if it had been just my book and me alone in a chair) I got to go back to an exam room. Well, first I had to be weighed, and the less said about that, the better. The nurse held Ada, who screamed about it.

Then I had to figure out how to unhook my bra while holding a child. (I put her down, natch. Fortunately, she was willing and able to stand next to me.)

Then I held her on my lap, perched on that table we women know all too well, feeding her Goldfish while we waited for the doctor. Who wanted me to lie down for the examination.

Picture this: I am lying back on the exam table, shirt raised and right arm over my head. My left arm is fully extended out in front of me to hold onto Ada's arm. She, meanwhile, is perched on my left knee and is not very fussy or wiggly, thankfully.

But she must have been a little stressed by the experience; she fell asleep in the car on the way home and napped for more than an hour; an unusual experience for my little daytime sleep dieter!

"Self," I thought on the way back out to the car, "Just pick up the doggone phone next time. What sucks in the moment is so very, very worth it in the end."

Also, I'm having a hard time imagining my next annual pap smear (8 weeks from now, but who's counting?) with a baby on my lap.

Savvy Traveler?

I've exposed my ignorance; now it's your turn.

Link courtesy of my wonderful sister and brother-in-law: The Traveler IQ Challenge

I'll show you mine if you show me yours . . .

Warning, it's a little addictive. And surprisingly educational. I don't think I'll ever misplace Malaysia again.

On a completely unrelated note, Ada learned to kiss today. "Say goodnight to Daddy, Ada."

"Mmmmmm-ah!" she says, pressing her lips - pushed together into a flat line - against his cheek. This was funny and therefore much repeated, until it became a painful experience involving her many teeth. But still: funny! adorable!

Now, go tell me how smart you were on your first trip through the geo-quiz.

Baby Talk

Ada's focused on walking right now. She gets this intense and excited look on her face, then rushing stumble walks over to you, never breaking eye contact. She laughs and laughs.

This is really saying something, given that my poor baby has been a CRANKY girl for these last several weeks, gums swollen and bleeding as 4 molars and 4 eyeteeth try to break free at once. By the time she turns one in a few weeks, she might have all of her baby teeth. A long break before the 2-year-old molars would be nice for all of us.


Ada's increasingly comfortable taking 3-5 steps between things. Any further distance, and she attempts to map out a cruising route. Failing that, or in a big hurry, she just drops down and speed-crawls, which is the most adorable thing ever. I will be sad when this stage is over (not the teething part!).

When I say that Ada talks, it's hard to give an accurate reflection of what that means. Let me try a little harder. Ada babbles a lot, like many babies do. I love her fast angry babble, "Gah!Gah!Gah!Bla!Buh!NaNaNaNak!" There's her happy, keep-holding-my-hands-I-love-walking babble, which sounds like a little piece of song. And there's her singing itself, which transitions us into Ada's speech.

Ada labels things correctly, a scary lot of the time. She was 8 months old when her Uncle Rob said, "Quack!" across the room and she said, "Duck." By that time, she'd already been telling us some things (Mama, Dada, Wawa, etc.) for quite a while.

Lately, we might be reading a book that is not about teddy bears or kitty cats but if she sees a teddy bear or kitty cat in an illustration, she'll point it out and name it. I couldn't begin to list all of her words, partly because it's only gradually that I realize what they are. She's hard to understand a lot of the time - she's 11 months old! - but I suspect that quite a lot of her babbling sounds are actual words. And that it pisses her off that I don't recognize them.

Unlike her big sister, Ada's very much a schedule girl. If I don't have her in bed by 7:00, I'm likely to see quite a bit of this sort of thing:


She still nurses. She's very clear about what she does and does not want to eat at mealtime, though "Chezzo" (Cheerios) is one of the few foods she asks for by name. She loves to pinch my nose until I honk. She loves to say, "eye" and poke finger into her own, and then mine. She ate beef stew for dinner Saturday night, with a biscuit, just like her big sister, her parents, and her godmother. The next night was the "meatloaf" and "mashed potatoes." Tonight we all had cheeseburgers (with zucchini and mushrooms on whole grain) and baked sweet potato "fries." She eats some jars of food for convenience and nutrition, but at dinnertime she eats what we eat and loves it.

She does some of this:

And this:




Hopefully these pictures have have brightened your January Tuesday a little, just as their subject brightens mine.

Subluxation

Two parenting moments for today.

First, Ellie developed nursemaid's elbow again, which is another story for quite another forum. As usual, I tried to make her comfortable in bed, this time with Finding Nemo on the portable DVD player by her head. But when Paul had finished preparing a Deceptively Delicious dinner of meatloaf (with pureed carrots) and mashed potatoes (with pureed cauliflower) I wanted Ellie to be up and about in order to share it with us.

Nursemaid's elbow usually reduces on its own, and if it doesn't, or if she seems to be in a lot of pain, I take her to the pediatrician for a quick reduction. Today, she wasn't crying, so we were waiting it out to see if it resolved itself before bedtime. Then I decided that I could probably do it on my own. I am, after all, a formerly certified E.M.T.. So I supported her elbow with my left hand and pulled gently on her wrist, rotating just slightly, and, "pop!" Immediate use of the arm again. I am SuperMom! It felt amazing, and now I understand why Ellie's pediatrician says that reducing nursemaid's elbow is one of her favorite parts of her job.

Later this evening, both girls were playing happily together, on their own, and with us, in Ellie's room, in Ada's room, in our room, in the hallway, in the family room, in the living room, etc. At one point, they decided that they wanted baby bottles with water in them. Don't ask me, I'm just the mama. They had great fun with these silly toys (neither of my girls would drink from bottles) and at one point, Ada was holding her bottle above her head with an out-stretched arm as though it were an Oscar.

Ellie leaned over and clunked her bottle against Ada's. "Cheers!" she said. Where did she get that?

So adorable.



Christmas Eve, at my dad's church

Gee, Thanks

I understand why people made this video, and why others send it around. But, man, do I ever wish I hadn't gotten this particular "send it to all the women you love!" email a few months ago.

I'm talking about inflammatory breast cancer, Google at your own risk.

Bottom line: if I suspect that I'll be dead before next Christmas, is that making me a better, happier person, spouse, or parent right now? Answer: As it turns out, NO.

And, yet, oh the panicky hours and many late nights I've spent quietly freaking out about this.

In my opinion, the target audience for this sort of piece should be primary care physicians and other front-line health care practitioners. So at my next well woman check up, if I tell my doctor that my left breast itches like crazy and my right breast has its own issues (two bouts of clogged duct/mastitis in the past six months of nursing, one experience sleeping on a hot pad and getting a terrible blister that looks disgusting and is not healing well) my doctor will know if I need further tests or not.

See, this is a type of breast cancer that forms in "sheets" and produces no lumps visible via standard imaging technology (including mammograms). The only way to really test and diagnose is a biopsy, which can be painful, disfiguring, and incompatible with breastfeeding - not a step to be taken lightly. Speaking of breastfeeding, this is a type of cancer that's apparently not deterred by pregnancy or breastfeeding. And it can strike young women as easily as older women. Oh, and it's usually fatal. Very aggressive, fast-moving, etc. Until recently, the mortality rate was 100%. The current treatment involves a very aggressive regimen of surgery, chemo, radiation, more chemo . . . and that only gives you a 40% chance of being alive in a couple of years. So, yeah.

This is, apparently, a rare type of breast cancer. One site I saw said that 1% of all diagnosed breast cancers is inflammatory breast cancer. Do you know how many women are diagnosed with breast cancer? Unbelievably high numbers. So 1% is still a lot of women. And "rare" means something different to me, a woman who had a baby with Down syndrome while still in her 20's, a woman whose younger sister had a malignant brain tumor. "Rare" translates into "targeted for Sarahlynn" to me.

Still, I'm not usually freaked out by these sorts of emails. Except that breasts simply don't behave normally while breastfeeding (weird lumps, strange sensations, itchiness possibly explained by the ring-around-the-boob fit of nursing bras) so I seem to be exhibiting almost every advertised symptom.

I don't want to die. The thing that paralyzes me? The thought of not being around for my babies as they grow up. Man, I love those kids, and as imperfect as I am as a mother, I know in my bones that they're better off with me than without me.

So, please.

Next time you get one of these horrifying DON'T GET RAPED! or HEALTH RISK YOU SHOULD BE AWARE OF! or YOUR MICROWAVE WILL KILL YOU! SEND THIS TO ALL THE WOMEN YOU LOVE! emails, please wait a moment before hitting "forward."

First go to Snopes.com; check it out.

Then, once you've determined that it's real, think about it for a moment. Will sending this really make the recipients safer? Healthier? Happier? Or will it just freak them out needlessly?

Then reply with a big "fuck you" to your book club friend's mom's great aunt who sent it to you, and hit "delete."

2007 In Words, out of context

First sentence of the first post of every month of 2007:

January: This is the first sentence of the first post of the month thing.
February: Post retracted by request.
March: I've been writing a lot about Adelaide, but there's so much to say about Eleanor too.
April: I was tagged, so I'm slipping this in right before Monday becomes Tuesday.
May: Quick update on my way to bed.
June: My day can be summed up like this:
Today was the first day of Ellie's summer vacation from preschool, and it rained.
July: Wow oh wow oh wow.
August: School starts in about a week, and I'm looking forward to it.
September: Recently, I wrote about what Ada's been up to lately.
October: For the past couple of months, I've been seeing red and white signs around Kirkwood:
Protect Historic Kirkwood
Preserve Our National Historic District
Don't Buy 407 E Argonne (now removed due to threatened legal action)
Taller Than Allowed Downtown?!?
Please Build It Lower!
and so forth
I find myself oddly on the other side of this issue.
November: Yo yo yo, it's NaNoWriMo; here we go!
December: I can't blog right now!

In titles:

January: 2006 In Review
February: Back to Draft
March: I Love Ellie
April: Magical Moment Monday
May: The House is Neat, Finally
June: I Don't Get Enough Sleep
July: Close
August: Summer Vacation
September: Literalist
October: Protect Historic Kirkwood! Or Not
November: Write On!
December: It's Time for Christmas Letters

2006

Oh, for heaven's sake. I'm boring myself. Next year, I'll change it up and pick random and interesting posts rather than just the first post for each month. Bob forbid I actually quit this tradition!

Big, Fun, Scary

This is a follow-up to NaNoWriMo. The challenge is to take on one big, fun, or scary goal for 2008. You know, sort of exactly like a New Year's Resolution. Which I don't do. But.

Why not?

Big: Weigh less than my (stunning if I do say so myself) Y2K weight by Christmas

Fun: Cruise the Inner Passage, go to Disney World, and spend a long, hot, child-free weekend in Mexico

Scary: swim cage-free with sharks

No, really:

Big: Limit gorging and resume regular workouts (notice how this is not a SMART goal, but I'll know and that's all that matters)

Fun: go on at least one date per month, and therapy sessions do not count

Scary: Submit at least 2 magazine articles to editors and at least 5 novel query letters to agents.

Merry Christmas!

Mini-Poll: If you celebrate Christmas, when do you decorate? When do you take it all down?

I decorate whenever it's convenient, though always during Advent. I undecorate when it's convenient too, though I try to do it around Epiphany, 12th Night, the 12th Day of Christmas, January 6th, the day we celebrate the arrival of the three wise men with gifts for the infant Christ. Last year everything came down early because we were sure that Adelaide's arrival was imminent. We were, of course, quite wrong.

The first hurdle for me is removing all the autumn decorations and cleaning the house (straightening and dusting). Then we decorate all together as a family with carols on the stereo and eggnog in our cups. Well, that part's just for Ellie and me. And really Paul hangs most of the ornaments on the tree. I unwrap them and hand them to him or Ellie. Ellie takes what she wants and runs around the house with it, excited about all the new stuff. Ada just watches and plays with the wrapping paper at this point.

My mother's parents decorated on Christmas Eve, so that when she and her brothers came downstairs on Christmas morning, the newly installed tree was part of the big reveal.

We had a good Christmas this year, and a lovely visit with my family at my parents' house. We won't see Paul's family this year, which does suck, and all their gifts (so many!) are still piled under our tree. Maybe we'll dive into the pile this weekend, or maybe we'll celebrate on New Year's Day. Why not? It's a holiday and the tree will still be up!

Ellie was very excited about Christmas this year, lighting candles on the advent wreathe she made in Sunday School, opening doors in her advent calendar, talking about baby Jesus, and watching Shrek the Halls daily throughout December. I'm not entirely sure that she's differentiating between Eddie Murphy's Dreamworks character and Mary's transportation into Bethlehem, but more's the fun, right? I mean, don't you think Eddie Murphy's Donkey would be an excellent addition to the nativity?

Unfortunately, she was very sick on Christmas Day. I was really worried about her. She wasn't having GI issues, and she wasn't running a fever. She was, however, completely uninterested in food, touch, or interaction, and she was terribly lethargic. Just when we were about to start loading up the van on the morning of the 26th to drive back down to see her doctor, if not go directly to Children's Hospital, suddenly pink flowed back into her cheeks and lips, and she ate a little breakfast. She's a little whiny but otherwise back to normal now, and we're keeping an eye on her. Both girls and I are congested, but what could cause such a strange illness? I'm still clueless.

I had a little bout of illness myself; on Saturday night I developed mastitis. That afternoon, my breast started hurting. I just figured that someone had been a little too rough with it; my breasts are community property after all. But by dinner time it was hurting worse, and by the time our friends left that night, I was running a fever, shaking and miserable, and my breast was throbbingly sore.

I woke up Ada and had her nurse for an hour, then took some Tylenol (should have been Ibuprofen for its anti-inflammatory effects; I switched over in the morning after my fever was decreased enough to allow internet research) and went to bed, sleeping with my breast on an electric hot pad. Set too high.

My nursing shirt must have slipped open, because I have an impressive blister on the underside of my breast, which I didn't notice for a couple of days until Paul pointed it out to me. I didn't even feel it, because my breast was so sore. But it was worth it; the treatment (ibuprofen, frequent nursing, self-breast-massage, and heat) worked: my fever never broke 101 and I didn't need to go to the doctor or get antibiotics. Hooray for my body!

Other than that, we're all tired, happy to be home, and ready for a little rest. I was thinking that if I had the sort of blog where I assigned nicknames to my family members, I'd call Paul Major Whiny. Or, maybe, Captain Passive-Aggressive. But then I realized that he could probably just call me "Ms. Pot" (as in, calling the kettle black).

Exposing My Ignorance

How does it work in political systems that have both a prime minister and a president? I understand the parliamentary system and how a prime minister is elected (at least in Great Britain), but how does a president fit in? What's the division of authority? Is it a little like having both a president and a CEO at a company? Actually, I find that a bit confusing, too. Do you have any suggestions for places to go do quick-and-very-easy research?

I am also lacking in hiring babysitter smarts.

I keep not thinking about New Year's Eve, because it's still so far in the future. It's after Christmas, after all, and that's unimaginably far away. Except that it's not. And our usual 13-year-old has all-night plans.

We don't have enough youth sitters. Finding kids you like and know and trust enough is hard, when your own kids are so much younger and most of the families you know well have children the same age as your own.

Also, the window for being a good sitter is so small. You're too young and possibly afraid of the dark or not allowed out after 9:00, and then suddenly you can drive and you're in drama club and you're way too cool for babysitting on Saturday nights. The 3-4 year window goes by so fast, and most people agree that younger is mostly better; younger kids are eager to impress, harder-working, less concerned with appearances. And less likely to bring over their boyfriends.

But I think our New Year's Eve job would be a pretty cool gig for some 12-year-old girl. We'll be going out after the kids are asleep, so if all goes according to plan, she won't have to actually do anything. She can just hang out here with a girlfriend, eating snacks, watching movies, and drinking sparkling grape juice while ringing in the new year. There's the fun of being away from home, the beauty of eating someone else's food and getting paid for it, and no real work! What's not to love?

Maybe I'll skip teaching Sunday School on Sunday in favor of hanging out in the Middle School classroom and looking for the kids who don't look quite cool enough to have been invited to all-night parties yet.

Any tips?

And the Girls Met Santa and All Was Good

I miss writing. I love December, but things are pretty uncreative around here if I'm not even finding the time to blog!

The silver lining is that January is usually cold and dark and depressing; the excitement of the holiday season is over and there's nothing immediate to look forward to. By "holiday season," I mean September through December, including my birthday, Ellie's birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Advent, Christmas, and New Year's Eve. What's not to love?!

Wait, I forgot the lining. After all that excitement, January is a bit of a let-down. But this year I can promise myself that, amidst all the exercising I'll be doing, I will also be taking time to WRITE again, which makes me feel happy and good in ways that nothing else really touches.

So, yay for January!

In the meantime, here's a writer joke.

A linguistics professor was lecturing to his English class one day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative."

A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."

It's Catching Up With Me

This morning, I fell asleep sitting up. Holding Ada. Fortunately, I am good at this and neither of us was injured. I did have a weird dream, though.

Too many weeks of insufficient sleep have rendered me semi-human. And ah haf uh code. I've got a Kleenex affixed to my nostrils as I type this, which I'm sure you're glad to know. Worse, Ellie's got a little congestion too and Ada has that face-like-a-glazed-doughnut thing going on. Sorry to all we've germed upon. No one seems sick, though, just snotty.

Our open house was Sunday, and I think it went well. I was surprised that about 40 people showed up, given the weather and timing. Hopefully, many of them had fun! I found it humorous that most of our younger friends came and went early, and the last people here were some of our older friends. By older I mean our parents' age, so older than us, but very young-at-heart. Which was fun. And fie upon those of you who came, dropped your white elephant gifts, and left again without taking one of ours! On a related note, would anyone like a pizzelle maker?

My Christmas shopping is done (!) and we're addressing Christmas cards tonight; we're trying to pare the list way back this year and we've cut to 86 families, though that number will increase as we reply to cards we receive this week and next. Hopefully, soon we'll be able to sit in front of the TV and wrap more presents. It's nice to have the pressure off: the shopping's done, the open house is over, the cards are nearly ready to mail, the house is clean and decorated, there are cookies everywhere.

What am I forgetting?

Family of Origin

I am very close to my family. My parents are still married, and my grandparents were married, too, until, one-by-one, they each died. That sounds confusing. But I don't mean that my grandparents were in an unusual 4-way marriage. I think you know what I mean. Moving right along. I have two younger sisters.

We have each had our personal problems, of course. But up until relatively recently, I would have told you that as a family, we were pretty much perfect. Growing up, we had family game nights, and we still do. We had family bike rides, all in our matching helmets. (Oh, how I hated that. No one wore helmets back then.) We still go on family walks when we get together at the holidays, each sub-family - all three girls are married now - with its own dog loping alongside.

After I had Ellie, and she was so sick, and things were hard, I began to turn inward. Gradually, I began to define "family" as Paul and Ellie, and define "home" as St. Louis rather than my parents' family, my parents' house.

Perhaps I began this process when my mother insisted that we come to their house for Christmas that first year, when Ellie was 2 months old, had been diagnosed with failure to thrive, and had heart surgery scheduled for a couple of weeks after Christmas. Our house was clean and decorated - we hosted family for her baptism a few days after Christmas - but my mother wanted us to drive 300 miles with that sick little baby, through the snow, to her house for Christmas. In retrospect, I can't believe that we did it, but at that time, not having Christmas with my family seemed inconceivable.

Over time, I've begun to feel uncomfortable with other things about my relationship with my family, specifically about the role I play.

When we go to visit my parents, it's hard not to be lazy, to feel like it's a vacation and surely someone else can take care of . . . the cooking, the dishes, whatever. (Exception: the kids. I never expect someone else to change diapers, help Ellie onto the potty, or watch the girls, unless they offer. The girls are my - and Paul's - personal responsibility just like going to the bathroom and showering myself are my responsibilities, iykwim. Baseline expectation of myself: basic hygiene and taking care of my children. Though I do expect my family to want to spend time playing with my girls. After all, they don't get to see them every month.)

It's also hard not to fall back into the predictable patterns of interaction, especially when people are treating me like they expect me to react the way I used to. You know, when I was a kid. This is uncomfortable, because I'm not a kid, and I don't want to be the kid I was.

I also don't like the specific part I've been assigned. People like to do things; we all reflect back happily on fun things we've done as a family, and some people complain if we sit around and do nothing, but getting the large group of easily distractable people to mobilize in concert is a Herculean (or Sisyphean) task.

I am the cheerleader, the ringleader, the bossy first child, the A-type personality, the boss. Just roll your eyes and follow along, folks.

If I don't start the conversation and marshall it along, the conversation often does not happen. I'm not just talking about which movie we should see on a Friday night, I'm also talking about which dates everyone is planning to be there, so that we can adjust work schedules and overlap our visits to my parents' house. So it's chaos and last minute scrambling and lots of time just sitting.

And it's become a family joke that Sarahlynn always wants to play board games. Of course, everyone likes playing games, and they frequently play even when I'm not there to suggest it.

But when I'm around, it's done with a let's-humor-Sarahlynn attitude, because that's my role. I don't like that role. I don't like being cast as the one who wants, who needs, the family and its corny-but-fun activities more than everyone else. It makes me feel like the worst parts of being a very young teenager again, with the seeking to belong, the fear of rejection.

It's not like all these issues are new. Some of them have been around for a long, long time; I've just been denying them. One summer, when I was home on break from university, my middle sister kept her diary on my computer. She didn't bother to password protect it; she just typed out her thoughts and plans and frustrations into my keyboard all summer. "I hate Sarah," she wrote. "She's such an ugly fat pig." And so on.

Over Thanksgiving, I overheard her talking to my mother. (When will they realize that I have always had very good hearing?) "Sarahlynn is acting just like she did back in high school," MiddleSis said. "She's totally . .. blah blah blah." I don't choose to remember it anymore; it was ugly. Also untrue.

So I decided to leave that afternoon and come back to St. Louis early. (That wasn't the only reason; there were lots of good reasons to come back here on Saturday, rather than Sunday, and we were all glad for the extra night's sleep in our own rooms, the extra day's rest at home before Monday.) In the car, on the way home, Paul and I talked a lot about what happened, and the ways in which being with our families can be stressful. The end result is that we can't and don't expect anyone else to change, and that we're all imperfect people. We can only monitor our responses and adjust our expectations. Hopefully, the Christmas visit will go more smoothly.

It seems that, perhaps, my picture-perfect family never really has been so picture perfect underneath, no matter how much I wanted that to be so, and believed that it was so. Here I am, in my 30's, surprised that we're an ordinary family with ordinary problems, after all.

Papa's Got a Brand New Bag

Well, not yet, he doesn't. But he wants one. See, I wasn't kidding a few days ago when I threatened to write about Paul's Christmas present.

Christmas 1997. I was making $8.81 an hour as an editorial assistant, and my student loan payments had just kicked in - I was 6 months past college graduation.

It was my first Christmas with Paul; we'd been together 11 months. I knew that he wanted a nice bag to carry to class and work, an over-the-shoulder bag rather than a backpack.

I spent what was, for me at the time, a lot of money at L.L. Bean or Land's End - I always get those two confused - and got Paul a great, personalized, leather-trimmed bag. He was suspicious and I believe in the importance of surprise, so I wrapped in a long, flat package along with several of my big college textbooks, but he knew what it was before he opened it, anyway. Disappointing. But he did like the bag and used it.

More disappointing was the fact that some months later, his parents got him a more expensive, all leather bag and he never used mine again.

This year he wants a new laptop bag, and he wants a backpack this time (after all, he's been carrying an over-the-shoulder bag for 10 years now). No problem, right? I'll tell his parents and they can get him a very nice new bag.

But no.

Paul wants me to get the bag for him, presumably to make up for ditching my last bag in favor of a nicer one from his parents. Sigh. You mean I'm going to have to let this go? After all these years?

Alas. I've looked around online a little but not fallen in love with any non-bulky laptop backpacks. Any suggestions? Do any of you have one that you love?

It's Our Fault, You Know

Why do so many toddlers live on french fries, cheese, pizza, pasta, and chicken fingers? It's seen as such an inevitable part of growing up, but it really doesn't have to be.

It's because we parents are lazy, we're weak, we confuse food with love, we confuse giving our children what they say they want with giving our children what they need, what will really make them happy.

Ellie has long been an unusually good eater. She didn't discover cheeseburgers and french fries until she was 3-1/2 (a feat that's practically unheard of amongst her peers). She still doesn't eat chicken fingers or toasted ravioli, though she really does love pizza and pasta these days. Fortunately, she still eats other things as well. She likes corn, she loves spinach souffle, and when I make crock-pot-roast, she'll eat the mushrooms and carrots all night long.

But I have become lazy. I've started feeding her foods that are easy to purchase, store, and prepare. I've started feeding her the foods that I like to eat rather than the foods that are best for her. Heating up a Lean Pocket for lunch is easier than, well, just about anything else, even a sandwich with healthful sides.

When Ellie started preschool, she was 15 months old and not yet walking. Later that year, she did learn to walk, but would plop down onto the ground whenever she got tired, no matter where she was, and her teachers were always trying to cajole her into walking a little further. Eventually, they hit upon broccoli bribery.

"Ellie, if you walk all the way back to the classroom on your own, we'll give you some broccoli!"

"K!"

When Ellie was little, she loved purees (which Paul made for her from fresh, organic vegetables and fruits). Now she's slightly interested in them again as I feed them to Ada, and that's OK with me. Alas, poor Ada gets store-bought purees, which she frequently declines to eat, favoring whatever we're having, and I don't blame her one bit. Such is the plight of the second child.

But I'll feed my girls pureed vegetables until they're 18, if they'll accept them, or add them to their quesadillas, pizzas, and soups, as well as continuing to offer fresh fruits and veggies with meals. Keeping and preparing fresh fruits and vegetables is harder, of course, as fresh foods tend to spoil quickly, which is why we drift into "easier" patterns over time.

At least the girls are getting important nutrients on my lazy days, even if they're not developing the best eating habits. (Puzzler: how to convince a child who can't stand the texture of raw vegetables to eat them? Or the slime of fruit?)

But let's not look too far from home when looking for causes in today's obesity epidemic. Our toddlers, preschoolers, and elementary school children are not so affected by commercials that they're driving themselves to McDonald's and buying their own junk food.

We're the parents. We stock the pantries, we drive the cars, we control the money, we should be monitoring the television. It's our fault.

Glamorous Vacation

I had some dental work done yesterday, the kind that involved 8 injections and some intimate time with a drill. Some of you might recall that I am a bit phobic about the dentist.

Don't feel too sorry for me, though; I only felt the first 3 shots in their full glory, despite the topical numbing agent. I didn't feel the next two at all, and the last three were but mere pinches. In my gums. And only the second filling got contaminated by those bleeding gums, requiring redrilling and touch-up work. So today my jaw is still sore from tensing it so hard while keeping my mouth wide open for two hours.

But I digress a little.

While waiting for the anesthesia to take effect, I managed to read the first three chapters of my new novel. Well, not my new novel, but you get the idea. I didn't have spend that time worrying about the baby, since Paul took the day off and stayed home with her.

And, for me, I was unusually relaxed. My fingernails didn't even draw blood while clenching into the opposite hand in my good luck squeeze position.

Even the dentist noticed.

"You know, I see some mothers of young children who say that it's actually a bit of a relaxing break to sit here and have a cavity drilled. It's funny that anyone enjoys this."

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that was it. Sure, I was enduring one of my least favorite activities in the world, but, hey, I got a morning off!

And then Paul, the girls, and I all went out to lunch together, where I realized that I couldn't even slup water neatly, though I did manage my milkshake nicely, thankyouverymuch.

Here, Fishy Fishy

Silly face:

Ada's a little scary. She's 10 months old. She talks some, uses some sign, looks very serious and wise, and seems to understand things that she should not. Like when she was 8 months old and someone across the room said, "Quack," and she replied, "Duck." And like yesterday, when she pointed to a picture of herself on the computer (actually, just a picture of her head - alongside her sister's, cousin's, and cousin-dog's, but she pointed to herself - atop an elf's dancing body) saying her name over and over. And like today, when she was happily chewing on a teething toy and occasionally holding it out to me, for my inspection.

"Ada, you've got a fish! Does it taste good?"

She looked at me like I was a little nuts, then crawled over to the fish tank and held her fish-shaped teether against the glass for a while.

I don't quite know what to do with this child, so I'm just enjoying her.

And her big sister, too, though I jinxed things by posting that I couldn't remember Ellie's last potty accident, prompting one accident a day for 4 days in a row. Whew.


Ada also plays "Where's Ada's nose? Mommy's nose? Where are Ada's eyes?" etc. I assume that's normal for this age. I'm really enjoying not knowing, not worrying, this time around. Ellie broke her brief cycle of daily accidents by initiating an entire potty cycle by herself and not telling me about it until afterward, including taking off her naptime pull-up and throwing it away. Amazing.

Huh. That's not what I was going to write about at all. This was going to be all about Paul's Christmas present this year. Guess you'll have to wait a little longer, honey.

Christmas To-Do List

I love this time of year, but I'm also (always) a bit overwhelmed by it.

Chopping down the tree
Writing Christmas letters
Christmas pictures/cards
Assembling and addressing, etc.
Cooking, baking, cooking, baking
Cleaning the house
Decorating the house and tree
Favors for the open house
Shopping for the open house
Preparing for the open house
THE OPEN HOUSE
Parties to attend, Secret Santa surprises to coordinate
Advent lessons to prepare
Christmas shopping
Wrapping
Mailing
Packing
Traveling

I'm doing a lot of this in my own way. We have the picture (just the girls, this year) and are close to ordering the photo cards. I'm working on the letter, which we will fold into envelopes with the photo cards. Paul will do the addressing, etc. I like the idea of homemade cards, but that's just not feasible. How many end-of-year/Christmas/holiday cards do you send? We send 100. I've cut way back to get to 100, and have experienced squawking when I tried to cut further. So no new friends can get cards until older friends die. Sorry. 100 is the limit. Because I'm married to Paul, we have a fancy database that coordinates all of this. How on earth do people do this with paper and pen address books?!

I am working on Christmas shopping. I have a grid listing each person for whom we need a gift, with a column for gift ideas and another column for actual gift purchased. Some of these I delegate out to Paul, often with a suggestion, but request that he actually do the shopping. Mostly, I love Christmas shopping. But it's sometimes a little overwhelming, too, especially this year when I started late. Oops.

We have the tree hanging out in a bucket of water in the car port. I should be cleaning the house right now, but I'm not very motivated because everyone went to bed early tonight, and so my night feels . . . unstructured.

For our open house party favors last year, we created a CD of some of our favorite Christmas, winter, and Hanukkah music, complete with personalized labels. I don't want to do that again this year, but am at a loss for what to do. I thought of personalized cocoa packets, but Paul thought that maybe that's not lasting enough. Hmm. Suggestions?

I should go to bed, I suppose. I have an early morning appointment with a dentist's drill. Ah, a crying, teething baby. Perhaps I'll go tend to her, instead.

It's Time for Christmas Letters

I can't blog right now! I'm writing our family Christmas letter! This year, again, I can't bring myself to write neat paragraphs describing our year. (Sarahlynn likes to read. Paul has a new job. Ellie is cute. Ada was born! The end.) So I searched around online, and I'm trying to write a menu that describes our year, as though we're a restaurant.

For example:

Entrees
Haggis, served family style (we took a 10-day family vacation to Scotland in June)

And so forth.

Do you know that some people think that writing longer things takes more time? Unless we're talking about a novel vs. a postcard, I find the opposite to be true. It's hard, very hard for me to edit, refine, pare down, keep the meaning without all the words. Words, words, words are easy.

Still Giving Thanks

I normally don't post on Friday nights, especially not after writing 2000 words, and after staying up past 2:00 am almost every night for a month. Have I mentioned that my girls get up early and the baby, while great at going to sleep at night, doesn't nap reliably during the day? And we have an extra tonight, though she's been no trouble at all.

A friend just defended his dissertation today, earning his PhD in astro physics (yes, seriously) so we offered to keep their daughter tonight so that he and his wife can have a night off together.

We were all at Blueberry Hill for dinner, and when we left, Paul was leading Ellie by the hand. Ellie was holding onto 2-year-old T's hand, and I was following along carrying Ada. The early dinner crowd was beginning to transition into a live music bar crowd, and we got lots of stares and comments as we walked out in single file with our three adorable little girls, ages 10 months, 2 years, and 4 years old. It's possible that they could all be ours, but whew! As if the past 4 years haven't been hard enough.

All three girls and Paul are peacefully sleeping now, and I intend to follow in their footsteps very soon.

But first, I want to answer the question for the StLBloggers November Blog Carnival: What are you most thankful for this year?

There are a lot of contenders this year.

In 2007, I gave birth to a wonderful, strong, intelligent, healthy baby girl and have watched her grow into an amazing almost-toddler. What could beat that?

In 2007, I have watched my three year old turn four, and develop by leaps and bounds, especially in her speech. She can run now, and carry on conversations with me that I didn't expect a year ago. And she is potty trained. I don't even ask her if she needs to go very often, anymore. I can't remember her last real accident. Amazing.

In 2007, my family was healthy, and everyone did well professionally. We saw each other frequently, my parents took all of us on an amazing trip to Scotland, and Paul started a great new job.

In 2007, I wrote a novel. My first one ever. And since this is what I want to do with my life, the fact that I'm actually working toward my goal is so exciting that I can barely talk about it.

But the winner this year is something of a dark horse, because it's something that, 18 months ago, I never would have thought to question. At the end of 2007, I am still married. I am even - dare I say it? - happily married.

While my life has grown and changed a lot over the past year, my marriage has grown and changed the most, I think.

And, for that, I am thankful.

Good Shepherds

There's a woman who reads my blog who had a baby with Trisomy 21 a few months ago. The diagnosis - shortly after the baby's birth - was a surprise to his parents. And as is often the case, it was a horrifying discovery. It was certainly scary, yes, horrifying to me when I learned that my first baby would have Trisomy 21, Down syndrome. I didn't know what to expect, but none of what I was imagining was good. I've written often before about not judging women for the choices they make in these circumstances. I don't believe that we can know how we'll feel until we've actually been in a given situation, and even then we can never be entirely in another's shoes. Each family must be allowed to decide what they can handle.

I still recoiled at first when I learned that she'd given her baby up for adoption. My first reaction was to compare her situation to my own. How could she? After seeing her beautiful, healthy, newborn son? How could she give him up? When I first saw Ellie, I was elated, I was smitten.

But there are differences. I knew about Ellie's diagnosis with 18 weeks to prepare. So surely she'll regret her decision someday; if she'd had the chance to get to know him a little, to get over the shock, to hold and love him a little, she'd have realized that she could do this.

Probably. Maybe not. The news is splashed, from time to time, with horrible, terrible stories about parents who could not cope. Perhaps worse still are the hundreds, thousands, probably millions of stories that don't make the news, of parents who harm their children - physically, sexually, verbally, coldly, hotly, in absentia - in less deadly ways because of their own difficulties coping sometimes.

I was already fighting against my initial reaction, when I found this post.

We are paving the way for our baby L to have the most wonderful life with a family who are 100% committed to him and his extra chromosome. Doesn't he deserve that rather than two people who are not sure.
He is worth so much more than 'not sure'.
. . .
Unfortunately, I am well aware that I probably will regret this decision. That it will hurt for a long time - maybe forever. But I would much rather feel that pain knowing that L is settled and happy than to have brought him home then regretted it. That's just a chance I am not willing to take.

She may regret her decision. But in the meantime, other than possibly the blogger herself, who is harmed? The baby was given the gift of life. And he has a home with a wonderful family who wants him. I think that speaks very nicely for itself.

In the meantime, for other parents who find themselves struggling with a difficult diagnosis: it is possible to cope, and even to he happy. To love and to grow, and to have a life you didn't imagine, didn't dream of, but are better - and happier - for.

To get there, you might need help. I wish everyone could have a doctor as good as my girls' pediatrician, who sees a lot of children with Down syndrome and who got us hooked up with all the specialists, therapists, and schools that we could ever need.

She led us to Good Shepherd School for Children, where Ellie attended preschool for 2 years. In the early days, Ellie's therapists - who came right here to our home - were more my therapists than hers. I can't tell you all the ways that they've enriched our lives together, and I miss them now that Ellie's a big girl in a big girl school.

Do you have a Kleenex handy? This is what they do:

I Wrote a Novel

Well, technically, I'm about 2/3 of the way done, but I won NaNoWriMo, and I don't feel inclined to stop now!

PARTY!

I'm off to go wake Paul up to celebrate.

Pet Peeve

False Tautologies

For example, I say, "I like X," and someone else hears, "Y sucks."

Or.

I say, "X describes Y," and someone else hears, "Therefore no other entities can contain any X whatsoever."

Note: precondition followed by assumption, without platform of fact upon which to base assumption. So annoying, so defensive.

I loved math in school, but if I had to narrow it down, I think that my favorite math class ever was the hard-to-describe course I took my sophomore year in high school. It was Algebra II, but it was an advanced course and we learned other stuff in there as well, including quite a bit of logic and whatever else the instructor was interested in teaching. I loved Geometry, and Trig, and I must have loved Calculus because I took a few years of it, in high school and in college. But Algebra II was one of the most valuable courses I ever took at any level of my education, because it taught me new analytical ways of thinking.

It's all a playful interest on my part, however. I like to exercise my brain with logic puzzles, but I have no desire to live and work in a completely logical world.

Thankful, Indeed

Everyone is feeling much better, and I never did get sick. We made it to my parents' house safely. Leftover Thanksgiving dinner was all the delicious fun and a lot less stress than the traditional meal always ends up being.

All in all, it's wonderful to be out of my own house for a little while and back in the comfortable clutter of my parents' home.

And Paul bought me an adapter so that I can power my laptop in the car, which allowed me to write nearly 4000 words on the drive! I'm not a great typist, but occasionally I can look up from the screen, and it was an interesting experience to be living in my fictional world, typing along, and looking out the windows at the dark Illinois landscape rushing by.

"There's a 24-hour Starbucks at the next exit!"

All in all, the weekend has gotten much better, and I am, as ever, Thankful.

And then Georgeanne’s shriek and Coralyn’s giggle brought him back with a blink, and he saw their colorful coats against the white snow and black trees, he saw the rolling hills and icy ponds, he saw Maggie’s face looking up at him, he saw the textures and pieces of his life laid out before him, and his heart felt so full, so full of love and longing.

Thanksgiving

We're not at my parents' house for Thanksgiving with my sisters, their husbands, and my sister's daughter, who was born the day after Ada and we rarely get to see. We're not anywhere for Thanksgiving. We're home, of course, but we won't be celebrating very much tomorrow; no one in my house is eating. The girls and Paul are not eating because of their GI bug. I'm not eating for two reasons: 1) I know that I will be struck down similarly very soon, and would prefer to have as little in my stomach as possible when that happens (I'll still eat toast, etc., as I become hungry). 2) My nose is so full of the unbearable stench of a house full of three people with GI bugs that it's hard to imagine wanting to eat.

This no good, terrible, very bad situation is exacerbated by a few things, most of which I'll call Paul, just for the sake of convenience. Since Paul is sick, he's very cranky and passive-aggressive. Since I barely cope with this much illness anyway, having a marginally civil co-parent is not easing matters. For example, if I notice that he's using diaper wipes on a freshly showered child, I might ask, "Oh, no, did she have more diarrhea?" And he might reply, "No, I just saw some on her and decided that it wouldn't be a good idea to leave it there." Unnecessarily sarcastic, rather than collaborative.

Further, he has very different ideas about cleanliness and germ-existence than I do. Granted, I was the one who took all those Biology courses in college. But his dad's got a Master's in Biology and is a high school Biology teacher, so surely Paul picked some of the 19th century concept of germ existence. But frequent hand-washing? Not so much. And, something germy (e.g. a used diaper wipe or soiled clothing) can apparently be set down on a surface frequently touched by other people (e.g. a chair) without leaving any germs behind. And the most disgusting things can be rinsed into the kitchen sink, despite all the dishes piled up in there.

Moving right along.

Thanksgiving. A couple of things about this whole illness have been wonderful. Yes! Wonderful! First, Ada seems to be through Part 1 of the illness, the throwing up part, and hasn't been nearly as sick as her older sister. Second, Ellie communicated with us! We took Ada to the doctor yesterday, and while she was being examined, Ellie told us that she was sick too. We blew her off nicely, thinking that she just wanted attention since her sister was getting so much. Then, after she'd been vomiting etc. for a few hours this morning, she told us that her throat hurt. So back to the doctor we went - and, indeed, Ellie has strep! (Ada's culture was negative.) This is the first time, the very first time ever, in more than 4 years, that she's diagnosed herself and given us the necessary information to help her. She told us her throat hurt! We took her to the doctor! She cultured positive for strep! And she got a shot of penicillin! Yay!

Where did she get the strep? Good question, and I do have a theory. The GI bug could have come from anywhere. Ada was sick first; she might have picked it up in the nursery at church, or anywhere else. After all, she's the one of us who crawls around on the floor, tries eating everything she sees, puts her dirty fingers into her mouth all the time, and gets passed around groups of people like a party favor.

But the strep part, I presume, came from Paul. He wasn't himself on Saturday night. (Note to the big crowd of people we had over here on Saturday: I'm sorry! But at least alcohol kills germs, and we sure had a lot of that!) I kept asking him why he wasn't participating in the party more, and he just said that he felt like sitting quietly and enjoying from afar, and that his throat hurt. We've all had a little cough/cold, so he insisted that his throat just hurt from coughing. I doubt that. I think he brought home strep. I wish he'd go get cultured. (Rob, I even used you as an example for motivation! No dice.)

So far, my throat's fine, and my stomach is a little off mostly because of what I'm smelling. I hope. Another bright and shining Thanksgiving light: I've written over 38,000 words this month, and am on target to hit the NaNoWriMo 50,000 target several days early. So I'm taking tonight off and going to bed. After I start a load of laundry and load the dishwasher.

I hope your Thanksgiving holiday is going better than mine!

How Do You Fill Your Days?

As Ellie and I were finishing up lunch, Ada woke up. I went to pick her up, and the phone rang. I took the phone with me and carried Ada back to change her diaper while talking to my mother. Then I sat Ada in her highchair, washed my hands, and got her some lunch. She wasn't too into eating; she's not feeling well today. I got her to have a sip of juice and a couple of bites of pureed oatmeal with pear.

While I was trying to make an appointment get Ellie's hair trimmed, Ada threw up all over herself and her tray. I got her cleaned up and into the bath. Ellie came along to "help." While I was dressing Ada after her bath, Ellie opened the refrigerator and got a fresh container of Quaker Old Fashioned Oats, and spilled the entire thing on the kitchen floor. I sat Ada down and swept that up. As I was finishing, I heard Ellie calling for help from the master bathroom.

Apparently, she and The (stuffed) Cat in the Hat needed to potty. Both were, apparently, successful. By this time, I'm a little pissed. I deposit Cat in a plastic bag to go downstairs to the washing machine, and I hear suspicious splashing. Ada has crawled into the hall bathroom (door opened compliments of her big sister) and is happily splashing her hands in the toilet. I wash Ada's hands and shut the bathroom door, then leave her to push her Radio Flyer wagon while going back to Clorox wipe the master bathroom floor after The Cat in the Hat's drippage. Big sister is having an extended session on the potty.

Ada's quiet, so I go back to check on her: she's fine, but the bed of the wagon is holding some sort of clear fluid. I clean this up with a cloth diaper and a Lysol wipe, then carry Ada back to sit with Ellie and me. Ellie's still on the pot, and saying, "Finish potty! Finish potty!" (This means: I need to finish going potty; don't rush me!) And Ada's rubbing her eyes, so I snuggle her and put her down in her crib. When I walk back into my room, I find that Ellie has decided to follow me to see where I was going with Ada. She did not wipe first.

By this time, I'm emitting a quiet but piercing noise, and Ellie's saying, "Mommy, no screaming!" I clean her up, the clean up the toilet, potty seat, and carpet just outside the bathroom while Ellie washes her hands for about 5 minutes. Then I wash my hands of the whole affair, both literally and figuratively.

As I've typed this, Ellie has put herself down for her nap (smart girl!) and Ada has fallen asleep too. I need to take a shower, then wake the two of them so that I can take Ada to the doctor to get the verdict on whether or not it's OK for us to travel tomorrow, to my parents' house for Thanksgiving.

Somehow this afternoon, I need to find time to get Ellie's hair cut, and then we are having an early dinner with friends, to meet her family who are in from out of town for the holiday.

Then Paul's got an evening meeting at church, and I'll come home to get the girls to bed, do laundry, pack, bake 4 loaves of quick bread (2 banana, 2 pumpkin), and write 2000 words.

No pressure. I'm sure glad I quit my job to live this life of leisure. For the record, the first part of that sentence is true.

What Year Is It?

I have been so off-kilter for the last few days. I've always been a little skeptical when reading authors talking about their characters taking on lives of their own, changing the stories, talking to them throughout the day, etc. (I know that some writers do seem to experience this, but others do not. I'm in the latter group.) For the most part, I know what my story is before I write it. I know who my characters are, and where their arcs end before I begin or shortly thereafter. The more practiced I get, the more I know before I start writing.

But I have been in a fictional fog for a little while, today especially. My last 20,000 words or so have been set in February 2012. And while the year isn't a huge deal, the month is really throwing me off. I keep looking at the trees and expecting to see preparations for new buds, not dead leaves gradually falling. I am thinking more about valentines than turkey sandwiches. I am looking ahead to our spring break trip rather than Christmas vacation. It's a weird, weird feeling, especially this time of year, when it usually seems like no other time of year can ever exist.

Genre Fiction

I've written before about genre fiction. Here, for example. And here. To sum up: I think that great quantities of rubbish are published by genre publishers (Romance, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Mystery) because they fit the template and readers will apparently buy anything that fits the desired template. This trend is good for getting published, but is bad for fiction in general. And it gives genre fiction a really bad name that it doesn't entirely deserve. There's some really wonderful, exciting, emergent writing going on in genre fiction, especially in SF&F, that's obscured from general readership by its association with the piles of dragon dung. At the core, good writing is good writing, and I'm the sort of reader who appreciates good writing, regardless of genre.

What I might not have shared before is that I've actually done a bit of genre writing, as well.

The first short story I wrote all by myself (without my mother writing the words down for me) was a fantasy story. I was in first grade, and I illustrated the story and taped the audiobook too; I was a jill-of-all-trades. As an adult, the first short story that I was really proud of, that I still think might have been published somewhere if I'd tried a little bit, was sort of a fantasy story as well. It doesn't fit a modern fantasy template, though, and is more Gregory Maquire than Anne McCaffrey.

And my first, failed, novel - to which I still intend to return at some point - was a mystery. I love good mysteries, and have about a dozen of them in my head; I just haven't found the voice yet in which to write them.

What's more surprising, it seems, to those who know me, is that I once thought about writing romances. The fall of my senior year in college was an interesting time for me. I decided that I really needed to break up with the guy I'd been dating since high school graduation before we ended up married. Around the same time, I decided that I'd been on the wrong life path since I was 9 years old. I realized, all at once and with no warning, that I really didn't want to be a doctor after all.

What now?!!

I thought about what I loved to do, and the answer was easy, even then: I love to write. Even when I wanted to be a doctor, I was secretly hoping to be Michael Crichton, publishing popular fiction rather than peer-reviewed studies.

But I have always been plagued by self-doubt, and I didn't think that I could do it. I knew for sure that I couldn't support myself and pay off my student loans by embarking upon a career as a novelist. But, I read up a little on Harlequin romances, and I decided that I could do that and make enough money to live. I just needed to learn the pattern, I figured, so I joined the Harlequin readers club and received my 4 books plus a complimentary gift each month.

I quickly realized that romance writing is not for me (this is that part that's not surprising to those who know me, or who have read any of my writing) but I kept my membership until I had a full set of wine glasses, and those are still the wine glasses we use today as, apparently, we failed to register for any at our wedding.

They're bright green, and they do make a wonderful conversation piece.

Structure

I'm on track to make the NaNo halfway mark (25,000 words) on Wednesday night, if I continue at this pace. That will, not entirely coincidentally, be the halfway point of the book (although lots of what I've already written needs to be expanded; that can happen later, after November) and the main crisis, which has been building since the prologue, will begin to explode.

My novel is divided into three parts, each of which should eventually be about 25,000 words. Part 1 spans 15 years and has a lot of shorter scenes: bam-bam-bam. The pace slows down, but the crisis picks up significantly in Part 2, which spans 2 months. Part 3 stretches out, is more introspective, and covers about a year.

Part 1 is fun, Part 2 is exciting, and Part 3, which I have not yet begun to write, is supposed to be lyrical and haunting. Ah, well, what's the use of trying, without making lofty goals? If I'm going to be a writer, this is the sort of writer I want to be. Can I carry a story on the merits of the writing, without relying on plot? We'll see by the second or third draft of Part 3. In the meantime:

Writing lesson from book club. The Time Traveler's Wife taught me that people can fuck in contemporary literary fiction. My characters, and my narrator, don't say that; though I think it would be interesting to write in a voice that could, someday. There is sex, though. And hopefully there's a little laughter too.

The undulating women, the thumping music, the pulsing lights, it all screamed sex-sex-sex. Mark closed his eyes and moved to the music, feeling fuzzy around the edges, feeling the beat and the lust in his muscles, in his bones, in the very core of his soul. There was no today, there was no tomorrow, there was no Maggie, there was no Mark, there was only this feeling, this being, right now. He was the beat. He was the music, the lights, the vapor of evaporating sweat steaming off the dancers.

Until someone threw up on his shoe.

Tales of the Journey: National Youth Workers Convention

Through the PCUSA webring, I stumbled upon a youth director talking about the recent National Youth Workers Convention. (Aside: there is a fascinating mix of progressive and conservative bloggers linked on that site.)

Anyway, youth director Brittany posted about a keynote speech by Veggie Tales creator Phil Vischer, in which he asked the question "Is this dream more important in my life than God?" in response to living his dream and then losing it.

In response to that question, Brittany said,

I realized that my dream really didn't have anything to do with God. It was just my dream. I owned it and expected God to fill in the missing parts. What a backwards idea about God, like I'm the one writing the story. It's easier sometimes to play the part of God rather than letting God be God and me be me.

I think I'm like that about my writing. It's hard not to be, when you want something so much. But I'd like to remind God that I have pledged that 10% of every single penny I make from my writing is tithed. (My tongue is planted firmly in my cheek, here; I'm being flip, not bargaining.)

NaNoWriMo update: I'm at 19,075 words and still liking it. My automatic counter widget (see right) isn't updating as quickly as I'd like.

Blogger Buzz: To-Do List (the book)

Blogger Buzz: To-Do List (the book)

Still Writing

Friday's Total Word Count: 17,140

I should be proud of what I've accomplished so far, and I am. And I know that Week 2 is when a lot of people hit the wall: it's starting to drag on a bit, and the end is not in sight.

But I am very concerned about running out of material. Given where I am today, I'm afraid that I'll say everything I have to say, I'll tell the story, and find that it's an awkward 25,000 words. I don't mind finishing up after NaNoWriMo is over; I expect that. But I do really care about this story, and in the end, I want to have a novel, not a novella.

Saturday night update: Today's Word Count: 16,908.

Yes, that's fewer words than yesterday, but I wasn't editing, just removing some stuff that will come back in towards the end of the story.

Today's progress: one of the most successful days so far. Worried about flailing, or failing, I spent tonight creating a detailed timeline for the main character and a list of all the scenes in the story, with rough size targets. Lots of words, none of which count toward the NaNoWriMo 50,000 target, although I'm still ahead of where I need to be to meet that target while continuing at a steady pace. The scene outline should go a very long way toward helping me stay on track to finish the novel with the three main sections appropriately balanced.

I've never come this far, and I'm not talking about word count. I think this piece has potential. I'm not afraid to write it anymore.

I Still Love Fall

Silly writer. Imagery is the sort of thing you go back later and fill in, after the characters are developed, after the plot's sketched out, after the NaNoWriMo word count hurdle has been met.

The weirdest change about Maggie during her pregnancy, though, was her hair. Mark had always loved Maggie’s thick curly hair, in that hard-to-describe color that was part chocolaty brown and part autumnal orange, all shot through with strands that shone pure copper and caught afternoon sun to turn her head into a burning pile of leaves. He loved to grab her hair in both of his hands and burrow his face into it, almost expecting the scent of crisp fall air and pumpkin pie spices. Maggie tended to choose shampoo based on continuously evolving criteria like price, bottle shape, brand name, ingredients list, and quality of marketing writing, though, so her hair’s perfume changed regularly, though it always overlay a smell that was purely, uniquely, Maggie.

While Maggie was pregnant, her smell changed slightly, and so did her hair. Her tightly wound curls became softer, gentler, still curls but more like paper links in a Christmas tree decorating chain than the springy store-bought ribbon on a child’s birthday present.

Wednesday's Word Total: 13,071
Thursday's Word Total: 15,086

Writing Poll

Writers,

How do you deal with longer pieces of work-in-progress? Do you keep the entire document in one large, cumbersome file for administrative ease? Do you keep separate files for each chapter? Some chunking system in between?

I've worked both ways, and have not yet stumbled upon a comfortable solution. I like being able to scroll up or down from where I'm writing - I don't always create sequentially or chronologically - to edit or verify a detail. On the other hand, large files are slow, and it takes a long time to move around in them. But it sure is a lot easier to compute things like word count in a single file rather than a chapter-by-chapter approach, and to ensure consistent formatting, page numbering, etc.

What do you do?

Today's NaNoWriMo word count: 11,120 words.

His Dark Materials

No amount of caffeine is keeping my head off my hand off the table, and even I am bored with the short section that I just finished writing. It's time to get some sleep!

Another successful NaNoWriMo day, all in all. My total word count is 9031 words, and according to the little spreadsheet Paul made for me, I needed to be at 8333 words to be on track. If I can keep this up, I might get a couple of days off at Thanksgiving! Or maybe just some lighter writing days to do more research and planning for the harder, later sections of the novel.

This is already the longest work of fiction I've ever written, by a hair. (I've written short stories, the first 5 or 6 chapters of a novel, and a longer pieces nonfiction/creative nonfiction/memoir, but most of my writing has definitely been in bite-sized chunks. I write a lot of beginnings before paralyzing in fear of failure. What seemed to me at one time to be great titles, great first lines, great opening paragraphs clutter my "Writing" folder.)

Moving on.

Have you read Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy? We loved it. And we're all looking forward to the movie of The Golden Compass, opening in December. By "we," I mean Paul, me, my whole family (mom, dad, two sisters, various brothers-in-law), and a couple of good friends.

I'm not sure I want my daemon to be a chimp, though. I mean, chimps are clever, and that's really good. But they're not exactly sexy animals. Maybe you can help determine if I've got the right daemon?

The Really Good Guy

The NaNoWriMo website is currently down. This is frustrating, because once I've finished my writing for the "day," I count on being able to log in and input my new total, in order to watch my little blue status bar move slightly to the right.

So far, so good. I have a rough outline, I have a timeline, and at the end of day three, I have 5264 words.

Orange asked me what I'm writing this month. The "it's late and I'm really tired" version is this:

I'm working on a literary fiction, very character-driven novel called The Really Good Guy. The title character is a married-with-kids, 36-year-old workaholic who has always been described as a good person. More importantly, that's how he sees himself. And then he does something that's pretty awful. He has to deal with the consequences, but most importantly, he has to see himself as the sort of guy who'd do such a bad thing.

This story presents all sorts of challenges for me, not least among which are that my main character is older than me, male, and a workaholic while I'm an at-home mom. (That's whole different kind of working hard.) It's hard for me to keep his wife and kids in the background where they belong.

"Write what you know" is good, solid writing advice. And I am writing what I know, just in a different way. Sometimes using a narrator who sees the world from a different perspective can shed interesting light on a story.

It really is impossible for me to write well this fast. It's not, however, a wasted exercise. I might not have a beautiful, lyrical novel, but I often put pretty stuff in later, once the outline of the story is in place. I shade after I sketch. I upholster after I construct, and so forth.

At the end of the month, I don't plan to have a publishable novel. I hope to have 50,000 words, the bones of a really interesting story, consisting mostly of scenes and summary without a lot of connective tissue: a great outline that can be fleshed out and lifted up a bit into something that I can be proud of.

3 days ago, I had a few notes jotted down at the Borders Cafe. Tonight I have more than 5000 words of new, original fiction typed and saved. I don't care which words they are; I'm proud of that.

Give It To Me

OK, I'm disabling the word verification thingie until I get fed up with the spam again. This lowers the bar for commenting. Let's chat!

Second day NaNoWriMo total: 3680 (slightly ahead of the daily requirement to stay on track for 50,000 words in 30 days).

Write On!

Yo yo yo, it's NaNoWriMo; here we go! In general, I do believe in quality over quantity. But when I'm paralyzed, any movement is a positive development, even if it's just a muscle spasm. And at the end of the first day, I have more than 1700 words on the screen. For the record, Ada does not feel that this is the best use of my time. In turn, I do not feel that being up and crying 3 hours past successful bedtime is the best use of her time either.

Ada did the funniest thing last weekend. I was playing Wii with my sister in the family room while my mom was playing with Ellie in her room, down at the other end of the hall. Our family room and Ellie's room are like the weights on a barbell, with other rooms (a bathroom, my room, Ada's room) shooting off the main hallway to the sides. So it's not like a barbell at all, but the family room and Ellie's room are at opposite ends of a hallway, see?

Anyway, Ada got bored with the way LilSis and I were neglecting her, so she crawled all the way down the hallway to Ellie's room for some more stimulating company. Once she got there, she got up on her knees (tall kneeling!) and looked at me, while defiantly shutting the door. Her reach is impressive, but she is only 9 months old. So she'd push the door a bit, crawl toward it, push it some more, crawl to catch up, etc., until the door finally closed. Until the last possible moment, she stared right at me, meaningfully.

I got the message!