Dinosaur Mom Chronicles

Squirrel!

2010-03-07T21:21:00.002-05:00

I don't have to watch the Oscars, or pretty much anything else on TV, because so many people are live-tweeting or live-blogging the event that I can stay abreast of anything newsworthy. I liked "Up!" so I'm glad it won whatever it just won. Plus I can't stay awake well enough to focus on writing the post I meant to write about my mother-in-law's latest meltdown or even describing our latest family craft project. So forget about it. Fit of crazy about Riley Dino's diet (apparently Sprite Zero is to blame for all that ails the boy, but Pop Tarts are just fine) concluding in exchange of screams and curses, dioramas in shoe boxes, blah blah blah. Think I'll read a book and eat some rice cakes or something. Meh.

Released

2010-03-04T22:48:00.002-05:00

Dino Spouse is home. They let him out of the hospital around lunchtime, right after my HIDA scan. It's good to have him home. The kids went to bed tonight without drama, a sure sign that all is right with the world. Babushka was greatly relieved to have her baby home safe.

I am going back to work tomorrow.

My 1000th post is coming up soon. What should I write about?

Health Fatigue

2010-03-04T01:21:00.001-05:00

Dino Spouse remains in the hospital. They were starting to release him Monday afternoon when his temperature jumped and the chills came back. Now he's been 24 hours without a fever. As long as his incision sites look decent and his drains keep draining, the odds are good that he'll be coming home tomorrow.

Babushka had the second of two procedures this week to close off the varicose veins in her left leg, which will hopefully result in increased mobility and decreased pain.

I have my HIDA scan tomorrow morning. The prospect of a morning without antacids or coffee does not excite me. I'm not sure why I'm awake now, but it probably has something to do with the caffeine I ingested at 9:30 PM on my way back to the hospital to visit Dino Spouse. He likes dilaudid and "Robot Chicken." I can see where that would be a winning combination.

Everybody To Get From Street

2010-02-28T21:55:00.006-05:00

Dino Spouse has been suffering an ailment in an unfortunate part of his body since Monday. I was going to blog smack on him on Thursday, when he got a doc to give him vicodin for his common, easily treatable ailment while my doc gave me a mere (albeit mostly adequate) antispasmodic for an inflamed biliary and/or digestive system. By Saturday, however, it became clear that Dino Spouse's complaint had led to some kind of burgeoning infection. The doc-in-the-box on duty at urgent care gave him some antibiotics and more pain pills and told him to come back Monday. When he turned a yellow-ish color and couldn't stop shivering this morning, Babushka and I decided that he was going to the emergency room.

The upshot of all of this is that Dino Spouse is resting comfortably in the new wing of Howard County General this evening after undergoing emergency surgery to drain an abcess in his undisclosed location and halt the cellulitis that was radiating outward therefrom. Surprise! I am disappointed in the unnamed physician (who is not Dr. Kim or Dr. Fusilier, because they rock) at the local AllCare who failed to grasp the severity of my husband's infection. Ironically, it was the surgeon whose practice refused to remove Babushka's gall bladder because she had medicaid who operated on Mr. Dinosaurov today.

The new wing of HoCo General is gorgeous, with single rooms that make it a major improvement over the last time any of us stayed there. I have to applaud the appearance of a triage doctor in their ER today, an innovation which got the dilaudid and antibiotics flowing through my husband's veins much faster than would otherwise have been the case. Are these kinds of things standard in countries with functioning national health care systems? I wonder. I would like to think they are, but I can't tell whether the driver for these improvements is medical or commercial.

Dino Spouse should be released tomorrow afternoon or evening if all goes well.

Antispasmodic

2010-02-23T23:09:00.002-05:00

"Spastic" was a term of derision in my youth, so I take great delight in taking the antispasmodic medication my doctor prescribed for my troublesome innards. No way are they going to be spastic now, boy howdy. The only downside of bentyl is that it makes me want to fall asleep, which is why I think my blog entry for tonight is almost over. I have to get a HIDA scan and see a specialist.

In Columbia

2010-02-22T14:46:00.000-05:00

I took the day off today so I could take Riley Dino back to the orthodontist and get myself to my own doctor. My mother-in-law got the kids off to school so I could sleep and made me some oatmeal to boot. Oatmeal, along with rice cakes, dry puffed wheat, and nonfat plain yogurt, is one of the things I can eat without burning pain in my gut. (Unfortunately, the eight blueberries I put on the oatmeal and/or the coffee gave me killer heartburn. But I digress.) I had time to get a pedicure and nail repair done and pick up the dry cleaning before Riley's appointment; polish will have to wait til after I see the Good Doctor. Riley will have to wear braces another six months, but he was reconciled to this fact by discovering that his orthodontist has an incentive program where he can collect tokens for good behavior and oral hygiene and earn toys.

Visits to the Good Doctor seldom bring out the best in me - I heart him, but I hate waiting 50 minutes to see him for ten. The cross-section of humanity in the waiting room inevitably brings out my worst ageist tendencies. Alert Muppet Labs, pain makes me crabby! I should remember to listen to my iPod and bring a book when I know I'll be in the waiting room, especially now that they've eliminated magazines as a possible nexus of contagion. I hope my ill humor and weight loss (10 lbs in two weeks - not freakish, but still impressive) will impress the Good Doctor and make him give me good drugs and some useful test referrals.

Everybody Must Get Stoned

2010-02-20T19:31:00.000-05:00

Whatever stones my body may be forming in my gall bladder or kidneys or whatever seems to be trying to escape. I base this conclusion on the searing pain that has gripped my ureters (or whatever) periodically since the morning. Baba and Dino Spouse were so alarmed by my state that they pressed more endocet on me, rendering me mute and docile. While misery of this sort would usually have me running for the nearest emergency medical facility, I've spent enough time tending to Baba's stones that I know there's not a lot they'll be inclined to do (besides give me meds) unless I stop being able to pee or something. So I am staring into the middle distance a lot and doing a whole lot of nothing.

Conversation this AM at Burger King after Mouse and Riley Dino's Saturday morning classes:

Riley: Nerds rule!

Me: That's what I'm sayin'.

Riley: Mom, you're a nerd.

Me: Exactly!

Riley: You're like a Nerd Master, like a Jedi Master.

Me: And you're a Nerd Knight.

Mouse: What am I?

Me: You're a Nerd Padawan.

Riley: You can be a Nerd Squire who gets the knight his Nerd Tools.

Me: Like, "Fetch me my laptop immediately, squire," like that?

Riley: Yeah. "Bring me my glasses at once!"

Of All The Gall

2010-02-17T22:43:00.000-05:00

My maternopathic research and recent experience with Babushka suggest that my gall bladder is going wonky. In addition to several weeks' worth of milder symptoms, I have not been able to properly enjoy a meal without pain for a little over a week now. This made my Ash Wednesday fast somewhat easier today, since I'm on a 700-1000 calorie/day diet consisting of non-fat yogurt, rice cakes, applesauce, and the occasional helping of soup, rice, or kasha. Actually, between the incidental weight loss and the generosity of my mother-in-law with her painkillers (she has been moved by my plight), I'm starting to think this could work out pretty well for me. Nonetheless, I was annoyed that nothing leapt out at the ultrasound technician when I got my right upper abdomen checked Monday morning. Not that I want my gall bladder to explode or anything, I just wanted a quick path toward resolution.

As if in sympathy with my woes, Mouse has picked up some kind of stomach crud that's giving her brutal intestinal cramps and the occasional blast of diarrhea. I kept her home today from Howard County's first day of school in forever because (a) she is pale and miserable and (b) who wants to risk a poo eruption at school? She almost made it through Mass tonight without having to drag me off to the bathroom, but she's still pretty crampy and sad - I think it will be another stay-at-home day tomorrow.

BoyMan and Riley Dino acquitted themselves respectably at church, which was a relief considering Riley's lengthy string of accidents involving Communion over the past few months. The augurs are good for Easter.

Back To Work

2010-02-11T21:41:00.003-05:00

The federal government is opening its doors again tomorrow for the first time in a week. I could not conceal my jubilation when the OPM announcement came out this evening. I probably could have made it in to the office after freeing my car from the latest foot or so of snow, but we needed provisions and I had promised Mouse and Riley Dino an afternoon of quality time. So it went. Their idea of quality time looks something like this:

Mouse and I made books with a kit Turtleduck gave us. She decorated her cover (a blank canvas) with a lovely still-life of flowers in a vase (tempera paint, oil pastels, and sparkles).
Mouse and I explored my jewelry box. My jewelry box came to me from my materal grandmother. It is filled with costume jewelry that I used to try on out of Ma Protosaur's jewelry box when I was a girl, plus a couple of quirky pieces of costume jewelry from my paternal grandmother, plus the jewelry I bought myself in Israel (two heavy silver Bedouin cuff bracelets, one Roman glass pendant, one antique pocket watch, a cigarette holder) and a Montblanc fountain pen I got for my 19th birthday. This was the first time Mouse wanted to try on the treasures within and admire herself in the mirror instead of claiming them as her own and losing them in her room.
Riley wanted to snuggle under the mostly-completed comforter I've been making while we watched "Family Guy." He takes his snuggle time very seriously. He allowed Mouse to hang on the couch behind him - and BoyMan to crawl under the blanket in front of us on the floor - but he was adamant that this was his time and that no one else was allowed to encroach further.

Tonight's bedtime reading material: Mouse chose selections from Egyptology, while Riley requested four pages from the latest issue of "Popular Science."

Snowed In

2010-02-08T14:37:00.003-05:00

Dino Spouse and I broke our cars out this morning from behind the meter-high retaining wall left behind when our HOA finally plowed out our cul-de-sac last night. We got about three feet of snow Friday through Saturday. We both had doctor's appointments today (and two for Babushka, for good measure), but that wasn't the real driver behind the break-out. No, when the nicotine ran out last night, I knew that we didn't have long before one of us would have to venture out beyond our street.

This morning the kids played for a good 90 minutes or so on the giant snow mountains that sprung up in the center of the cul-de-sac after the plows came through. This was their best play time so far - the boys were not enslaved for shoveling purposes, plus my belle-mere was at the doctor and therefore could not holler at them everytime they got visibly covered with snow. ("That's not very nice," objects the oldest, who has asked to be renamed [USSR] $l!pknot but will be disappointed.

"Make sure my name is Dino Mouse!" adds Mouse.)

My blog entry about work-life balance got linked at Katherine Lewis's blog carnival thingie. Yay!

Silent No More

2010-02-06T21:52:00.000-05:00

The other night, as I was diagnosing myself with gall stones, I stumbled upon a WebMD article about the six most embarassing women's health conditions. As a maternopath, I am fascinated by medical curiosities. Their list was:

1. Frequent urination
2. Gas
3. Irritable bowel syndrome
4. Excessive sweating
5. Vaginal odor
6. Lack of libido

All of these ailments can be treated with commercially available remedies (prescription and nonprescription) and have been subjects of television commercials. To my mind, anything that people advertise a cure for on TV cannot possibly warrant a "most embarassing" label. So here is my list of the most embarassing (or shame-laden) women's health complaints for your consideration.

1. Urinary leakage. Having to pee a lot doesn't seem embarassing unless you have toileting shame issues. My problem after three kids and 50 lbs was that I couldn't cough, laugh hard, or get low without spraying urine. Getting rid of my uterus helped, since it had become a monstrosity, but the real culprits were my complete lack of pelvic tone and my bad habit of consuming carbonated beverages to the exclusion of all other drinks.

They sell pelvic floor repairs and drugs for bladder ailments. Those things may be helpful to some people. But the fact remains that exercise and diet do things drugs and surgery can't. If I do my 50 sit-ups and 50 pelvic tilts each day and try to limit my soda intake, I don't have bring a change of undies to work or invest a portion of my salary in maxi-pads. As an added bonus, I can stand for several hours without crushing back pain!

I can't help but believe that a lot of women's anxiety about vaginal odor is disguised concern about smell from urinary leakage. The other hidden smell problem is fistula, which is a rare consequence (in the Western world, anyway) of trauma in childbirth but also a consequence of severe sexual trauma. Fistula has to be treated with surgery, but it can be treated very successfully.

2. Boils on the Boop. No one talks about the big zit-looking things that will grow on a girl's mons from time to time, but they hurt! And it can be exceedingly gross when they pop. This isn't just a function of having pubic hair, as my daughter's experience demonstrates. These things are not uncommon or (usually) dangerous, but it's worth paying attention to them because they're more common in people with compromised immune systems and they can herald more widespread infection (watch for red lines spreading outward from the individual boil or the carbuncle).

3. Rashes Where You Don't Expect. I have already described my family's experiences of butt strep in this blog. I refer now to the heat and, occasionally, yeast rashes that can plague the more full-figured among us in the delicate folds of our fat rolls and where underwire meets flesh. I am fortunate that my transition to a more, uh, matronly figure coincided with the period of my life where I was in daily contact with the many varieties of diaper rash, since that allowed me to hone my diagnostic skills and recognize the horrors perpetrating themselves on my skin for what they were. Here are my recommendations:

Treat it as you would a diaper rash. That is, keep the affected area dry and clean, and protect it with powder or an appropriate cream. If it's safe for a baby's butt, it's good for you too.
If the rash looks like a bunch of little red dots, get some lotrimin-type cream (for jock itch and athelete's foot) and use that on it.
If it itches so bad that it's driving you crazy, see a doctor.
Make sure your bra fits right and wash it (and yourself) frequently.
Since rashes thrive in areas with damp skin, there's nothing wrong with slapping some antiperspirant under your breasts or in your fat folds.* Seriously, you have plenty of other sweat glands in your body that can handle the work of the ones you're blocking.

* I suspect that many "excessive sweating" complaints are related to the underwire and fold sweat issue and to my next item ...

4. Foot Odor. This isn't gender-specific, but it sure embarassed the heck out of me when, a few years ago, my feet began to just stink. I think it was a combination of excessive sweating and maybe some cheaper shoe materials. In any event, a good swipe of the soles of my feet with the deodorant stick most mornings has solved that problem for me at last.

Any other nominees for most embarassing women's health issues?

Carnival Of Life

2010-02-04T23:45:00.001-05:00

My pal Peggy from Kid and Caboodle (and Ur Takses!) told me about a blog carnival on work-life balance I should join. It's being run by Katherine Lewis, who has a blog about working moms and is promoting this project by Fem 2.0. I'm never one to miss a chance at self-~~promotion~~ expression, so here is my entry for the carnival. If I hit three balloons, maybe I will win a stuffed animal.

1. Work-Life Balance Is A False Dichotomy.
You can't work without being alive (at least physically), but you can be alive without working in the "my identity is a function of my career" sense. You don't have to be an old school Commie to recognize Marx's theory of alienation playing itself out in the fiction that work is something separate from and equal to life. This kind of thinking gives work way too much credit as an activity and an end in and of itself. I reject the title "working mom" because, my dear SAHM mother would say, "All mothers are working mothers." All tasks we perform with a purpose beyond our own amusement are work.

On the other hand, most of us in the workforce work for a living. I call myself a Salary Mom because my main contribution to the material survival of my household is my salary. The time I spend earning said salary is time I cannot spend with my kids or focused on activities that promote their intellectual and emotional well-being. The same is true of my husband, yet no one thinks to call him Salary Dad. Which leads me to my second balloon toss ...

2. "Work-Life Balance" Is Sexist Cant
Once you get past what I think is a legitimate call to re-evaluate the role "work as validation of my worth and identity" (or "work for pay as an inherently virtuous undertaking") plays in modern society, everything else sooner or later gets down to how moms are supposed to balance the demands of their jobs with the demands of their roles as wives, mothers, and daughters. In any event, I haven't seen any magazines called "Working Father" on the shelves of my local bookstore. As long as the discussion of "work-life balance" focuses on helping women (and the men who genuinely share household responsibilities with their wives*) to balance competing roles, I'll keep tuning it out.

* If you describe tending to your own kids as "babysitting," men, this isn't you. Also, if you have no regular household chores besides manning the grill and yard work? Not you.

3. What I Want Is A Million Dollars And A Pony. Okay, Forget The Pony.
Yes, yes, I want every kind of "family-friendly" workplace feature you can name (paid parenting and care-giving leave, affordable health care, flexible hours, telecommuting, sabbaticals, all of it). And the people in Hell want ice water, as an HR colleague of mine used to say, but they ain't gonna git it. So in the here and now, emotionally, I want role models. I embarked upon the enterprise of parenthood married to and fond of the father of my child, with an established career that provided my family's primary means of financial support. In assessing the odds of me concluding that enterprise (at least the first 18 years' worth for each child) in the same state, what I'm finding is (a) married moms who worked some or most of the time for secondary income while their kids were growing up, (b) married moms who started working full time for primary income once the kids were out of the nest, (c) single breadwinner moms, and (d) breadwinner moms whose marriages tanked about the time the kids reached majority. I'm not finding breadwinner moms staying (tolerably happily) married even after their kids come of age, and that depresses the crap out of me.

The Middle Ages

2010-01-28T22:18:00.007-05:00

BoyMan invited me to accompany him on a 7th grade field trip today to Medieval Times. Since I predicted that my days of being invited to appear with him anywhere in public would be numbered, I took the day off so I could serve as a chaperone. It was an interesting experience and would make for far more interesting blog fodder if I hadn't promised the boy I would refrain from blogging about him in more than passing detail. But let me sum up the key elements of the Medieval Times experience:

Pro:

Good chicken. Seriously, even the 7th graders were raving about the spices.
The meal did not cause me violent gastro-intenstinal distress, unlike my last visit to Medieval Times three and a half years ago.
Decent diversity. The Master Falconer was a woman and our section's champion, a major character in the story performed for us, was black. (BoyMan was outraged at his defeat and kept lamenting about how unfair it was that the lone black man got killed. I saw his point, of course, but the spectacle of the white boy repeating that comment over and over finally overcame my good sense and I told him, "Well, The Man is always trying to keep us down."
Engaging dinner theater for kids. What's not to like about weapons and horses? I wish they'd do a martial arts one of these, too.
They gave the kids a talk about medieval clothes and match-making and the process through which a nobleman became a knight.

Con:

Our meal consisted of the afore-mentioned tasty chicken, garlic bread, corn-on-the-cob, and a potato wedge. There was a chocolate chip cookie for dessert. I kept holding up food items to the kids in my group and saying, "Guess what else they didn't have in Europe in the middle ages, kids?" To BoyMan's credit, he did not find this embarassing.
Sweet Jesus, why do actors think they have to put on fakey British accents for these things?
Speaking of Jesus, there were no representations of clergy or church or anything in the whole presentation. Not that I object to secular entertainments, mind you, but trying to show medieval life without religion is like trying to explain the modern era without reference to - shopping? the internet? I don't know.
As an educational experience, this was on par with showing the kids Black Knight. Actually, it was somewhat less educational than that, and there's no one selling $10 smoothies and styrofoam glow sticks ("Guess what else they didn't have in the middle ages, kids?") in my living room.

I decided that, since BoyMan had gotten a special adventure with me, I should give each of the other two separate excursions on errands so they too would have one-on-one time with their elusive mother. Riley Dino got new shoes and a 20-minute power walk with me around the track at Supreme Sport. He wanted to talk about fidelity in marriage and Legos. Mouse got a new sleeping bag and nightgown for her first sleepover party ever, which is tomorrow night. In the excitement of preparing her things for tomorrow night, she forgot to (a) ask me for dinner and (b) do her homework. Horror ensued.

In between shopping expeditions, I read a link about spanking on Facebook from Delightful Mom. It got me to thinking. I more or less reflexively adopted my parents' approach on spanking (rare, hand only, on the butt only, no pulled down drawers, no more than three strikes, kid between ages of 2-9, not as a reaction to child's emotional outbursts but only in cases of direst insubordination or risky behavior). I can't say this has traumatized my kids any worse than any of my other parenting choices. Like declawing the cat 12 years ago (front paws only), however, it was an unconsidered choice I'm not sure I would make the same way if I had to do it over again. After pondering that piece and some other accounts of corporal punishment, I've decided that I unreservedly admire the goal of raising kids without recourse to physical violence.

So Much For That, But ...

2010-01-26T22:31:00.002-05:00

I am neither hungry nor sober, but I did at least get a good work-out tonight. Not at belly dance, alas - I didn't make it back to Columbia in time. However, the indoor track at the gym was open, so I dorkily power-walked for 40 minutes. Were it not for the tasty pelmeni that awaited me on my return home, it would have been a skinny day.

A Good Evening

2010-01-25T21:08:00.006-05:00

It was an exceedingly pleasant evening chez Dino. Here is the anatomy of a pleasant evening.

1. I got home at a decent hour after a decent commute.

2. Dino Spouse was already home from the gym. This is good on two counts: first, he didn't have to commute today since this was his alternate work schedule day off, and second, he went to the gym before I got home, so he had already burned off the accumulated irritation of a day spent parenting and being parented by Babushka.

3. Monday is pizza day. (This may change, since our local Jerry's is going out of business next week and their Monday special is what brought pizza day into being. But tonight there was cheap pizza and antipasto salad. I'm sorry to see them go!)

4. We had a common object of family entertainment - the movie "Airplane." In addition, Dino Spouse and I both had good things to read - the latest Russian tabloids (his) and a new chapter from Dr. Johnson (mine).

5. BoyMan wanted songs that didn't sound like screaming for his MP3 player, and they were all available on iTunes.

6. I had quality snuggling and reading time with Mouse and Riley Dino at bedtime. Mouse wanted to read about insects. She took turns with me reading captions and text. Dino Spouse came up and tugged on her braid (she sleeps with her hair in a braid now to fight tangles aand looks like a Soviet schoolgirl). Riley wanted an article from a recent "Scientific American" about nanobacteria, then he wanted me to wrap him in a cocoon of all his blankets so he could "sleep all night all snuggly warm and wake up like a grumpy little butterfly."

7. I finally finished the incentive chart doohickeys I've been planning for the kids. They look vaguely like passports or Soviet-style work registration booklets, with lists of tasks they should perform to earn points and big gold seals I found when I was cleaning out my desk at work a few months ago.

8. I remembered to prepare my work-out clothes for tomorrow. I've traded scheduled nights out with Dino Spouse so I can resume my belly dance studies. Look out, world.

9. Last but not least, I am going to sleep hungry and sober.

Why I Love Indexed

2010-01-20T23:52:00.002-05:00

Lost And Found

2010-01-20T22:27:00.006-05:00

I spent the longest consecutive periods of my youth (1970-2, 1974-8, 1981-86) in Michigan, within three hours of most of my father's extended family. There were Protosaur aunts and uncles, cousins, second cousins, grandparents, great aunts, great uncles, and all sorts of other flavors of relative all over the southern half of the lower peninsula. We gathered two or three times a year at least. My grandmother and her husband were at the center of most of these gatherings. Grandpa RJ married my grandmother when I was a tot and my father and his brothers were grown, their father having died a year or so before my birth. (He was a wonderful grandfather and a perfect foil to my strict grandmother. He let me read all his trashy novels without ratting me out to my parents, putting them into the play room so I could enjoy them while minding my siblings.)

My father, his older brother, their cousin, and their new step-sister all had kids in 1968-70, so there was a big clump of us all about the same age. My two closest companions among them were Matt (aka Cousin Who Got Me Started Blogging, younger son of my dad's older brother) and Andrea, daughter of Grandpa RJ's daughter. The three of us were in the same grade, at the same academic and relative social level in our respective high schools. Our parents sent us off to each other's houses and our grandparents in the summers. For me and Andrea, these visits were like week-long slumber parties. Her parents were more permissive about bedtimes and movie choices than mine, while mine were indifferent to social appearances. My Aunt Lauren shared her father's tastes in fiction, so I stayed up all night in their guest room reading all of the forbidden goodies on her shelves. She took us to see "Grease."

After my grandparents died, the bonds between our families started to loosen. We moved to Maryland. Andrea and I saw each other in college, but we lost regular contact after I moved overseas and she had her daughter. The last time we met was 11 years ago, then we lost contact. The Protosaur relatives would ask each other if anyone had heard from Aunt Lauren or Uncle Art or Andrea, but no one had. I looked for them occasionally online, half-heartedly, but never followed up by looking up their old phone number or street address.

When I got back into the office this morning, there was a message from Uncle Art on my voice mail. He found my name on my agency's online phone directory. I called him right back and learned that Aunt Lauren died in November. I got contact information for Andrea and wrote to her right away.

You forget the role that people played in your life when you lose touch with them. I am stunned by the news of my aunt's death. I wish I had looked up the damned phone number. More than that, I feel sick when I think that my parents were the age I am now when their parents and aunts and uncles started dying off. Oh God. I talk smack on the Boomers* in my workplace all time, but - I'm not ready yet! They can't go yet!

* That's Baby Boomers, not the Boomer zombies from that video game.

Modest Joys

2010-01-19T22:27:00.000-05:00

I went to New York on business today. My day in ur takses was arguably productive, plus I got lots of exercise walking between Penn Station and my meetings AND I saw Times Square for good measure. My goodness, but it's bright there at dusk! Oh, and I found a respectable but inexpensive fountain pen. The city didn't produce quite the same impression on me as my last day trip, but it still seems pretty cool.

On my way to the train station this morning, I heard a new and hateful commercial for diamonds. According to Mervis, what women secretly want more than anything is diamonds. Really? Reeeeeaally? Stupid Merviseses. What we secretly want more than anything is ... Well, I can't speak for the whole gender here. Girls, what do you secretly want? I am holding out for a lifetime supply of vicodin or one of those hugging machines they use to calm cattle in slaughterhouses.

Speaking of diamonds, I came within feet of the diamond district in NYC today. I'm not a jewelry person, but I am starting to catalog and quietly covet precious gems like I do dogs on the street as I drive through nice neighborhoods on my way to and from work. I'm not sure I'm equal to the upkeep, but I'm starting to understand the appeal. However, I wanted lunch more than I wanted to window shop.

Things I enjoyed today:

* Walking and walking and walking. I could not have handled this much walking in work shoes during my trip to New York two years ago, no doubt about it. I am creaking pathetically now, but not in the 2400-mg-of-ibuprofen-to-master-the-pain way I would been. Yay, stomach muscles! Yay, no endometria growing on my sciatic nerve! Yay!

* The view of the Empire State Building at dusk, approaching Penn Station.

First Dance

2010-01-16T10:12:00.001-05:00

Mouse's first-ever dance class is in about half an hour. She is drawing pictures of herself as a ballerina while we wait. We are waiting because Riley Dino's weekly swim practice has already started in the next building over. While Mouse dances, I will collect Riley from the swim center and bring him here to wait for Mouse. This will be our morning routine now until May some time. Unfortunately, this morning started an hour earlier than usual because Riley needed to see the dentist at 8AM, so I am all but drooling from sleepiness. Ugh.

Mouse attracted unsolicited and vaguely creepy adult male attention this morning as we wandered from point A to point B. She was not in her dance ensemble, for the record. She was merely engaged in the act of being a seven-year-old girl. Guh.

Limited Personal Use

2010-01-12T14:01:00.002-05:00

Taking a break from Ur Takses because:

1) I find this hysterically funny and I think I already tweeted it and shared it on Facebook.

2) Someone I know published a story on the internet. Read it.

FAIL du jour, Part 2

2010-01-09T13:26:00.001-05:00

For once I remembered that my Cymbalta prescription was set to run out and expire before it actually happened. So I asked Dr. Melfi to hook me up when I saw her Wednesday night, and I had subsequent back-and-forth with the practice's psychiatrist Thursday and Friday. Alas, none of this has resulted in me getting a new prescription for Cymbalta as of today, at least according to the nice people at the Target pharmacy. Thus I find myself in the highly overheated lobby of AllCare with two of the three kids (BoyMan being at karate with Dino Spouse), waiting to beg the physician on duty for five days' of Cymbalta so I can skip the hateful withdrawal symptoms and crushing despair.

FAIL du jour

2010-01-09T10:32:00.001-05:00

Riley Dino: Mom, no offense? But why is it that every time you take me somewhere we're late?

Vainglory

2010-01-05T21:49:00.002-05:00

Speaking of my prospects for immortality, I forgot to mention a shout-out I got from a real writer on his writing blog, 3:17 a.m. Thanks, George! In the interest of journalistic ethics, I should point out that George and I used to work together in ur takses, so it's not like he was suddenly blinded at random by my luminous genius. Still, I appreciate it.

Spare Parts

2010-01-05T20:18:00.001-05:00

My belle-mere is resting comfortably at home tonight with a fistful of percosets and no gall bladder. All is well except that I spent the day after her 6 AM procedure overeating and then forgot about Mouse's Daisy meeting until - ugh! half an hour after it started. Now sitting in lobby at community center, waiting for meeting to send. Since Mouse has not stormed out weeping, I assume that her progress toward earning the coveted Pink Petal has not been affected by our lateness.

Fun parenting fact: assisting Riley Dino with his math tonight (greatest common factors), I rapped him on the knuckles lightly with a pencil and said, "Riley, you are not attending!" when he wouldn't stop goofing around. It felt so 18th century. I continue to be horrified by the fact that kids aren't learning multiplication tables, but - on the bright side - I am relieved that BoyMan does seem to have mastered basic multiplication and division at last. Shut up about "he's in 7th grade," it's hard-won progress.

For the record, I did not/not help myself to my mother-in-law's percoset. I am sure my eating binge this afternoon has nothing to do with this fact.

At outpatient clinic this AM, I made the acquaintance of a lady who was there with her adult son and in the mood for conversation. This wasn't bad, but it diverted me from my goal for the morning, which was reading and commenting on novel drafts by Dr. Johnson and Suitable Match. So. Jealous. I wish I had the attention span and lack of self-absorption to write something more than an ongoing chronicle of my life. It's obviously not a matter of time or technical competence, since I maintain the blog pretty faithfully - I just have trouble thinking that far outside myself. Drat. My best hope for immortality, barring some future achievement by the Dinos, is becoming dissertation fodder for some women's studies or cultural history program. That would be pretty cool, actually.

Mismatch

2010-01-01T19:53:00.003-05:00

We didn't have our usual New Year's Eve Open House yesterday because, meh, we didn't feel like it. We took Riley Dino to Cheeburger Cheeburger to celebrate his 10th birthday, and I worked on constructing the Sock Monkey Eeeevil Seestor gave Mouse for Christmas. (Note to Eeeeevil Seeestor: I will remember the craft projects you gave Riley and Mouse when I am picking Christmas gifts for the toddlers next year. Just warning you.) After the kids when to bed, Dino Spouse and I hunkered down with a documentary about Hitler, a pile of caviar sandwiches, and a bottle of vodka to meet the new year. I think we made it to about 10:30 PM or so before I went to bed. It was more fun than it sounds.

I am taking a break from bedroom improvement after installing a new curtain rod and hanging new light-blocking and energy-conserving curtains only to discover that (a) I didn't extend the rods quite long enough to take full advantage of the curtains' light-blocking properties (a serious failing given Dino Spouse's love of sleep) and (b) the two panels I purchased do not match each other. Ooops. I think I'm ready to give up for the night now. I wonder if they have more documentaries about Nazis on the Military Channel tonight?