Have love, will travel

One of the recurring memes I have with my mother involves teasing her about her propensity to prepare for travel so far in advance of her actual departure time that she might as well just go the airport the night before her flight is scheduled to leave. 

Mom:  "What time do we need to leave for the airport tomorrow?"
Me:  "What time's your flight?"
Mom:  "10:30 in the morning."
Me:  "Well, it only takes about half an hour to get there, so why don't we leave at 9 or 9:15?  You're not checking a bag, right?"
Mom:  "Will that give me enough time?  Why don't we leave at 8:15 or 8:30?"
Me:  "Why don't we just leave now?"

But now that I regularly travel with small children, including navigating security lines with a toddler who wants to run around and hang from every retractable rope stantion, getting through security with FAA-approved carseats and baby strollers that will then need to be gate-checked and sippy cups that the agent may or may not decide needs to be tested for explosives, not to mention the luggage itself, finding a bathroom when Zeke decides he needs to go potty RIGHT NOW or when Josie decides that 3 minutes before we board is a great time to blow out her diaper, keeping the kids in control at the gate area, let alone praying for no tantrums or fussing during the plane ride itself ---- well, let's just say that my stress level when I travel now is sufficiently higher than it was before I had kids, and all I can tell my mom is, "You're right, you're right, I know you're right."

Of course, if we plan to get there by 8:30 for a 10:30 flight to DC to spend the holiday with my parents, all of the hoopla about the crowds and threats of boycotting the full body scanners resulting in horrific lines at the airport will end up being totally overblown.  I've already printed out our boarding passes, so we'll check our bags, fly through security in 10 minutes, and have hours to entertain the kids at the gate.  Or not.  Who knows?

But honestly, I don't even care.  I'm so excited.  My brother and his significant other and her dog (a hilariously fat, lazy pug for whom Sam created a Facebook profile, and his status updates are things like "I feel like I'm some combination of the Star Wars Sand People, ET, Ewoks, and Winston Churchill. Assuming they ate street garbage and peed on everything, of course" -- so fucking funny) will be there, and we always do a Turkey Trot run for charity on Thursday morning, and Thanksgiving dinner is always awesome, and we've got the Day After Thanksgiving Pie (DATP) gathering on Friday with my friend Ali and her family, and then my cousins are coming over, and we're going to a hockey game, and the kids get to hang out with their adored (and adoring) grandparents, and there's football to watch, and I'm plotzing because I love Thanksgiving so much and I can't wait to get there.

Bring it on, TSA, crowds and everything else.  I'm ready for you.  You won't break me, because my destination is too wonderful to make the journey bad.

Good night, Gracie

Zeke, being the responsible older brother, is often tasked with looking out for Josie.  We don't ask or expect him to supervise her or anything, but sometimes they'll be upstairs playing together in their room and they're perfectly happy and safe, so J and I will leave them alone while we're downstairs cooking dinner or something. We just ask Zeke to call one of us if Josie is getting close to the stairs, because while she is now walking everywhere, she hasn't figured out how to go down the stairs in a way that won't cause her serious injury.

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Last night we had a bunch of friends over for a football-watching barbecue and the kids were mostly in the room with us, but at one point Josie climbed up the stairs and Zeke followed her and they were upstairs playing. 

J told Zeke, "if Josie gets too close to the stairs, or if you need help with anything, call out for Daddy."

Five minutes later we heard Zeke yelling, "out for Daddy!  OUT FOR DADDY!"

Let it not be said that the kid doesn't pay attention.

Life in the cube

As I mentioned yesterday, I don't have an office, just a cube.  It's tucked in the back of the room, fairly secluded, roomy and comfortable, but it's still a cube.  Everyone is very sensitive to the noise issue and makes every effort to be courteous, but you can hear e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. 

Some people listen to music over a radio or whatever, on very low volume.  But I have super-sensitive hearing, so I can still hear it. 

I think the lady across the "hall" from me listens to a station (via internet radio?  I have no idea) that features nothing but TV theme songs.

Because there I was, reading about the legal requirements school districts have involving disabled kids placed in private schools, when all of a sudden I was totally distracted by the theme to Charlie's Angels.  I never even watched the show -- I think it was on while we were living overseas -- but about 3 cell phones ago, I used the song as my ring tone because I worked for a guy named Charlie and we (his female employees) jokingly referred to ourselves as Charlie's Angels and wasn't it all hilarious. 

Anyway.

So even though it's only playing at about half a decibel, I can totally hear it with my bionic ears, and then given my propensity to develop ear-worms, I'm walking around going "daaaaah dah daaaaaaaahhh, dah dah dah daaaaaaaaah da daaaaaaaaahhhhh."

Until that ear-worm is replaced by the theme song to -- and I am totally not making this up -- All In The Family. 

"Thoooose were the daaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyys!!"

And then the opening instrumental number from Dallas.  Which I did watch when we lived in Israel because back in the early 80s before the era of global satellite television, it was one of 3 American shows that you could watch on Israeli TV (the others were Little House on the Prairie and Diff'rent Strokes), so we were glued to them religiously just to get a little dose of home.

Needless to say, it was a bit distracting.  But being the new kid, still trying to feel my way and figure out who's who and who's nice and who is not to be fucked with, no way was I going to say anything. 

But just to be safe, today I brought in my iPod, which I listened to with one earbud in (so I could still hear the phone and whatnot).  Because otherwise, I'll get nothing done, and constantly be living with images of George and Weezy Jefferson or B.A. Baracus and Face running through my brain, via my ears.

Rumplestiltskin rides the bus.

So the new job is going well.  Everyone has been very welcoming, I've had an actual orientation with an explanation of what it is they want me to do, gotten my ID badges and business cards and all that. 

The biggest adjustment (other than working in a cube, which I've never done before and which is bringing on a bit of sensory deprivation, like a lab rat) is the commuting situation.  At the old job I had free parking.  At the new job, I do not.  And parking in downtown Denver is an expensive pain in the ass. 

One of my employee benefits is a monthly bus pass at less than half the regular rate.  I've always been a driving commuter, not a public transport commuter, so until I spent the first day driving around finding an inexpensive and not too far away public lot in order to avoid the $35 a day fee of parking in my own building, it didn't occur to me that I would be taking advantage of this particular benefit, particularly with two morning daycare dropoffs to contend with. 

But I I live directly on the bus line that has a stop right at my building.  I discovered that if I get the kids up early enough, I can drop them off at their respective locales, get home, walk across the street to the bus stop and have it drop me off in front of my building 12 minutes later, meaning I'm still getting to work by 8 or 8:15 at the latest.  And it will save me over $100 a month (at least) in parking fees. 

Done and done.

And it's kind of an interesting experience.  Good people watching.  Yesterday on my ride home, there was a guy in front of me who had a little spindle that he was using to spin thread out of some loose cotton (I'm assuming) fibers he held in his hand.  Spin spin spin.  It was kind of mesmerizing.

As he got off at his stop, he started talking to the woman sitting across from him who looked a bit stricken by his overtures.  Everyone around me started giggling when he finally was gone, and it turns out that when she had first sat down, he had taken out a huge knife and without saying a word, approached her with it to cut a stray string that was hanging off the hem of her skirt.  (I had missed this episode, but the lady sitting next to me told me about it.) 

I'm so bummed that I didn't witness this interaction in person.  It totally would have made my night.  In any event, I certainly never would have had the chance of observing this awesome spectacle commuting in my car.

Thursday Tidbits

• J's surgery went well, and he's recovering nicely.  The weekend was a bit rough -- he was incredibly sore, and trying to take care of him and the children and keep the children off him felt like being under siege.  But we got through it and things are getting easier.
• Josie started walking.  At first it was just figuring out how to stand up, then it was taking a step or two, then she figured out how to string steps together.  It's kind of thrilling.
• We have a mouse.  There's a little hold in the corner of the wall in the living room, and apparently a little mouse has made his way in.  J and Zeke were downstairs when they saw him, and Zeke was mesmerized, peeking over the back of the couch and whispering, "Daddy, shhhhhh, we have to be quiet so we don't scare the mouse."  We'll plug up the hole, but mice don't bother me so much.  Rats, on the other hand, make me want to puke.
• Getting excited for Thanksgiving.  Next week Zeke's school is having a little Thanksgiving celebration, so I'm going to make my mom's famous cranberry jello mold.  And this time, I will remember to cook the cranberries.*

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*The first time I made it, I used whole cranberries and forgot to cook them, subjecting my poor guests to a miserable experience.

Party's over

And now I get to clean up the mess...

It's been a lovely four days.  I've had time to myself, done household chores in peace, watched reruns of Law & Order, got some reading in.  The batteries are not fully recharged, but they're certainly sparkier than they were at the beginning in the week.

But today I go back into the shit (can you tell I'm reading a book about Vietnam?  Talkin' the talk, baby.)

J's surgery is this afternoon and for the next two weeks (at least), it's all me, all the time.  Because while J will be somewhat up and around almost immediately, he cannot lift anything. Anything anything anything.  Nothing.  Nada.  Bupkis.

So not only will I have all of the housework but also all of the childcare, even when J is home.  He can't pick up the children, can't carry a laundry basket, can't put Josie in the bathtub or put her on her changing table to change her diaper.  Plus I will have to figure out how to keep Zeke from crawling and jumping all over his daddy, as he is used to doing.

*sigh*

Not that I'm not happy that J is getting his hernias fixed.  He's been so uncomfortable for so long, it will be a huge relief for him to be on the road to recovery.  So long term, it's a good thing.

Short term, it's going to be rough.  Wish me well.

I will leave you with a hilarious joke I heard, told by David Sedaris to Jon Stewart on last night's Daily Show:

A man is in his house late one night, getting ready to pack it in for the night.  Suddenly there's a knock on his door.  He answers it and finds a snail on his porch.  The snail is going door to door selling magazine subscriptions and asks the man if he's interested in buying some magazines.

The man is furious at having his evening disturbed.  He rears his foot back, ferociously kicks the snail off his porch and slams the door.

Two years later the doorbell rings again.  The man opens the door.  It's the snail.

The snail says, "what the fuck was that about?"

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Stay-cation: Day Three

This is exactly what I'm wearing today.

I'm getting pretty good at this housewife biz.  Today after dropping the kids off at school, I came home, cleaned (including taking wood polish to the furniture, fireplace mantle, and staircase banister -- whee!), made some phone calls, worked out the dealio with our ski passes for the winter, and went to the grocery store (Safeway AND Costco).

As an added bonus, rather than my usual habit of having a vague sense that we're low on food and then heading to the store without much of a plan, resulting in finding 2 bottles of Thai fish sauce, 3 half-empty bottles of Newman's Own salad dressing, 4 large bags of frozen peas, 2 jars of celery salt and 3 open bags of rotting carrots every time I decide to clean out the kitchen, I made a list. 

And a meal plan.

And figured out what to do with the 2 small sweet potatoes that will go bad if they're not used.

So tonight for dinner, we'll have quesadillas to use up the rest of the tortillas that we bought when we had fish tacos the other night.  I can throw in the rice and beans leftovers as well.   I'm making sweet potato bread.  Tomorrow we'll have butternut squash soup and another loaf of bread that I will make tomorrow.

The refrigerator and freezer are clean and organized.  The laundry is done. The toy trucks are in their baskets.  There are no cheerios under Josie's high chair.  It's quiet and peaceful in the house. 

And did I mention Zeke is potty-trained?  And has had three awesome days at his new school with nary a tear or a wistful glance behind him?

This week doesn't suck at all.

Stay-cation: Day One

My friend Lisa has recently been going through what I feel like I go through at least monthly -- that sense of, Good God, get these kids away from me and give me some peace.  And she made a point today that I make all the time, and that few people seem to get -- I don't want to go away anywhere and have time away from my family.  What I really crave is for everyone to get the fuck out of my house and leave me alone (I love her idea of a kiddie hotel).  To read, to do laundry, to watch my DVR'd shows, to just have some time with no whining and no crying and no noisy toys.

Which I am finally getting for the next two weeks until I start the new job. 

And holy shit, it's so nice.  I got the kids up and out the door by 8:15.  Zeke started his new preschool and did so well.  I've been preparing him for this day for a long time, and at first he was nervous and saying that he wanted to go to the old school.  But I talked him off the ledge, and after we dropped Josie off at her daycare, he said, "where are we going, Mama?"  And I said, "we're going to your new school sweetie.  You're going to make new friends and learn all kinds of cool stuff and it'll be great."  He said, "I'm going to be just fine."*

I've been telling him that all along.  And I guess he gets it.  So we went in and met the teachers and he said hi to his friend Connor and sat down to have breakfast with everyone and said, "bye, Mama!" without a look back.  Which is exactly what I wanted.

And then I came home, got back into bed and finished my book.  Which was seriously phenomenal -- one of the best books I've read in awhile, and one of the few experiences of reading a book in which I truly had no idea what was going to happen. 

Then I took a nap.

Then I had something to eat.

Then I watched Saturday night's recording of SNL -- love me some Jon Hamm. 

Then I did the dishes.

Then I had a massage.

I couldn't do this forever.  I'm too restless.  But I'll take it for the next two weeks.

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*Then we had a hilarious conversation about what we should feed the lion that lives in his closet.  He opted for crumbs, but I said that lions might need more food than that and suggested hamburgers.

The hard truth we all learn

This morning Josie woke up at 5 in the morning, screaming her face off.

She's teething again.  Finally, because I was getting a little worried that those four teeth she has were going to be it for her.

But it hurts.  A lot.  Much more than her other teeth did, at least so far as can be determined by her reaction to it.

So I got up and went and got her and tried to comfort her by sitting with her in the rocking chair, but she was having none of it.  Just cried and cried and cried.

So I put her in Zeke's bed and lay down next to her, trying to snuggle her into calmness (Zeke had made his way to our bed at this point, so his bed was empty).

Nothing doing.

So I took her downstairs and gave her a bunch of ibuprofen, and then got back into bed with her, waiting for it to work.

It took about 30 minutes.  And she was furious the entire time.  I would try to cuddle her, and she would beat at me with her fists.  I would try to hold her upright, and she would scream and shake her head back and forth.  I would try to give her a frozen pancake to chew on, or a teething ring, and she would push it away and wail.

She was in so much pain, and so pissed off at me for not being able to make the pain go away instantaneously.

At one point, while crying inconsolably, she kept holding up her hands and making the "finished" sign, as if to say, "OK, Mama, I'm done with this shit.  Please help me.  Please make me feel better."

But all we could do was wait it out.  I had given her medicine, I had tried topical remedies, and now all I could do was comfort her and try to sympathize.

I'm not all-powerful.  But she doesn't know that yet.

Well, now she does.

Damn the Man

This is the saga of J's worker's comp claim.  Or, non-claim, as it turns out.

Some time in mid-August or early September, J came home from work and said, "I think I got a hernia at work today?"

Being the calm, rational one, I shrieked, "WHAT??"

"Yeah.  I was lifting a big spool of cable and I felt something pop."

"So what did you do?  Did you report it to your foreman?"

"Yeah."

"Well??? What did he say???"

"He said, 'not on my fucking job, you didn't get hurt!'"

"What??  He can't do that.  That's illegal.  This is a worker's comp claim, you need to report it."

"I tried, but he refused to accept it."

"Well, he can't do that.  You need to talk to his supervisor, or call the main office, or something like that.  You can't just let it go."

"If I do that I'll get fired."

My head was about to explode right off my body at this point.  "They can't fire you for submitting a workers comp claim.  There are laws against it!"

"Baby, they do it all the time."

I fumed.  "You cannot let them get away with it.  You have to report this."

Long story short, he was intimidated by his foreman's attitude, didn't report it (thought there were witnesses to both the injury and his efforts to tell the foreman), it got worse, and a month later, it hurt so much that he couldn't lift his tool pouch without excruciating pain.  So they sent him home and told him to go to the doctor, get it fixed and go on short term disability.

So he went to the doctor.  Who confirmed that he had a double hernia and sent him to a surgeon.  Who also confirmed that he had a double hernia and scheduled him for surgery.

But all along, I was confused.  It was a workplace injury.  Why wasn't it being covered by workers comp?  What the fuck was going on??

I wasn't the only one.  The administrator at the surgeon's office was confused as well, because workers comp is billed differently from other kinds of claims.  And if it was a workplace injury, it needed to go through workers comp.

So she called the HR people at J's company, who proceeded to yell at her.  Then they ran around trying to cover their tracks by intimidating the guys on the job -- the witnesses -- into giving statements casting doubt on J's version of things.

J, being totally non-confrontational and intimidated, didn't want to make waves.  He was perfectly happy to pursue the personal-insurance-and-short-term-disability route.  But the safety manager at his company, who was walking around talking about how he was going to "bury J in court," insisted on submitting the claim through workers comp.

Which denied the claim today.  Because it was a "your word vs. theirs" thing, according to the claims rep.

So we'll submit it through our own insurance and seek short term disability for the time he needs to take off of work to recover.  Which we were willing to do all along.  We can't afford to fight it, so whatever.

This is why my great-grandfather, the proud socialist, believed in labor unions and working for the rights of the working man.  Because he knew that without them, the working man has no power.  The Big Man will always find a way to bring the little man down.  I never really thought about it before I was married to a tradesman, but now I know.  In Hawaii, a very pro-union state, J would have been protected.  In Colorado, where the union has a very weak presence and there are no union jobs to be had, he's fucked.

It makes me so mad, I don't even know what to do but sit and stew.

You can't go home again*

For Zeke, one of the consequences of turning three is that, in addition to being a big boy who almost always remembers to use the potty, who will be starting preschool with his buddy Connor next week, who is learning how to read and put puzzles together, is that he has to sleep in his own bed.  All night.

I'm sure some of you may be wondering if you accidentally stumbled on an old blog post from last year (or even the year before), because we've been fighting this fight for a long time.  Or, more accurately, not fighting it.  The kid has been playing us like a Stradivarius.  What with J being out of town, and not wanting to wake up Josie by putting him to bed later than her (they share a room now), and just generally being a big ol' softie about it, he's been spending a lot of time in our bed.  A lot lot.

So I decided that his birthday would be the arbitrary Maginot line that would mark the start of him Being A Big Boy And Sleeping In His Own Bed.  It was the perfect day for it, because he didn't nap, and in addition to his party, which involved non-stop running around and excitement, he went swimming at my parents' hotel in the morning and then immediately after the party, went to the park to play some more with his friend Lucy.  So by 7:30 or so, he was a complete zombie.

I put him in his PJs and put him in his bed and sang the sleep song and he eventually went to sleep.  But not before, as we were turning towards his room rather than mine, he said, "but I want to sleep with you, Mama."

"No, honey, you're a big boy now.  You need to sleep in your own bed."

"But I don't want to."

"Well, remember, we talked about it, and now that you're three, you need to sleep in your bed."

"No!  I don't want to!  I want to be two!  I want to be two!"

Sorry, kid.  That ship has sailed.

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*Hat tip to my brother Sam, who came up with this line (by way of Thomas Wolfe, obvs).

Three is a magic number

Zeke is turning three on Sunday.

I could do another Animoto video, as I've done in the past on the kids' birthdays, but I feel like it doesn't tell enough of a story anymore, where Zeke is concerned.  The pictures are cute, and he's turning into a gorgeous kid (if I do say so myself), but the pictures aren't enough.

They don't convey what it was like for me to be driving him to school this morning and have him sit in the back seat and look at his animal book and say, "C-O-W....that spells 'cow', Mama!"

Yes it does, son.  And also, holy shit.

Newborn Zeke in his first bit of prison gear.

The pictures can't really give you a sense of what it's like to see this ... this boy -- I mean, he's certainly not a baby and not even a toddler anymore, he's seriously a kid -- and remember what it was like the first night of his life when he woke me up crying and for a second I was confused and thought someone had let a cat into my hospital room.  All of a sudden having this tiny little person in my life was so weird.  But now he is a person, an interesting, smart person, and we have hilarious conversations about elephant poop and which park has the best slides and the relative merits of mac & cheese vs. ham sandwiches and why it's fun to play with toy trucks.  It blows my mind.

There's nothing baby-ish in this guy anymore.

The pictures don't tell you how my heart feels like it's swelling up and about to pop out of my body when I walk by him when he's sitting on the couch looking at a book or watching a DVD and he calls me over to take my face in his hands, plant a big smooch on me, and say, "I love you, Mama."

The pictures can't express how I simultaneously die from the cuteness and also laugh my ass off when I drop Zeke off at school in the morning and he and his friend Elliott run up to each other, call each other's names, and give each other a big bear hug.

From looking at a picture, you can't hear the joy we both get from playing the silly "I'm going to change you..." game that we play all the time.  "Mama, I'm going to change you into a hot dog."  "Oh, yeah?  Well I'm going to change you into a piece of macaroni!"  "I'm going to change you into a traffic light!"  "I'm going to change you into a shoelace!"  There is no rhyme or reason to this game.  It's just funny and it makes us laugh.

You can see a lot from the pictures.  His twinkly eyes, his big smile, his sweetness toward his sister, his joy at being alive.  But you can't tell that if you take the joy from the pictures and multiply it by about a million, you might come close to the joy he brings me every day.  Maybe.

So, happy third birthday, Zekey-beans.  You're my best, sweetest, lovie-est boy, and I'm over the moon about you.

And I'm going to change you into a tree.

Conversationus Interruptus

One of the unfortunate side effects of having two small children is that any telephone conversation with me is bound to be either confusing, incredibly annoying or both (unless the children aren't at home, in which case I hope you will consider the conversation pleasant, unless you're with customer service for Verizon, in which case, piss off).

Few things drive me nuttier than talking on the phone with someone who is very obviously doing something else at the same time, like, say, opening his mail.  I'll say something, and the other person will start a sentence but then will go silent in the middle of a thought, and then finally mutter, "but I paid this already."  And I'm all, "Hel-looooo!  I'm still here!  Pay attention to me!"

Yes, I'm talking to you, Dad.

But now I'm doing it too.  Not opening my mail, which I almost never do anyway, which is why my water will be shut off, causing me to have to pee outside in the middle of the night, and I'll think that someone is playing a prank on me until I realize that I just forgot to pay the bill because I never opened it.

No, my offense is trying to have an intelligent conversation while also supervising my children.  So my poor brother will call me to chat, and then be forced to suffer through sentences like this:

"I also loved that scene at the end between Betty and Don, and really thought the whole episode was don't throw food at your sister."

Or:  "I can understand why you'd want to just settle the case and get -- I smell poop.  Who has poop?"

Or:  "We're really excited about get your finger out of your butt!"

My brother has the decency to not hang up on me or even scold me, though I totally deserve it.  But it's hard.  You get so used to trying to do 47 things at once, it bleeds over into your conversations and obliterates every rule of politeness that you've forever held dear.

So to anyone that is subjected to this in the future, please bear with me.  I know it's a problem, and I'll try to be better.  Things should normalize in, oh, 17 years or so.

Monday miscellany

• You people are a bunch of serious task-masters.  By an almost 3-1 margin (and that's not counting the votes cast to let me know that I'm a big ol' dork), you said that I should pull up my big-girl panties and just suck it up and read the Chernow book already.  Lucky for me, this isn't a democracy, so I may or may not heed your advice.  I'm still deciding.  At the very least, so that I don't become completely boring, I am forcing myself to alternate every non-fiction choice with a fiction choice.  So right now I'm reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and loving it so far.  
• Josie is starting to communicate.  I've been a little bit worried about the fact that she is at least 4 months behind where Zeke was at her age, developmentally speaking, because when Zeke was 13 months old, he was saying words and walking and had at least 8 teeth.  Josie says "dada" or "da-di" and occasionally says "mama," is at least a month away from walking, and has had 4 lonely little teeth that don't appear to be getting any company any time soon.  But suddenly she's taking more steps and chattering up a storm, saying "bye-bye" and using sign language for things like "eat" and "more" and "all done."  And as a close family friend said to my mom upon learning of my concerns, comparisons are odious.  So I'm not worried.  She's perfectly healthy and normal.

"Look, Ma, I'm standing!"

• We're slowly but surely getting the house in order.  It was even presentable enough to have friends over for dinner Saturday night!  And my parents will be in town this weekend and have agreed to take the kids for a solid stretch on Saturday so that  and I can finish the drywall in the front hallway and dining room.  When it's all done, it going to be beautiful.
• My friend Elizabeth is having a baby today.  Send her positive vibes for a smooth delivery and speedy recovery and a healthy, happy baby girl.  

Climbing the literary Everest, and a "test your level of geekiness" poll

So I finally, finally, finally finished the Alexander Hamilton bio.  At 4 in the morning last night when I couldn't sleep and I had already watched my recording of The Good Wife.  I've been reading it since the beginning of August, but have only had snippets of time here and there, with the occasional plane ride that gave me a bigger chunk of uninterrupted reading opportunity.

And the book is huge.  But I didn't realize how huge, because I've been reading it on my Kindle, and the Kindle pages don't match up to actual pages, plus you can adjust the font and print size to your liking.  So all I knew was that a) it was amazingly written and researched; b) Hamilton was an extraordinary guy, and probably the most essential of the Founding Fathers, in terms of his ability to take the concepts underlying the Constitution and turn them into an actual working government; and c) it was taking me forever to plow through it.

Then when I went to DC for the Israel reunion, my parents had an actual physical copy of the book, and I was stunned.  It wasn't just 700+ pages, but 700+ big pages with teeny teeny tiny print.

Jesus, I thought.  No fucking wonder.

But I kept plugging, and finally finished it.

And somewhere along the way, came up with my latest uber-geek plan to read the history of the United States in order, by president.  I'm good with Adams and Jefferson (and a few others), but I've never read a biography of George Washington, so I was talking to my mom about looking for a good one.

Wouldn't you know, Ron Chernow just came out with an opus about George Washington.  And it's 900 fucking pages long.

"For God's sake!"  I said.  "I'm sure it's great.  He's an incredible writer.  But there has to be a worthy Washington biography in the 300 or 400 page range."

"But if you're going to be reading anyway, what difference does it make if it's a 900 page book or some other book?  My feeling is, I'm going to be reading something regardless, so I'd rather be reading something good, no matter how long it is."

"Hmm."

"I mean, do you read for quality or quantity?  Would you rather read more books, or read better books?"

"Can't I do both?"  I wondered.  "I'd rather read really good books that don't take me a million years each, because then I can read more of them."

She laughed.  But it got me thinking.  Why was I so hung up on the length of the book, when I enjoyed it and was going to be reading something anyway?

What say all of you?

Sleepless

I've been doing a lot of blogging in the middle of the night lately.

It beats lying in bed and tossing and turning and thinking about the various things on my to-do list that are crowding my brain.

But the middle of the night is also a great time to get caught up on my shows.  My DVR does its thing, and then I watch my episodes of House or Mad Men or The Daily Show at 3 in the morning, when no one is clamoring for my attention and Zeke isn't asking to watch Madagascar 2: Escape to Africa for the 80 millionth time in a row.

But I can't focus tonight.  My chest feels tight and full of anxiety.

Could be the fact that I'm changing jobs soon.  Going to try my hand at being a special ed. specialist again, instead of a general education generalist, which, as it turned out, I am ill-suited for.

Or it could be that J and I can never seem to get caught up around the house.  I feel like I spend every spare moment unpacking a box or trying to figure out where something is going to go.

If I'm not actually doing renovations.  Like sheetrocking.  Here's a piece of my handiwork:

I still need to tape and mud, but the cuts are clean and that sucker isn't going anywhere.

And here's another.  And see that thermostat?  I wired and mounted that bad boy.

The duk-duk dancer is watching over my work.

It's been nice having J home again.  Did I mention he's home again?  Except that the reason he's home is that he has a double hernia and can't work and needs to have surgery.  So he's around, but I'm still doing plenty of the heavy lifting, literally.

Lately when I talk to my friends and family on the phone, they keep asking me if I'm OK.  And they don't sound like they believe me when I tell them I am.

I'm OK.  I'm taking my meds.  I'm stressed out, but I'm OK.

I guess.  I don't know.

Blue Rules

One of the coolest things about my school in Israel was the Hockey Marathon.  Every year, I think in February, the entire high school would divide up into red and blue teams.  In the weeks leading up to the Marathon, the captains of teams would determine the hierarchy of players and divide into squads from A to E (or so) and practice.  The school was decked out in huge posters that covered every bit of available space, and the gym was transformed into a red and blue battlefield.

Then came the big event -- starting on a Friday afternoon, we would play floor hockey for 38 hours straight, finishing up on a Sunday morning.  First the A boys would play for an hour, then the A girls, then the B boys, and so on.  Most people played on two squads and thus were scheduled to play every 6 or 7 hours.  So we would camp out in sleeping bags and try to get some shut-eye between heats, or hang out in the gym cheering on our team, with the music blaring and all of our friends there and the whole school watching. 

I've never been involved in another tradition quite like it.  It was awesome and crazy fun and overwhelming and exhausting.  We'd all be fried and hoarse from cheering for days afterwards, but would immediately start looking forward to the next one.

And the allegiance to color was pretty much a permanent deal -- once you were blue, you were always going to be blue, barring some extraordinary set of circumstances.

When I showed up this past Saturday for the Alumni Hockey Marathon, I wasn't even sure I would play.  I had my kids with me and I was tired and I haven't played hockey in 26 years.  But I wore a blue shirt without even thinking about it.  Honestly, I just grabbed it out of my bag, and only when I got there and decided to sub in on a heat did I realize I was wearing blue, and of course would only play for blue.  Playing for red was unthinkable.

I only played for about 10 minutes, and was totally on the verge of barfing up a lung afterwards, but it was worth it.

And Blue won, of course.

The reunion was as most reunions are.*  A whirlwind of old memories brought to the surface and old friendships rekindled and the fascinating experience of finding out, 26 years later, how your recollections of teenage awkwardness matched up with what other people remember about you.  Seeing old boyfriends and thinking, "really? him??  Huh."  Martinis.  Getting into intense conversations with people you haven't talked to in decades, and have them tell you seriously deep dark secrets.  Dancing until 3 in the morning.  Laughter.

Lots and lots of laughter.
____________________________
* Of course my nervousness and apprehension were totally unfounded.

Many thanks to Candice and Sharon for the pictures.  

Another day, another reunion

Growing up all over and moving every few years meant that I went to lots of schools.  Lots and lots of schools.  Eight before I went to college, to be precise.  And this appears to be the year of the international school all-class reunion.  July was for the India school, from which I graduated from high school.  This weekend is for the Israel school, which I attended from 6th through 9th grades.

As you all know, the India reunion was phenomenal.  Most likely because my experience in India was phenomenal -- a magical confluence of being in the right school in the right country at the right age with the right friends.

Israel was different.  I love the country, and I received a terrific education at the school and made good friends, but I don't feel the same nostalgia and longing for my time in Israel that I do for the India experience.  Maybe because I was at such a difficult age -- going through puberty with all of the horror that entails, including trying to figure out how to deal socially with my newly developed body and trying to feel comfortable in my own skin and not succeeding very often.  Being 12 and 13 years old and navigating the new world of leers and stares from older boys and men, and not knowing how to deal with it.  Being a freshman in a high school that was really small, so older kids and younger kids tended to hang out together more than they otherwise might have.  And feeling the pressure to grow up a little too fast as a result.

So I'm a little warier going into this one.  Probably for no reason -- I mean, for God's sake, it's been 26 years -- but I can't help it.

Still, I had some wonderful close friends with whom I have reconnected over the past few years via Facebook, and based upon the list of attendees, I will be seeing most of them.  Seriously, the turnout looks to be amazing.  It's going to be great fun.

But I'm nervous.

Lesson learned

Shopping is one of the rare times I have to myself, like, ever.  So while I actually don't like shopping all that much, my trips to the grocery store or to Target are sources of great peace for me.

I was at Target tonight shopping for stuff for the house -- utility shelves for the laundry room, an in-sink drain rack, contact paper for the drawers, a shower curtain, that sort of thing.  And all was going well, except for a pervasive feeling that people were staring at me. 

I checked my teeth.  I checked my fly.  I smoothed my hair. 

Nothing seemed out of place.

But the feeling persisted.  Occasionally I would look up and notice someone start to approach me like they wanted to say something, but then would stop themselves, as if they were unsure.

I was in the lampshade aisle, comparing the square medium-sized shade with the larger round shade, when I heard someone say, "excuse me!  Ma'am?  Ma'am!"

I looked up and saw a woman approaching.  "Yes?" I said.

"I'm trying to find a swiffer, you know, one of those sweeper things?  Do you know where I might find one?"

"Uhhh...." I responded, with what had to be an extremely confused look on my face.

Then she stopped short and put her hand to her mouth.  "Oh, my goodness, I'm so sorry!"

She obviously thought I worked there, and had just realized her mistake.

"Oh, it's OK," I assured her.  "I think the brooms are over in the next aisle.  I would look there."

She thanked me and scurried off, apologizing and obviously embarrassed.

 Then it hit me, and I started to laugh.

Moral of the story:  don't wear a red t-shirt and khaki-colored pants to Target.  Unless you really want to mess with peoples' heads.

Chaos. But in a good way.

It's such a cliche, but Jesus Christ, moving sucks.  As many times as I've done it, it never gets any easier.  At least with this one, it's a local move, so I can be slightly less organized and still get it done.  But then I'm disorganized.

And for reasons that I don't understand, we decided to throw a little barbecue for Josie's birthday the night before the movers were coming.  So instead of spending valuable time getting ready, we were trashing the house with balloons and cupcake pans and dirty mixing bowls streaked with batter.  

But it was good to hang out with friends.  And Josie had fun doing the requisite destroying-baked-goods ritual of the first birthday.

Prey

Predator

To the victor go the spoils

 The move itself went fine.  The movers were great and worked quickly and efficiently.  But now we're in that stage of moving when we're technically in the house, but it's like living in a war zone.  There's debris everywhere.  I have no idea where anything is.  I'm all disoriented and keep walking into the wrong room.  Every time I take a step I trip over something.

But still, I love the house.  We're so happy.  I can mince down the block to grab a dozen eggs at the local grocer, or across the street for coffee, or two doors down for nails at the hardware store.  It's such a great neighborhood.  And the house, for all of the work it needs, feels like home.