Category Archives: Don’t get me started (uh-oh, you just did)

Aaaaaah.

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Only 21 more days ’til January.

Tomorrow is my day to prepare, bring, and serve a healthful snack at preschool. 25 kids, 12 adults, and a requirement for whole grains and protein, all organic. WTF, people…I already have enough trouble getting three people fed around here.

Tonight my sewer is overflowing into my garage. No big deal. Landlord has a standing account with a 24-hour plumber. How’s that for a silver lining in a shitstorm?

Computers are still busted. Found a loophole that lets me write one sentence each hour and eventually post. I think my computers want me on Twitter and off everything else.

Packing for an awesome trip that will be way too short and that is sure to be fabulous until the moment USAir (why they are still in business escapes me) strands us in Phoenix on the way home. As they always do. Without fail. It’s like the Phoenix chamber of commerce paid the whole airline to make sure people read those lame ass signs for just a few extra hours. People, if I wanted to be in Arizona, I would be in Tucson. Not Phoenix, and not the Phoenix airport. Save your money and let us pass. I can answer your three questions AND I brought you a shrubbery.

Now it’s only 20 days until January.

Massive computer fail

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Netbook and laptop both took a huge dive. After several days during which any click of the mouse takes, no joke, 8 minutes to register I think I’ve figured out that Microsoft auto-updated my Windows XP to a new and Internet-outraging service pack. Or some other geek talk I don’t get. Neither computer can perform basic functions and I’m left hanging for days after asking for a virus scan or a return to backup.

What I do understand is that both my computers are useless and I’m a mess. Can’t pay bills, can’t check our plane reservations, can’t send email, can’t handle the huge address book that has all the info for our holiday cards.

I need Kipper. Any chance he and Jake could come over and fix both computers, since it seems I have to download and reinstall something onto computer that is completely unable to even copy or delete a file?

Microsoft, if this is your fault, I’m totally and completely going Linux on my PCs and am using my Mac for EVERYTHING from now on. Jerks. Losers. Monolithic asswipe computer ruiners. (I usually reserve my “The Man is bringing me down” category for politics, but Microsoft is *The Man* and The Man is so thoroughly bringing me down, man.)

I’ll be back when I can actually access the Internet.

Just what the doctor ordered

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No, not swine flu vax. Still don’t have access. And not a healthy diet or steady exercise. Because I prefer organic unhealthy and sporadic respectively, thank you very much.

No, the Rx of which I speak was a solo trip to New York for personal and professional reasons. Was it a success? Aye.

Seeing old friends has always been my drug of choice. It makes me feel so intensely good I can’t put into words how I value faces and voices that span all the phases of my seriously stunted personal development. It was miraculous to see some of the people I thought had disappeared into the aether. (Yeah, I went Victorian on that one. I debated the contemporary spelling, but I just finished a George Eliot book and am sprinkling my life with the nineteenth century. For fun and profit. Well, really just fun, but you never know.) So it was lovely to see half a dozen people I value above sleep. (Yes, you five, I did just say I value you above that which I’ve dedicated my life to finding, achieving, and relishing. How do you like them apples?) All this in a setting where I wasn’t chasing a small child or trying to keep him occupied with things he likes so I can do what I like: sitting like a lump discussing books and food and politics and life.

It was also a great relief to get in one more conference before the Baby Formerly Known as Vomitron arrives. I had intended to polish and publish as many articles as I could before next fall and to apply to PhD programs as Peanut settled into what I hope will be a better year for both of us. The onset of 15 weeks of nausea made me reconsider, deflate lethargically, then kick the plans into high gear. The conference reassured me that 1)Some of my work makes me a viable candidate for consideration at the journals and Universities to which I’d apply; 2)I must continue to function at as high a level as possible for the next few months, because academia will just not be possible in 2010; and 3)the stuff on which I wanted to focus my scholarship ten years ago may actually start making its way into the mainstream soon, which is freaking awesome timing, all things considered (and Vomitron willing).

But the highlight of the trip was the food. I love good food, and I certainly have access in San Francisco and Berkeley. Really good food. Really, really good….but here’s the thing. Food eaten on vacation with friends in New York City in the just-beginning-to-crisp autumn achieves a whole new level of great over that which is sandwiched in between gulps and eyebrows that remind, constantly, exactly what the babysitter is costing. Some of the dishes in NY (gnocchi alla sorrentina, a grecian omelette, and pret a manger soup grabbed between conference panels) were fine but not spectacular. And some were as well balanced and nuanced as anything I’d had before (a bread pudding of perfect consistency, a brilliant artisan cheese and local veggies omelette, the freaking mindblowing TKO and linzers at Bouchon, and a brie sandwich on cranberry baguette).

But the absolute best time, money, and calories spent were achieved via a raging 25-month sheeps’ milk local artisan cheese from the farmer’s market is still coating my palate with a NYC magnet, pulling me to go back. And telling me that despite my instincts, there need be no punctuation in the above cheese’s hyper-adjectival clause. Cause a pause would ruin the magic, yo.

Believe me, cheese guy, if I could afford to, I would be back tomorrow. Because I have to get more of that cheese and give it to all my friends. Heck, I’ll even bring Peanut this time. Because he should totally get to see NYC at night in autumn. I loved it. Even more delightful this time than it was 13 years ago.

(Holy crap I’m old. Way to kill the mood about a great trip and future successes by recalling how many years have passed since I was vibrant and carefree. Geez. I need more of that cheese to salve my wounds. Oh, look. Brought home a pound. Good thinking.)

for the record…

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…the smaller you make the peanut butter cups, the more I need to eat to feel as though I’ve done something with my day. Work on super-sizing those bad boys. Then we’ll talk.

…apples are not protein. Neither are bananas. When I ask you what protein you’re going to have with your popcorn, you’d better actually name something with a complete amino acid profile. Otherwise you’re having almond butter spread on every single food you ever eat until you’re 20.

…turn signals are not optional. If you dillholes keep making me wait/threatening my life by refusing to use those signals, I will drive headlong into your stupid-ass SUV and tell the police officers that you were weaving and screaming as you hit me.

…calling yourself by a different name and trying to thrash my house and one remaining shred of sanity under the guise of having different rules at “your” house, when I know full well everything you’ve done for the past 3.75 years does *not* get you a free pass to roll all over me. Sure you can have a cuddle, whatever your name/alibi is.

…there is no reason on earth to charge that much for a cab ride. Do you know what taking the subway would cost me if it were still running this late?

…there is no reason on this earth that you need to wipe your hands on your shirt. We’ve been working on this for three years. You have two napkins by you. Use one.

…that’s nice that you love me *this* much. You still only get one movie on Movie Day.

…it’s really not okay to call your doctor’s office (or your child’s pediatrician) and curse at the office manager for not having the H1N1 yet. It’s not their fault. And, from the words of my childhood pediatrician’s office “I don’t mind being called a bitch, but one woman called me fat. i simply will not be talked to that way.” All people who lack civility go to the back of the line, anyway. And the nurse, who is too much of a professional to spit on your needle, calls your cafe and tells the barrista to spit in your overpriced attitude-worsening brew.

…I will be gone for the next four days and I don’t plan on blogging anything useful, but you never know.

It’s all about balance, I guess. Maybe.

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So first week of school for Peanut, predictably, meant first week of the worst freaking tantrums since the dawn of time. (Not seriously. He’s a low tantrum dude. But on *his* Richter scale, this weekend was off the f–ing charts.)

We had him screaming in the supermarket, knocking down boxes of Top Ramen. We had him running full tilt through the freezer aisle and opening every door, just before I caught him and flung him over my shoulder kicking and screaming to make a speedy exit. We had him whining and sobbing and yelling at us, really yelling, with every single Lego piece that did not obey the laws of physics and geometry on whatever planet this non-Euclidean, non-Newtonian kid lives on. We had a day, basically, of “I will help you when you can treat me respectfully, but I will not stay in the same room with that voice,” all day, both days. And we had him yelling at my sweet little 94-year-old grandmother, on my birthday, that she was not allowed to talk to me, only *he* can talk to me.

Clean up! Aisle Six! Some lady is sobbing about something or other, and her puddle of tears is activating the Top Ramen secret flavor packets.

I knew we’d pay dearly for the first week of preschool. I know it’s a lot of change and his world is upside down (shut up, Drs. Sears, he’s in a co-op where I’m there and everything is all child-directed, for a grand total of three hours a day thrice a week, so don’t tell me from upside down world until you’ve lived with a highly spirited intense opinionated way-too-smart kid for three and a half years, and then I’ll show you upside down world) so he needs an emotional outlet. But must *I* be the outlet? Holy Freaking Meltdown of the Social Order, Batman, we need a tranquilizer dart from Babies R Us.

Upside of the whole insane weekend of terror, though? My mom watched the new person formerly known as Peanut for an evening in which Spouse and I saw a real, actual film on a screen and had a real, actual meal at a quiet restaurant. As in feature film rated something I didn’t have to check because who cares? and menu without crayons.

More important, uproariously funny Clooney and MacGregor flick at which the rest of the audience politely tittered and I laughed so hard and so loudly that people glared at me. Dumbest movie I’ve seen in years and absolutely pants-wettingly funny. See it. The Men Who Stare at Goats. I think. I don’t care. The title’s not important. When you see it, email me about the “what are the quotes for?” line. And the sparkle eyes scene. It’ll make me wet more pants. And I only have, like, two pair that fit right now, so what a laundry honor that will be.

And even more important, we found a fabulous restaurant I’ve never tried, in whose menu I was very pleased, and with whose policy of offering wine by the bottle, glass, or 2 ounce taste I was thrilled. Because a “taste” of wine is totally under the radar of *every* hyper-vigilant American obstetrician I’ve ever met or read. No, not a sip, and not a glass. A technical, measured, duly noted on the receipt, “taste.” Spicy syrah. Lovely. From what I tasted.

Did I mention George Clooney and Ewan MacGregor? Nobody laughed but me. And you know how much i don’t care that other people on the planet are too dumb to get good jokes?

Today was not much easier with Peanut, but he slept a full nap and I had a huge pot of homemade chili at my elbow as I thought about and refused to the the 20 really pressing things on my to-do list. And instead started a new book that pleases me GREATLY.

And you know what? Volcanic bullshit from my kid on a day where I get a few hours with Spouse, and whiny exhausting understandable but unbearable nonsense from my kid on a day where I have freshly made chili and a new book is totally a good weekend. Because his bullshit is, as of today, no longer going to be my bullshit. It will be my atmosphere and my backdrop and my full time g.d. job, but I’m gonna do my best not to breathe it in and let it rattle me. Cuz, dammit, I have George Clooney and chili and twelve choices of bruschetta and Ewan MacGregor and a new book, y’all.

Ewan MacGregor.

I’m sorry….what?

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Today’s wtf files:

Microwave instructions on instant pudding. Because there *needs* to be an option between 5 minutes of stovetop and buying premade pudding. [Yes, dammit, it’s organic and low sugar. Sue me.]

At least one father at every single playground I’ve been to in the past six months: texting or playing games on phone or having really insipid phone conversation while kids try desperately to get his attention. Dude. Do you see *any* of the moms doing that bullshit? And when there are other dads, it’s still only one guy. Loser.

Fifteen of the twenty products rated “must have” in some lame-o mainstream parenting magazine at the doc’s office are either toxic or useless. And these people are raising the assholes our kids will go to school with.

Why do people tell me to watch MadMen and not Weeds? I freaking love that show and don’t get the same nausea after an episode or two that followed Betty Draper’s existential spiral.

The Bay Bridge is falling down. And people are complaining about the traffic instead of remembering 20 years ago when we counted every second, hoping they’d find someone alive in the Cypress and thanked heaven only one person died on the Bridge. But by all means, whine about your commute.

My kid has gained three pounds this month and I can’t freaking lift him up. He’s always been a timid eater, and he’s now scarfing down adult portions and taking seconds and eating veggies and taking two hour dinners. Who is this guy?

Preschool still has no space for us. This kid is going to be in college before I get him the hell away from me for a couple of hours a week. In fact, he told me he wants to go to college right now because he wants to be an ultrasound technician so he can push all the buttons. Fine by me, dude.

A street sweeping ticket is $48?! For what? I’ll get out a push broom and clear the tiny bit of stuff from under my car. Don’t you people have better ways to raise money?

SIGG toxic b.s.

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I am so angry it’s taking all my energy not to scream obscenities and cry. Sigg, the maker of stainless steel bottles I’ve used for YEARS to escape exposure from the scary hormone-disrupting chemicals found in plastic (especially BPA), actually contain BPA. Or did, until last year when they changed their liner without telling anyone about the toxins.

Should I have known when they touted their bottles as an eco-alternative that “does not leach BPA” to read between the lines and see that doesn’t mean “does not contain BPA?” Sure. But I wasn’t the only one fooled. Consumer advocates have been trying to prove for years what we all suspected: Sigg is too good to be true.

Now Sigg is willing to replace their old bottles with their new, BPA-free bottles. I refuse to link to their website because I am angry I could spit BPA tainted water. Several retailers are exchanging the bottles for the new version or for an alternative.

I’m not getting new Sigg bottles. I’m going to put on hold my boycott of Whole Foods, whose dolt of a CEO wrote an editorial opposed to health care reform and basic human services (hello, do you know your customers at all?) because Whole Foods is taking back Sigg bottles for a credit. And with that credit I will buy the bottles I thought I could never afford but am now KICKING myself for not buying earlier, distraught with what I may have done to my body, my children’s bodies, and my Spouse’s body by relying on Sigg for so many years.

I’m scared and mad and feel so f—ing misled. What is the point of reading and researching and trying my absolute best if goddamned companies goddamned lie as a way of doing business?

No aluminum. No Gaiam bottles (I knew that because they taste like plastic). No Sigg bottles.

Yes to stainless steel. Yes to Kleen Kanteen. Maybe to whatever other alternatives you’d like to suggest, if you can prove they’re not taking our money and lying like certain other companies. Like all of them.

Just one day.

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I want one day.
ONE day in which I don’t need tricks and techniques and reverse psychology to get my job done. I want ONE day in which I’m in charge of only my own actions, in which I get stuff done without taking six times as long as should be necessary because it will be just me and the voices in my head.
I want ONE day in which things are easy; where I ask and things happen. Calmly. Happily. Without whining or crying or throwing or hitting or questions or bullshit. I want ONE g-dd-mned day where I don’t have to explain safety and society and polite and dangerous and inappropriate and unacceptable. ONE day where I don’t need to consciously reinforce all the good behavior of someone else in a DESPERATE attempt to stave off the batshit insane bad behavior that I can’t even label “bad” because it’s not the way I want to do things.
I want ONE f—ing day where I can just operate on my own list, focusing when I want to, spacing when I want to, and taking freaking breaths when I want to. One day with clear goals and outcomes, milestones and markers, measurement and metrics, respect and a f—ing paycheck.
I want ONE day where nobody tells me about their bowels or their bladder or makes me help them evacuate either. I want ONE day where I actually feel like I’m doing a good job. Where I don’t need a g-dd-mned book to give me suggestions for making things smoother and can operate without needing freaking experts telling me how to get through the day without homicide and suicide and infanticide and freaking increasing the shockingly low child abuse rate.
ONE day where I don’t have to explain or cajole or bargain or compromise or invent games to convince everyone but myself that life is fun and washing hands is wonderful and eating is jolly. One day where the growth, development, life, or death of people around me is really none of my concern and certainly not my responsibility. I just want to do my day.
I want ONE day. ONE. One. 1. Just one.
Or I want a 60 hour a week job so someone else does this b-llsh-t for me.
Never mind. I want an 80 hour a week job. The weeks I handled a 120 hour work week, all billable hours, I barely had enough energy to shower. I want that again. Someone else handle this. Someone who’s good at it. For just one day. Or maybe forever.

No, seriously.

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You read how my day went down yesterday. I’m not kidding, at all, when I narrate for you now the way the evening after that rather trying day proceeded:

After Peanut’s in bed and Spouse is settled, I head to the main library on campus to pick up a book on hold and to (hopefully) nab another book someone returned before anyone else notices it’s back.  I arrive at the main door and walk through the glorious and stately halls  to get to the circulation desk. Time: 8:45.  I watch as the metal gate descends, too far away to holler or run or be otherwise indecorous. I get to the entrance and read that closing time is 8:45. Well, I guess I should have checked that online. Book on hold will have to wait. (Phlebotomist rants replay in my head…)

So I walk down the hill to the lowly undergrad library, through the catacombs of which I can still access the main stacks even after closing. I search for the book purportedly returned. Not on the shelf. Nowhere to be seen. To whom does one report that? The circulation desk at the main library. But they are at home with their phlebotomy and philately and whatnot.

So I research underground or a while, collecting articles that I’m not allowed to access from home, due to the vast conspiracy between the online critical journals and the babysitting lobby. I subvert them all with my free sitter, the father of my freaking child.

I recheck the shelf, just in case. No luck. But good thinking on rechecking, eh? Wouldn’t want it checked out this morning before I can peel the lad from my leg or anything like that.

And on a whim last night, after an hour or so of journal trolling, I search for a free reading book I’ve been coveting. In luck: it’s housed in the aforementioned lowly undergrad library. I navigate catacombs, climb stairs, survive glares that remind me a nigh-on 40 year old pregnant alumnae is not a quote-unquote normal site on campus after hours. If ever. I find the book. I descent the stairs and head to undergrad circulation. Time: 10:07. Sign on the desk informs me that circ. closes at 10:00. Guess I should have checked that before I leisurely used the stairs instead of the elevator. I’m really tempted to issue forth with a SCREW YOU, AL GORE here, but I hold back. Bottle it up. It’s of more use to me there. I contemplate, I grouse, and I drop the book into the return slot. Hope that confuses them for weeks, those loser philatelists.

And, I swear to all things chocolate and marshmallowy, I showed up on campus this morning to get both books and to report the missing text: marquis sporting event of the year ongoing; library apparently closes for such nonsense. There were lawns full of food vendors and grand entrances full of dancers and drummers. On the marble steps of the oldest University in California. Drummers. Dancers. Where are the books? It’s unseemly but true: the library closes for football. This ain’t one of those Big Ten schools where they go to college as an excuse to have an alma mater to support all football season. Our football prowess is not exactly our calling card. Nobel Laureates, sure. number of periodic elements named by and for our graduates, yup. Holdings of original Mark Twain manuscripts. Yes. History of protest and disorderly conduct? You betcha. Football? No. But you’re gonna close the library. I see. I guess I should have checked that online. Wherever library closures due to gridiron conflict are listed, I suppose.

I smell a new dotcom.

I have now slogged to campus, up and down the north hill twice, carrying 40 lbs. of briefcase during precious writing/childcare hours yet left with none of the three books I desire.  Not one.

And I can’t even rant about it. They’ve beaten me down, fair readers. Librarians and phlebotomists and veterinarians and quarterbacks. Seriously, I’m waiting for the cosmic payback. Better be one cute f—ing baby, one Lazarus-like cat, and one awesome journal that publishes my paper for all this b.s.

Look! It’s rant time!

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To whomever wrote: “You’re probably feeling a whole lot better as you settle into your second trimester. Less nausea, fewer mood swings, and “glowing” skin contribute to an overall sense of well-being.” SCREW YOU, LIAR!

To the cat whose illness has led to feces on my bed, urine all over my house, and a $400 vet bill with a shrug and an “I’m not sure what’s wrong with him,” SCREW YOU! Next time you get sick I’m spending the money on an iPod and you get a brick in a pillow case.

To the vet clinic who told me to collect feces and urine for my cat then forgot to give me the kit and locked the doors before I had even gotten to the car: Screw you, too. I’m not coming back for the kit then going home then coming back with samples. Screw you a lot. Now YOU get to come over and collect feces and urine. For all the family members. I do it every other day; now it’s your turn.

To the phlebotomist who closed the lab ten minutes before we got there: Screw you. No, I didn’t check your hours by calling or anything. But who the hell runs a lab open 9am to 4:30pm, closed for lunch 12-1? Seriously? Do you do any work? I collected a toddler and a sick cat, both of whom needed more than the usual amount of fecal clean up today, got the noisier of the two into the car and drove half an hour for your stupid one vial of blood intended to scare me about all the things that could, hypothetically, but we can’t tell you with any certainty, what might be wrong with my poor, maligned, nauseating Hazelnut. Screw you, lab tech. You give phlebotomy a bad name. and sphignomenometers. And sternocleidomastoids. And stuff like that.

To the librarian who accused us of returning a DVD case with no DVD: SCREW YOU! I always double check because I don’t want to walk all the way down here and have to go back for a stupid disc. AND, I don’t rent baby Einstein crap. No, I didn’t. No, I didn’t. Stop telling me I need to go home to get it. I’ve never IN MY LIFE checked that crap out of your library. I’ve never seen that DVD in my existence. No, I didn’t. Oh, and how do you propose I do that? Buy a new one and give it to you? Screw you. I may have mentioned that, but it bears repeating. SCREW YOU. Oh, you’ll double check? That’s so thoughtful. Oh, it wasn’t me? Oh, you’re paging a different library patron without apologizing to me? You’re ignoring me now? SCREW YOU! I’ve never liked you. You’re greasy, icky, and rather creepy and give my kid a bad image of the few male librarians on this planet. You know what? I’ve taken bibliographic methods. I’ve aced out of all the methodological and theory-based library sciences courses. I could OWN you if I felt like it. Don’t ever accuse me of Baby Einstein Forgetting again.

You know what, world? Screw you. Screw all the nasty people and the yucky people and the rude people. Screw all y’all. Cuz I don’t have the patience for your asinine driving, ugly looks, rude cell phone talking, and general in-my-way-getting. Get off this planet, you jerks. Especially the dude who took the last jar of m—-f—ing olives today. Screw you. You’d think I’d have something new or clever to say, wouldn’t you? Nope. Screw you. You people are killing me. And you don’t need those olives like I do.
I hope global warming takes out, like, 85% of you by next year.

(And to the little emotional sponge who lives in my house, who is way intense and way sensitive and way perceptive and way neophobic, I’m sorry dude. I know when I’m way off my rocker it’s even harder for you. I watched as each of these little wrongs in our day sent me further and further from reacting well, you absolutely melted down. Sorry, friend. We’ll both get some sleep and one of us will have a really, really dreamy can of caramel colored sugar water and tomorrow will be better. That said, if you ask “why” one more time I’m ripping your arms off and shoving them down your throat.)

Marketing 101

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Dear Mr. Axelrod,
When you have an important message on a key policy issue from the leader of your political party, the email should not be titled “Got a few minutes?”

Aside from being grammatically incorrect (it should be “Have a few minutes?”) you almost guarantee having your email deleted before it’s been read. The answer to “got a few minutes” is always “no.” The answer to “To Whom It May Concern” is a universal, “not me; check for someone else while you’re in the trash can.”

If you’re sending out a short, compelling video about health care reform, maybe use the subject lines:
Four Minutes to Health Care Reform
Health Care Reform in Just Four Minutes
Health Care Reform in a Few Minutes
A Few Minutes to Health Care Reform.

This is just Advertising 101, people. Your only chance to be read is the headline. You have one second. “Got a minute?” doesn’t cut it. (Have vs. Got is Grammar 1A.)

(You can see the video on the White House site, but I’m not linking because I don’t reward poor grammar.)

Is it wrong that…

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I was buying Spouse shirts for work and found myself winking at one of the models? I should mention I was online shopping and the model was kind of smarmy, in that Chet kind of way. Of course it’s not wrong. Because I was kidding, right?

Is it wrong that I wanted to gouge out the eyes of the guy next to me in the coffee shop who kept interrupting my work to make inane banter? Of course not. But is it wrong that I didn’t actually gouge them out?

Is it wrong that I told my kid to give his new doll a tour of the house so I could close my eyes for two minutes and not worry that he would be breaking something or, you know, demanding attention or something?

Is it wrong that I’m having dreams about the people on 30 Rock because thanks to Netflix, Spouse and I are actually watching (old) television programming most nights and these are the only adults in my life?

Is it wrong to eat the same food day after day after day after day until you get sick of it, then move on to another item-of-the-week? If not, is it wrong that I’ve moved to an almost-all ice cream diet? Of course not. Calcium and protein, right? Right?

Is it wrong that I sat in a salon for half an hour today, leafing through Food and Wine, just waiting to make an appointment for a haircut? I didn’t *have* an appointment. I wanted one. But Spouse was at home with P and I felt as though I had all the time in the world. And they had two new Food and Wines.

Is it wrong that the bathtub has needed new caulk since we moved in four months ago but that I still haven’t gotten to it? Will it be wrong two months from now?

Is it wrong that I fantasize about going on facebook and calling all those liars and posers on their b.s. about how perfect their lives are? Or to ask them when, exactly, they’re too old to post drunken pictures of themselves out with friends? Seriously, who the hell gets a sitter so they can go party? I’m pretty sure it’s wrong to use party as a verb after age 25.

Is it wrong that the week where my nausea was manageable I willingly took the wallop of exhaustion because it was better to feel unbearably tired than puke 5 times a day, but that now the barfing is back?

Yeah, actually, that one is wrong.

We now rejoin our midlife crisis, already in progress

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We went to the guitar store today to restring Peanut’s awesome little 1/2 scale SX guitar. He earned it potty learning, when he got 20 dry days in a row (and therefore 20 stickers) at 21 months. He bought himself a guitar with the stickers. You’re damned right, kiddo. Not yet two and dry all the time? Guitar? Fine.

Well the trip to the guitar mecca coincides with a midlife crisis I’ve been contemplating, based in part on the nausea I’m feeling at life, my choices, and the impending and rapidly growing BOMB that will descend on my already precarious situation. My midlife crisis today looked a LOT like a $2660 twelve string guitar. Then it looked like an $80 used and totally awesome used natural ash wood bass for the band my newest peeps and I are starting. Then my midlife crisis looked like a miraculous $3200 keyboard that sounded honest to goodness like a well tuned piano.

And then my midlife crisis reminded me what end was really up. Because besides not having even the $80 for a bass, I don’t have time for a new hobby. I have a novel to edit. Again. I have a paper to submit, another paper to write, and a PhD application to ponder for next fall. I have to find a babysitter and a preschool.

I grabbed an Atwood at the library, because there’s nothing to counter balance 32 picture books like an Atwood. We got home late and I had to wash dishes and make dinner. Peanut was in a lovely mood and tried to dump out a whole canister of ground flax. Sealed, luckily, but he was willing to test Oxo’s sturdy seal.

I asked him nicely to put it down, and he did. Sweetly. In the dining room. I continued thinking about whether, really, cowboy boots would serve the same purpose as a guitar, as midlife crises go. Maybe I’d need them for the band (blues, I think, but whatever. Everything goes with buckaroo boots.)

I went into the dining room to give Peanut some carrot sticks. He had dumped all the flax neatly on the table and was sorting it into piles. I took a deep breath and told him to get down. I asked, as I gathered the placemat parking lots, what he was trying to do. He was making pretend smoothies. Sure. okay. As I brought the soapy sponge back and forth from the kitchen, I explained that while pretend is a good idea, his pretend kitchen is a better place for pretend juices. And that using real food for pretend food isn’t a good idea. And that I understand how he wants to help, so he can make a real blender juice with my help. But real food always needs a yes from Mommy.
Okay?
Well, kind of. Except that now, at the dining room table, he has his face burrowed into my brand new, 64 oz. jar of organic kosher pickles. tongue fully extended, licking the brine in the freaking jar. i collapsed on the floor. Took a deep breath. Contemplated a good cry and realized that I already had his cold, so, no harm no foul. I mean, really, really foul, but I’ll be done with the pickles in a few days, so…meh. I told him how not okay it is to put hands or mouths on containers of food. I try to explain, I try to be forceful but casual. I remember a gorgeous burbinga wood guitar and take another breath.

So we make a smoothie together. He’s happy and proud of his blueberry pouring skills. I’m almost ready with dinner. I turn away to get cups for the juice. I pour the juice. I turn away to get lids for the juice.

And now I need one fewer lid because he’s poured all of one juice on himself, trying to get to the purple one first. “you can’t have thee purple one,” he began, before getting really wet and cold.

Here’s the thing, people. I’m barely hanging on. And now the flax-y sponge has to sop up 12 ounces of blueberry smoothie. WHY CAN’T PREGNANT WOMEN DRINK, AGAIN?

I don’t think a late night trip to the pawn shop to trade my wedding ring for a guitar is too much to ask.

Food Inc.

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LOVE having grandma live nearby. Saw Food Inc. last night, our fourth movie in three years, and cannot get over it.

What has become of our nation’s food supply? Why is it all made from a couple of crops, paid for by tax dollars, even though it’s not the healthiest food?

I mean, I taught Fast Food Nation for three years to my freshman English students. And I’m pretty well versed in everything Pollan says on NPR when they get in one of their all-food-all-the-time blocks. But I’m still shocked by a lot of what Food Inc. had to say.

Sure, it had the predictable propaganda moments. Music swell over repeated shots of the boy who died from E coli poisoning because beef recalls are still voluntary and the FDA and USDA have no real regulatory power anymore. Dastardly sinister music while we watch what technology has done to assembly-line food production. But pretty simple parsing of the purpose of the film would predict that. Of course it’s propaganda. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t have important information. Critical thinking skills (which, unfortunately, are not always taught in colleges anymore), deduce that most of the fundamentals of the film are sound.

Mostly, I’m shocked that when the government complains we’re out of money, that we can’t get Americans healthy because we can’t afford it, they’re ignoring a glaringly simple way to rescue two birds with one pocketed stone: stop paying anyone not following organic practices. Stop it. It should not cost tax payers for huge farming corporations (all four of them who control virtually all of what this country produces) to make food seem cheap. What tax dollars buy is the ability for chemical-laden corn syrup and soy Frankenbeans to be cheaper than more healthful foods (healthful for our bodies and the planet).

If we stop paying huge multinational corporations to produce tons and tons and tons of food that we then overprocess and feed to animals who should be eating something else, maybe food will cost what it should. Maybe a head of broccoli will be cheaper than brown, carbonated sugar water trucked all across the country using scarce petroleum. Maybe organic proteins will be cheaper than a chemical-laden, ammonia bathed, bacteria-opportunistic burger or chlorine washed chicken breast at a fast food restaurant. Or maybe people will cut back from their average of 200 pounds of meat a year because the real cost finally makes it a food they enjoy but limit.

And maybe if we take the tax savings and pay for health care, people who buy the now cheaper whole foods will be healthier and not need as much medical treatment. Maybe obesity and diabetes will decline from epidemic proportions and we will all be eating what our local farmers produce instead of the chemical sludge, shipped from thousands of miles away, that we’re all pretending is food.

So cut all subsidies to food producing companies. Don’t lie about how important corn syrup is for our national health. If we have that much corn, so much that it can be processed into any number of pretend foods, then we have too much corn. Stop paying agribusiness to genetically modify and pesticide and herbicide and chemically fertilize and gas-harvest and chemically wash and process and alter and reprocess and package and truck and sell.

Now that we have all that money back, take the savings and give us health care instead of massive profit private health insurance. Or subsidize organic farms and teach small farmers to become organic farmers. It would do the nation’s food supply a lot more good than huge quantities of sprayed and processed and modified foods.

And while the gov. is taking care of that, please vote with your dollars. Buy food grown safely by people you trust.

After the movie, we ate here and I still eyed the potatoes, a produuct normally so pesticide and herbicide treated that it has to sit for several weeks after harvest to outgas all the chemicals before it’s deemed suitable for human consumption. Mmmmm.

Let them figure it out

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I have no problem letting Republicans figure out their own leaders, politics, and goals. They know much better than I what they want and how on earth they can believe the things they believe.

So I’m just saying this…of all the theories, and I’ve heard maybe eight this weekend, on why Palin quit a job she promised to do, I don’t care which reason is real and which is spin. What I care is that Canada embraces now the knowledge that I will undoubtedly leave this country if the Republicans choose her as their representative, and that by some stretch of faith, ignorance, or fraud, she gets elected President of these United States.

I’m not opposed to thoughtful, intelligent, inspiring Republicans getting their shot at running things. But I am opposed to that woman, who stands, talks, and walks for everything I find abhorrent in the way our democracy is going, putting her stamp on this nation.

Just saying. In advance. Appropos  of probably nothing.