Mishegas and B-Sides

At Night

2010-08-25T20:59:00.007-05:00

"Mommy, come rub me."

Henry has trouble winding down at bedtime. He wants me to come to him, to get in his bed with him, to rub his back. I oblige. I'm happy to; it's rare that he'll stay this still for me, to let me be this close to him.

"Tell me the story about the two girls again."

This is the story that my grandmother used to tell me, about the sisters, Lucy and Laney, and their dog Snoonie. And how they went to visit grandma in a snowstorm. And how they dug snow tunnels in the front yard until they were frozen. And how they all went inside and grandma warmed them by the fire, wrapped them in quilts, and made them hot chocolate.

Years later, when my father died, I inherited his Bar Mitzvah photo album. My grandmother went through it with me, pointing out the relatives. There, seated at a round table, was Lucy. A young woman in 1956 with tanned arms, a floral dress. I hadn't guessed that the sisters were actual flesh and blood, my grandmother's cousins. Now, my grandmother gone, I find her. I don't know who she's sitting with at the table, I don't remember which one is her sister.

I tell Henry the story the best that I can. I know that it's changed since my grandmother told it to me. When I'm done, he asks for a story about animals, a story about Batman, a story about clocks. I do my best, and then I tell him a story about a boy named Henry. I let him fill in the blanks. Henry lives with his? "Mom and Dad." And his favorite food is? "Applesauce." And his best friend is? "Augie." And...and...and. And then we say goodnight, and I leave him.

Goodbye, Good Boy

2010-01-07T08:56:00.019-06:00

It started with the treats. Oskar used to love treats. Last fall, when Henry learned to give them to him, we knew we had a love match.

In the spring, he lost interest in his treats, and we thought it was strange. We'd call, "Treeeeat!" from the kitchen, but he wouldn't come. Fine, we thought, he's getting older, we'll take the treats to him.

By summer, we knew it wasn't just the treats. Oskar wasn't responding to any our calls, and we decided he must be going deaf. We'd expected that something like this would eventually happen, he was almost 13 years old, we'd already been through diabetes and high blood pressure with the cats.

As it got cooler out, we finally started saying out loud what we'd known for a while. He wasn't just deaf. He didn't hear us, that was clear, but he also didn't remember how to walk through the front door when we came inside. He wandered under the dining room table and couldn't find his way back out. He began having accidents in the house. He slept through the day and paced the house aimlessly at night. He stopped barking when friends came to the door. We looked down at dinner time, expecting to see him at our feet hoping to catch a dropped bite, and he was gone, alone in his bed in a different room. He began to disappear.

In September, Oskar was diagnosed with cognitive dysfunction syndrome and started medication for it, along with something to help him sleep at night. We were told it might take a couple of months to see some improvement and that not all dogs respond to the meds at all, but we stayed positive. And by November, he seemed stable, if not improved. He was still confused, vacant, but he had fewer accidents. He slept better at night. In hindsight, I realize that our optimism tricked us, that we saw hope in what were really the tiny spaces between bad moments.

In December, he declined rapidly. He walked headfirst into swinging doors. He turned in the wrong direction on his way into the bedroom and toppled down the stairs. He lost control of his bodily functions. We began washing his bedding daily.

The long weekends and snowstorms over Christmas and New Year's kept us all in the house together for days on end. We watched Oskar, talked about him in hushed voices, and we knew. Mike had known for a while, but it was me who needed to catch up. I needed time. I'd put so much effort into hoping Oskar would get better that I hadn't accepted what his illness would really mean. I felt guilty for giving up on him, but also selfish for keeping him around just to mitigate my guilt. I loved him, and after the new year began, I knew it was time to let him go.

We put Oskar to sleep yesterday morning. His vet, our dear friend Katie, came to the house. Mike and I sat on the couch, I held Oskar in my lap, and Katie kneeled in front of him. He was sleepy from his sedative, and we stroked his back as he stopped breathing. Afterward, I kept holding him as the heat left his body, and we talked about what Oskar had been like. How he hated to go for walks and loved to kill his dolls. How I secretly used to let him come up on the couch with me when Mike wasn't home, and how Mike secretly knew our secret the entire time. How, when Henry started crawling, Oskar would get right behind him and lick behind his ears and make him laugh so hard he would fall over.

We stayed like that until we knew he was gone, and then Katie took him away. He'll be cremated, and we'll spread his ashes in the spring. He was a good dog, and he will be missed forever.

Oskar, 1997-2010

Grownups Talking

2009-09-03T08:24:00.004-05:00

This week has been a countdown. Next week, Henry starts at his new Big Boy School. He knows there is a big playground, there will be lots of kids, he will have his own cubby, and he can bring any blanket he wants from home for naps. This morning, I packed him off to Allison's with cupcakes to share, and at pickup we'll give her a present: a soldered tin sparrow wrapped in pretty paper.

I was ready for some parts of this. Parenting. I knew what to expect, the lack of sleep, the anxiety about food, the expense of it all. But this week I'm discovering how Henry's relationships have affected me, how the people who come into his life have entered mine, and how, when it's time to move on to the next stage, it hurts to let them go.

I think about the midwives I saw when I was pregnant. They talked to me about their own pregnancies, their children, they let me in. They comforted me when I couldn't stop sobbing at 41 weeks. They visited me after Henry was born, marveled over how long he was, and then they disappeared. It was the nature of the relationship, it was time-limited, as Henry moved on and moved ahead, I went with him and together we left them behind.

There have been so many of these - the ECFE moms, the Musikgarten parents, the young residents who've moved through our pediatrician's office. We part with warm goodbyes, maybe we will meet again, or maybe not. We knew the terms when we started, it's sad but fair, and it's to be expected. Henry is a rolling stone, casual and unconcerned with attachments. His life is an endless parade of brand new people; he loves them and leaves them and bears no regrets. I'm different. I get attached.

For two years, Henry has spent his days at Allison's house. She has become part of our lives, our family in ways I can't describe. We have more than a business relationship; I would say we're friends, but friendship would be about us and this is something different. Our relationship centers on Henry and spins around him in a way that's pulled us both in.

Yesterday at pickup, she ruffled his curls. She let her hand linger an extra moment and said, "This one will be hard." It will be.

Walnuts

2009-07-02T21:00:00.009-05:00

We used to joke that if you were coming over to hang out in our backyard, you should bring a helmet. The walnut tree was especially prolific this spring, now they drop like softballs into the grass. No one has been hit yet this year. Henry wanders the yard, collecting them in a bucket, saving my lower back from the task.

He cooks them on his toy grill while Mike prepares our dinner on his real grill. I approach to compliment his culinary risk-taking and he stops me, "No, Mommy, ess HOT. You stay back." From across the yard, Mike grins widely at his own words echoed back.

The days are so long that we can lay in the hammock late into the evening now. The drought finally ended and our grass came in soft and very green; it tickles the bottom of our bare feet. We lay and swing and listen to the thunks and fwaps as walnuts drop around us.

Sleepless

2009-06-11T10:44:00.004-05:00

I hear him at midnight. Mommy, he calls. I give him a minute. Sometimes he talks or calls out in his sleep, sometimes he decides he doesn't need me after all and goes back to sleep on his own. Then, a few minutes later - Daddy, Dadd-eeee. Mike is next to me, asleep for at least an hour by now, so I go to him.

I don't mind. I was wide awake anyway. I'd stayed up to finish my book and couldn't get comfortable; I stacked my pillows, punched them down, switched sides, but my neck ached. I flipped channels, turned Mike's face a little when his snoring grew louder. I watched the clock and counted, with each passing minute, how much less time I would have to sleep, if I ever fell asleep.

So when I go to Henry in his room, I'm actually relieved, happy for a few minutes of company.

He's standing in his crib, I can make out his silhouette. Mommy, he says, wanna come out. I tell him he needs to go back to sleep, and he responds, Not sleeping Mommy, wanna come out. Okay, I tell him, just for a few minutes, and I lift him out of the crib and up into my arms. Mike thoroughly disapproves of this, but he is asleep across the hall.

We settle onto the couch in Henry's room, I'm sitting and he collapses against me, facing me, legs straddling my lap. He wraps his arms around my shoulders and buries his face in my neck. We sit. I stroke his back and we sit in silence. I feel his thin back under my hand, the clammy skin on his neck against my cheek. I smell him. I can never get him to stay this still with me during the day.

We sit for five minutes, ten. I stand up and lift him back into his crib, tell him he needs to sleep. I turn on his music, pull his favorite blanket over him, tell him Goodnight I Love You like it's all one word.

I go back to bed and wait. At one a.m. I'm still awake and I hear him again. Mommy. I sit up and this time, Mike wakes up, too. He tells me to wait, and in a moment we hear Henry turn his music on, off, back on. He doesn't call out for me again.

I tell Mike I can't sleep and he says, Turn on your side, I'll rub your back. I do. I turn my back to him, we listen to Henry's music coming from the next room. I fall asleep almost immediately, and we all sleep for the rest of the night.

WWED?

2009-05-11T12:40:00.010-05:00

I haven't blogged in a while. I've been busy scurrying around my basement, sorting and boxing and scratching my head. We're having the basement finished, and the construction begins next week. I think I'll use the process as a starting point to start blogging again.

This Mother's Day weekend, with my own mother safely tucked away on a riverboat in Eastern Europe, I found myself thinking about my grandmother. Specifically, wondering what she'd want me to do with her fur coat.

It's been sitting in a box in my basement since my uncle sent it to me after she died in 2002. It's beautiful, a flawless full-length mink. An appraisal certificate from a furrier on Castor Avenue in Philadelphia remains in the pocket.

I can clearly not keep this coat. It's not fashionably retro - while my grandmother was always stylishly and fabulously dressed, it's most likely from the 1980s, when she was already a mature woman. I covet any one of many dresses she's wearing in the pictures I have of her from the 1960s, but this coat is not my style. Additionally, my grandmother was at least 4 inches taller than me and a broad, full-figured woman in her day. I drown in the coat, exactly like a little girl playing dress-up in her grandmother's fur coat.

And where would I wear the coat? I have no occasion for a full-length mink coat. I briefly toyed with the idea of wearing it to be Lucy Pevensie for Halloween, but Mike will not go shirtless in October to be my companion, Mr. Tumnus.

Finally, I just don't wear fur. Even if it's free. Even if it's inherited. Wearing fur implicitly supports the fur industry, and I don't.

On Saturday, I removed the coat from its box, shook it out, and put it on. So did my mother-in-law, who is at least tall enough so that the coat did not brush the basement's cement floor. We admired the perfect lining, my grandmother's name embroidered in sloping script. We discussed options - should I sell it? Or keep it, to remember my grandmother?

It's not as if I need more material assistance in remembering my grandmother. Her lamps and furniture are prominently displayed in my house. I wear her scarves and jewelry on grown-up occasions. Henry is named for her older brother. For Pete's sake, I am using her napkin holder in my kitchen (she bought it in Israel, it's lovely).

After a day spent wondering what she would want me to do, I decided that she would've been annoyed that I was spending this much time on it. My grandmother was tall, stylish, and also easily annoyed. We're going to sell it. Which is the easy part. Because, since I do remember my grandmother and do think about her frequently, I'm quite certain that, while she would not be upset that I plan to sell her coat, she would be livid if I don't get a fair price.

Any suggestions?

Cooped Up

2009-02-24T14:27:00.004-06:00

We take a trip to the pet store, just for fun. We push down the aisles and look at the fish, then the birds, then the cats. Henry smashes his face against the glass, calls to them, "Kitties!" They are all old, sleeping, waiting to be adopted. I push the cart on and Henry protests, "Kitties, come." I wonder where we would put another cat. I wonder where we would put another baby.

I think about a show I watched the other night on television - experts weighed in on what the world would look like if humans suddenly disappeared. They report that house pets would become feral, and I think about my cats and dog, trapped in the house, their humans having disappeared. I remind myself to leave the front door open for them if I start to disappear.

We've all been trapped inside too much. Winter hangs on. Henry fights us on the mittens and even the monkey hat now. I carry him over snow banks and icy patches and he squirms, complains, "Wan get down!" I can't blame him. We lie in wait for long walks and dinners in the backyard. Spring, come.

Winter Afternoon

2009-02-03T14:03:00.011-06:00

At daycare pickup he runs toward me, chanting. Mommy Mommy Mommy. I stay still on the mat, not letting one snowy boot touch the pristine wood floors. Bribed with a sucker, he lets me dress him: mittens, hat, coat, boots.

I drive home, slowly, weaving down the parkway. I ask him about his day. Did you have fun? No! Do you mean yes? Yes! Who did you see? Assan, Cash, Audit, Ack-Ack, sucker! I tell him I missed him, did he miss me? I am admonished to stop talking - Mommy, sucker!

At home, I pull into the garage. The door closes behind us and it gets very dark. From the backseat he Woooooos. I grab him from his car seat, throw away the half-sucker stuck to my upholstery. I unload the car, layer my body with work bags, groceries, Henry's backpack.

In the house, we strip off the bags and winter clothing. We let Oskar out. I fix a snack, cubed up cheese and strawberries. I unload the dishwasher and he talks to himself while he eats, cheese cheese dawberry mommy.

I hold him in my arms and we look out the window at the backyard. I ask him if he sees snow. No! Do you mean yes? Yes! I show him how I can use my hot breath to steam up the window, and how I can use my index finger to draw a heart in the steam. I add an H for Henry and an M for Mom to the heart and then I wipe the drawing away with my palm.

Shovelin'

2008-12-01T19:21:00.001-06:00

DIY Toy Kitchen

2008-11-03T09:37:00.005-06:00

I wanted to get Henry a toy kitchen, but I had a lot of trouble finding one that wasn't enormous or aggressively gendered, so I made him one myself. I used empty diaper boxes and surplus knobs and other hardware I found at Ax-Man. Verdict: Great success.

Pictures here.

Teen Idle

2008-10-28T19:49:00.003-05:00

On our way home from daycare, Henry and I sometimes stop at the coffee shop in our neighborhood for a snack. The shop has recently changed ownership, and the new owners have hired two teenage boys to work in the afternoons. They are what we would have called alternative when I was in high school, but I don't know what they call it now. They go outside for smoke breaks, they wear tight jeans, they check Facebook during lulls. They should be surly, but inexplicably, they're very sweet boys.

Today, Henry and I had milk and pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting, and watched two teenage girls flirt with the boys. The girls were stationed at a table in the corner, working on a laptop. One was outgoing and smiley, the other was awkward and engrossed in the laptop. Besides us, they were the only ones in the coffee shop at 5pm.

The smiley girl called out to the boys, "Name an Iron Maiden song!" I wondered what they were working on and silently named three. The cuter of the boys answered, "Breaking the Law!" and sang the most famous part of the chorus before correcting himself, "No, wait. That's Judas Priest." Henry got down from his chair and wandered over to the two girls, and the smiley one started talking to him. The boys went out to smoke cigarettes.

The radio was set on a 90s alternative station. I listened to the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Breaking the Girl," which always makes me think of my first boyfriend and subsequent first time being dumped. Henry climbed back into his chair for more cake, and I wondered what he'll be like as a teenager. I watched the boys outside smoking and thought about how to talk to Henry about smoking. A Nirvana song came on and I remembered how much potential the music seemed to hold when I was a teenager. I thought about Kurt Cobain and how to someday explain suicide to Henry. He blew bubbles in his milk.

The boys came back in and the less cute one, who had the look of a kid that keeps a journal, grinned at me, asked Henry how he was enjoying his cake. I briefly wondered if the boys could tell I used to be a girl they would put on the guest list, a girl who would know all the lyrics to every Operation Ivy song, if they saw something familiar behind the mom. And then I realized that it didn't matter, thanked him, and turned back to my son.

Preppy Aerobics

2008-10-11T19:13:00.004-05:00

Punch Drunk Love

2008-08-31T20:03:00.006-05:00

"Don't throw up tonight."

Saturday night was our fifth wedding anniversary and our first night away from Henry. We checked into our downtown hotel and set out on foot. We started with wine at the bar of the hotel where we stayed on our wedding night, and then moved on to live outdoor opera in Peavey Plaza. By the time we made it to our 8 o'clock dinner reservation, we were giddy. Okay, I was a little drunk. I've been either pregnant or breastfeeding for the last two years, I'm kind of a lightweight.

When Mike looked at me across the two hundred dollar dinner and the bottle of wine I was wading through with aplomb, I was expecting a romantic pronouncement. But no; there it was. "I'm serious," he continued. "You'll get broken blood vessels in your eyes and I can't take you home to my parents looking all crazy in the morning."

To be fair, he does have historical precedent for the concern. A million years ago, when Mike and I were friends-but-not-dating-yet, he took me to a party at Mike Braam's house. I hadn't eaten all day because I wanted to look skinny in my jeans, and not being from the midwest, I was totally unfamiliar with a wop (a drink made by soaking fruit in grain alcohol overnight) and had no idea what I was getting myself into. By midnight I was puking in the alley behind the house while Mike kept me company.

I digress for a minute to point out two things:
1. He actually still dated and eventually married me.
2. Mike Braam still lords this over me. In fact, at Henry's first birthday party, he told me that when we attend his son's first birthday party in a few months, there will be a spot reserved for me in the alley in back of the house.

In any case, I promised I wouldn't throw up on our anniversary, and in a show of good faith, I dug into my peapods with enthusiasm. I told Mike about how, when I was at the University of Florida, a number of students had died from mixing Gatorade and Everclear at parties. He told me that had to be an urban legend and I insisted it was absolutely true. "Because Gatorade," I recalled, "is supposed to deliver electrolytes to your blood superfast, and it does that with the Everclear and you die. And Gatorade was invented at UF. For sports, not as a mixer."

He smiled and moved the wine away, replaced it with a glass of water, and urged me to try some more of the bread.

Later, we wandered downtown. We wove through the crowded sidewalks - the city was packed with clubgoing locals and delegates in town for the RNC. Mike muttered, "Republicans" at a group wearing light-up American flag lapel pins, and then he muttered "Republicans" at a group of hookers. We meandered past the giant entertainment complex that was a scary empty lot when we used to ride our bikes downtown at night. We reminisced, talked about the movies that were playing, talked about Henry and what he must be doing at home with Mike's parents.

When we finally ended up back at our hotel, we were mostly sober and totally, happily exhausted. We decided to re-up for another five years. For the record, I did not throw up.

Parts Unknown

2008-08-07T09:32:00.014-05:00

To my father
who didn't meet Henry
or did
in parts
tab a cheek
tab a mouth
tab a perfect curl

To my son
who didn't meet my father
or will
in parts
tab a whispered joke
tab a trip to the shore
tab an easy laugh

Saved email, May 2001
(to be read every year on
August 7th)
subject: good luck today
Hi honey,
I know you are gonna do great.
love,
dad

For MSW, 6/14/43-8/7/01

Block Party

2008-08-05T22:17:00.002-05:00

Marigolds

2008-07-10T20:13:00.007-05:00

In the garden
He is pulling the tops off the marigolds
snaps them pops them
right off their stems.

He laughs,
Pulls the petals off in clumps.
She loves me
She loves me
She loves me.

(he'll never land on
she loves me
not.)

Overdue

2008-05-27T21:06:00.006-05:00

Today is the anniversary of Henry's due date. In other words, ten days until his birthday.

Last year, May 27th was a Sunday. I was hiding at home, letting the phone ring and not answering it. Trying to come up with good reasons to miss work the following day. Avoiding the internet and an inbox full of questions and good intentions. No, he hadn't come yet and yes, we swear we'll tell you when he does. My personal biology was letting everyone down.

Somewhere in the seventh or eighth month of my pregnancy, something about my exam led my midwife to tell me that I might go a little early, not too early and not to worry, but to pay attention to my printed list of early labor symptoms and not to travel too far out of town. Maybe it was that, maybe it was total naivety, but for whatever reason, it just never occurred to me that I would still be pregnant on May 28th.

As the date closed in, I expected something to happen. Lying in bed, at my desk at work, my body groaned and creaked but did not go into labor. I was restless, anxious, sometimes depressed. I sobbed to Mike that I would never give birth, that Ignatz would petrify inside me and I would be forced to carry around a stone child for the rest of my life. Hormones are a tricky thing.

At one week past my due date we went on a date - took in a movie, ate some spicy Thai food, and finally started to see the humor of our situation. As we left the movie theater, a woman asked me when I was due and I enjoyed answering, "A week ago." The man at the gas station decided not to charge me for my ICEE after I gave him the same answer. Other people who'd been just as late, even later, came out of the woodwork to reassure me that I would eventually have to have this baby.

On Monday, when I was one week and one day overdue, the midwives scheduled me for induction that Friday morning. On Tuesday afternoon, 9 days overdue, I met Kristy for a pep talk. Beached like a manatee on the couch in the coffee shop, I ate the largest piece of coffee cake I'd ever seen. I headed home and let Oskar out into the gray afternoon.

And then my water broke, and as I trudged from the parking garage into the hospital that evening, I finally had my first contraction. And then my next and my next and my next, 4 minutes apart. It was on.

Henry was born at lunchtime the next day, on June 6th, ten days late. This year I'm celebrating his due date too, because it makes a nice countdown kickoff to his birthday, just for us. T minus 10 days until he's a year old. He took his time getting here, and we have savored every moment since.

Oh, and there is pie, but it's still cooling as I type. Patience. In everything.

Blueberry Lime

2008-05-20T09:54:00.004-05:00

I wanted to make a double crust, and since I figured that would increase the difficulty level, I went with a simpler filling. This recipe calls for frozen blueberries, and the result is not nearly as tart as I was expecting. Not too sweet, though - really mild and tasty. I cut the above piece for breakfast, for which it was perfectly suited.

In my pie studies (seriously), I read that in pastry crust, butter contributes flavor but not much flakiness and vegetable shortening contributes flakiness but not much flavor. So far I've used half and half in each crust, but I've realized that I appreciate flavor over flakiness and will be upping the butter percentage in the next pie. Which I'm hoping will be rhubarb from our garden, depending on how it looks this weekend.

Mom and Apple Pie

2008-05-11T22:34:00.006-05:00

I learn new things on an as needed basis.

I learned to knit in November of 2000. This was before Mike and I started dating; we were friends and I had an enormous crush on him. I'd decided to make him a scarf for Christmas, so just before Thanksgiving, I went to the little crochet shop on Nicollet and the south fifties, picked out a beautiful blue, and asked for a lesson.

For weeks I plugged away at the thing, until I realized that I didn't know how to stop. Literally - the woman at the store hadn't taught me how to cast off and finish. I would be visiting my parents for Hanukkah, and my mother made plans to teach me. In the meantime, she said, stop knitting. Of course I couldn't, and by the time I reached Florida, the scarf was almost six feet long. When I gave Mike the scarf just after New Year's, it was, with the glorious fringe I added, easily as long as he is. He loved it and still wears it.

When Mike and I got married almost five years ago, we didn't want kids. And one day we just felt differently about it. I remember reading in college that as human beings evolve, we never become someone different, we just become aware of things that were already in us but that we couldn't yet see, that we weren't yet ready to know. However it happens - the clouds part or a curtain falls away and there you are.

We're learning how to be parents as we go, even the things that should be obvious. Like when my mother told us to fill the baby tub with warm water and set Henry in it rather than spraying him down with the shower head. Which, to be fair, is how we'd always bathed Oskar. Curtains fall away daily. We find knowledge, we find patience, we find new ticklish spots.

All of this brings me to the latest learning project. A few weeks ago, I decided that for Henry's birthday party next month, instead of buying a sheet cake, I would bake pies. A couple of fruit pies, definitely fresh rhubarb from our garden, maybe a pecan pie, maybe a key lime pie to honor Henry's South Florida roots. Mike pointed out that I'd never baked a pie from scratch before and suggested that I might actually start trying it out ahead of time.

So this weekend, in addition to celebrating my first Mother's Day, I celebrated my first pie:

Apple Pie with Oatmeal Crumb Topping

Daycare Pickup

2008-04-21T20:06:00.005-05:00

Did he nap?
Did he eat? How much?
Did he have a jacket today?
A clinician collecting
data
for later analysis.

Then, safely across the street:
Breathe
in
deep to
Get reacquainted with
the
smell of his
hair.

Pancakes

2008-03-25T20:05:00.002-05:00

Longtime Listener

2008-02-28T09:36:00.006-06:00

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Evil Livin'

2008-02-22T20:00:00.006-06:00

Don't you worry
I ain't got no evil living on my mind.
And I don't mind living in cold ass Minnesota
where I can see my breath and my fingers ache,
no I don't mind living at all.
I left home in a hurry and I don't know
what I was looking for.
Did you think that I would stay this long?

(Lyrics by This Bike is a Pipe Bomb)

Boys

2008-01-27T18:43:00.000-06:00

Ears

2008-01-15T14:58:00.000-06:00

Henry's ears stick out. They're maybe on the big side, too. It's at least partly genetic - my big ears stuck out when I was little. Mike and I are deadlocked on whether they still do. I like to think I grew into them.

It's partly circumstance, too. One of his ears was folded up while he was still inside me, and when he finally emerged, it was creased neatly in half. The top part, the floppy part, stuck out at a right angle. When he sleeps on that side, it still folds itself back up; when he wakes, it stays closed on itself for just a moment before unfolding like a little pink stop-motion flower.

Those ears serve him well. In the time between his birth and when we went home from the hospital, Henry only left our room once - for a hearing test. When he returned, the young resident who'd accompanied him told me he had perfect hearing. "Of course he does! Look at those ears!" I responded, beaming. Mike and I joked that with ears like Henry's, he wouldn't be accidentally switched with any other babies in the hospital. He would never be unremarkable.

One day last month I picked Henry up from daycare, and Allison handed me a rolled-up paper tube. She told me they'd done art projects, which they do pretty regularly. When I got home and unrolled the tube, I found an outline of Henry; someone had traced around him with a crayon while he lay on the paper. Besides being a pretty bold reminder that Henry is tall for his age, the most notable thing about the drawing is that the ears stick out further than the shoulders. He is unmistakable, even from a distance.

On Saturday night, Mike and I returned home from a date to his company's Christmas (yes, in January) party. Henry was asleep in our room; my dear friend Annie was visiting and was bunking in Henry's room. I tiptoed in for my slippers and he stirred and woke up for his last nighttime feeding. I took him into the bed with me and nursed him. He stretched out on his side across my body, threw one hand up on my shoulder. I reached down in the dark and laid my hand on his head. Felt the fine baby hair, still coming in blond and starting to curl. I took hold of his ear, the folded-up one, and rubbed it between my thumb and forefinger like a good luck charm.

Henry's ears stick out. He is remarkable and unmistakable, in outline drawings, and in the dark when we're alone.

A Mother of a Cold

2007-12-19T13:56:00.000-06:00

When I was an undergrad, I took a comparative mysticism class. At one point during the semester, we were instructed by our professor to go on what he called a zhikr walk. Zhikr is an Islamic meditative practice that involves the repetition of sounds, the names of Allah, sections of the Qur'an. For our purposes, we were supposed to pick a word, a phrase, a sound, and then chant it to ourselves, under our breath, while we took a walk.

I don't remember the syllables I chose or where I walked. I do remember the practice, I still use it all the time. It silences the chattering. Which is what it's supposed to do.

Today, Henry and I sat in the pediatrician's office, he up on the table and me on the edge of my chair, while his doctor listened to his chest. He's had a cold since Saturday, a fever since Sunday, and his cough this morning was wet and ragged. The doctor told me she heard a wheeze, and it could be the cold or it could be asthma. "Is there asthma in your family? Let's do a nebulizer treatment and see what happens."

The nebulizer was shaped like a cartoon cow's face. I told Henry the mask made him look like Wedge Antilles but he hated the whole thing. Cried while I held him on my lap. The chattering started; don't have asthma, don't have anything wrong with you ever, never want for anything, remain frozen in time and perfect and six months old.

And then we went on a zhikr walk. I balanced Henry on my hip, steadied the mask on his face with my left hand, and walked in a crooked circle around the exam room. Chanting the best phrase I could come up with at the moment.*

The chattering silenced, a path opened up. Henry calmed and quieted. Finished the treatment. The doctor came back and listened again to his chest, which was now clear. He has, she told me, "a mother of a cold," but no infection, no asthma, no need for his own personal cow head nebulizer. Well, not today.

Something else will come up, something will be wrong with him, he'll go wanting for something, he will get older. He'll be sick or hurt or troubled or he'll have a bad attitude and friends we don't like who steal from the mall. And we'll take our walk and find the path through that when it happens.

*Sucks to your assmar, piggy. Sucks to your assmar, piggy. Sucks to your assmar, piggy.

Jewbilee 2007

2007-12-12T19:37:00.000-06:00

No Pesticides

2007-11-30T20:37:00.000-06:00

The rice cereal I purchased for Henry is organic. It has, according to the box, no genetically engineered ingredients, no added salt or sugar, and no artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives. It's iron-fortified and made with whole grains.

The illustrations on the front and back of the box depict babies farming. Cheerful babies, dressed only in cloth diapers, harvesting wheat, picking vegetables, carrying a watering can. And that's upsetting, because you'd think that a company so dedicated to producing healthful food for babies wouldn't use child labor.

Thank you very much, I'm here all week.

Oh, Ball

2007-11-19T18:48:00.001-06:00

Fall

2007-11-11T20:12:00.000-06:00

What I Told Betsy

2007-11-08T14:46:00.000-06:00

He is so excited that he has to
tab scream
at moving lights
at the cat's tail as it brushes past his face
at my voice when I go to him in the morning
at everything
at nothing.

How lucky I am to keep time with someone
so excited that he has to
tab scream.

Asleep at the Wheel

2007-10-12T21:50:00.000-05:00

Our Friday night date was to Costco. We stocked up on yogurt and granola bars and diapers and cat litter and ate our dinner - a slice of pizza for me and a hot dog and half of my pizza for Mike. I really enjoyed my Diet Coke. Henry rode in the cart, laughing out loud at the turkey jerky display. We played Mama Wind Tunnel; I yell "Wooo!" and then blow in his face. It makes him cackle and squeal, it's our favorite game.

Henry fell asleep on the drive home and when we pulled up to the house, Mike was quiet. He was thinking about beer, he said, and how nice it would be. But he said it would be too much work to get some. I suggested we take the groceries in and then walk down the street to Rix Cafe for drinks and dessert. Mike said that would be too much work, too. We kept sitting in the car, talking, Henry sleeping in the back seat. We watched our next door neighbor's kitchen light flick on and off. Mike told me it seemed like a lot of work to get out of the car. He relaxed into his seat and closed his eyes. Just resting a minute, he said.

It was quiet and still in the car. I unbuckled my seat belt and leaned over, put my head down in Mike's lap. And fell asleep there, just for a few minutes. Our little family, Friday night.

Reboot

2007-10-01T21:50:00.000-05:00

In the last three weeks I've written a post about pumping breast milk at work. I've written it and rewritten it; I never got it to a place where I felt good posting it. Pumping is a microscosm of my entire experience at work - on a Tuesday, starting back to work for the week, I'm irreverent, I'm cocky, a SuperProducer. On a Thursday, trying fruitlessly to finish a full-time week's work in three days, I'm grasping, I've got quotas to meet, I'm terrified I'll fall behind. So I've filed it as a draft. I'll revisit it when I'm more clear on the goal.

I never know what to write about anymore. Or rather, I have a lot to write about and don't know how to do it. It's not as easy these days to compartmentalize my thoughts - nothing is an anecdote, nothing has a simple punchline, nothing has a linear narrative structure. In real life, I change voices many times in day, and I can't locate myself in prose. I generate but can't produce.

I spent a good day with the boy today. We went in to the office to fix the server, we picked Grace up from boarding, went to our Adventures in Parenting class, and we went back to the office for a meeting. Henry napped, I fed Oskar cheap, store brand lunch meats to keep him quiet. I drove, Henry watched out the window. He cried and I sang an impromptu song about a magical crab who lives under a rainbow and is starting to grow a tooth he calls Philip. I bought a mirror to hang in the back seat so that I can see him while I drive; I watch him suck his pacifier and drop it, cry, fall asleep. My brakes are making noise, I should take the car in to the dealership.

I'm tired. The boys are all asleep upstairs and I should join them.

3 Months

2007-09-09T17:35:00.001-05:00

Weddings Parties Anything

2007-09-06T08:37:00.000-05:00

Our little family has been getting around.

Last weekend we went to Florida, and spent the holiday weekend with my brother's family in St. Augustine. It was our 4th anniversary and Todd and Cris's 10th, and we celebrated together Friday night with their three kids and our new bubba.

Saturday we drove to Orlando for BDH's wedding. What a great day. The bride, who is beautiful on any given day, was just breathtaking, and BDH was BDH, which is to say amazing and one of the best people in the world. They're really just such gracious people and we felt so lucky to get to share the occasion with them. It was a great party, and it was nice to see so many old friends, Ed and Jo, the Adamses, Rachel with her expecting belly, the Garlands on a night out without the kids. There are pictures floating all over Flickr, I will have to post some of ours this weekend.

By Sunday, my sister and her family had joined us back in St. Augustine, and we celebrated my niece's 15th birthday with Cris's homemade ziti and her mother's meatballs. And a cake about a foot high. We finished the weekend sprawled in the living room making each other laugh.

Traveling as a family was great, better than we expected. Henry nursed, slept, and laughed through all four flights, and maintained his fantastic sleep schedule away from home. He met 5 of his 7 cousins, two more uncles, and one more aunt. He showed his half-Floridian colors and wore a guayabera. He spent time with another Henry and he stared down a dog the size of a pony and was not afraid. We hope he travels this well at six months when we head back out to Atlanta for Thanksgiving with the rest of the family.

We rounded out the week of celebrations last night with Devorah's birthday gathering at Barbette. Mike stayed home, making Henry the man at the table. We chatted, drank wine, and when the bebe fell asleep on my lap, I carried him to the car, happy for every minute together.

Tiny Dancer

2007-08-21T19:35:00.000-05:00

We are 99 percent sure that what he's doing is the Carlton dance from Fresh Prince of Belair.

Everytime We Say Goodbye

2007-08-07T14:35:00.000-05:00

This is a big week. Yesterday, Henry had his two month pediatric appointment. He measured 14.5 pounds and 25 inches long, putting him in the 98th percentile in height and 96th in weight. It's hard to believe he's getting all of that nourishment just from my body. I feel so accomplished somehow. The nurse jabbed four shots into his fat little baby thighs, which elicited about 10 seconds of crying until Mike slid the babe back into his Bjorn, where he passed out cold against his dad's chest.

Today is my first day back at work and as such, Henry's first day at daycare. We drove him there in a miniature caravan, me in front with Mike following, Henry tucked into his car seat full from his early feeding. We dropped him off with Allison, and I showed her his things - the wipes, pacifiers, extra socks tucked into a Sierra Club backpack. She hugged me and told me he'd be fine. Henry smiled at me, at Allison, at the dust particles in the air, and when I started admiring the new kitten, I realized I was stalling for time. We said our goodbyes and, for the first time since he was born, Henry and I parted company and set off to start our day in different places.

This will be our routine three days a week until whenever we decide to do something different. Henry will head to Allison's with his backpack, and I will head to the office with my breast pump. We'll meet back up in the afternoon and he can tell me all about his day in his baby language of smiles and snorts, wildly waving arms that he may or may not know are his.

This is so hard. I'm torn in a lot of directions and am just trusting my judgment (and Mike's, and Mike is super intelligent) that this is what's right for us right now. I'm sure I'll have more to say on this as we go on.

We're Fine

2007-08-02T10:36:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to jump online and let everyone know that we're fine and thank everyone for all the calls, texts, and e-mails to check on us. That bridge is a significant part of our work transit, but not yesterday afternoon. We're stunned and, like a lot of people, we're just watching the news and waiting for more information.

Our hearts are with everyone.

That's Not Colic - That's Anarchy

2007-07-11T19:19:00.000-05:00

We are using Dr. Karp's 5 Ss method of calming Henry, it was recommended to Mike by our dentist as he filled two cavities. Mike was a captive audience to the recommendation, which was accompanied by great insistance that we purchase a white noise machine (we instead use a clock radio tuned to the static in between stations).

The headline was in jest - he's not colicky, he's hardly even fussy, and some combination of 2, 3, or 4 of the Ss generally works, though which Ss to apply and in what order remains elusive; whenever he does get fussy we cycle through them in random order until we hit on the magic elixir that soothes the savage 5-week-old. At the moment, it's swaddle-swing-suck. Henry is in his swing, snoozing, with Oskar lying at his feet ready to assist should he fall down a well or become trapped in a burning building.

Mike finally went back to work this week, leaving Henry and me with entire days alone. We coast along; we're a team killing time until our third member comes home. We go out for coffee with friends, he naps while I read, we nap together. We have small adventures: today, I pushed him down Lyndale in his stroller, stopped at Treehouse to buy a present for Mike. The sky opened up and we ducked into a bus shelter to wait out the rain. The days are melting together, and summer is slipping by.

When Mike is home we do impressions of the grimaces and colossal yawns that involve his entire body. We pass him back and forth, taking turns eating dinner one-handed. We have fun, and at night, miraculously, we all sleep.

Living on Henry Time

2007-06-30T14:24:00.001-05:00

Loving every minute. New pictures online (prints on their way in the mail, Aunt Sarah)!

9 pounds, 22.5 inches long

2007-06-19T12:48:00.001-05:00

Henry will be two weeks old tomorrow. He is a champion eater and sleeper, and we're feeling very blessed and lucky. Our families have now gone home, and we're just getting the patterns down as a new family; I will start posting more frequently in the coming days.

In the meantime, though, a few more pictures. We haven't gotten all artsy yet, these are just a few that we've taken and a few that my mom took when she was in town. But here they are, for the far away friends.

Hello

2007-06-10T17:21:00.001-05:00

Henry was born on Wednesday, June 6th, at 11:56 in the morning.

More later. Very busy being madly in love.

Whenever You're Ready, Ignatz.

2007-05-29T15:43:00.000-05:00

What's the old saying? That there's no such thing as "a little bit pregnant?"

There is, however, such a thing as too pregnant. Trust me on this.

Goodbye to Ye Olde Rattletrappe

2007-05-21T13:00:00.000-05:00

Last night, Mike sold his old car on Craigslist. For a total steal. He sold it for much much less than it was worth, because it's just been sitting there, feeling left out as Mike drives his new dad car around.

I will miss Ye Olde Rattletrappe. We called it that not because of some mechanical or body issue, but because every cupholder, crevice, and cushion was stuffed and overflowing with tapes. Tapes that rattled when Mike drove over 30 miles per hour. Mix tapes, live shows, tapes recorded off of vinyl, tapes so badly smashed or soda-flooded they didn't even play anymore. Jawbreaker to Chet Baker, Metallica to Buck Owens, the tape adaptor so Mike can listen to his iPod, and a head cleaner tape for good tape deck hygiene.

This was the car Mike drove when we started dating, and the car we took on our first overnight trip together. It was the dead of winter and we went to the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin. We wandered around in a warehouse of decommissioned trailers and mugged for the cheap first-generation digital camera I'd borrowed from work. On our way back to the Twin Cities, we stopped at a diner and, over our skillet breakfasts, Mike told me he wanted to "do something big with me." He said he didn't know what at the time, but it was going to be big. A few hours from home, we hit a lot of snow and pulled over; we were listening to John Cougar Mellencamp (on TAPE) and we kissed for a long time. This was very big. Being that close to him in the car was the biggest thing I could ever imagine.

We loved Rattletrappe. But it only had two doors and no air conditioning, and he needed something better for bringing home the biggest thing we've done together yet. We still have all of the tapes.

10 Days to Due Date

2007-05-17T15:28:00.000-05:00

Annie told me we're in a liminal state.
I repeat that. I like the way liminal feels in my mouth.

Mike bought a bigger car.
I had the second carseat base installed in it for him.
We washed the tiny baby clothes; Mike put the little socks on his fingers
for an impromptu puppet show.
I type; Ignatz shifts. Stretches his legs.

Oskar had a checkup and a haircut; his shots are all up to date.
I'm finishing up all my work projects.
My mother-in-law believes he'll come on time; Mike did.
To that, Annie responds, "Germans are so punctual."

Ignatz turns over. Waits until he's ready.
I save up my energy and wait with him.

Turn, Turn, Turn

2007-04-27T10:38:00.000-05:00

The last couple of weeks have been a little tense. At our last appointment, Ignatz was breech. For the past week or so, he's been completely sideways. Kicking off of one side of my abdomen and using the momentum to ram his head into the other side. Fun to watch from the outside, but a little nerve-wracking. I've been hoping he hasn't gotten the idea that I like having surgery and would in fact enjoy sampling another taste next month.

So to move little Nacho, we thought positive thoughts, threatened him with cancelling cable, and then I did a bunch of yoga positions to use gravity to encourage him to move. I was about to make an acupuncture appointment, and then something happened. Two lumps have appeared on the sides of my abdomen. He either has Princess Leia buns or they are feet. Not sideways anymore.

We had an ultrasound this morning, and relief all around. He's head down, feet up, exactly the way he needs to be in a month. Go, Ignatz!

On a sad note, though, as Ignatz is preparing to enter the world, we're saying goodbye to a great woman. Mike's grandmother has passed away just shy of her 105th birthday. She was such a lovely lady, and I anticipate that her funeral will as much celebrate her life as mourn her passing. We'll head down to southern Minnesota to be with Mike's mother and her family this weekend. Ignatz won't get to meet his great grandmother, but we've all benefited from knowing her. May her memory be for a blessing.

Waking Up

2007-04-18T08:10:00.000-05:00

A few nights a week I wake up screaming. Or yelping, rather. I've been getting charley horses in my sleep; I have to get up, massage my calf, and take a little stroll around the bedroom to loosen up. I always manage to get right back to sleep.

Some nights I wake up starving and eat a bowl of cereal. Or I wake up with heartburn and eat a handful of Tums. Both of these things get me right back to sleep. I've also got a cavity on the bite surface of my back right bottom molar now, but I'm cool with that. I get a baby at the end of all this.

Sometimes I wake up because there is a cat on my head or a wiener dog chewing his bone with a noise like a gross little sucking drain.

Sometimes my dreams wake me up, and last night I woke up crying. I dreamt Mike came home and told me he'd changed his mind about something. A decision we'd made together a long time ago, before we were married, about kind of a fundamental part of how we would raise any hypothetical kids. And now, just over a month before Ignatz is supposed to emerge, he had changed his mind. And was being really cold and insensitive about it. Not like Mike in real life at all.

In my dream I kept hitting him and yelling at him that this wasn't fair, you can't just change things like this. And in the dream I couldn't catch my breath and just started making these low, moan-y, cry noises. Which is how I woke up. I didn't get back to sleep. Mike woke up and we talked about it, he reassured me that he wasn't changing his mind about anything, and I know he's not. That's not what my dream was about. It was about my own insecurities with these decisions we've made, my own doubts about whether every choice we're making now is what will be best for Ignatz. I read somewhere that people in your dreams never represent the real people, they're all yourself.

Earlier in the night I'd woken up for the last reason I wake up a lot - to pee, and when I got back into bed I laid there thinking about the dream I'd been having when I'd just awoken. In the dream, my sister and I were in a toy store and I was looking at a snowsuit for Ignatz. A snowsuit with a furry teddy bear head/hat attached to it. I wondered if it would fit him next winter and then suddenly he was there. Ignatz was a talking six-month-old, sitting in his car seat and introducing himself to other shoppers. He looked exactly like Mike as a baby, and kept insisting that I call him by his real name instead of Ignatz. Like, if his real name was Peter (which it won't be), I would say, "Ignatz," and he would say, "Peter." Ignatz. Peter. And on. Like he was reminding me that soon enough, he won't be a theoretical Ignatz anymore. Or I was reminding myself. I told Mike about that dream this morning, after we finished talking about the other, bad dream, and for a few minutes, we talked about Ignatz with his real name. Which we superstitiously never do. It was really nice. Don't worry Ignatz, we know you're coming. We are wide awake.

Working on How Not to Work

2007-04-13T15:32:00.000-05:00

Ignatz is coming soon and we're so excited to meet him. We feel ready in the sense that we've accepted that there's no way to be ready. We're trying to let go of needing to control things. Spring is finally bouncing back in after a few nasty, cold weeks. The sun is out, it's almost ice cream cone and bicycle season.

Which is why it bums me out that I spend so much energy worrying about work. Whether I'll get my projects done before Ignatz comes. What will happen when I go on leave, what will it be like coming back with this new huge priority in my life, what if I don't want to come back? I think I'd like to come back part-time, part of which I'll do from home, and my boss is on board for this. I'm already doing more than one person's job, and we could easily split me into two part-time people, but what sounds good in theory scares me to death in practice. I mean, if I finish my leave and decide I want to do the part-time option, we still need to hire and train my counterpart/replacement. So in the meantime, what will I do? And what does part-time mean? I work full-time now and it's much more than 40 hours. I have evening meetings, events on weekends. It's a small nonprofit and we all juggle so much. I won't be able to or want to juggle all of that with Ignatz. I know there have to be jobs I could do with a new baby, but I'm scared that mine isn't one of them, or isn't the right one for me.

I'm lucky in so many ways. I have options that a lot of people don't have and I appreciate that. My boss is so flexible and wants me to stay; he's willing to work with me to figure out how to make that happen. We have savings. Mike has a solid income that affords me the option of working part-time or even deciding to just stay home for a while and figure out the work stuff on a timetable that doesn't seem as high-pressure. But how do I do that? I've always had my own income, I don't know how to change that without feeling dependent or beholden. And I like to work; I like my job. It has a lot of meaning to me.

I think about this stuff all the time. All the possible options and permutations. I try not to worry, everyone tells me to try to relax and take it as it comes. I'm trying to learn by watching the mamas I know who have found some kind of balance. I'm pretty sure that when Ignatz gets here, all of this will become so much less important. I should go home and take Oskar out for a long walk in the sunshine and try to let some of this go for the weekend.

Sleepy Rambly Post

2007-03-21T21:21:00.000-05:00

Mike is working up north, close to the Canadian border. I'm not a person who looks forward to alone time when my spouse is away - I'd rather he be here. I miss him. Tomorrow I'll work a very long day and won't have time to think about it, but tonight I'm a little moody and reflective. And tired. I haven't felt really rested in days, and it's all catching up to me tonight.

With Mike away, I'm solo on Oskar duty. I just took him out for an attempt at the last bathroom run of the night. I feel guilty that I haven't spent enough quality time with him today, so I let him wander around the backyard for much longer than usual, and didn't get impatient with him when he spent 15 minutes looking for the most perfectly ideal spot on which to poop. Most of the snow in our backyard has melted, and it's the first time I've really seen it since we had our elm tree cut down in January. The backyard seems so much bigger and more open. It's good and bad. There's a lot more space, but fewer places to hide. I wonder how much shade we'll still get from the walnut and what it will be like to lay in the hammock this summer without the elm above.

Anyway, after all that meandering, his majesty, lord of the wieners, neglected to pee. So I'm giving him until the end of "Top Design" and then his fuzzy butt is going back out. Right now he's gnawing on a Greenie and making me play the I See You game - he stares at me and barks. I answer, "I see you," and he goes back to his treat. If I actually do watch him, he gets antsy, so I watch him secretly in the reflection in the glass doors on the fireplace. Until he notices I'm not watching him and he starts the game over again. Oskar is kind of a waddling, snorting, farting mess, and I'm madly in love with him.

Today after work, I stopped by Kristy and Dave's house to visit with them and new baby Spencer, who arrived last Thursday. He's beautiful, and it was a nice visit. Kristy let me hold him on my lap and he laid completely still while Ignatz squirmed around, inches away, still in my belly. He's moving all the time now, big moves that sometimes feel like he's going to bust right through my abdomen like the Kool-Aid Man. I've been thinking lately about how I've gotten to know Ignatz from his movements, his schedule. Mike can feel his little heels from the outside and pushes on them, lightly, just enough to make him push back. I wonder if we'll all recognize each other when he hits the outside.

Time to take Osk back outside and head to bed. I can barely keep my eyes open and I can't imagine how any of this post has made any sense.

A Break in the Snow

2007-03-04T16:39:00.000-06:00

We had a ton of snow this week! In honor of that, here are some pictures from our recent trip to South Florida, where it was 80 degrees and sunny.

Here they are!

A Pop and a Shiver

2007-02-22T13:22:00.000-06:00

The title of this post refers to two things:

First, our furnace broke. Seriously. Bad enough we had to have our tree removed last month. Then last week, the furnace went and had to be replaced. What a spendy winter! You know what, though? It's just money, and frankly it would all be a lot more expensive if it wasn't the middle of winter, so whatever. One less thing to worry about after Ignatz gets here.

The furnace guys were great, too. They came right away. They called me on Saturday while I was at Kristy's baby shower and I ran home to let them in. They came back this morning to do the "finishing," and now there's a chunk of our basement a good decade younger than the rest. Swanky. And having to be home for the furnace guys gave me a few hours to tackle more of the home organization we need to finish before May, though "home organization" isn't as apt a term as "mass purging." I'm loving getting rid of things, it's so freeing.

The other thing the title refers to - I fear that today might be the last time I zip into a non-maternity winter coat. I love my puffy coat. It's been with me traveling, sledding, slipping and falling. But it's becoming more and more like a sausage casing, and tonight may be the night when I carry it down to the basement until next year. I made it to 27 weeks, at least. Sigh.

Our trip to Florida was great. We spent a beautiful morning on the beach, just Mike and me. My brother Gil likes to call us "Sprockets," which was an old Mike Meyers Saturday Night Live skit about German TV. The nickname refers to our blinding whiteness and propensity for wearing dark clothing and sunglasses on tropical family getaways. Gil must never know, but boy were we Sprockets on Fort Lauderdale beach. Then again, Fort Lauderdale beach in February is all nutball tourists anyway, so who cares. Those people were actually going in the water! That's insane. It may be 80 degrees out, but the water? Cold.

My sister was a beautiful bride, of course (my sister is smoking hot at all times). Her older son walked her down the aisle, and the little one stood between them while they said their vows (this wasn't planned, but he wouldn't sit down and it was all really sweet). The only weird thing about the whole wedding was that my sister married her high school boyfriend. And her high school boyfriend was the guy who, in 10th grade, could and DID grow a full mustache. With the parted feathered hair and the pants that look like MC Hammer pants. He is a great guy and is amazing with my sister's kids, and she is soooo happy with him, but he's THAT GUY and now she's married to him. I should really get over this. The day was gorgeous and they threw such a great party, and to be fair, my first high school boyfriend wore size 42 pants on a 29-inch waist. Shutting up now.

So now we're back in the cold but not as cold, and we're looking forward to a weekend of projects. Mike's parents are coming up and his dad will help him tear up the bathroom floor while his mom and I pull down wallpaper in the guest room. It will be nice to see them, too, though I don't think they have any idea how much work their son is going to try to wring out of them. Um, wait. Dave, are you reading this? Uh oh. See you tomorrow?

Snowbirds

2007-02-07T16:02:00.000-06:00

For those unfamiliar with the term, snowbirds are people who live in a northern climate and spend their summers in a warm place. Generally in gated retirement communities. As of tomorrow morning, Mike and I will be snowbirds. At least for a long weekend.

We leave at 7am for warm warm warm South Florida for family time and my sister's wedding. We'll visit with my siblings and all the nieces and nephews. Also exciting - a trip to South Beach for debauchery (as much debauchery as a pregnant woman can accomplish, anyway, I guess my role will be as designated driver of the debauchery) with BDH and clan.

Tonight we still have to do laundry, pack, and take Oskar to Dan and Melissa's for the weekend. He's had a bath and we washed all his bedding, so while he might be super annoying, he will not also be smelly. I've loaded my iPod with episodes of This American Life for the airplane and bought an extra thing of Tums for my carry-on. Here we go.

Extreme Cold Retards the Aging Process?

2007-02-05T10:04:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was my birthday and also the third day in a row where the temperature never got above zero. Or anywhere near zero. We started the day with birthday presents - CDs and some new Minneapolis Public Library schwag - and breakfast in bed, and then we watched "Syriana."

I just have to say that Mike and I are intelligent people. We have advanced degrees! One of Mike's is even in Science! We watch the news every morning! Clearly, though, we were too dumb for "Syriana." I didn't understand a thing after the menu screen. It's totally possible that the "Traffic"-like editing was what made it so hard for me to get; I need some establishing shots or exposition early in the morning. Watching "Syriana" was like when the electricity goes out when you're in the shower - it's all familiar and still somehow do-able, but extremely disorienting.

After the movie, it was still only about 10am, and instead of making the wise decision to stay in (it was 15 below!!), we went out to run errands. We had a bunch of things to accomplish and figured that the cold and the Super Bowl would keep the stores pretty empty. We had birthday gift cards to use up (Mike's birthday is 5 days before mine), so we headed to an outlet mall in the suburbs and found him a sweater and me some maternity jeans. I had to buy a few things for our upcoming trip to South Florida, because all of the clothes that currently fit my constantly exploding midsection are for winter and it's in the 70s in my parents' Village of the Aged. Kind of surreal, the idea that on Thursday morning we'll get on a plane and a few hours later it will be at least 75 degrees warmer. Like time-warping to a different planet.

I don't remember it ever getting this cold and staying this way for so long since I've lived here. When people ask where I'm from and I tell them, "South Florida," I always get the same response - "WHY are you here??" I like Minneapolis a lot, but no I'm not used to the cold. And to be fair, even people who are from here don't like it when it's this cold. But 30s, 20s, even the teens are totally bearable with the right clothing and I'll take another Minnesota winter over a Florida summer, especially a summer in Central Florida, where I attended college. So humid you pull your clothes out of the dryer and in 5 minutes, they're wet again. A total swamp.

On the other hand, it's pretty freaking cold here right now. Schools are closed because nobody would make a little kid wait for the bus in these temperatures. Oskar has to go out twice as often because he can't stay out long enough to actually finish his business in one trip. He dances back and forth, standing on two feet at a time to keep from freezing in place, and he'll run back in the house to warm up a bit before hopping back out to finish the job.

At first I was glad that we were having Ignatz in the spring, because we'd get to be out and about and not be cooped up in the middle of winter with a newborn, but now I'm concerned that he'll get used to the lovely mild weather and come next winter he'll feel shocked and royally duped. Oh well, he'll be half Mike, too, and Mike is pure Minnesotan. With my luck, Ignatz will dig snow tunnels around the house for six hours at a time and then come in, his nose in a plastic baggie, and demand fried cheese products, tater tots, and a glass of whole milk.

Speaking of Ignatz, we had our 24-week check-up on Friday and everything is looking good. He is big enough that if I lie still while he's kicking, we can watch my whole belly jump and tremble. It's an old wives' tale that excessive heartburn during pregnancy means your baby is going to have a lot of hair, so we're expecting Ignatz to come out sporting a giant afro. Which, given who his mother is, is not terribly unlikely anyway.

Stay warm, people.

Sweet! Literally.

2007-01-22T15:28:00.000-06:00

On Friday, Kristy and I had a pregnant lady afternoon. We started with lunch and then moved on to pedicures. My brother-in-law had given me a gift card to Aveda for Hanukkah, and since my hair and skin are on some kind of hormonal freakout, I decided that getting our toes attended to would be the safest bet.

So we're sitting there, feet all a-soaking, and in walks a deliveryman carrying two boxes that look like pizza but smell like chocolate. It's Dennis of Tank Goodness, and he has two dozen fresh-from-the-oven cookies. For me! And milk, too! Turns out my awesome friend Jeff had ordered this for me and they had managed, through no small amount of subterfuge, to track me to Aveda. There were a dozen chocolate chip and a dozen oatmeal chocolate chip, and they were amazing. Hot, delicious, made from the best ingredients possible. What a thoughtful and truly sweet gift, and Kristy and I were two ecstatic preggos. Yes, of course, we saved plenty for Mike.

Thank you, Jeff and Molly and the boys for the fabulous gift!

Fun for Nerds

2007-01-16T13:31:00.000-06:00

I am feeling better today, so this morning I went for an orientation session for a volunteer thing I'm starting next week. One morning a week, before I go in to work, I'll be a classroom helper and tutor 4th graders in math. It's part of a program to help urban schools meet NCLB standards. The school, an elementary school in North Minneapolis, has been exceeding reading score requirements for several years, so we're focusing on math.

I'm pretty excited. I really like doing math and this is a fun age to work with. It's through a program with the Minneapolis Public Schools, though, so I had to provide actual references. I warned my boss that they're going to call him for a reference and he told me that while he'll state for the record that I have never harmed a small child, he wouldn't vouch for my treatment of little dogs. Hardy har.

Now I'm at work for a couple of hours, rounding up some people for a meeting next week and playing catch-up with my email. I'm only here a little longer and hopefully, when I get home, the dress I ordered for my sister's wedding will be here. I'm an "attendant" or whatever you call bridesmaids when you're trying to be low-key. We're supposed to wear black (yay!), and I was lucky enough to win a hot Liz Lange maternity cocktail dress on eBay for cheap.

Happy wind chill, everyone!

It's Getting Better All The Time

2007-01-13T17:33:00.000-06:00

Two weeks after surgery and I ended up back in the hospital last night. A spot on my incision has gotten infected. I'll take antibiotics and keep it open to drain. Ewww.

I'm feeling really fortunate. That Ignatz is okay, still growing, still giving me insistent little kicks that tickle and surprise me. Fortunate that my mom came and stayed for a week, that we have really good health insurance, that everything will eventually be okay.

But I'm also feeling a little down. I want this all to be behind us, so that we can nest, redo the upstairs bathroom, clean out the kitchen cabinets, get ready to be parents. For everything I feel lucky for, there are things I realize I took for granted - cooking for myself, tying my shoes, showering without having Mike sit in the bathroom with me in case I need help. I'm not patient enough to be a good patient, if that makes sense. The infection is a setback, not a huge one, but a setback still.

I'll rally. I'll do another paint-by-numbers and watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy again and then I'll rally.

Adventures in Emergency Surgery

2007-01-02T08:11:00.000-06:00

It's a long story, and kind of a scary one. It might take a few posts to get it all out, I get tired really quickly right now. If you're squeamish, I'll jump to the end before I start - the baby is fine. I'm fine. Mike is fine. We will all be fine.

On Thursday morning, Mike and I were scheduled for our first ultrasound. We woke up that morning excited and nervous, and while I was blowdrying my hair, I noticed a pain in my side. A tender spot that felt like a stitch in my side, but closer to my belly button. It was sore to the touch, but it felt like muscle pain, which my pregnancy book had told me to expect. We proceeded.

By the time we arrived at the hospital and parked next to each other in the garage, it had gotten a lot worse. Not emergency-room bad, but sit-out-of-the-rest-of-the-workout bad. I figured I'd mention it to the ultrasound tech and if it didn't ease up, we'd stop at the OB clinic and check in with my midwife on the way out.

We had our ultrasound! When the tech first touched the ultrasound thingy to my belly, we saw a flurry of movement, and Ignatz didn't sit still for the entire exam. He looks great! Measuring about 5 days big and super active. And that pronoun was correct two sentences ago - Ignatz showed us what he needed to and he is definitely a boy. A show-off, hey-look-at-my-junk boy. We got some great ultrasound pictures and the entire experience was really exciting.

And then. The ultrasound tech, who had had to be really careful near the sore spot on my abdomen finished the exam and did me a favor by checking out the sore area. To see if it was a pulled muscle or what. She was unsure about what she saw, so she called in the radiology resident. Who then called in the staff doctor. Who showed us, on the screen, a "7 centimeter soft tissue mass." He was pretty sure it was a fibroid, and called up to OB to get us an appointment for that afternoon.

So we left and went to the hospital cafeteria for breakfast. We excitedly called our families to tell them about the successful ultrasound and the visible boy parts and gave them some brief info about my pain (getting even worse now) and the later appointment. We sat in the cafeteria eating and looking at our ultrasound pictures for about half an hour, my pain getting steadily worse and worse. By the time we got up to walk out to the parking garage to head in to work for a few hours before the next appointment, I couldn't walk anymore. We called OB again and I was ordered up to Labor and Delivery immmediately.

After sitting in Labor and Delivery triage for half an hour sobbing in pain and in fear that I'd been sent to Labor and Delivery because something was horribly wrong with Ignatz, a nurse came in, got me onto a table, and assured me that the only reason I was in that department was because I'd be seen sooner and could have some type of pain management until a diagnosis was made. An hour later, a resident strolled in, examined me, and then hurried out, ordering an IV of Dilaudid.

The doctors started pouring in. All super attractive successful female OBs. With cute glasses. Women with whom I would, in other circumstances, be in a book club. Residents, staff doctors, surgeons. I am just pregnant enough that the ultrasound was crowded. They couldn't tell whether it was on my uterus or my ovary, but they thought ovary and that required emergency surgery. I've never had surgery before, besides wisdom teeth, and this terrified me. I couldn't possibly have surgery. I'm pregnant! You can't cut pregnant people open! And I can certainly NOT miss 4 to 6 weeks of work. And I'd prepaid for the prenatal yoga I was supposed to start the following week. And my sister is getting married the first week in February in Florida. Everything crashed around in front of me.

The chief resident, who was phenomenal, advocated for me and pushed them to wait on the surgery and let me have an MRI. I would still need the surgery, she said, but they wouldn't be going in totally blind if the MRI could show us anything. MRI took me right away (at this point I'd had two rounds of Dilaudid and the pain was still steadily getting worse; I blacked out briefly lowering myself onto the toilet to pee) and I laid in the metal tunnel for half an hour listening to talk radio on headphones and wondering if we'd ever meet Ignatz. Would I lose the pregnancy and then one of my ovaries to boot?

The MRI, at first glance, seemed inconclusive, and the chief resident started drawing, on a sheet of notebook paper, what would happen during surgery. Then the chief of radiology called. He could see the tumor. It was not on my ovary. It was growing off of my uterus, attached by a stalk. Which was good news, because they could cut the stalk and not touch my uterus, which meant good things for Ignatz. And it was bleeding, which made surgery a definite, but now they knew what they were looking for. Transport came and got me for surgery and I kissed Mike goodbye.

Surgery was fast, under an hour. They didn't put me under, because general anesthesia can cause preterm labor and other complications for a fetus. I had a spinal block and remained awake, feeling the pressure and movement of what the doctors were doing, but not the pain. When they were done, the successful attractive female doctors in cute glasses all turned into 9-year-old boys, "Woah. That's really big." "I wanna cut it open. Pathology wants it intact but I realllllly wanna cut it open." "Carin, wanna see it?"

I did. And they showed me. There, in a plastic container, the kind the Chinese place gives you your hot and sour soup to go in, was a fibroid the size of a softball. It all seemed like it was happening to someone else. They stapled me up, 14 staples up my abdomen, and sent me to recovery. It was 5pm and it seemed like weeks had passed since we'd checked in for our ultrasound. Once I got to recovery, they did an ultrasound and we watched Ignatz, unaware of any of the drama, give me a few elbow jabs to let us know he was bored.

This has taken me a few days to type. Like I said, I get tired. I spent a few days recovering in the hospital and now I'm home. My mom came up from Florida to help so that Mike could go back to work (he needs to save his sick and vacation time for when Ignatz makes his big appearance in the spring). Melissa came to visit and brought me warm socks, Kristy came with magazines, and Devorah just dropped off an enormous pot of homemade matzo ball soup. I can do a little more every day, so I'll catch up on how we're recovering in the next few.

TV Personality

2006-12-18T09:33:00.000-06:00

Minneapolis isn't Manhattan, but you do see an occasional celebrity. Sometimes really big celebrities - I once passed Prince in Calhoun Square and he is completely magnificent in person. Sometimes more specialty celebrities, people who are super famous to me and people with my interests, but whom my mom might not recognize (my mom is my eternal litmus test). Like standing next to Dave Pirner at a Fugazi show. Or getting hugged by former governor Wendy Anderson while registering voters at the Farmer's Market.

Anyway, on Friday, while I was picking up Mike's Hanukkah gift at Macy's downtown, I met Katy Gerdes, a designer from the most recent season of Project Runway. I'm kind of obsessed with that show, so it was exciting to have a local designer featured this season, and it was a huge bummer to see her voted off so early on (she definitely should have outlasted at least Bradley and Vincent). She is absolutely adorable in person, and very sweet. I only talked to her for a few minutes, because I was neurotic that I was in some way bothering her or invading her space. If I was in fact annoying her, she did not let on and was super polite. I would've liked to ask her more about her experience on the show and about what she's doing now, but I didn't want to pry or bug her. Holy crap! I've become Minnesotan! Oy.

The only drag about meeting her was that just 15 minutes earlier, I'd been drinking coffee with Journey, another huge Project Runway fan. Journey has actually been so inspired by the show that he's started taking apparel design and construction classes in community ed. If only he had walked down to Macy's with me instead of going back to work! He would have died.

Catching Up

2006-12-14T14:04:00.000-06:00

I haven't wanted to post for a while, because between being sick all the time and getting used to the novelty of the whole thing, all I would've posted about was being pregnant. And I'm really wary of becoming one-note. In writing and in real life.

But very recently, I've started feeling a lot better. My energy is coming back and I've started getting out again. And boy am I glad. I was starting to feel like a womb on legs. On a boat, pitching back and forth on a choppy lake. Like my entire purpose was to gestate and feel like crap all of the time. No joy in Mudville. But we've turned a corner, Ignatz and I. Oh yes, the kid-in-waiting is being called Ignatz*. Which rhymes with tater tots, and also with our last name.

So, now that we've reentered civilization, here's what Ignatz and I have been doing:

X-MAS EVE JEWBILEE
The Jewbilee is a big event that happens on Christmas Eve. Last year was the first, and it was a blast. We're doing it again this year, and it's only going to be better. Deejays are booked, a really great local rapper is booked, local businesses are coming through with door prizes, and we've got awesome sponsors (The Current, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and more). I'm picking up the posters this afternoon and I'm beyond psyched.

It's a good thing it's such a great event, because it has basically eaten my life. Last year, I had my lovely co-worker and friend Alyse to co-staff this thing. Alyse has moved on to a much larger city where she can walk down the street singing showtunes and not be weird, and I miss her on a million levels, the most recent of which is in her role as co-planner. It's part of my job to plan this event, so I get to do a lot during work hours, but I still have to get the rest of my job done somehow. So it's a good thing my energy has come back. And if you're not doing anything on Christmas Eve, come on over to Nordeast and party with the Indie Jews. Details here.

CATCHING UP WITH THE CREEK
I never watched Dawson's Creek when it was on TV. There was a pretty significant chunk of my life during which television pretty much fell off the planet, and I ended up missing out on some serious pop culture. Like the Spice Girls. And Dawson's Creek.

A segue to inform you that it takes at least 25 minutes of blowdrying for my hair to get totally dry. I have an assload of hair. And it's winter. And I'm still a tiny bit draggy in the mornings.

So in stead of standing in front of the mirror when I blowdry, I've started sitting in the bed. In front of the TV. With the captioning on. And watching Dawson's Creek. I have no enormous insight into the Creek, but a few days ago I experienced one of my FAVORITE phenomena - the wraparound. The series ended. Finale played. Then the next day? Started over again. I love that! For about three years, I was the evening director of a small technical college and didn't go to work until 12:30pm. Two back-to-back episodes of ER a day meant that I got the wraparound like 4 times during my tenure. It's like an eclipse. Or my brother Todd calling me. Rare and coveted.

CATCHING UP WITH GOOD FRIENDS
This weekend, Mike and I went over to Fred and Julie's house and watched them put up their Christmas tree. We drank real hot chocolate and then Julie made me show Fred how newfangled maternity pants work. I've missed them, and it's good to see them, Julie glueing googly eyes on reindeer ornaments and Fred procrastinating writing papers for school.

Today I had lunch with Mel. A marathon lunch at the Birchwood. We shared a piece of chocolate/orange torte cake and she filled me in on all the gossip I've been missing. She poked at my miniature bump and gave good hugs.

So I've got a new life tucked inside, and a renewed zest for my own life bursting through. Maybe it's the weather. It feels deceptively like spring, though I know it'll get bitter and cold again soon. In the meantime, I'll visit with friends, start prenatal yoga, and force that fat little dachshund to do some walking with me.

*We are not actually naming said child Ignatz.

Future Spelling Bee Champ

2006-11-28T08:11:00.000-06:00

I am playing host organism to a very small human being. Said human is scheduled to depart from his or her comfy pod inside my midsection in May. And then on to a good college!

So that was the other thing about Europe. I barfed everywhere. Trains, airports, the Louvre (beautiful bathrooms, by the way), a McDonalds in Rome, a different McDonalds in Rome. Did you know they keep it dark inside Paris Metro stations? It's supposedly a deterrent, so that junkies won't have enough light to shoot up. I had enough light, though. And I had Mike stand next to the toilet so that I could hold on to his legs and avoid actually touching the toilet in order to keep from falling in. He was a trooper. We were both troopers.

Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled to be expecting. And Europe was still fabulous and romantic, if slower-paced than we thought when we booked the tickets last summer. It was exciting to tour beautiful cities and incredible museums with our secret package in tow, knowing this amazing thing was happening to us, having these experiences together while we daydreamed and wondered at what's coming next. That said, though, the biggest challenge of the trip has been trying to talk about the trip without mentioning what was central to our thoughts the entire time, and I'm glad to finally get that off my chest. We're in the second trimester and are out of the closet (or I guess we are now). Whew.

Yes, for now I am still yakking every morning like a freshman at a Utility House party. Yes, I know it will go away eventually. And no, I'm not tired of hearing everyone else's pregnancy tales. Not even a little.

Pictures from Europe, Part Three

2006-11-25T21:11:00.000-06:00

Roma, finalmente!

The Day Before the Holiday

2006-11-22T09:47:00.000-06:00

I love working the day before a holiday.

First off, no traffic. This morning, Mike and I watched the news, which showed us the tremendous traffic jams on all roads heading away from the Twin Cities. Scary. However, the roads that keep you in the Twin Cities? Deserted. Sweet! My commute from Minneapolis to St. Paul, a whopping 11 and a half miles that normally takes half an hour? Took 12 minutes. Ahhh.

Next, no coworkers. They have all taken the day off, either to head out of town to family or to prepare their own homes for incoming guests. So I'm here by myself. Which means that I can accomplish most of my day's work in about 4 hours, interruption-free. And since I just got off the phone with my boss, who told me to "take it easy, leave when I feel like it," that's sounding like a decent plan.

Finally, in addition to having no coworkers, I have no meetings. So I didn't have to bother to make myself lovely today. I am in jeans, a hoodie, and a hat. I didn't even have to get my afro in check! Plus, it's a dorky Puma hat I bought in Rome just to keep my head dry when the sky opened up, and this completely adds to the fun. I could've chosen more stylish headwear, but that wasn't the point.

Early tomorrow morning, Mike and I will pack our maniac wiener dog into the family truckster and head down to rural southern Minnesota to spend Turkey Day with his parents and extended family. Today though, I will enjoy my beautiful empty Twin Cities and what's turning out to be the best workday of the year.

Enjoy your holiday!

Election Scorecard 2006

2006-11-08T11:45:00.000-06:00

The Good
Keith Ellison wins, becoming the US's first Muslim in Congress. And also just a great example of what grassroots organizing and relationship-building can accomplish. A tribute to the late Senator Wellstone.

Amy Klobuchar heads to the Senate! And Mark Kennedy retreats into KreepyLand to hang out with his mom.

The Bad
Tim Pawlenty edges out Mike Hatch by 1% of the vote and remains our Governor. Hatch, you sure blew that one. Next time you call a bunch of people "Republican Whores," (not that I don't agree with you), have the good sense to wait until after the election. Geez. For the first half hour of election returns, we were pretty sure Pawlenty would be combing the want ads but no, you and your fat mouth to his rescue. Bleargh.

The Ugly
Yep. Michele Bachmann.

The Radical
My friend Jeremy Kalin won the House of Representatives seat in District 17B, a super red district. Go Jeremy!

Europe Pictures, Part Two

2006-11-07T08:37:00.000-06:00

Longano pictures are online!

Vote Tomorrow

2006-11-06T12:44:00.000-06:00

If you don't know where to vote, visit this site for a Minneapolis precinct finder.

If you're not in Minneapolis, try Googling "precinct finder" and the name of your city or county.

Pictures from Europe, Part One

2006-11-03T14:26:00.000-06:00

We took almost 500 pictures on our trip, so it's taking us a while to go through them and pick the ones that are decent enough to upload. We're dividing the trip into Paris, Longano, and Rome, just to simplify (and make us feel accomplished when we've only sorted through half so far).

So bear with us.

And for now, here's Paris!

They Only Live to Get Radical

2006-11-02T09:03:00.000-06:00

Normally, in the morning, Mike and I watch the news while we get ready for work. This morning, however, while my face was still planted in the pillow, Mike started flipping channels. Maybe he saw a Michelle Bachmann campaign ad and got scared. You can only stare into the face of the devil for a minute before your eyes melt, you know.

So Mike is flipping, and it hits me like the voice of an angel. Keanu Reeves. And he's talking about surfing. With Gary Busey! Point Break is on. It's 5:49am and Point Break is on. And I sit up and spit out, "Stop flipping! This is Point Break! Turtle from North Shore is in this movie. You LOVE Turtle from North Shore."

Mike informs me that he's never seen Point Break, and I quickly fill him in the relevant plot points and then...we watched the movie. We watched Keanu chase a Ronald Reagan-masked Patrick Swayze through backyards and houses, and we discussed how very 80s such a chase was (though Point Break came out in 1991, we believe it was cinematically paying homage to the great films of the previous decade). We noticed that Beecher from "Oz" was playing one of the bank robbers. And we discussed my love for James LeGros and wondered why we never see him in anything anymore.

At the end of the movie, there's a scene where Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze jump from a plane and plummet to earth. Only Swayze has a parachute, so Keanu grabs onto him and (after a lengthy discussion about what he should do with his gun that in real life would have ended up with both of them as dead as James LeGros is at this point), pulls Swayze's ripcord. The chute opens and both men are jerked upward.

Mike: That so would not happen. Keanu Reeves could not have hung on.
Me: Well he had both hands at that point.
Mike: I don't care. The force of that chute opening would've knocked him off of Patrick Swayze.
Me: I don't know. I mean they only had to fall a few feet and he looked like he had a really good hold on him. Oh my god, I'm defending Point Break.
Mike: It's science. This movie sucks.
Me: You're right. This is a movie that tried to foist Lori Petty on us as a sexy hetero leading lady!
Mike: This is a Patrick Swayze/Keanu Reeves vehicle. I feel stupider now.
Me: I concur. But the big "suicide by surfing" scene is coming up so let's watch that.
Mike: Sweet.

A few minutes later, Mike left for work, and instead of my normal goodbye, I called after him, "Chaka, brah!"

Happy Hallo-wiener

2006-10-31T18:52:00.000-06:00

This year, for Halloween, Oskar asked if he could be "a superhero, but the kind who gets to lay on the couch and smoke cigars."

How could we refuse? He already had the cape.

Arrivederci Roma

2006-10-20T12:44:00.001-05:00

So, two days in Rome.

We started yesterday. We wound through the streets to the Trevi Fountain eating gelato (chocolate for Mike and limone for me). The Trevi Fountain was stuffed with tourists (not like us), so we continued on to the Pantheon as it started to rain.

Consider that - ducking inside the Pantheon to get out of the rain. Worldly. Poetic even. Not totally practical however; as we read once inside the Pantheon, the center of the dome is actually open to allow rain to enter, and a series of 22 smaller holes in the floor allow for drainage. We stayed dry on the outer edge of the dome and took in the beauty of a structure so old and so magnificent. I have to say, even as a big Jew, I've fallen in love with Madonna and child iconography and art. It's really touching.

As we left the Pantheon, we were nearly trampled by the cast of "Harry Potter and the Choir Trip to Rome." We sat at the base of an enormous column and waited out the rain; we watched a maintenance worker spread sawdust on the ground and decided to spend 5 Euros on an umbrella.

We moved on to the Coliseum, getting completely lost and walking in a circle twice along the way (Mike took us in a circle so then I, thinking I could do much better, took us in a totally different circle). We grabbed a slice of pizza and continued to the Forum and the Colisuem. The day was seeming short so we skipped the tour. Mike surreptitiously photographed the Italian men who stand outside the Coliseum in gladiator costumes and charge tourists to take their pictures.

We hopped on the Metro to Piazza Barberini and walked from there to Piazza de la Repubblica, where our American selves enjoyed an American movie. By the time we returned to our hotel, we fell into bed, exhausted.

This morning, we breakfasted for the second day on fresh bread and cookies from the bakery a block from our hotel. Which is nice, by the way. Really hot shower with excellent water pressure, and super clean linens. I've been super happy with and impressed by our accomodations throughout this trip.

We headed out to the Metro station and I experienced what I'll probably hold on to as a sense memory of our trip - a blast of warm air as the train approaches just as we walk down the stairs to the platform. It happened several more times today and made me feel as though we were doing something right, like we had finally hit our rhythm in Europe.

We visited Vatican City and the Basilica and it was there that we finally, for the first time on our trip, purchased a souvenir. Joel had requested we bring him back a Pope bottle opener. There's been a new Pope since the last time Mike was in Rome and of course, tacky souvenirs must be updated.

From the Vatican we headed back on the Metro to the Spanish Steps, where we window shopped at Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Bulgari, Prada, and peed at a McDonalds. You can always find a free (not clean) restroom at a McDonalds. Then we stopped at a ristorante and had a lovely sit-down dinner: pasta and caprese salad. We stopped at a shop to load up on Italian fruit candy and then set out to wander. It's our last night in Rome and last night of vacation, so we want to soak up a bit more of the lit-up streets and awesome company before we return to our hotel to crash one more time.

We leave tomorrow morning from Rome and after a day of flying (with a plane change in Chicago), we return to Minneapolis in time to still call it Saturday. I'm glad to be getting home. I can't wait to sleep in our own comfy bed. I want to burn these jeans. But vacationing has been so nice, and I'm not at all tired of spending entire days with Mike. Sometimes I wish we were the idle rich and we could spend all our time together traveling. Or just together loafing. Whatever. Mike's a really great travel companion - he's smart and patient and plans great adventures.

Thanks to everyone who helped out with this trip or just wished us well. Everyone deserves a great vacation. We've really enjoyed ours.

Arrivederci from Roma!

International House of Pancakes

2006-10-19T06:17:00.000-05:00

Did you know they don't have pancakes in Southern Italy?

We spent 4 great days with Tony in Longano. Mike helped him in the machine shop and the two of them hung a sign Tony was commissioned to make for a Caffe in Isernia. I will post pictures from home; Tony does really wonderful work. Modern and design-y but still very true to the architecture and spirit of the small villages. They fixed a lathe and helped Tony's future in-laws haul bales and bales of hay in a pickup truck the size of my Volkswagen.

Me? I slept, read, took walks with Mike, and took in the mountains and the fresh air and the pace. The fresh air, of course, smelled like wine; it's the season. Tony's neighbor across the alley took us into his basement to show us his setup - he presses the grapes and, depending on whether they're to become white or red wine, they sit for a day or a week. Then he ferments the juice. The wine wasn't ready, but we tried the fresh grape juice Tony's aunt had prepared.

Every day we ate pasta for lunch. Everything was delicious in Longano, which brings me back to the pancakes. When Mike and Tony were roommates in Minneapolis, they ate pancakes. Mountains and mountains of pancakes. Italians don't eat pancakes, so Tony was looking forward to our visit and Mike's mom's pancake recipe ("Annecakes").

Problem - you can't even get the makings of a pancake in Southern Italy. No baking powder. No problem, you think, Mike is a chemist and can whip something up with baking soda, right? No baking soda, either. Huh. But we're industrious American kids, and we discovered that there in the Farmacia, they sold (as a sore foot remedy) bicarbonato. Sodium bicarbonate. Baking soda. It took a lot of tweaking, but after a couple of batches, we produced some not just serviceable but downright tasty pancakes. Stacks and stacks. We invited Tony's Italian friends over, and though they were skeptical at first, soon they were putting down pancakes like champs. Tony even served real maple syrup brought over by a recent visitor from California (Tony takes this pancake stuff seriously).

Bolstered by our success with the pancakes, the next night Tony proposed (and executed) another fond American favorite - grilled cheese and french fries. Fresh, of course, everything from the garden, and fried in olive oil from the olive trees in the backyard.

Longano was a much-needed break and we really enjoyed ourselves. We were sad to leave yesterday afternoon, but we boarded the train back to Rome, our last stop. We'll be here for a couple of days, and then we fly home on Saturday.

If I don't get a chance to post again before we leave Rome, I will finish out our trip diary when we get back to the States.

P.S. Italian music television rules. I have seen the new Scissor Sisters video at least eight times and I keep enjoying it more and more (also, it's playing in the internet cafe where I'm typing this and I'm still not tired of it).

Everone is Named Tony

2006-10-15T11:35:00.000-05:00

We spent a long night on the train to Rome. We ended up sharing a coach after all, both of us on the top bunks with a Frenchman down below. Mike didn’t quite fit in his bunk and slept fitfully. I slept okay but woke with motion sickness and spent some time in the W/C.

We arrived in Rome with a few hours to kill before our train to Isernia, but with our bags (and me still queasy), we didn’t want to go far from the terminal, so we got some fresh air and rested a bit in a nearby park. We’ll be back in Rome in a few days, anyway, so we’ll dive in and explore then.

At 2:15 we boarded the train to Isernia. We were stopped on the tracks due to a problem in Cassino, but after an hour, we were moving again. The train was comfortable and the sun shining in made us hot, but we welcomed it after the grey cold of Paris. We loved just sitting and watching the Italian countryside go by as we traveled south.

Tony picked us up at the station in Isernia in his Fiat, which Mike called “Gumby Green.” He told us he hadn’t cared for the color, but that he hadn’t cared when he found out it had air conditioning. Tony took us up the mountain to his house in Longano. It’s actually his parents’ house. His parents are back in Philadelphia and Tony lives in their house here. The custom is for the father to build a house for first-born son, and Tony is remodeling the second floor of this house to live in with his wife when he gets married next year.

One of Tony’s friends (also named Tony) was having a birthday, so we all went out for pizza. We ordered individual pizzas, mine was marinara and Mike’s was mushroom and truffle. We realized how tame (Tony said “wussy,” which is a super-Philly thing to say) our pizzas were when the rest of the group’s showed up. Pizzas stacked high with broccoli and lunch meats. A guy across the room had french fry pizza. They also brought out an appetizer platter of deep-fried potatoes, fish, and stuffed olives. The olives were amazing; please please please let this be the new State Fair delicacy!

For dessert, we were served vanilla ice cream dunked in a cup of espresso. Just delicious. Tony explained to us that here, on your birthday, you don’t get presents, AND you foot the bill for dinner. It sounds like a raw deal to me, and I guess this is one of those areas where Tony’s more American than Italian, because he brought a gift anyway and tried to pay for our dinner. The gift, a drill, was accepted, but the money was not.

Later, Tony and his fiancee Barbara went to piazza in the center of town to hang out some more, but Mike and I were exhausted and came back to Tony’s house to crash. Mike serenaded me with acoustic Jawbreaker songs on Tony’s guitar and then we called my mother-in-law in Mankato for her pancake recipe. We could hear Oskar barking through the phone, so we know he’s still obnoxious. We think this is a sign of his being in good health.

Today, we slept late and then Tony took us sightseeing up the mountain to his grandfather’s land. We hiked and walked and picked mushrooms, but none of us knew which would be good to eat, so we left them were we found them. Tony told us that, to the old people in the village, the abundance of trees on the mountainside is a scary thing. He explained that in the old days, there were so many people living in the village of Longano that the trees were all cut down and the mountain was bare and grassy. Now, the trees have grown up into a thriving forest and for the elders, this means that there aren’t enough people around. We took a lot of pictures today, I’ll upload them when we get home.

This part of the trip has been the best so far. We came back to Tony’s house and he made us lunch – crusty bread and pasta with his aunt’s homemade sauce. His friend Mario came by with a pizza crust he’d just pulled out of the oven. We sat around the wood-burning stove and caught up. I enjoyed sightseeing in Paris, and I’m looking forward to Rome, but to me, the part that makes this a vacation is the winding down. Life at home is fast, and we’ve needed this break. I can tell how much Mike is enjoying being with Tony, too. They’re into the same things – photography, building things. When I first met Mike, Tony had just moved away from Minneapolis and you could feel his absence. You can always feel the absence of a friend like that. Today is Sunday, so pretty much everything is closed in Longano. Which is fine with me, hanging around Tony’s house and eating good food has made for a great afternoon.

The only thing I would change, if I could, is that I wish I’d gotten through more of our Learn Italian CDs. None of Tony’s friends or his fiancee Barbara speak much English, and I wish we could’ve gotten to know them better. Telling them I have a fast and economical car just doesn’t build a bridge.

More to come. We have two more full days in Longano after today and then we head back up to Rome. Spero che state tutto bene!

Reporting from Paris

2006-10-13T06:05:00.000-05:00

Bonjour! It's our last day in Paris and we finally made it to the internet cafe. Say what you want, Mel, but Rick Steves was actually useful in this instance. To catch up:

We took off from Minneapolis on Monday afternoon. We landed at Charles de Gaulle airport early Tuesday morning and took the RER train into Paris, where we were able to leave our bags at the hotel until we chould check in after 1pm. We had lots of time to kill and were sleepy! We didn't sleep on the plane at all, mostly from the excitement of being on our way.

We spent the morning walking along the Seine, eating crepes (me a la confiture and Mike avec Nutella), and drinking strong black coffee. Exhausted, we walked back to Forum des Halles and watched people, walked over to Fountain des Innocents and watched more people. Finally, we checked into our hotel and took a nap! The hotel was very nice - small but clean and stylish, with a really friendly staff. We napped until dinnertime, when we set back out for a walk through Les Halles and couscous for dinner.

On Wednesday, we got a late start and ate lunch at Flunch, a cafeteria-style restaurant across from the Pompideau Center. We sat by the famous fountain, Homage to Stravinsky, and planned the day. We headed over to the Museum of Jewish History, and after touring the museum, sat in the courtyard and rested near the sukkah they had erected for the holiday. I especially enjoyed the large exhibit in the mezzanine area that featured stories and artifacts about Etre Juif a Paris before and after the occupation.

We went on to the Picasso Museum and visited Mike's favorite Picasso - Horse and Bull. He likes that he can't tell if they're fighting or playing. After the Picasso Museum, we wandered through the Marais and sat in a park watching children take a ping pong lesson. We walked back to the Fountain des Innocents to eat paninis and watch skateboarders. We finally returned to the hotel for a nap and turned on CNN International to learn that the pitcher for the Yankees had crashed his plane into a New York highrise. How terrible.

That night, Mike wanted to go to Notre Dame, but I was exhausted and still not over my jet lag, so he set out alone and I fell asleep listening to my iPod. Mike returned with French candies and a loaf of bread for the morning.

On Thursday, we visited the Louvre and looked at sculptures. I don't know if we could have done the entire Louvre without feeling overwhelmed, so we picked out the things we really wanted to see and saw them. If you're museum people (which I think Mike and I are), I really do recommend purchasing the multi-day Paris museum pass. It served us well, especially as after the Louvre we went to the Musee D'Orsay to see the French Impressionists. Rooms and rooms of them.

From the Orsay, we jumped on the Metro to La Place de Concorde, where Mike took pictures of me in front of the obelisk. In middle school, I was eliminated from a major county spelling bee on the word obelisk, which I spelled with a "que." So to see it spelled that way (in French) was a little redeeming. We hopped back on the Metro and headed to the Arc de Triomphe. There was some kind of French military demonstration or parade going on, a lot of old men in uniforms carring flags. A policewoman yelled at me for being in the way and we sprinted back through the underground passage to the Champs Elysees, where we strolled and finally headed back to Les Halles. We found a Thai restaurant close to our hotel, and when the waiter greeted us with, "Ca va," Mike responded with, "Au revoir!" Gotta love him for at least trying.

My high school French (I do not count the year in college which was actually French literature) is actually serving us really well, and only twice has Mike mistakenly asked for Dieu instead of l'eau (hee!) in a restaurant. We're having a great time on this adventure, getting to spend this much time together makes us feel like we did when we first started dating. In fact, when we first started dating, Mike had just come back from several months in Europe and was sporting lots of black socks with his black Clarks. He's brought that look back in full effect on this trip, so now he even looks like he did when we first started dating. Yay!

This evening we'll board a train for Italy, and we'll arrive in Rome tomorrow morning. From there we'll take another train to Isernia, where Tony will pick us up for a few days in his village, Longano. So I'll write again from Italy.

Hope everyone is well at home in the states!

Thursday Afternoon Brain Dump

2006-10-05T14:48:00.000-05:00

TV:
Last night, the Project Runway reunion show disappointed. It was only after Mike pointed out (quite astutely) that designer Robert Best sounds like Mr. Rogers that it became watchable (with our eyes closed). Actually, I think he sounds more like Mr. Rogers doing the voice of Henrietta the cat, but there's plenty of room for compromise on this issue. In any case, I'm not sure what the show accomplished, since it didn't reveal anything new or move any of the character arcs forward. At least there were tiny glimpses of Jay and Robert (is he hot now or am I on glue?) from Season 1 to remind me of when the show rocked.

WEEKEND:
This weekend is going to be insane. Saturday we have Fred and Julie's wedding, and Sunday my in-laws are coming up to pick up Oskar. Then we have to frantically clean the house, pack for our trip, and stock the fridge for our super awesome and extremely handsome and manly (he reads my blog) housesitter/brother-in-law, Tom. Lots of activity. All leading up to great things.

TRIP:
Monday we depart for Paris. We're excited. Yesterday morning, while I was getting ready for work, I heard Mike on the phone downstairs and could not for the life of me figure out who he could be talking to at 7am. It was our friend Tony (7 hours ahead), making plans to pick us up at the train station in Isernia to take us to Longano for our visit. So it's real and it's close!

We plan to stop at least every few days so that I can post here. That was the point of starting this blog, anyway - to keep a travel journal while we're away. We won't upload pictures until we get back, but I'll do my best to update along the journey.

So for now, au revoir and arrivederci!

Midnight Train to Roma

2006-09-28T17:42:00.000-05:00

Our EuroRail passes from Paris to Rome arrived today via UPS!

Good news - It's a 14 hour journey, and we were able to book two spots on the overnight train, so we'll arrive in Rome refreshed (before jumping on another train south to see Tony in Longano) and we'll sleep in beds without having to pay for a night in a hotel (which, given that the cost of the train tickets, is a very nice plus).

Bad news - Couchettes (sleeping cars) are segregated by gender, so we'll be spending the night apart. How unromantic. On the other hand, telling Mike, "I'll see you in Rome!" sounds romantic indeed.

In news from this continent, baby AMFM has arrived! We're going over to Lisa and Joel's to meet him tonight - can't wait.

Paris...booked!

2006-09-22T09:38:00.000-05:00

We're leaving for Europe in 2 and a half weeks, so you'd think we'd have everything planned and booked by now. Ha hahaha. Not so. We've had plane tickets for months, we know where we're going, we just haven't nailed down what we're doing when we get there. As a rule, we like to spend a long time talking about planning, going to the library and reading about what we might potentially plan to do, lazing about in the hammock daydreaming about what those plans might bring, and then and only then do we make plans.

We're flying to Paris on Monday, October 9th. The flight is overnight; we'll land in Paris on Tuesday at about 9am. On Saturday, October 21st, we fly back out of Rome. So here's the first chunk of what's happening in between:

We've booked a hotel in Paris, in the Marais. We'll spend Tuesday and Wednesday night in the hotel and the days wandering around Paris. We'd like to go to the Musee d'Orsay, Jardin des Tuileries, and Sacre Coeur, and my friend Holly has given us tips on a couple of different spots to sit and watch the Seine. I'm sure there are a million other things we will do in Paris, but it's at least reassuring to have a hotel room booked to act as home base.

Right now we're planning to leave Paris on Thursday evening and take the overnight train down to Rome. We need to make a call to our good friend Tony, who lives in southern Italy, to see if he wants to meet us in Rome for a few days before we journey down to see him and spend a few days relaxing in his village.

Planning is underway: send tips and recommendations!

And on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, I want to wish everyone L'Shana Tovah, a Happy and Sweet New Year!

Mustache Rides!

2006-09-15T13:08:00.000-05:00

I just got hit on at the bank! By a guy in his late 40s with a mustache, highlights, and super-tight jeans! It was kind of unsettling, because dude was sleazy. On the other hand, I had NO idea I was that kind of guy's type. Maybe it's because I'm wearing a jean jacket and big earrings...

Tonight we're going to the Poster Offensive opening. Bill Tee is deejaying, so I'm looking forward to some KISS tunes and smack talking.

And this Sunday is the annual Headwaters Walk for Justice. Our team has raised almost $3,800 this year, and I managed to raise about $250 myself (huge thanks to everyone who donated on my behalf and extra extra thanks to Joel for his awesome, generous, sweet last-minute donation that will motivate me to walk even in Sunday's predicted rainstorm).

I've had kind of a long week at work. A lot of financials to pull together and I've ended up staring at the computer for too many hours. I did go and present to a class at the Carlson School of Management, though. I'm getting a team of interns from a Nonprofit Management class, and on Wednesday I went to present my project to the entire class. Students will pick from 7 organizations/projects; we meet our teams next week.

The thing that was MOST interesting to me about the presentation was that 7 out of 10 of those college students were wearing some variation on a suit. This answered a question I've had for years and years. I used to watch Beverly Hills 90210 (okay I still watch it on SoapNet), and during the college years, the girls (especially Brandon's girlfriends, the Noxious Journalist Brunettes, Tracy and Susan) were constantly in suits. And I used to wonder (and scream at the TV), "What college students wear suits all the time???"

Aha - Business Students. So there you go.

Happy weekend, y'all.

Dachshund Races

2006-09-10T19:52:00.000-05:00

This weekend, Oskar participated in the 22nd Annual James J. Hill Dachshund Races. Even a cold front can't dampen your spirits with more than 120 wiener dogs milling about. Just ridiculous.

Take a look at some pictures.

When You Know You're Not Cool

2006-09-06T10:54:00.000-05:00

I met my friend Margaret for coffee this morning, and at some point, our discussion made its way to the moment when you realized you were a nerd, dork, whatever. For her, it was the day she looked around her lunch table and noticed that all her friends were dorks. And if they're all dorks then I must be...shit!

If you knew me, you'd think there wouldn't be one definitive moment, because my entire childhood was about being a huge unpopular weirdo. But there actually was that definitive moment. I mean, I knew I was a huge weirdo, but there was that definitive moment where I finally got exactly how unpopular I was because of it.

In sixth or seventh grade, I was a CIT (Counselor in training - basically, slave labor) at a summer camp. Every staff member had to take a turn leading the Pledge of Allegiance, and then we were supposed to give a Quote of the Day. Most of the quotes were from TV shows, movies, or totally rockin' 80s songs. When it was my turn, I went to the library, got a book of quotations, and chose one that I thought was great: "He who fishes for compliments is apt to be handed a line." Damn, that's hot! It had a pun! It had a message!

See, here's the thing: I wasn't trying to be a smartypants. I wasn't trying to be "different." I honestly thought that everyone would LOVE my quote! I thought that they would really appreciate that I had clearly gone the extra mile to find a really really great quote! The quote would enrich them as it had enriched me.

So yeah, not so. After I did my Quote of the Day, one of my friends (I guess) turned to me and said, "See, that's why people don't like you." Sweeeet. Good to know.

In any case, the thing that makes this super timely is that then, after my coffee date with Margaret, I came in to work and logged into Myspace (mostly to see Chuck's ironic picture of the day) and found something. Or a lack of something.

There's a girl on Myspace who I really don't know at all. We met ONCE at a Dachshund Meetup Playdate thing and then she found me on Myspace and friended me. I didn't even know who she was until I read her blog and found mention of her dogs. Anyway, she's not someone I'd really BE friends with - she's like a 22-year old suburban Republican homophobe but whatever, wiener dogs build community or something. I've never communicated with her other than accepting her friend request, I don't know her at all. And she posts about 90 bulletins a day and it's just super annoying. Every day I log in to Myspace and have to click past her 90 bulletins to get to the one I might want to read from an actual friend.

So this morning, no bulletins. What? Did she die? Did her internet access get cut off? I check my friends list and...she's gone! She freaking deleted me. She deleted me. What?

Maybe she found out about the quote.

Three!

2006-08-31T16:04:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was my third wedding anniversary.

I read something on the internet a while ago, and I can't find it now, but it was a quote, something about how I never thought I'd be happy being just a wife, until I found out whose wife I was going to be. I don't know about the "just" - I don't think anyone's just anything, but I think I understand the sentiment. I don't think I saw myself as the marrying type, and I don't think everyone needs a partner to be happy (and people with partners definitely don't need to get married), but nothing in the world has ever felt as normal to me as being married to Mike does. I'm my own person, for sure, but who I am in relation to the rest of the universe always felt awkward, like a bathing suit that's wearable but doesn't really fit. That changed when I ran into Mike (or when he rolled his bike into my living room, whichever).

So a moment, if you will, to pay brief homage to that which is Mike. And to satisfy my sister-in-law, Sarah, who has reminded me repeatedly that she only likes to look at pictures.

Mike's old band from high school has a Myspace page, and a few days ago our friend Josh posted a picture of Mike in the comments section:

He's probably about 18 in this picture (though I swear that shirt is still in his drawer) and I didn't know him then. I have about a million pictures of Mike at various ages, but this one struck me. Not just because it made me think, "If I was 18 I would totally hit that," though it did (and by "hit that" I of course mean "have an obsessive crush on and never actually speak to"). It struck me because his crooked smile is the same as in this picture that I took a few weeks ago:

Mike's punk rock is semi-retired now, and he likes to tell me that he's old, but I think he's the same guy. He's the guy who likes to drive the tour van (he definitely knows how to fix it), always remembers ear plugs, and though he will lend a hand with your equipment, he will not hesitate to steamroller you if you've had too much to drink and fall out early.

He's my best friend, and I would totally hit that.

Happy anniversary, Micycle.

Sleep Tight, Little Man

2006-08-29T22:16:00.000-05:00

Oskar's back is hurt again. That crazy wiener, running up and down steps, jumping up on and back off the couch when we're not looking; his eyes are bigger than his little legs. May the baby aspirin and songs we sing him carry him off to sleep tonight. Sweet dreams, Little Man.

Looking for Patricia N. Davis

2006-08-29T08:52:00.000-05:00

On Saturday night, we got a series of phone calls that we initially dismissed as a simple, yet persistent, wrong number. As the calls continued, we learned that Ruben, calling from Texas, was looking for his old girlfriend. The last time he'd been in the Twin Cities was in 1973, when his girlfriend was 14. She lived at our phone number then.

Ruben is 52 now and hasn't spoken to Patricia in over 30 years. We tried to suggest ways for him to find her, like Google or that 555-1212 thing, but he just seemed really frustrated and kind of distraught. We eventually had to cut him loose, as we had to get to the Ada Jane CD release party, but I thought about him for the rest of the night. I looked it up - there are 5 Patricia Davises in Minneapolis, one of them lives 19 blocks away from us. It's probably not her. She's probably moved on or married and changed her name by now, right? It would probably be totally inappropriate to call her, right?

I don't know why, after over 30 years, Ruben was so desperate to find her right now, at 9pm on a Saturday night. Maybe he was a little depressed or a little drunk.

I don't know if Ruben reached her. He reached me.

Harvest Festival

2006-08-17T09:33:00.000-05:00

Yesterday after work, I went to the Youth Farm Harvest Festival. We were given a tour of the Lyndale garden by an 11-year-old girl named Rama, who was possibly the tallest and most articulate 11-year-old on the planet (or else is a ringer). They grow everything from lettuce to watermelon to marigolds (planted next to the cucumbers to keep the bugs away).

Then my friend Journey met me and we watched a short play about an old woman with renowned healing powers. We watched as child after child, each ailing in some way (limping, visually-impaired, a two-month cold) came to see the old woman for help. She treated them all with natural remedies from her garden and then, at the end of the play, reminded them that good health comes from both a nutritious diet and regular exercise; the play closed with the entire cast demonstrating an aerobic dance. Which ended with "Pop the booty!" Hee.

Then we were served dinner, and while everything looked really great, I just tried a little cucumber salad and fresh watermelon (the kids had picked and prepared everything) and headed home for (more) dinner and Project Runway with Mike. A great afternoon.

Oh! A little follow-up: our tree does NOT have Dutch Elm disease! Mike called the tree service who had done the inoculation to tell them that he thought they may have inoculated a tree that was already sick. They sent out an arborist, who then sent out the forestry service to confirm that no, our tree does not have the disease. The city had misdiagnosed it and all is well. Yeah! Now how do we get a big fat fluorescent orange paint line off our tree?

Things That Happened This Weekend

2006-08-14T09:10:00.000-05:00

SUSHI
We went for dinner at Kikugawa with Fred and Julie. It was a nice night, so we walked from their house. Dinner was delicious; Fred and I had the chef's choice sushi, Mike had a steak, and Julie tried sushi and vegetable tempura. My dinner came with kappa makki (cucumber roll) and 7 different pieces of sushi. I made a huge mistake, though, and saved my favorites (tuna and salmon) for last, and by the time I got to them I was full. Stuffed 'em in, though.

BALDY
Oskar got a baaaad haircut. They went way too short, and you can see the clipper lines! Eek! I really hope it grows out a quarter of an inch or so by the time he races next month. He looks like a prisoner of war. How fast does dachshund hair grow?

HURRICANES
We went to Dan and Melissa's house for a pizza party in honor of Mel's birthday. When we stopped to get beer, I picked up 3 bottles of pre-mixed hurricanes for 99 cents apiece. Beth and Manuel helped drink them, and Beth kept pointing at the label and reading, "The rum's in it!" And it was, my friend. The rum was in it.

NO CLASS
I finished my last paper for school! I won't technically graduate until the semester is totally over in another week or so, but I have finished all my coursework. The university doesn't have a summer graduation ceremony, so I don't get to walk until December, and I think I'm going to. This was tough. I worked full-time while I did it and it was a huge challenge (I have no idea how my classmates with kids do it), so I think I'm actually a little psyched about the ceremony part of it. I just hope it isn't anticlimactic, having the ceremony 3 and a half months after I finished classes. I bet the time will fly. Master!

Elm

2006-08-10T16:02:00.000-05:00

On Monday, I got home from work and found an orange hang-tag waiting on our mailbox. Despite never having seen it before, I knew immediately what it was. The city has been out, looking for Dutch Elm disease again, and they found it in our backyard. It's claimed most of the elms in Minneapolis, but we thought we'd done all we could to prevent it. We had the tree inoculated two summers ago and again last month. But the heat and drought are the perfect conditions for the disease to spread; it was probably already sick before the most recent inoculation.

I took Oskar into the backyard and we just laid there in the hammock, staring up at the tree. It hangs over our house and gives us a lot of shade. Mike and our friend Mimi planted and have continued to cultivate a really lovely shade garden under it. I wonder what our backyard will look like once it's gone.

Mike thinks the loss of the tree won't hurt the value of our home, since anyone who might buy our house someday would see the elm and assume they'll have to have it removed eventually - this costs between 4 and 5 thousand dollars, and while the city requires that you have it removed, they don't subsidize any portion of the removal cost. We'll still have the walnut, which is a beautiful tree as well.

I don't know. I feel like we've failed somehow as tree parents? And maybe a little violated because the city came into our backyard without us home and painted a big fluorescent orange line around our tree? So melodramatic! About a tree! I know it's really about a million other things, but that orange hang-tag sure makes a good locus for all the angst.

Dog Days of Summer

2006-08-05T12:43:00.000-05:00

On a streak of bad doggie news.

Sarah's Molly is in some kind of heart failure and it doesn't look good. She was having a lot of trouble breathing when we saw them in Chicago last weekend. Poor wiener.

My boss's dog Ali has run away. For about the 10th time this year, but for much longer than ever before. He had to break a screen and a window frame to get out, so he must really have wanted to go. Hopefully, they will hear something soon. Ali is almost more horse than dog, maybe small children are riding him somewhere?

Last night I dreamt that we couldn't find Oskar. Mike finally found him under the couch, unconscious, eyes half open and glassy. I panicked as I tore through the phone book looking for an emergency vet (such is the way dreams skew reality, because in real life, I've had the emergency vet's number handy since Oskar pinched a disc and lay helpless at the foot of the stairs last year). I woke up in hysterics and jumped over Mike to where Oskar laid asleep in his bed. I stared at him for a few seconds to make sure he was breathing, and I realized he was wagging his tail in his sleep.

I'd never had a dog before Oskar. Mike didn't want a dog but I begged, bargained, whined. Now they fall asleep on the couch together and follow each other around like...a boy and his dog? My cats are different, they're independent, more like housemates than pets. Oskar needs us in a different way, a way that's challenging and very welcome. Right now he's napping on his couch (my dad bought him this, I didn't) while I do homework and his face is moving like he's in conversation. I wonder what he's dreaming about. I want him to stay this way forever.

You're on Notice!

2006-08-04T17:10:00.000-05:00

Make your own at shipbrook.com.

Weekend Getaway

2006-08-01T15:11:00.000-05:00

I'm back at work after a long weekend away.

An auditor has me too swamped to recap, but in the meantime, check out some pictures of our trip.

Five Things

2006-07-24T16:07:00.000-05:00

ONE
Today a construction crew hit a gas line outside my office building. They also managed to nick the phone and DSL...working from home.

TWO
It's thundering and lightening and about to storm, and my next-door neighbor Jim is watering his lawn.

THREE
We're going to Chicago this weekend for the Pitchfork Music Festival; time away and time with good friends. Mission of Burma and the Mountain Goats!

FOUR
Mike's job is sending him out of town way too much this summer. I miss him. So does Oskar.

FIVE
Fun fabric came in the mail today from ReproDepot. What to make?

Oh, a sixth: We went to a party on Friday night and Bill Tee told me I looked "foxy."

Job Randomness

2006-07-20T14:48:00.000-05:00

I run the operations and communications of a nonprofit organization. On some days this involves managing investments. Or planning events. Or taking pictures at a rally. Or facilitating a meeting. Even dreaded server maintenance. None of this is random. The music is random.

The fact that my job has now not once but twice required me to bring a quitar somewhere tickles me. Last December, Sarah and I played "Black Boys on Mopeds" at a social justice conference in Chicago. We ruled it. We really did. Today, the music struck again. My co-worker Dave and I are going to play a sing-along at our annual meeting this Sunday. We (mostly Dave) wrote new lyrics to the Jewish-summer-camp-favorite "Rise and Shine." The one where Noah has to build an arky arky to deal with the floody floody. Our lyrics are about creating affordable housing, fighting racial discrimination, and of course, community reinvestment. They are sexy lyrics indeed.

So today, Dave and I spent our lunch break in the parking lot practicing. We are not ruling it. Yet. But the parking lot was so hot that the tar melted to our feet. I am wearing black Earth shoes and was nonplussed, but Dave's working the mandals today. Oops. Silly mandal-wearer.

Does anyone else ever think of their job as performance art? I recommend it.

Making Time to Make Stuff

2006-07-19T08:12:00.000-05:00

Since I went back to school, I haven't had as much time to make things. I've got kind of a backlog of potential craft building up. I keep buying fabric when it's on sale and planning screenprinting projects for "later, when I'm done with school." I'm putting off doing creative things until I have more time.

But making things makes me really relaxed and happy. And I have less than a month left of school (not that I have a countdown or anything), so I decided that instead of waiting to have more time, I'll just shuffle things around and make time.

So, after an energizing breakfast at the Sample Room with Joel and Lisa, we spent Sunday screenprinting. I had a drawing I'd done (an owl from one of Mike's birdwatching books) that we'd been wanting to burn a screen from. We did, and we printed it on tote bags:

And on tee shirts:

I'm not a huge fan of the tee shirt blanks I'd bought - they washed weird and got a little short and wide. I ordered a bunch of blanks from an online wholesaler and they should be here just in time to do some more printing this weekend.

Making stuff, woo!

It's a Little Hot Outside for a Penguin

2006-07-16T19:43:00.000-05:00

This weekend it was 100 degrees, and we attended a wedding. My friend Julie caught us ducking out for some fresh air.

Wykoff

2006-07-05T20:58:00.000-05:00

This weekend, Mike and I drove down to Wykoff, MN, with a couple of goals. We were there to celebrate his grandmother's 104th birthday, and also to help his parents clean out her house so that it can be sold.

I don't know how helpful we were to my in-laws, but I sure did enjoy hanging out with them. Mike's grandmother has saved everything, and I think half of our usefulness was just in sitting and looking through everything and listening to the stories. Mike's Aunt Jean passed away in the mid-90s, and most of her belongings are in her sister's house. Going through them we found her husband Chuck's wallet. Chuck died after complications from a relatively routine surgery, it wasn't expected, and when Mike opened his wallet, he found all of his identification, 2 five dollar bills, and the drawing the doctor had done on a hospital notepad to explain the details of the surgery.

It reminded me of when my father died and we went to clean out his apartment. My father also died suddenly, and stepping into his apartment was surreal. His toothbrush was in its cup, the cupboards were full of food, his laundry was in the hamper waiting to be washed. It was as if, while life continued as usual, he had just been sucked off the planet. Disappeared, leaving the props of his physical life untouched upon exit.

We spent Mike's grandmother's 104th birthday with her at her nursing home. She was having a good day, but was clearly exhausted. It's complicated, celebrating a birthday. You're celebrating another year of your own life, but it's also another year further away from the spouse or sibling or parent you've outlived, another year further in the distance since you last felt really great. Not just when you're 104.

That sounds so dark. I'm really not in a dark mood. To prove it, I'll post a picture of the best thing I saw all weekend:

Mike found a magnifying glass.

Look Who Decided to Get Along for Five Minutes

2006-07-01T19:10:00.000-05:00

We're going to Southern Minnesota for Mike's grandmother's 104th birthday tomorrow. Also from the realm of things that happen only once per lifetime:

Bump in the Night

2006-06-28T22:30:00.000-05:00

Two days ago I mailed off the check that means I now actually and completely own my 4-year-old Volkswagen.

The unfortunate side-effect of this success is I've become paranoid that every noise outside is someone attempting to steal said automobile. This paranoia did not exist while I was making payments - it began only after the vehicle became wholly mine.

Meaning: in just two days I have proven that our possessions will come to own us. What an awesome triumph.

Homework

2006-06-25T21:59:00.000-05:00

Today I spent some time talking with a woman named Margie who completed the graduate program I'm in back in December. She confirmed that the class I'm currently taking is The Suck, and at least commiserating is nice sometimes. I just finished a pile of homework while Mike played with the dog and downloaded music. I hate homework. When I was a kid, I looked forward to this abstract future point at which I would be free of homework.

True, homework comes in a lot of forms. Paying bills, doing laundry, gardening, it's all a kind of homework. The consulting gig I'm doing on the side is homework-y. That's all good. Actual homework for actual school is evil, and I'm ready to be done. The light at the end of the tunnel is that the class I'm in right now is my last. The assignment due on August 13th will be the last (that's only 7 weeks, woah). After that, I will be a Master of Something.

Margie asked me a question that a lot of people are asking me lately - what am I going to do after I graduate? I guess I could get a new job that would pay me more, but I really like my job and I don't think I do it as well as I could. I'd like to keep working on it. I mainly want to hang out with Mike, watch some movies, do some leisure reading, and ride some bike. Get back in training for a real run. Make screenprints. Play with my friends' babies. Go to Italy and France! I feel very accomplished and proud, but also very exhausted, and once I get my diploma, I don't think I'll have much to prove to myself. That's good, right?

Found Object

2006-06-21T07:47:00.000-05:00

I found these on the sidewalk outside of Calhoun Square while my dad and I waited for my mom to get her hair done. They were stacked neatly, so I thought it was just one picture (the one on the top left, which is my favorite) until I bent down to pick it up. There are a couple different backgrounds going on, and a couple of them aren't cut - they're the top photo in the strip, so they're definitely from multiple sets. Neato.

And She Blew the House Down

2006-06-16T10:26:00.000-05:00

On Thursday nights, I play in a kickball league. Last night we played an early game, which we had to forfeit because we were short a boy (several more showed up to play, but not in time for the ref to call it). We played anyway, and lost. Which is not an interesting story as we lose pretty consistently. The other team was the Long Strokes, and they were a bunch of unfun, taking-it-seriously jocks. Not like past rivals The A-Holes or Mushu Pork, who were cool to play with/against and were also in it for fun rather than fierce competition.

In any case, the fact that it was an early game meant that I went straight to kickball from work and, since Mike was working out of town, Oskar had to hang out a little longer than usual in his kennel. That's not a huge problem, because Oskar can hold it to no end (on Sundays he usually sleeps in until 2 or 3pm and Mike has to practically drag him out of bed to go outside). But accidents can happen, and Oskar's getting up there in years.

So when I got home and opened the front door and immediately smelled pee, I was unpleasantly surprised, but not shocked. I mean, we have pets. So I took Oskar outside and did the reassuring doggy momma thing: "It's okay Osk, Mom left you alone too long. It's Mom's fault, and it's okay." We went back in the house and I tossed his kennel pad and his blanket into the washing machine and washed out the inside of his kennel. Feeling pretty good about the situation, I noticed two things: 1. It still smells like pee in here, and 2. It actually smells like cat pee.

But my cats have never had accidents outside their box. Hell, Fred doesn't even pee in the box, he just squats over the drain in the tub and pees right down it. As an aside, many people have asked me how to train their cats to do the same thing, as it's a much easier and cleaner method than using the litterbox. I did train him to do it, but it took a long time and a lot of it was dependent on Fred just being a huge weirdo and the fact that I never really ate or slept during my last year of college. If you'd like more details though, email me and I'd be happy to fill you in.

Anyway. So I start trying to track down the source of the smell. Where did one of them spray? I crawled around the first floor of the house, sniffing. To no avail. There was a spot in the kitchen where it smelled particularly strong when I stood up, but nothing when I got down on the floor. So I opened all the windows and settled in to do some homework and wait for Mike to come home and fix everything. About an hour later, it got warm in the house and the smell had pretty much aired out anyway, so I shut the windows and turned the air back on. When Mike called to tell me he was on the way home, the smell had come back. As he drove, we tried to work together to trace the smell. Mike was convinced that it was actually an old spray in the basement from the former owner's cat and that the humidity had awakened it and driven it upstairs. When he actually walked into the house, his diagnosis changed. Drastically.

It wasn't cat pee. It was gas. Natural gas. One of our burners was on full blast with no flame. The house was full of gas, which I mistook for cat pee. Natural gas has no odor of its own, but it's treated with an additive so that homeowners can detect if it's, oh, say, filling the house. Homeowners who aren't me, anyway. But boy am I glad I decided against lighting a scented candle to cover the cat pee smell. Boom. Also about that whole quitting smoking thing.

(I apologized to Oskar and the cats for thinking they'd peed.)

Four Eyes

2006-06-13T19:56:00.000-05:00

Recap: Moments of frivolity with great impact on my life.

1. Realizing that Jimmy James from News Radio and Milton from Office Space are the same person.

2. Finding out that in Kiss the Bottle, the lyric is "We hit concrete" and NOT "We had cold cream."

3. Getting prescription sunglasses.

Seriously, I've worn glasses since I was 7. Except for a stint from age 12 to about 18 when I wore contacts regularly, I wear glasses all the time. Even to sleep. As a result, I can't wear sunglasses and end up squinting and running into things on my bike pretty frequently. Today, all of that changed. Today, I can see in brown tint!

No, I have no idea why it never occurred to me to purchase prescription sunglasses until now.

It Hears Me Quacking

2006-06-12T11:03:00.000-05:00

A weekend full of those gray areas that are work but mostly enjoyable. Friday night the Indie Jews celebrated our first birthday. We've been having potluck Shabbat dinners for a year now, so we had a kid-style first birthday party planned in my backyard. Alyse and I bought a helium tank and blew up a ton of balloons (or she blew up balloons while I made shishkebobs and freaked out about the weather). The backyard aspect did get rained out, so we moved everyone into my house, which completely stressed me out. I love my house, and it really objectively is a beautiful home, but it's not huge and I was paranoid that everyone would feel too crammed in and would, as a result, hate me. Which didn't happen. We had cake and ice cream and everyone had a great time. But my stressing is just really indicative of the fact that I still carry some baggage about growing up middle class in a much-wealthier-than-we-were synagogue. I'm dealing with it, but it definitely has a lot to do with why I'm part of Indie Jews (besides the fact that it's my job to staff the Indie Jews) and am not a member of a congregation. I've grown to really appreciate faith but am still incredibly wary of the institution, I guess.

Saturday we went to a BBQ at Joel and Lisa's house. It was cold, but Lisa debuted their new fire pit, which was excellent. They've decided to name the baby August. I don't know the significance, except his full initials will be AMFM, which I love. They're due the first week in October, which is when we leave for Europe, so I guess unless they're early we'll miss the birth. Which is fine, nobody wants goofy Mrotzes hanging around newborns anyway. That reminds me, I remember back in college my friend's older sister had her first baby and she didn't want us near it in the hospital because we'd clearly just been smoking. We thought she was such a snob at the time, but now? Dude, gross. Wash your hands. For reals. Do not tell Lisa and Joel, but I have ordered a Motorhead onesie for AMFM.

Sunday was another work thing. Some kind JCA folks hosted Rock the Backyard, a fundraiser featuring a solo performance by Adam Levy of The Honeydogs. It had finally gotten nice out again and we biked to the party, demonstrating reason number 437 why I love Minneapolis - bike paths. It was only between 6 and 7 miles, but it was all bike path. I think we had 3 or 4 blocks of city street/car traffic to deal with. I've never been into The Honeydogs, so I really had no expectations, but Adam Levy was great. His set was very social justice-y and also very kid-friendly, and he did a song about loving olives which touched my soul. Plus, there was an enormous bowl of candy. Candy! I ate blue Tootsie Pops and got blue teeth.

One of the highlights of the weekend was a brief but substantive conversation with Annie. I'm really glad to have friends who challenge and stimulate my brain. There are a lot more of them these days, and I value checking in with them more and more.

And I'm having a Palace Brothers renaissance. Sweet.

Memorial Day Weekend 2: BBQ at Julie and Fred's

2006-06-06T20:41:00.000-05:00

The Mr. likes to show off a little skin with artfully-hanging shades.

If it's not clear, they're playing bocce. The official game
of summer in Minneapolis. For about 12 people.