After the fiasco that Google Groups created for us over the weekend, I received so many kind emails and phone calls from folks wanting to help — to help fight Google, and to ensure we restore our group. Thank you all — it means a lot to me that so many neighbors feel the same way I do about the East Nashville list.

I did a lot of research the past couple of days. I was really hoping to find a PHP-based forum software that I could host myself, that would have the same or better features offered by Google Groups and Yahoo! Groups. To avoid this sort of wackiness in the future.

In the end, I decided there were two insurmountable problems with this approach:

• I couldn’t find a popular [that is, widely used and therefore well supported] but inexpensive software that included the option to email all posts, and to post by email, thus preserving the original email list concept that so many of our group still enjoyed.
• One REALLY important thing that Google Groups and Yahoo! Groups do is handle email deliverability issues. If you’re not in the web industry, this may not mean a lot to you. But the short version is, ANY email can be marked as spam by someone else’s email server, and Google and Yahoo! have relationships with ISPs and other Internet entities that make their emails far more “deliverable” than your average email.

So, I decided that moving the group to Yahoo! is the right decision.

[FYI, thanks to all who shared information and offered to help with Google. It is just a dead issue as far as I'm concerned -- they have not responded to my several contact attempts, and I'm truly not surprised by that. Google seems to operate as if it doesn't need any individual customer. A strange business model to my mind, but I was already aware of their attitude. Caveat emptor, I suppose.]

I am inviting everyone who’s emailed me to join the new East Nashville list, but Yahoo! only allows 50 invitations every day or two. So, please spread the word that it’s easy to join the list right this minute by sending a blank email to eastnashville-subscribe@yahoogroups.com or by visiting the group
home page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eastnashville.

Once you’re in, you can post by emailing eastnashville@yahoogroups.com.

Thanks for being an important part of East Nashville!

I am working to find out if there’s actually anyone at Google I can ASK about this [they are notorious for not actually having customer service], or if it’s a moot point.

By 7/5, I will decide if it’s time to cut bait and make a new start for the list. Watch my blog and Facebook page for updates! And please, spread the word.

I do NOT have a list of group members. I would love to collect one, so if you were on the East Nashville list and would like to remain on it, please email me at lcreekmo@gmail.com with “East Nashville list” in the subject line. I will not reply to all immediately, but I will collect your address and let you know the minute I’ve figured out a solution.

After getting called out by the list administrator any number of times [no names to protect the guilty], some of us decided it would be nice to have another list, one for debate, discussion and general carrying on. Because as a neighborhood, we just didn’t get to do that enough at the local restaurant [we weren't the coffee-shop-haven that we are now] and the neighborhood association meetings. So I started one.

For years, it sat quite contentedly at around 300 members. Well, “content” is not the right concept. It was vibrant and lively. We were solving the problems of the world. Then a few years ago, it had edged up to around 750 members, and the Tennessean did a feature story on neighborhood lists. Within two months, we reached 1500 members. This year, we hit 3000.

We’ve been on the Google Groups platform for a number of years. It’s a nice, easy platform to use, and it allows me to moderate the first post of any group member — thus catching untold amounts of spam and letting me ban spammers before they can bother the group. Google did NOT, however, allow me to moderate pages and files — it only allowed me to either post pages and files myself, or allow anyone in the group to do so. Thus, I spent a lot of time deleting porn spam from both areas, until I finally turned them both off this week.

I have no idea if that’s related to what happened to our group or not. This week, Google reset its spam filters, and for some reason, the East Nashville group triggered the filters. They gave me the option to re-submit the site for review, so I did. Then this morning, they deleted the group. No warning. No communication. Nada.

Now, first of all, it says quite clearly in their Terms of Service that they can delete your group anytime. So I’m not arguing they did anything they didn’t warn me about in advance. But as a marketing tactic, Google’s approach fails on every level. They are the 800-lb. gorilla, but there are other options out there for a lot of their services, and I can’t imagine why they think it’s a good idea to anger people who work on web strategy for a living. I get it, I’m a tiny peon compared to the mighty Google. But seriously? This is how you treat the world?

I’m looking for a better solution for my neighborhood list, and spreading the word to re-compile my group. Still waiting to hear from Google. Not holding my breath.

I was so worried this would happen again. And until the very end of my pregnancy, it seemed unlikely.

My feet have grown another half size.

If I weren’t already sure that the baby is the “third and last” child, as I’ve said ad nauseam, this would be the final straw. Because I’m having to get rid of the vast majority of my shoes, just like I did when the 10yo was born. [Yes, she's 10 now. It's been a busy few weeks here at Fixin' Supper.]

Some of these fit. Sort of.

Even my list of shoes that still fit is fudged. The clogs and the duck boots really do fit. The brown heels sort of fit. And the sandals don’t really. But I LOVE those sandals, and they don’t hurt, so I’m going with them for the rest of this summer, anyway. Meanwhile? Every single other pair of shoes has got to go.

First to be replaced: The Sauconys. Then, some black heels. Then I guess I should buy some brown heels that really fit, instead of just sort of. And I’ll be praying for lots of rain this summer so I don’t look too stupid in those duck boots.

In my whole life, I’ve just never been that hung up on what other people think. [OK, no need to shout, "Obviously!" from the peanut gallery.] I try not to take myself too seriously and I don’t take you all that seriously, either. I’m more comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt than almost anything else. Every once in a while, I think to put on some makeup. At 37, I have a rapidly growing amount of gray hair and it’s not occurred to me to color it. You get the point.

So about 5 years ago, I started developing rosacea. Well, that’s not really true. I think I’ve been developing it since about when I was born. I’m very fair and freckled and I’ve always blushed easily. I blush when I’m NOT embarrassed or drinking, a fact I find quite annoying, never mind when I am. So, given what I was just saying earlier, you’d think the fact that my face gets red…and can sometimes stay red much of the day…wouldn’t be a big deal for me, emotionally.

But it’s here that I met my limits. I have given up trying to evaluate the roots of this vanity: Is it that I’ve always been complimented on my skin, so that I developed some pride in it, as if I had anything to do with what kind of skin I have? Or is it that it’s changed the way I see myself? Well, regardless.

Here’s the kicker: I was so worried about what would happen to my skin while I was pregnant, since I wouldn’t be using the topical medicine that really seemed to have helped [though not eliminated] the rosacea. Yet my skin just got better and better. And then I realized: Pregnant. Practically no alcohol for 8 months. [Baby arrived early.]

Alcohol is a known trigger for rosacea, but so are lots of other things. I’d never been able to conclusively identify anything beyond alcohol that really set mine off, and now I’m thinking, maybe that IS the only significant trigger I have.

Back to the vanity part: I’m seriously considering not drinking anymore, just so my skin will stay like this. I’m not a big drinker anyway–unless there’s a big party or family event, I’m unlikely to have more than a couple of glasses with dinner, a couple of nights a week. But apparently that was enough to really screw up my skin.

Vanity number 2: I’ve never been really, terribly overweight, but I haven’t been skinny in years. Until I was about 30, I was definitely skinny. My metabolism downshifted dramatically around 25, before I ever got pregnant the first time, but I exercised enough and ate just well enough that I still wore a size 4 or 6, back before they super-sized all the women’s clothes sizes. [Seriously? That was marketing genius.]

For my 30th birthday present from the universe, I developed rheumatoid arthritis. Put an immediate and final halt to my running career. I’m incredibly fortunate; my RA has been in remission for 3 or 4 years now, with just mild lasting damage to my knees, which frankly, could have as much to do with the gymnastics, cheerleading and running I did for years.

But let me clue you in about what happens when you suddenly stop exercising at the age of 30: You won’t be wearing a size 4 anymore. Once my RA was under control and in remission, I tried any number of times to get back in my exercise routine. I ran into issue after issue: Child care. [I was a single mom to 1 and then 2 kids for about 7 years total.] Regular work schedule. Volunteer commitments.

I think the real issue is that I’ve never found anything I loved as much as running, though. I was never a distance girl, but the runner’s high is a real thing and it will drive you out the door when it’s too cold, too wet and too hot to even think about sitting on the porch, never mind pounding the pavement. Can you tell I crave it to this day?

Still, I wasn’t horribly overweight. My cholesterol was fine. I was in reasonable shape for someone who exercised just sporadically. And I was fine with myself. For several years.

And then I got pregnant. And from the split-second I started to show [at about 6 weeks, to my mind], I was ready to be skinny again. I have no idea why being pregnant triggered that in me. I didn’t just want to not be pregnant and back to my old self; I wanted to be back to my old old self, skinny.

A month after the baby arrived, I’m almost back at my old, pre-baby self. And I haven’t really worked at it yet. But the weight loss and changes to my body have slowed down a lot, and it’s obvious that getting back to my old old self will take some work. I am about to embark on a quest to find something I can like to do, if not love as much as running.

And all that was fine, really — no one likes the last month of pregnancy anyway — until we learned that the double-whammy of showing up more than 3 weeks early and having been exposed to Pitocin during delivery [because my water broke -- they really want the baby out within 12 hours if possible -- so, Pitocin if your contractions aren't moving along fast enough] made her all the more likely to spike a high bilirubin level. Which she did, and then had to spend 24 hours in the phototherapy box, and to date has had at least 6 heel sticks to check her blood level. We’re hoping the last one will be tomorrow morning — and all signs look good on that front.

That just wasn’t enough for us. We like to do things in a big way. So, Friday night, as we were waiting for both our dads to arrive in town, Ashby decided to go and develop a fairly scary allergy to pomegranate seeds.

He’d been wanting to try them again for some time. The 9yo has a friend who brings them to school for lunch fairly often, and we’d just been discussing them at the house — how they were the trendy food, and supposed to be so good for you, and we really needed to try some, etc. Ashby had had some years ago but didn’t quite remember what they were like. So, when he ran by the store recently, he picked some up to try.

All I can say is, thank heavens he didn’t try them one of the two nights he was home alone this week with the 3yo while the baby and I were still at the hospital.

Late Friday afternoon, he sat down and had a few for a snack. Then I had him hold the baby while I was busy with something. I came back in the room a few minutes later, and he mentioned sneezing. Whereupon I snatched the baby out of his hands and said, “I’ve been freaking out about swine flu all week and here YOU are, sneezing on the baby???” So he gets up and says not only that, but now his head feels stuffy and maybe he’ll take a shower. I sent him out of the room with a warning that I was now serious about having him spend the night with his dad in Hopkinsville.

While he was in the shower, he developed a horrifying hacking cough. He emerged not 10 minutes later with his eyes nearly swollen shut.

At which point I hollered for my mother — thank goodness she was here! — and the two of them hopped in the car and headed for an urgent care place. They gave him epinephrine which stopped the reaction, but he didn’t improve. So they hustled him off to Baptist in an ambulance.

Meanwhile, I’m having to get the play-by-play from my mom via cell phone, because Ashby really couldn’t talk at this point. Breathe, just enough. Talk, no.

So, then he got more epinephrine, some steroids, and still didn’t get better. They were going to admit him overnight to the ICU! for more epinephrine and continuous monitoring, but they didn’t have a bed, so he spent the night in the ER. Somewhere in there, his dad arrived to stay with him, my mom came home, and things settled down.

The whole time he was gone, I couldn’t talk to him — first because he couldn’t talk, and then because they didn’t have cell phone reception in the area of the hospital where they were. So, I sat home worrying about him and feeling bad for saying I was going to send him to Hopkinsville for his “cold.”

He came home Saturday morning and seems back to normal now, thank goodness. We’re crossing our fingers for an uneventful week of late-night feedings and the usual chaos, with no additional medical emergencies.

I was scanning the news real quick, and I saw this item in the New York Times: Paying a Price for Loving Red Meat. A new study shows that people who eat more red or processed meat don’t live as long as the rest of us. Here’s the money quote:

To prevent premature deaths related to red and processed meats, Dr. Popkin suggested in an interview that people should eat a hamburger only once or twice a week instead of every day, a small steak once a week instead of every other day, and a hot dog every month and a half instead of once a week.

Umm, OK. Really? Are even you low-carb people eating that much red and processed meat? I guess someone is.

He gets here and takes a load of stuff to the car. And we’re waiting, waiting, waiting on the pediatrician. Who finally shows up and says we’re not going anywhere.

Harper [I will spare you the "2-day-old" or in our Fixin' Supper nomenclature, the 2do, abbreviations] has jaundice, which I had kind of noticed late yesterday in the back of my head, but wasn’t really paying a lot of attention to. Seeing as how we have doctors to pay attention to that sort of thing for us.

And I get the idea that he doesn’t think it’s a HUGE deal, but especially because she’s a bit early [born just shy of 37 weeks], it’s perhaps not just a breastfeeding issue [slight jaundice is practically de rigeur for the bf set and no cause for worry], but instead, an immature liver issue. So, right now we are hoping that 24 hours or so under the bright lights [and on top of this cool electric blue light blanket] will take care of things. We’ll know more in the morning — she’ll have another blood draw at 5a on Wednesday. If that looks good, they’ll take her out of the lights for observation [and, I'm sure, another blood draw :( ] to make sure her bilirubin level doesn’t spike back up. If all goes well we can go home tomorrow night, it looks like.

I will say, I am not an emotional person [not even while pregnant! -- though apparently I am bossier while pg], but it takes someone more stoic than I to see her newborn baby with patches over her eyes, half-naked and lying uncomfortably on her back, alone in a plastic case and not shed a tear. It’s the alone part that bothers me so. I am massively grateful for the health of all of my children, and all present indications say this is nothing more than a speed bump for Harper — but newborn babies are made for cuddling 24/7 in my book [actually, if you want "my book" on parenting, you'll be reading Katie Allison Granju's Attachment Parenting and every word that the Sears have written], and her holding my finger through a hole in a plastic wall don’t cut it.

Send us your good thoughts and wishes for going home tomorrow!

Harper Corley Barnes
Born 4/26/2009
4:05 p.m.
6 lbs., 9 oz.
19 3/4 inches

But seriously, I get tired of the finger-wagging when I’m not doing anything wrong. Crossing guards don’t like me as a pedestrian or as a driver, because I insist on the significantly lower standards of “what’s legal” and “what’s reasonable and proper,” as opposed to their dictatorial mandates, which are more along the lines of “how much can I make you do.”

This morning, we turned the corner near my daughter’s elementary school. This corner is a half block from the crossing guard, who stands at the next corner. Since we were coming off a full stop at the turn, we never approached 15 mph. But from the moment I turned, the guard was blowing her whistle full steam and shaking her hand at me to stop. As we got closer to the actual crosswalk, I could see she was also furrowing her eyebrows and generally giving me the evil eye. Since I was slowing from my already turtle pace to stop, I have no idea why. We actually knew the people crossing the street, and my pedestrian friend and I shrugged our shoulders at each other.

I get into trouble with the other crossing guard at school pretty frequently as well. Seems that when I’m a pedestrian, I insist on crossing the street when no cars are coming — but she hasn’t yet noticed that I want to cross, or that it’s safe to do so, or stepped into the street to “help” me with her ever-present whistle. That doesn’t make her happy.

I am sure this is actually a challenging job at times. There are kids who dash into the street. There are cars that literally zoom through the school zone. But I drive the same way to school at the same time every day. We’ve had the same crossing guards for several months now, after a lot of turnover last school year. And in general, are moms in minivans your problem drivers? I don’t get the anger at a driver and sometime pedestrian who’s not doing anything wrong or dangerous. Shouldn’t you save it for the person who barrels by at 23 or something?

Please make me be not so stupid. Last year I got remarried, and I jokingly said to friends, Now I don’t have to hire a babysitter to go to meetings anymore! But truthfully, that’s a major benefit of being married when you’re a do-gooder, because do-gooders tend to accumulate evening meetings like other people collect pennies.

So, next time I am tempted to say to my sweet, dear husband, “Sure dear, you work late; I’ll take the kids to the meeting with me,” please help me to remember how that is not a good idea with a very active 3yo boy who tends not to take naps anymore.

Love,

Me