Thursday miscellany

Feeling kind of disjointed and off today.  Could be any of the following:

• The nature of springtime in Denver, which is totally schizophrenic.  Yesterday it was 80 degrees and unbelievably beautiful - blue skies, balmy breeze.  When I woke up this morning, it was snowing.  Now it's just kind of drizzling and overcast.  A friend of mine quipped that Denver really doesn't experience spring -- it's more like winter and summer duking it out for a couple of months.  That is an astoundingly astute description of what April is like in this city.  

• I'm tired.  Josie is having an odd stretch.  It might be teething or a growth spurt (or both).  But she isn't sleeping or eating like she normally does and is a little bit fussy (which, by normal baby standards, isn't much, but it's so unlike her).  So I've been up the last three nights at 3 a.m. to give her a bottle.  At least Zeke is making up for it by being astoundingly cute and well-behaved.  He's sleeping in his own bed.  He's using the potty more and more.  He's having great days at school where he plays nicely with his friends.  He's happy and fun to be with.

• The fucking Capitals.  Grr.  Congratulations on being the first #1 seed to blow a 3-1 series lead in the history of the NHL playoffs, guys.  Jesus.

But there are things to be happy about as well.

• I started a new workout program a couple of weeks ago.  In addition to the workouts being really fun, I'm seeing results.  Meaning I won't be the chubby girl at the high school reunion who has to go on an on about how she's still trying to lose the baby weight (and yes, Sophie, it's looking like I'll be able to go -- yay!).  

• More importantly, Emma is going home from the rehab center tomorrow.  This is blowing my mind.  The accident was only 6 weeks ago.  She literally almost died.  Had she been hit an inch further over here or a centimeter further over there, she could have been dead or severely impaired for the rest of her life.  And she's only been doing hardcore rehab for a little over a week.  But in that time, she's gone from being in a wheelchair to walking with a cane to barely needing the cane at all anymore.  She's working really hard to regain the use of her right arm and hand, and she's doing astoundingly well.  She'll still need to continue with rehab for a while, but she doesn't need to do it on an in-patient basis. What a stud she is.

So, as you can see, I'm sort of all over the place today.

I get my kicks where I can

My Grandma Anne - my dad's mom - used to be a great artist.  She doesn't do any art anymore, but before she became physically infirm she was a terrific painter.  And she always had great taste - beautiful furniture, paintings, jewelry.

A few years ago when we were in Michigan for a family shindig for Leo's 90th birthday, she gave me this incredible gold necklace that was made up of links of dancing figures.  It's a beautiful and unique piece, a work of art, really.

As a true artist, my grandma loved the human form.  And if you look closely, you can see it well-displayed on the necklace.  When I wear it, I'm wearing a chain of naked people.  With little hand-shaped gold penises.

Quite impressive gold penises (that's a side shot below).

Dancing, flopping gold penises.

I invariably get compliments on how lovely the necklace is.  And I chuckle to myself and thing, "yes, especially if you're into jewelry porn."

Post-racial?

I saw a comedian do a bit a few years back -- I think it was Chris Rock -- about the racial stereotypes of Jews and Asians being smart and good at business.  His point was, what's so terrible about a stereotype like that?  Wouldn't it be great if someone saw a black person on the street and didn't think they were a criminal or from the 'hood, but rather automatically assumed that they were an intelligent business owner?

I thought of that this past weekend when I was waiting in line at the ticket office at Coors Field to swap out Friday's rain-check for tickets to Saturday's game.  Jason and his brother Simon were waiting off to the side with the kids, and Zeke was running around and going back and forth between Jason and me, being silly and playing and practicing saying "excuse me" as he barreled through the crowds.

At one point he came to me and held up his arms to be picked up, so I reached down and pulled him up onto my hip.  We stood there chatting for a minute.  Zeke was looking around and flirting with the people standing around us, as he is wont to do.

The ticket window we were in line for was being manned by a late-30-ish, thin, light-skinned African American guy.  As Zeke was scanning the crowd, he looked toward the ticket window and when he saw the guy behind the window, his eyes got really big.

"Mama!  Mama!  It's Obama!  Look, Mama!  Obama!"

I don't think the guy behind the window heard him (there were still a bunch of people ahead of us in line), but the people standing near us cracked up.

And I was thinking to myself, "does it make my kid a racist if he assumes that every light-skinned black man he sees is the President of the United States?"*

___________________________
*In his defense, he doesn't do this with darker-skinned black men, only men that actually do look like President Obama.

Four years ago today

Jason and I were legally married in Australia in December 2005, but we did a second wedding in Atlanta four years ago today (i.e., 5 months after the first one). We did the second one so that our families could each be able to participate in a wedding ceremony for us, because most of my family and friends couldn't afford to go to Oz for the first wedding, and most of Jason's family and friends couldn't come to the States for the second.*

The first wedding was fun, but a bit of a whirlwind, and I was naturally stressed out and a bit freaked out by the prospect of getting married. The second wedding was far less emotionally charged for me because I was already married, so it was just a chance to celebrate with my family and friends and bask in the Jewish wedding traditions that my tribe has been following for thousands of years. I tried to work in as many personal touches as I could think of.

My wonderful parents both walk me down the "aisle" to the huppah. I carried yellow roses, the same flowers my mother carried at her wedding.

We had a huppah at the Australia wedding, but we made it at the last minute out of some lumber and a piece of lace we bought at a fabric store. The huppah at the Atlanta wedding was made from a Jewish prayer shawl that had belonged to my great-grandfather Julius.

We stand under the huppah, as our rabbi-for-a-day, my friend Karen, leads the ceremony. She speaks Hebrew and recited all the Hebrew prayers and blessings for us

Also, we worked in all of the chief aspects of the Jewish wedding ceremony, including the recitation of the ketubah (marriage contract), the Kiddushin (blessings of betrothal over wine), and the Sheva Brachot (Seven Blessings), in Hebrew.

Signing the ketubah (marriage contract)

Reading our marital obligations (from the ketubah) to each other

Blessings over wine

I circled Jason 7 times when I entered the huppah, representing the building of the walls of our new world together (similar to the world being built in 7 days).

My friend Andrea read a portion of Walt Whitman's "Song of the Open Road," a nod to living a life of adventure, as Jason and I always try to do. Then Jason broke the glass, which represented (to us) not only the remembrance of the suffering of others, but also a breaking of ties with the past and the creation of a new family - we no longer belong just to our parents, but also now to each other.

Then we went to the reception hall, I changed into a dancing dress, and we enjoyed Southern cuisine (including fried green tomatoes - yum), danced to the music of a Cuban band, and enjoyed the time with our family and friends.

Jason and I took rhumba lessons to learn our first dance, which was to the song "Besame Mucho"

I teach Emma the basic mambo step, and she and I dance with Jason. She and I will dance together again, I'm sure of it.

My maternal grandparents (seated), Ruth and Leo, and the inspirations for Josie's middle name (Ruby Lee) - the lady standing behind them is their friend (and mine) Melba, one of my favorite people in the world. She is still alive, but her health is not great these days.**

The scene on the dance floor

We had cake. Our cake toppers were male and female surfers, of course.

It's been a crazy 4 years (well, 4 1/2, really). We've been from Atlanta to Hawaii to Denver, our financial fortunes have been up and down, and there have been times -- many times -- when I feel like I would give anything to be single and childless again. But the rituals and the ceremony of that day four years ago meant something, and still do. We are bound together forever now, not just by our children, but by the shared experiences of our life together and, without question, love for each other, for better or for worse.

_________________________________

*There were a few troupers who made it to both: My friends David and Michele and Malinda, and my parents, were at the Australia wedding. Jason's dad and grandmother were at the Atlanta wedding, and his step-brother Dean came over for it but had to fly back before the wedding date because his mother (Jason's ex-stepmother) died.

**Melba died about a week and a half after I wrote this post. She was a powerhouse of a woman and I will miss her dearly and admire her and strive to emulate her always.

Aussie Word of the Day: Let's call the whole thing off, or, my life as a Gershwin song

The Accent Wars are beginning in earnest.

You will recall that I recently was taken aback, and a bit freaked out, when Zeke used Jason's Aussie pronunciation of the word "weird," so that it sounded like "weeeeed." And his "dog" sounds like "doog" and "car" is "caaah."

Jason 3, Wendy 0.

But as I am the one who does most of the reading of stories to the monkeys, I'm starting to gain ground.

Zeke has this board book about life on the farm (and I love how it's called "My First Farm Board Book," as if there are sure to be other farm board books in one's future). It's got lots of pictures of everything from farm animals to tractors and tools to different kinds of produce. There's a whole page with pictures of lettuce and strawberries and apples and peppers and other fruits and veggies, in varying amounts, so that in addition to learning the names of the various foods, kids can work on their counting skills as well.

So from this book (because God knows he would never actually eat a vegetable*), Zeke has learned what a tomato is, and, more importantly, that the word is pronounced "to-MAY-toe."

The other night, Zeke was jumping around on the couch (naked, natch), when he spied his farm book on the shelf and decided he needed to read it RIGHT NOW. So he went and grabbed it and took it over to Jason, and they proceeded to go through the pictures, naming and counting and having a good time.

I was reading a magazine and not paying much attention (except to get a face-full of naked toddler ass when Zeke felt the need to crawl over me to go hug Jason's brother, who is visiting for a couple of weeks, before returning to Jason and the farm book). Then I heard this hilarious exchange:

Zeke: Daddy, what's that?

Jason: Those are to-MAH-toes.

Zeke: (laughing hysterically) Not to-MAH-toes! To-MAY-toes! They're to-MAY-toes, Daddy!

Jason: To-MAH-toes.

Zeke: TO-MAY-TOES! Hahahaha! Daddy's silly!

Indeed, son.  Indeed.  Come back from the Dark Side...

___________________

*Yeah, yeah, I know that tomatoes are technically fruits, but to Zeke, they are grouped with foods like broccoli and green beans, i.e., the kind he won't eat.

Don't call DFCS

We have a history in my family of enthusiastic and creative rough-housing. When Josh and I were really little (before Sam was born), we came up with increasingly violent games to play with my dad. We'd pile pillows against the wall at the head of his bed, and he would get in a crouched down position (with his head toward the pillows). We would sit on the small of his back, and then he would straighten his legs and send us flying into the pillows/wall. This was called Being The Machine, as in, "Daddy! Be The Machine! Be The Machine! Again, again!!" There was also The Helicopter, where he would get on all fours on the bed and we would climb on his back like he was a horse and then he would spin and buck around until we got thrown off. The Helicopter-Chair was another iteration.

But Jason has my childhood games beat by a mile. He has all kinds of insane stories about the stuff he and his brothers used to do, often involving careening down steep hills on skateboards with nail-studded pieces of wood dragging behind them to make sparks on the road -- that sort of thing. Suffice it to say that it's a miracle he made it to adulthood.

I am not a nervous mother and it doesn't bother me when Jason throws Zeke around like he was made of foam. There is much flipping on the couch and bouncing on the bed and throwing from one surface to another, and all the while Zeke screams with laughter and giggles and says "again! again!!"

Every once in a while, they come up with something that makes me wince and scrunch my eyes shut. Until I can't help but start laughing.

They've actually been doing the "kicking the beanbag while Zeke lies on top of it" trick for awhile. Last night they came up with a way of doing it so that Zeke flies from the beanbag to the couch. I find it utterly hilarious, in spite of myself.

The long and winding road

I'm here in Boston, at the hospital with Emma.  She spoke for the first time last night, which is awesome, and has been much more responsive, both verbally and nonverbally.  Her first utterance was to ask her mother, "what happened to me?"

Seeing her has been both wonderful and daunting, emotionally.  Wonderful because the outlook is positive.  The doctors are incredibly encouraged by her progress of the last 48 hours -- one of the neurologists deemed it "spectacular."  And another doctor, doing the rounds, explained that she has given us cause to be optimistic.

But all I can think is how frustrating this must be for her.  To wake up in the hospital, with arms restrained, a wall of medicines next to the bed, and people coming in at all hours to poke and prod and ask things like, "can you stick out your tongue?"  Her progress is terrific, but she is still barely speaking and is easily tired and has difficulty moving her right side.  She has people hovering over her, strangers coming in to bathe her, strangers coming in to give her basic commands.  I'm sure it gets annoying as all hell.  She will undoubtedly require extensive rehabilitation, which, for a driven honors student who not only excelled in school but in multiple sports, will be tedious and difficult at times.  I wish I could take it all on myself, so she doesn't have to suffer through it.

But today, as I stood by her bed holding her hand and giving her water, I told her about a surf trip in December that I'm trying to plan with some of the cousins.  "It's going to be sick.  Amazing surf in an awesome beach house.  I'm going to try to convince your parents to let you come with us, if you're up to it by then."

She gave me a raised eyebrow look, like, "hell, yes!"  She's a really good surfer.

I feel like we're getting her back, a teeny, tiny piece at a time.

Mini-me

Lately I've felt like I'm looking in a mirror when I look at Zeke.  Yes, he has Jason's coloring, but I've seen enough pictures of myself as a kid to know that the resemblance between us is uncanny.  Well, not uncanny, because I did create him, after all, so there's a ready explanation, but you know what I mean.

Other people see it too.  I saw my aunt at the passover seder, and she hadn't seen Zeke in a while, I guess.  She looked at him and exclaimed, "Oh, my GOD!  He's a little you!  He looks just like you!"

And he's starting to act like me, too.  Not in the sense that he mimics my actions as an adult, but he's doing the same things I did as a kid.

My mother tells this story about me when I was about 2 years old or so.

"Mommy, I need an ice cream," I told her.

"Honey, you don't 'need' an ice cream.  You want an ice cream, but you don't need it," she responded.

"No, Mommy.  I need an ice cream.  I need it."

Oy vey, I'm sure she thought.

Well, payback's a bitch.  The other night, I was getting Zeke ready for bed.

"C'mon, honey, let's go downstairs.  Time to get in bed.  We can read some books."

"No, Mama, I have to watch Elmo."

"Sweetie, you don't have to watch Elmo.  I know you want to watch Elmo, but it's late.  Time for bed.  You can watch Elmo in the morning."

"But Mama, I have to.  I have to watch Elmo now."

He didn't get to watch Elmo just then.  He got in bed and we read books and he went to sleep.

But, oy vey.

Renewal. And brisket.

Tonight is the first night of Passover.  The holiday celebrates the liberation of the Jews from bondage (don't get excited, Michael Steele, the other kind), and is a time to focus on freedom and renewal and springtime and all that good stuff.

We have much to celebrate and pray for.

There is Emma's return to health -- she had a great weekend, and this morning the doctors took out the bolt that attached the ICP monitor to her head.  The occupational therapist examined her and said her muscle tone remains good.  She has started to wiggle and move a little bit.  Josh and Lori have her iPod in the room and are playing music for her.  We are very encouraged that she will make a solid recovery.

There is the renewal of our life as a family unit.  It's been so great to have Jason home.  We have more time with each other, more time to ourselves when we need it, more time to focus on the children as individuals.  Saturday, for the first time in I don't remember how long, Zeke and I went, just the two of us, to the science museum.  We had so much fun, spending three hours running around looking at the wildlife exhibits, playing with magnets, playing with puppets, pretending to walk like different kinds of animals, coloring, dancing in the children's center.  Then that night, after a lovely time having dinner with Rich and Kathleen and their girls, we went home, put the kids to bed, and snuggled on the couch to watch a movie.

And other, little things, that make today feel like a fresh start, a liberation from some of the stressors of the past months and years.  Spring is here, and it's a beautiful day in Denver.  I painted my toenails and am wearing sassy sandals.  My cousin, Aaron, is in town, so Zeke is in heaven.  And on Friday night, I think for the first time since Zeke was born, I spoke on the phone with my friend Karen.

I always think of Passover when I think of Karen, because she and I became friends about 13 years ago right before Passover.  We played on the same club soccer team, and I liked her immediately.  She was one of those people who, from the moment I started talking to her, I just got a great feeling and I knew we were going to be friends.

A few weeks after we met, I was getting ready to host my first passover seder, and, recognizing her last name as one that few (if any) non-Jews have, invited her to come along.  And that was that.  Since then, we have had Passover together, been in each others' weddings, and been great, great buddies.

Since we left for Hawaii, I have only seen her once, when I went back to Atlanta when I was pregnant with Zeke.  We've talked on the phone a smattering of times, but really only kept in touch via email and Facebook.  Talking to her on Friday night was wonderful.  So another renewal I'm celebrating this Passover season is the renewal of my friendship with Karen.

We are going to my cousin's house for first night seder.  I volunteered to bring the brisket, because I make the best brisket ever (Karen makes the best matzo ball soup ever).  I modified the recipe after reading some Jewish cookbooks.  It's largely based upon Joan Nathan's recipe in her Jewish Cooking in America book, but I've modified the ingredients and added my own touches over the years.  For your Passover pleasure, or if you just like really delicious braised meat, enjoy:

5 lbs brisket
2-3 tbsp oil
1 clove garlic
salt and pepper
3 onions, chopped
2-3 sprigs fresh thyme
2-3 springs fresh rosemary
2-3 bay leaves
2-3 stalks chopped celery (with leaves)
1 large (20 oz) can peeled tomatoes, with juice
3-4 cups red wine
2 cups Coca-Cola (classic, none of that diet shit)
1 packet onion soup mix
6-8 carrots, peeled and sliced on the diagonal
1/2 cup chopped parsley

For best results, this dish should be prepared the day before and then completed just before serving.  

Preheat oven to 325F.  Sprinkle the meat on both sides with salt and pepper and rub with the garlic clove.  Heat oil and sear the meat.

In a large roasting pan with a cover, place the onions on the bottom of the pan and then place the meat, fat side up, on the onions.  Add thyme, rosemary, bay leaves, celery, wine, tomatoes, coca-cola and onion soup mix.  Cover and bake in 325F oven for 3 hours, basting often.

Remove cover and add carrots and parsley, cook another hour.  Remove from oven, and allow to cool overnight in the fridge.

Before serving the next day, skim the fat from the gravy and cut the fat off the meat.  Cut the meat across the grain into long slices and place back in the gravy.  Cook, uncovered, at 325F for 45 minutes.  Serve on large platter with gravy.  Gravy can be strained or not, but if you choose not to strain (the vegetables are delicious), remember to remove the thyme, rosemary and bay leaves.  They're no fun to bite into.

Happy Passover, everyone!

"Mail plow"

I'm heavy on the "look at how cute my kids are" posts this week, because the other stuff occupying my mind isn't so happy.  Emma remains under sedation, as the doctors have determined that she isn't ready to be awakened yet.  They want to monitor her brain pressure and give her more time to rest.  Which I understand, but the waiting is agonizing.  This level of sustained anxiety is exhausting and draining, and I'm sure that whatever I'm feeling -- which sucks -- you can multiply that by a million and you won't be close to what my brother and sister-in-law are going through.  Once again, I want to thank everyone who has contacted me to offer their love and support, but in particular, those who have left messages for Josh and Lori on Emma's CarePage.  It really helps.  You've all been tremendous, and I feel so blessed to have such wonderful people in my life.

In other news, my children continue to be the light of my life, particularly Zeke's sweetness towards his sister.  He is so nice to her, it just makes my heart feel like it's going to burst out of my chest.  For your Friday viewing pleasure, here's a little clip of him reading to her from his beloved truck book.  He climbed into her little floor gym to lie down next to her and show her the pictures.  I just about plotzed from the cuteness.

You can hear me croaking (I've got severe laryngitis) in the background.  Zeke is pointing to a page that has a mail truck and a snow plow on it, and gets confused and combines the two, calling the snow plow a "mail plow."  Josie finally decides that the book is more interesting to chew on than to read.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Six

Today is Josie's 6 month birthday.  She has been nothing but a joy from the moment she was born.  Sweet, smiley, giggly, mellow, happy, snuggly.  In keeping with the tradition I established with Zeke, I made an animoto.com video, set to one of my brother's songs.  Happy half-birthday, Josiebug!


Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Naked baby time

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a two-year old in possession of a cute tush must be in want of excessive time to run around with said tush unencumbered by clothing.*

It started a few weeks ago, when I began noticing that Zeke was displaying an aversion to getting dressed in the morning. All of a sudden, he was giving me a hard time about what he was going to wear, requiring much cajoling and trickery on my part to get him to cooperate.

"No shirt, honey? OK, why don't we put on pants first. Look, let's watch Diego! Diego wears pants. Don't you want to be like Diego? Oh, and look, your shirt has a fire truck on it. What noise does a fire truck make? Right! You're a fireman!"

Etcetera.

Then he started wanting to take a bath 40 times a day. I think partly because it's fun to splash around, but mostly because he gets to be naked. Then he didn't want to put clothes on after getting out of the tub. Or I'll change his diaper, but as soon as I get him de-diapered and cleaned up, he scampers off, bare-assed, to the playroom.

Every kid I know has gone through this. When Emma was 2, we went on a family vacation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. She spent the entire vacation, save for times we were either at the store or a restaurant, buck naked. This coincided with her obsession with the movie The Jungle Book. So every afternoon, she would ask one of the grownups to put in her Jungle Book video, and she would stand there, this little tan, blonde, gorgeous teeny girl, and watch the movie and then start dancing around naked when the Bare Necessities and I Wanna Be Like You songs came on. And those songs are seriously catchy and danceable -- I would usually join her in bopping around the living room (I wasn't naked, though), and then she would say, "Again, Again!" It was the cutest thing ever.

Tonight when Zeke got out of the tub, he put on his shoes all by himself -- which is a big deal -- but nothing else. First he sat with me on the couch and wanted to look at family pictures on the computer, but then he took off to push one of his big trucks around.

I find no look funnier than the "naked with shoes" look. I don't care who you are. You could be the hottest, most gorgeous person on the face of the earth, but put on a pair of sneakers and nothing else, and you're going to look ridiculous. Which is good, because I needed a little levity after days and days of being worried and nervous.

________________________________
*My apologies to Jane Austen. Can you tell Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite books?

News, or lack thereof (mostly)

I always had this perception of myself as a strong person.  And I guess about some things, I am.  I can deal with certain, probably many, types of adversity.  But the thing I am terrible at, the thing that reduces me to a ball of nerves and exhaustion and depression and despondency, is waiting without knowing.

I doubt this makes me unique or special.  That's probably the worst thing for anyone.  But in any event, I feel like I should be stronger than I am right now.

Because right now, I am a mess.

The situation with Emma is that she is essentially in a holding pattern.  She hasn't required surgery, which is good, but her intracranial pressure has been spiking off and on, and so all we can do is wait until she stabilizes a little bit more so that the doctors can do an MRI and try to get a sense of the extent of any brain damage she has suffered.  We are being told that she will need to stay in the hospital for 3 weeks to a month, and then require probably at least a year of therapy.  But right now, we just don't know how bad the damage is or how extensive the impact will be in the long term.  So we wait, without really knowing how long we will have to wait for some information, some understanding of what the prognosis is.

Every once in a while, the mundane details of life take me away from it, mentally, so I'll be focusing getting Zeke dressed or finding an emery board because I've got a snag in my nail or doing the dishes.

Then it will all rush back.  There are pictures posted on the CarePage of Emma in the hospital bed, with the ICP monitor attached to her head, and they haunt me.  I think about it and I start to cry.  I look at pictures of Emma surfing or coming back from lacrosse practice, all sweaty and healthy and beautiful, or grinning while piling on for a family picture at Thanksgiving, and my throat catches and my chest tightens and I'm overwhelmed with feelings of sadness and desperation.

Thanksgiving 2009.  L to R:  Jason, Emma, Mom, Hazel, Josie, me, Josh and Lydia.  Not the entire crazy mishpachah, but most of it.

This is a hard time.

On the home front, it's so great to have Jason back in town.  His new project is 30 minutes from the house, and he gets off work early enough to pick up the kids from school.  We can share dinner duties and have time to exercise and just be a normal family again.  Plus we have reclaimed our bed.

I'm going to go to New Hampshire over Easter weekend to see Emma and help out any way I can.  In the meantime, your emails, comments, and messages on Emma's website have been tremendous.  I am so thankful for the support of my wonderful friends.  With all the prayer lists and candles and everything else that our friends and neighbors are doing, I think we've got just about every religious denomination covered.  So that's good.  We'll take it all.

Meanwhile, we wait.

Control

First off, I want to say how incredibly grateful and touched I have been by the outpouring of love and support for me, for my family, and most of all, for my niece, Emma.  She's on prayer lists, the subject of positive thoughts and hopes, had candles lit for her, healing prayers at synagogues, you name it.  It means more to me than I can say.

My brother has set up a CarePage for her through Mass. General, so click here if you want to look at photos, leave a message, or get a status update (I'm also putting a button on the blog sidebar to the right).  As I write this, she is in stable condition.  The big thing the doctors are monitoring is the pressure in (on?) her brain.  The next few days are critical, and she has been sedated so that she and her brain can stay calm and have the best possible chance of healing appropriately.

But, the truth is, we have no way of knowing what will happen or whether she has sustained any brain damage and to what extent.  I'm trying to stay positive, but I'm terrified and I spend much of my day choking back tears.

The other big news is that Jason finally finally was transferred to a job back in Denver, meaning he will be living at home full time and I will no longer have to function as a single parent.  We're so happy to all be under the same roof again, and it will be so much easier for everyone.  For Jason, no more 100 mile drives through snowy or icy mountain passes, no more coming home during the week only to hang out for an hour and a half, go to bed, and then get up at 3:30 in the morning to go back to work.  He can finally get to know Josie, who up to this point, he has seen only on weekends.  For me, no more days of never having a free minute, of always being on duty.  For Zeke and Josie, time with their daddy.

It also means that it's time for Jason and me to retake control of our marital bed.  In the months after Josie was born, Zeke started crawling into bed with us more and more.  He's sweet and snuggly and it was easier to move over than to fight it, so we didn't fuss about it.  And when Jason was out of town, it was nice to cuddle up with him.  And then eventually, we dropped the pretense of putting him to sleep in his own bed, so now when it's bedtime, he just crawls into our bed and we read stories and then go to sleep.

We could have picked the battle and made him go back to his bed, but decided to wait until Jason was back in town.  And now he is.

We've known the day was coming soon, so I've been trying to prepare Zeke for it, talking about how he's a big boy now and big boys sleep in their own rooms.  And we already know that I'm not above bribery, so we talked about how we would pick out special sheets and blankets and set up his room with tap-lights on the walls so he could sit in bed and look at books if he wanted to.

My mother is always cool-headed in times of stress, and emphasizes dealing with what you can control and not worrying about what you can't control.  Obviously, I'm going to worry about Emma even if I can't control what happens to her.  But I can control the bedtime situation with Zeke.  So I spent my day buying Thomas sheets (a.k.a. "crack on a track") and putting up lights so that Zeke has this to look forward to:

__________________________________________________________
*Oh, and what of that firetruck bed, you ask?  Yeah, apparently the novelty wore off pretty quickly.  He still likes to play on it when friends come over, but displays very little interest in sleeping in it.

There are no atheists in foxholes - or hospital waiting rooms

It's the kind of thing that is absolutely impossible to ever be prepared for.  You think that it only happens to other people, because it's too unthinkable, too nausea-inducing, to contemplate that it could ever happen to you.

But it does.

My brother's eldest daughter was hit by a car today.  When I first heard the news, all we knew was that she had been riding on her ripstik out in front of her house, had been hit by a car, and it was very serious -- so serious that her local hospital (she lives out in the country in New Hampshire) decided to med-evac her to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.  As more information has trickled in, we've learned that she has a fractured skull, but her vital signs are stable and trending in the right direction and the swelling in her brain is decreasing.  She will be kept sedated for the next 3-5 days while her brain and her condition generally is monitored.  So all we do is wait, and hope.

I'm not a praying person.  Whatever belief I may have in God -- and I am deeply unsure of it, honestly -- I definitely do not believe that God is an intervenor in the world's events.  If he/she/it were, then things like the Holocaust would never have happened.

But as I was driving home from work today, shaking and crying and terrified, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I said, out loud, "please, God, let her be OK.  Please.  Please."  And every time I think about that gorgeous, sweet, smart, cool, funny girl lying in a hospital bed, with tubes coming out of her, I ask again.

Please.  She has to be OK.

TMI Thursday: Lost in translation

OK, folks, time for another TMI Thursday. Click the picture above to read more awesomely cringe-worthy TMIs courtesy of LiLu at LivitLuvit.com.

After Jason and I met in December of 2003, I went back to visit him Costa Rica in February 2004. We had a great time surfing and, uh, getting to know each other again.

Surfing with Jason in February, 2004

The second or third day I was there, which also happened to be my birthday, we were out in the water in the late afternoon, when I had to pee.  So I peed.  And felt that twinge, that slight sting at the end, that made my stomach sink.  Because I knew I was getting a urinary tract infection.

It was the third one I'd ever had in my life (and I haven't had one since, thank goodness).  The first time I got one was in law school, and when I started experiencing severe pain and, oh, yeah, blood while urinating, I seriously thought I was dying.  I went to the student health clinic and the baby-faced med student who treated me gave me some pain pills and some antibiotics -- but not before engaging me in extensive, meaningless chit-chat while I was sitting there holding my crotch in agony -- and I was fine within an hour or so.  

Yes, they're easy to treat.  But holy shit, they're awful, and they go from mildly uncomfortable to excruciating in about 12.7 seconds.

So I'm out in the water, feeling that little painful tingle, thinking, Fuck.  I know what's coming.  And I'm in Tamarindo, Costa Rica, without a fucking clue as to where I can find a doctor who's open after hours.

There was a little chemist shop next to the surf camp, so I went over there and pleaded with the pharmacist to give me something.  And they did, but I can't remember what it was, though I do remember it didn't help.  The night wore on, Jason threw a little birthday party for me, and we were sitting there in the restaurant at the surf camp, hanging out with everyone, as I became more and more uncomfortable.  I had to pee constantly, it was intensely painful, it was getting bloody, and I desperately needed to find a doctor.

I whispered to Jason, practically crying, that I couldn't take the pain anymore and needed to go to a clinic or something.  But at that point, it was 8 at night, and the closest place that was open was an urgent care-type facility about 30 minutes away.  And neither of us had a car.

Jason went and whispered to Jorge, one of the guys who worked at the surf camp, about whether he could take us in the surf camp's van.  Apparently, he wasn't supposed to, but he did it anyway.  So we climbed into the van and went speeding down this narrow country road to the clinic.

Once we got there, everything was fine. The doctor was very nice and perfectly competent, but he was out of oral antibiotics, so he asked me if I wanted to get the antibiotics in a shot.

And I'm all, yeah yeah, I've got a monster pain threshold and no issues with needles, bring it on. I leaned over and exposed the top of my butt cheek.

"You might want to lie down on the table. This could hurt a little."

Mmm hmm. Fine. Whatever.

I got up on the table and proceeded to get the most painful shot of my life.  It felt like it took hours, and the doctor kept pushing and rubbing and jiggling the needle in my butt, trying to help my muscle absorb the thick liquid he was pushing into me. It took my breath away and brought tears to my eyes. But then it was over.

I hobbled outside to find the boys, who had decided to wait by the car.  My ass-cheek was throbbing and sore.

The car was there, but there was no sign of Jason or Jorge.

I looked down the street.  Off in the distance, I saw a blinking sign for Imperial, the national beer of Costa Rica.

Motherfuckers.

I limped down the street and found the guys sitting at a bar.  Rather than stay mad, I joined them and ordered a beer.

I was telling the guys about the experience at the doctor, mostly in Spanish because Jorge's English wasn't great.  

Jorge asked me, "¿tienes infección de la pepa?"

I leveled a withering stare at Jason. "'Infección de la pepa?' You told him I have a pussy infection?? So now everyone at the surf camp is going to think I'm some kind of nasty skank?"

Jason's eyes got big, then he shrugged and looked sheepish.  He pretended to be intently concentrating on the foam on the side of his glass.

I turned to Jorge, rolling my eyes at Jason in the process.  "No.  No es 'de la pepa.'  Es urinario.  No es 'de la pepa.'"  It's not "de la pepa," it's urinary.

Jorge nodded as if to say, yeah, right.

We finished our beers and made our way back to the surf camp.  I got better and Jason and I enjoyed the rest of our weekend.

And of course, I did end up marrying the guy. But I think the lovely and wise Mrs. Banks had it right when she said, "though we adore men individually, we agree that as a group they're rather stupid."

Thanks a lot, Ben.

The first time I went to Australia (before I met Jason), I flew from Atlanta to Denver, had a 2 hour layover, then Denver to LA, another 2 hour layover, then a 14 hour flight to Sydney.  I arrived at 6 in the morning, went to the hotel, and slept for an hour or so while waiting for my mom to fly in from Papua New Guinea, where she was stationed at the time.  She arrived at around noon and we went out and walked around Sydney, took a boat ride on Sydney Harbor, went to see an opera at the Opera House,* and then finally went back to the hotel to go to bed.  We got up at 6 in the morning to climb the Sydney Harbor Bridge and then rented a car to drive into the Blue Mountains west of Sydney to go hiking and look at waterfalls.

Only at around 6 that evening, when we were lounging in our hotel room, did the travel and activity and 14-hour time difference catch up with me.  I passed out and slept for 13 hours.  Then I was fine, and we had a lovely trip.

I appear to have lost my time-change-battling mojo.  Because the recent "spring ahead" to daylight savings time is completely. kicking. my. ass.

Sunday morning we woke up and were supposed to be at my cousin's house for brunch at 10:30.  I got up with Josie and was sitting giving her a bottle while watching the previous night's episode of Saturday Night Live, only to be shocked when I pressed the "info" button on the remote control to find that it was already 9:37.  Shit!  We needed to get moving!

We started buzzing around, taking showers, dressing the children, dressing ourselves, only to glance at the clock and see that it was only 9:00.  And I was all "dooooh?" like a confused Scooby Doo.

So we calmed down and slowed down, thinking we had an hour before we needed to leave.

In other words, I assumed DirecTV had the time wrong.  It never occurred to me that, oh yeah, it's mid-March and there's this thing that Benjamin Franklin thought of a couple hundred years ago to change the clocks during the summer and of course the time on the cable box and the cell phones is never wrong and I seriously think my brain is broken.

When it finally dawned on me what was going on, we called the cousins, explained our stupidity, no problem, and we went and had a lovely time seeing them and their new baby.

But I've felt all discombobulated and just off ever since.  My days feel hurried and then slowed down, I can't figure out how to get Zeke's bedtime on track, I'm not sleeping and then when I do I have an impossible time waking up.

It's only a fucking hour.  It's shouldn't be such a big deal.

God help me the next time I have to travel to another time zone.

______________________

*Mozart's The Magic Flute, which sucks even when you see it in the Sydney Opera House.

Semper Fi

I read this funny post by FoggyDew about the general bad-ass-ery of our boys in the Marines.  And it took me back to my high school days, when I was living overseas, and the embassies had Marine Security Guards manning the various entrances and generally keeping our butts safe.

If I saw them now, I'm sure they would look like babies to me, albeit big strapping ones.  They were so young, usually in their late teens or early 20s.

But at the time, they seemed like forbidden fruit to us high school girls.  Not that many of us actually wanted to date them -- I thought some of them were cute, but I think I realized, even at the tender age of 17, that I wasn't likely to have enough in common with any of them to sustain a relationship (plus I had a boyfriend).  But they were Older and wore spiffy uniforms and carried guns.  So there was something exotic about them.

The summer after graduation, when a bunch of us were hanging out in New Delhi before heading back to the U.S. for college, a couple of my friends had little summer romances with Marines (I think they weren't allowed to fraternize with us until we were out of high school).  We would hang out at the pool on the American compound, and have drinks at the bar, and go out dancing at the Gunghroo, our club of choice.  And the guys were all very nice, if not particularly intellectual (these were young enlisted guys, not officers).  I think we sort of thought of them as these cool older boys who worked out at the Marine House Gym and looked good in bathing suits and occasionally went to work in a security booth at the Embassy.

What a naive little thing I was.

I didn't even think about the dangers these guys faced on a daily basis.  Not that New Delhi, India, was a seriously dangerous place, but still.  The Cold War hadn't ended yet, and we had recently bombed Libya, and Khaddafi had supposedly threatened to target U.S. diplomatic posts overseas.  And you never know.  An attack can come out of nowhere.  Truly, if anyone in the embassy was at risk, it probably would have been the Marines.  They put their safety on the line to protect not only the ambassador and the embassy officers and staff, but also our little Foreign Service Brat asses, as we pranced around the pool in our bikinis, shopped until we dropped at the local bazaars, and flitted around like little colonialists, having drinks and dinner at 5 star hotels.

It may be 20 years late, but I want to say, thanks, guys.  From the bottom of my heart.

First we taught him to talk, now we teach him to be quiet

When angry, count to four.  When very angry, swear.

-- Mark Twain

Like most people, I yell at other drivers when I'm in the car.  And like most people, I do it with the windows up so they can't hear me.  I don't really suffer from road rage much - it's just a habit, a verbal way of blowing off steam, but it's rare that I'm ever truly angry with other people on the road.  It's just not worth the time and effort.

And when Zeke is in the car, if I do "talk" to other drivers, I generally limit myself to sarcasm rather than swearing, because he is a total sponge these days.  Everything he hears, he repeates.  Ad nauseum.

But every once in a while, something makes me so furious it takes me by surprise.  

Like this past weekend.

Saturday was a beautiful, glorious, sunny, warm day in Denver.  Spring was showing signs of definitely springing soon.  Of course, everyone was out, at the parks, running, playing at the playgrounds, you name it.

We had talked about going to the zoo.  But if you don't get there early on a nice day -- especially the first warm, sunny day in weeks -- you're totally fucked in terms of being able to find a parking space.

So of course, we didn't get organized early and by the time we got to the zoo it was a complete mob scene.  Within the parking lot itself, it was huge masses of cars circling and circling and not a lot of finding empty spaces.  We made our way down the ramps at the parking deck, searching in vain for a spot, any spot, but there was nothing to be found.  

Until we got to the very bottom level of the parking deck, and back in the corner, there was a woman standing next to the open door of a minivan, and next to her was an empty space, with a stroller in it.  The woman was fiddling around on her phone.

We pulled up to the spot.  We looked at her.  She looked at us.  I made a "nu?"* type of gesture and pointed to the spot.  And she said, "I'm saving it."

At this point, we had been crawling through the parking lot for at least 20 minutes.  Our kids were both being good, but Zeke was getting restless and was ready to get out of the car and do something.  And it wasn't just an affront to me; there was a long line of cars snaking throughout the parking deck, in both directions, full of families with children, trying to find a place to park.  So this woman was violating every rule of parking deck etiquette in the book, and was being a rude hag about it, to boot.

"No! You do not get to save spots!"  I yelled at her.  Both front passenger windows were open, so she definitely heard me.

She looked at me and shrugged and went back to fiddling with her phone, like one of those a-holes from the SNL sketch a few years back.

I totally blew a gasket.

"EXCUSE ME!  You can't save spots when people are waiting like this."

She refused to look at me.  I contemplated getting out of the car and moving the stroller (or throwing it against the wall), but retained at least a modicum of sanity and stayed where I was.  

But not without a parting shot.

"YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE!"  I screamed.  

"Fucking COW!"  Jason added.

Then we drove off.  And realized that Zeke was sitting back there, listening intently.

We looked at each other sheepishly, praying that Zeke wouldn't start repeating anything he had heard.  We strongly believe in not swearing in front of the children, and rarely, if ever, slip up.  We whispered to each other in the front seat.  "What is the matter with us??"

Thankfully, Zeke was quiet until we were inching back up the parking deck ramp, trying to get out, and I said, "I can't believe that woman.  Dammit!"

And Zeke said, "dammit!  dammit!  dammit!"

"Zeke, honey, that's not a nice word.  Mommy shouldn't have used it, and you shouldn't use it either."

"Let's get out of here," Jason said.  "We can go to the park."

"Yeah!" said Zeke.  "Let's get outta here!  Let's get outta here!  Let's get outta here!"

Dodged a bullet on that one.

*Yiddish for "well?"

Fantasies, and my lifelong nitpicking of words and language

I'm having one of those days when the thought of being single and childless is so overwhelmingly attractive I can barely stand it.  I love my children, but the day-to-day of full-time work then chasing after the children then not sleeping because of insomnia then waking to feed and dress the children and get them to school so that I go to full-time work etc. is wearing me out.  I'm grumpy.  I'm irritable.  Stupid shit like Zeke taking a bottle of nasal spray and dumping it on the couch is making me lose my patience and yell at him, when it really isn't that big a deal and he's only acting his age and it's not like the stuff stains.

And I'm feeling totally disconnected from my husband.  We barely ever see each other, and when we do, it's to divvy up cleaning and childcare duties.  To say the spark and heat of our marriage is low to the point of barely being perceptible would be a massive understatement.  My mother suggested that Jason and I need to go away together, but the truth is, I don't even want to.  I just want to be left alone.

I know, I know, so much of the problem is that we haven't had any time together and we're both under enormous stress and we're tired and it makes everything else shitty.  We could probably use some help figuring out how to communicate about the big stuff again.  There was a guy we were seeing to work on some issues last summer, before Jason got the job and had to work out of town during the week, meaning we couldn't synch our schedule with that of our counselor.

And I liked him alot, except for his opinions about the word "but."  He wouldn't allow us to use the word "but," because to him, using the word "but" in a sentence negates everything that came before.  So if you said, "I enjoy spending time with you, but sometimes I wish I had more time to myself," the good doctor's therapy-speak translation would take the sentence to mean that I don't actually enjoy spending time with you.

Which I think is a bullshit linguistic rule.  I really liked the guy and thought he was helpful, but (aaagh!  there's that word!) the "no buts" rule annoyed the shit out of me and caused me to use what felt like very awkward sentence structure at time.  And 7 or 8 months after seeing him, I'm still bothered by it.

"I'm a loser, baby, so why dontcha kill me..."

Anyway.

My Atlanta girly peeps have been floating the idea of a girls' weekend in Miami, maybe in May.  Time to get away, recharge the batteries, get some sun, and spend time with good friends, sans husbands or children.  It sounds like heaven.

And reminds me of a funny story my mom tells me about when I was a little peanut, around 2 years old, and we were going to Miami to visit the grandparents.  I asked about our destination.

Mom:  We're going to Miami.

Little Wendy:  Where's your ami?

Mom:  No, it's not my "ami."  The name of the place is "Miami."

LW:  Right, that's what I said, Your Ami.

Mom (getting frustrated):  Wendy.  There is no "ami."  I don't have an "ami."  The name of the place is "Miami."

LW:  I know.  It's YourAmi.

 Money is tight right now, but nonetheless I need some fun to look forward to.  I will make it to YourAmi if it kills me.