And then there were three..:-)

Meanderings on making banana bread

2011-10-22T20:33:00.000-07:00

I am not the world's greatest cook. By which I mean, I totally do not have the talent my husband has, to take a look at a pantry and throw something together that tastes good. I can follow a recipe (so long as it's not complicated) and as the sign jokingly says, millions have eaten my cooking and gone on to lead normal lives.

(I am also not the world's greatest blogger *blush*. 2011 has been...well...busy. I'm trying to post more regularly, honest. :-))

But lately, I've started baking again. Our last apartment had two outlets, and one was taken up by the refrigerator. Adding in that, the lack of counter space and that our kitchen faced into the sun most days...and the stand mixer stayed under the counter, gathering dust. But in this apartment---there's both some counter space and outlets so...yeah. I'm baking again. Bread, sometimes. Banana bread, tonight. Brown bread (for an office get-together) earlier this week.

There's something curiously satisfying about making bread...I can't really explain it. A friend of mine, also a Wiccan, says cooking is a form of worship...after all, the cauldron is one of the witch's tools and certainly there's no more powerful magic than throwing together a bunch of ingredients to feed your family. For me lately, it's been a form of meditation. We've had a lot of challenges this year (who hasn't?) and anything that brings a small amount of peace into the chaos can only be good.

And banana bread? Yum. How can you beat that?

Body image and the preschooler

2011-04-02T06:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, my daughter and I were snacking on grapes when she said to me, "Don't eat all those or you'll get fat."

Whaaaaaaattttt?

She's four and not a cruel child, but the remark brought me up short. I have...curves, putting it mildly, but I'm sure I've never said such a thing to her. I've tried not to discuss food issues in terms of being thinner or trying to lose weight, but only in terms of eating more healthy foods, especially since she herself is at a perfectly normal weight for her height and age. So where did she get the idea?

When I picked my jaw up off the floor, I told her, as calmly as I could, that it wasn't nice to say such things, that it was mean and could really hurt someone's feelings. I think she understood, but again, she's four and of the age when the world is entirely black and white and it's okay to say what you're thinking when you think it. (Which I usually admire in her but um...yeah. Sometimes, not so much.)

The remark, though, made me think---about all the things we tell little girls about how they should look and what they should be. Abercrombie and Fitch just got into trouble (again) for marketing push-up bikini tops to seven year olds. I've seen platform shoes and ultra-short skirts marketed to kids Roisin's age and younger. We've done our level best to innoculate her from the worst of things, but I don't fool myself--the pressure from her peers, from society itself, is never-ending. I don't want her to look in the mirror and feel fat or ugly, not ever, but especially not at four. And I also don't want her to think it's okay to be rude to other people, even if she is speaking a literal truth. Sometimes, people are overweight for reasons other than eating too much food and even if they are, it's not her place to say so.

Sigh. There isn't anything like parenthood to make you worry. :)

"Do you love me?" :)

2011-02-14T09:04:00.000-08:00

Today is Valentine's Day, and I confess that our family is pretty much ignoring it this year.

My husband and I will have been married eight years at the end of April. In that eight years, we've had four moves, one miscarriage, one premature birth, one cardiac bypass surgery, one NICU stint and all the other various and sundry things that happen in a marriage. I'm reminded of the line from "Fiddler on the Roof" where Tevya asks his wife, after twenty five years, if she loves him. She gives him a laundry list of all the things she's done and at the end of it, says, "If that's not love, what is?"

After eight years, I agree with Tevya's wife. My husband is an excellent father and husband---if he has kitchen sink blindness occasionally, he's also the same guy who can make a good meal out of seemingly nothing in the pantry, the same guy who also remembered a remark I made in passing, and bought me my favorite lip gloss.

In eight years, we've struggled, grieved, loved, lost, laughed and learned...together. I don't need a card to remind me to tell him I love him. I already do. And I know he loves me and loves our daughter. We don't need the day....it's nice, but not necessary.

If that's not love, what is? :)

You are my sunshine...

2010-12-06T02:45:00.000-08:00

To my daughter, on her birthday....

I found your sonogram pictures the other day---five or six of them, stored in an envelope with your birth certificate and the name chart and growth chart from your stint in the NICU. The sonogram pictures were our first pictures of you---the earliest of them was when you were a whopping 4mm long. I was five or six weeks pregnant and terrified that I was having another miscarriage; my OB took pity on me and my fears and squeezed me in, somehow, for an ultrasound.

And that was when I saw you for the first time. I realize, if you read this later, that you might think that you looked like a really small baby, but you didn't, not then. You did look like the seed that gave you your first nickname (Sprout) before we knew if you were a boy or girl...but then, that early, you were just this tiny life who'd arrived in our lives against tall odds. I fell in love with you then---which you probably won't truly understand until you have a child of your own, but it's true. I saw you on that screen and I knew I'd fight for you, struggle with you, love you, no matter what.

It's four years later, four years since your birth and I don't quite have the words to describe how you've changed both of our lives---the terror and joy and hope and awe that we've felt as we watched you be born and grow. We're seeing more and more of you now, parts of me, parts of your dad, and parts that are most definitely just you, the unique presence that I first saw on that ultrasound all those years ago.

Happy 4th birthday, Róisín. :-) We love you, so very, very much.

Nope, definitely what we didn't need, thanks.

2010-11-28T11:25:00.001-08:00

Well, yesterday it was time for auto maintenance---oil change, brake check, tire rotation, that sort of thing. We took it to our local mechanic---two guys who run a hole in the wall place about a mile away. I've been going to them for my repair needs since I drove my VW bug regularly (which was, if memory serves, before I met my husband.) They don't take appointments, so you have to get there roughly at the crack o'dawn, but they're reasonably priced and honest.

Anyway, our Honda is not even three years old yet (it'll be three in February) but we're going to have to replace the tires on it soon. Not real soon (else they'd have told us yesterday...they're that honest) but soon. And with Rob hoping to start school in January, we'll have to have it done before then. I'm just glad that we don't have long commuting trips planned or snow and ice to deal with.

It's just...gah, annoying. I had a suspicion we'd need to buy them soon; the tires on our last new car, a Toyota, needed to be replaced when it was roughly three years old. I don't get it, though...when you buy a new car, I think you should more or less be able to expect that the tires wouldn't need to be replaced before the 36K mile mark (we don't even have 30K on our Honda.) We're not lead-foots or dangerous drivers...but it seems that junk tires are the rule, these days.

*Facepalm*

This day, we give thanks....

2010-11-25T16:52:00.000-08:00

Today is Thanksgiving. It's not our first as a married couple, but our seventh. It's not our first with our daughter, but our fourth. It is, however, the first time we cooked The Bird by ourselves---with a series of completely random events, we not only ended up cooking a full dinner, but cooking one for less people than we planned. (I fully expect to be heartily sick of turkey by next weekend :-P)

This was the first Thanksgiving that my daughter was old enough to begin to understand how the holiday originated (and, frankly, this is the one occasion where being a history geek really isn't a good thing.) I told her a simplified version, how those first colonists---all alone and starving---needed the help of others to survive. The larger moral, I've thought as I've gotten older, is that we're all interconnected to each other by our actions and our choices, that none of us should be too high or too mighty to realize we might need help come morning.

Which brings me to the grocery store. We ended up shopping at the last minute, not today, but yesterday...and because of the job which occasionally drives me insane, we had the money to buy the ingredients for the meal. Our local store has a food donation drive---basically, you buy a grocery bag with the dry ingredients for three meals inside (the prices vary,) and the grocery store donates it to a local food pantry. I didn't even blink when I picked up ours---it wasn't even a choice for me not to help, even a little bit---and there was a time when I would have, when I would have ignored the display and been too focused on what I was doing or where I needed to be.

But I have been in need---not that desperate kind of need where I couldn't feed my family (thank deities,) but need nonetheless, when I received help from people who could have chosen not to help...but didn't.

So today I give thanks, not only for my friends and my family, but for those experiences...because they taught me and bent me and shaped me.

No, No, and No. I don't think that's unclear.

2010-11-22T18:41:00.001-08:00

Tonight after work, I made my weekly pilgrimage to Chez Target for, well, everything. (Yeah. This was one of those weeks where we ran out of everything all on the same day. Sigh.) So anyway, I saw a little old lady who'd borrowed a Target shopping cart and was handing out religious leaflets with the headline "Does God Love You?" She tried to hand one to me and I said, "No, thank you."

When I came out, she tried to give me the same pamphlet twice within about five minutes. The third time, I'm afraid I wasn't as polite as I maybe should have been. I said, "This is the third time you've tried to give me this and the third time I've said no." She said, "Well, I forgot." Um, okay. Silly me for thinking once should have been enough.

I don't know if that was the proper response---certainly it didn't work either of the three times I tried it. I don't like being preached at, or being on the receiving end of someone's conversion attempt---and make no mistake, she wasn't trying to, say, convince me that Zeus or Buddha or Shiva loved me. ;-) (I wouldn't have liked it if she had, but at least it would have had the virtue of newness---we don't get a lot of proselytizing Hellenists, Buddhists, or Hindus in our area of San Diego :-P) And I don't think I should have taken her pamphlet and then tossed it away (which seemed to be the majority choice, to judge by the trash in the parking lot.)

I don't come from a tradition that does a lot of witnessing, or whatever the term for it is nowadays. I wasn't raised Wiccan, but my mom and dad never went in for that type of religious practice. But I also couldn't have said to the old woman what I wanted to say, which was---to paraphrase another blogger---I believe in my gods the way you believe in your god.

Or put simply...I just want to shop and go home to my family. I don't want to be rude, but no means...no.

Le sigh.

From the mom of a preemie

2010-11-17T05:26:00.000-08:00

Today, November 17th, is Fight for Preemies Day. Sponsored by the March of Dimes, it's a collaborative blog effort to promote and bring attention to the worldwide issue of premature birth.

In 2006, my daughter was one of nearly half a million babies born too soon in the US. I had excellent prenatal care, I didn't smoke or drink or use drugs. What I did have, though, (unknown to me) was a condition called incontinent cervix (IC) in which the cervix, for some reason, does not stay fully closed during pregnancy. Tragically, in many cases this condition is diagnosed only after late term pregnancy loss. I was one of the lucky ones; my cervix was seen dilating on an ultrasound when I was 22 weeks pregnant, and I had surgery just a few hours later to sew my cervix shut. I then went on bedrest for the next nine weeks.

When I was a little over 30 weeks pregnant, my water broke and I delivered my daughter at one day shy of 31 weeks' gestation. She was 3 1/2 pounds at birth and 16. 5 inches long. She went immediately into the NICU, where she stayed for the next five weeks.

In some ways, looking back, I think my husband and I were lucky. Róisín was our first child; we didn't have another child to compare this to, so this became our version of normal. And she--and I--had the best medical care we could have asked for. But all of this is not to understate the real risks my daughter---and others born too early---faced. Cerebral palsy, brain bleeding, intestinal and heart problems, blindness, developmental delays...these are all risks of premature birth. These babies are not just "smaller than normal"; they face a whole host of medical issues that full-term babies almost never deal with.

Today, my daughter is healthy and thriving and for all intents and purposes, perfectly normal. We were lucky, but many other babies born at her gestation or even earlier, are not. If you are reading this, if you are pregnant, are thinking about being pregnant, or know someone who is, please go to the March of Dimes website and educate yourself about the warning signs of premature birth.

Momento Mori

2010-10-31T07:01:00.000-07:00

Today is the start of Samhain, the day when the walls between the worlds grow thin and our deceased ancestors and friends may yet come to visit us.

Today is also Halloween and we're taking Róisín, in her guise as Cowgirl Jessie, out for her first time Trick or Treating. I'm making Irish stew for dinner and we have an apple pie for dessert...and then we'll go out and join the hundreds of other parents taking their kids out.

Samhain and Halloween are where the two worlds join in my house. I will leave an empty plate for the ancestors and explain to my daughter (though she may not get it yet) who we are remembering, and I will light a candle (in this case, an LED light inside a votive holder) for loved ones to find their way home. My husband, whose beliefs are and always have been his own, may not understand my need to do these things, but he accepts them.

So today, I remember....

Sochi, my cat and my friend, who died in November of last year at the old age of 17. I miss you, my friend.

Chan, who brought (and continues to bring) such joy to my life through her art. She died in March this year....much too soon for all who loved and knew her.

My grandmother, who died eight years ago this October. We never really connected enough to know each other while she was alive; too many years and too much gulf of personality divided us, but still, I remember you.

My cats Tasha and Tess, who died within months of each other, twenty years ago. I've never forgotten you two.

And finally, I remember the men, women, and children---living and dead---who were or who are being persecuted as witches. The Burning Times didn't just happen in Europe and America, centuries ago; they're happening now, in Africa and the Middle East.

May your Samhain, or Halloween, be a peaceful one. Blessed be.

These are a few of my favorite things....

2010-10-23T07:22:00.001-07:00

My daughter turns four in December (four!!!) and this is the first year she's really gotten into the Halloween idea of dressing up. However, as anyone who's ever been around a preschooler can tell you, time and patience aren't really their strong points (well, patience still isn't one of mine...:-P) so for the last two weeks, her dad and I have been doing the "No, Halloween is x amount of days away" thing.

In the meantime, she's dressed up as other things around the house. She's put on her kitty mask, thrown a blanket over her head like a hood and asked me, "Where's Catherine?" (Yeah, like that guy LOLOLOL.) She's also put her candy bucket on top of her head and announced she's Buzz Lightyear (though her dad made an Ichabod Crane quip that totally went over her head.)

I've been tired and frazzled and a little frustrated by life in general recently, and the holiday season is bound to make things worse, not better. So it was nice to have the reminder of the joys of being a parent---to see the world anew in the eyes of a child, to see her turn blankets and legos and boxes and ordinary objects into things of magic. :)

Sometimes, Life is Like That.

2010-10-14T21:11:00.000-07:00

...sometimes, you're talking to a co-worker and she makes a comment that she's missing a toe and you remember, because she told you once, that she and her sister fled the Khmer Rouge as children.

...sometimes, you're talking to another co-worker, all happy and nervous because she and her husband have decided to have a family and she's talking to you because you're the voice of experience...and you remember, four years ago, that you knew nothing. Experience doesn't make you an expert...but you tell her what you know and what you'd wanted someone to tell you four years ago.

...sometimes, you're having That Kind of day, and then your email goes off with emails from insanely funny friends all over the country and you start laughing because in all the inside jokes and mangled words are people who truly Get It, linked by something we can't explain. And things seem...lighter, somehow.

Sometimes, in the course of one day, life is like that. :)

Turn, Turn, Turn...:-)

2010-10-12T18:07:00.000-07:00

(And yes, if that puts you in mind of a song from the 1960s, that's the point. :-D)

Things are changing at our house---in a good way---that's making me blink at just how fast things are happening. My daughter is about to finish her third month of preschool, and aside from one minor melt-down when she abruptly realized her daddy wasn't right there with her, she's really enjoying it. She's growing and changing and just, well....becoming more and more of a person each day. Which isn't to say she was a walking asparagus or something before...but I look at her and I recognize bits of myself or my husband in the way she reacts or behaves. I don't know who she's going to grow into, but I bet the ride is going to be interesting, to say the least. :-P

And my husband is trying to reenter the workforce after having been a full time stay at home dad for the last four years. With the economy being what it is, I don't really expect things to happen fast, but for the last four years, it's been me leaving and going to work and coming home. It'll be a switch to see my husband doing the same.

Not much has changed with me lately, but the changes are all around me. As we head towards Samhain and the end of the year, I suppose that's only natural. :)

Bite Me :-)

2010-09-18T06:48:00.001-07:00

Just some assorted rants from the week (taken seriously, or not, as you choose)

1) Bite me: to plus size clothing designers. I have curves. I have thighs and hips and arms that shouldn't be as flabby as they are, but that's life and I'm dealing with it. What I can't deal with is plus size clothing. Note to designers: it is NOT enough to redesign clothing for skinny folks and make it larger. What looks good on a size 4 does not, often, look good on a size 18. (Trust me on this one.) I want actual sleeves, not cap sleeves, not flared sleeves, not sleeves that are ruched in weird places (hello, the only place ruching belongs is on a leine.) I want pants that fit with the inseam clearly marked on the tag. I don't need "skinny jeans." I want jeans that fit. (Such an astonishing idea, but really, is it too much to ask?)

2) Bite me: to bra manufacturers. Standardize your sizes, will ya? And boning on the side of the bra---who thought that up? It's painful and it doesn't really hold its form long. Remove it, please.

3) Bite me: to the grey hairs that show up more and more each month. I'm not even 40 yet. Couldn't you have waited a few years?

4) Bite me: to my daughter's early morning whine. Keep it up and I'll give you cheese with that :-D

And finally...

5) Bite me to the people in this country, on both sides of the political divide, who are more interested in tearing down than building up. Who knows why you do it---maybe because it's easier than the hard work of creation? I'm tired of the labels, the name-calling, the insinuation that because our president is not a "whiter shade of pale" he must be some sort of "sekrit muslim" or somehow isn't one of us. Where was your all-fired concern for the state of this country while Dubya was using the Constitution for toilet paper, eh? I don't always agree with Obama but in this country, I don't have to. And you don't either...but, um, can you take it down a notch or two or three? (Or 12?) Then we can have a civilized discussion instead of foaming at the mouth like a bunch of rabid raccoons.

/end rant. :-D

Today I Choose Not to Remember

2010-09-11T07:03:00.000-07:00

Every year, I've remembered (or been forced to remember) where I was, who I was, and what I was doing on September 11th. I'll never forget (I don't think that's possible, any more than it's possible for the folks who were alive to remember Kennedy's assassination) but today, I'm choosing not to remember.

I'm going to out and celebrate life instead. My family and I are going to San Diego Pagan Pride---a local festival celebrating both the coming of Mabon (the fall harvest) and religious tolerance. We're going to go out, amid the trees and flowers of Balboa Park and remember that doing simple, ordinary things is the best antidote to the horrors of the world. I'm going to celebrate the fall harvest, the time when the earth gives of Her bounty, and I'm going to remember that this country is one of the few places I could practice my religion (or no religion at all) without fear of the religious police arresting me in the middle of the night.

I am going to remember that my almost-four year old daughter doesn't know about 9/11. And I'm going to treasure and preserve her innocence as long as I can.

Today I choose not to remember. Today I choose to live.

Blessed be.

And the Aunt Resurfaces...

2010-09-05T20:32:00.000-07:00

I have an aunt. Actually, I have several, but only three of them are on Facebook and only one of them actually talks to me. I used to have two aunts on Facebook, but almost a year ago, one of my aunts decided to "unfriend" both myself and one of my liberal cousins before closing her FB account. Yes, the aunt of this posting. (That her reasons for doing so were political rather than religious is because, well, my cousin isn't Wiccan--so far as I know--but I am, yet she defriended both of us, the "liberal wing" of the family. *eyeroll*)

Leaving aside how juvenile that all is and was (what? People can't disagree without knickers being twisted?) my aunt has now resurfaced. I'm not going to try and "friend" her on Facebook--I didn't know her all that well (except as a perpetual thorn in my mom's side while they were growing up) and her more recent behavior doesn't make me say, "Ooh, auntie, I want to know you better." It's just so...weird. I don't know if she decided Facebook was Teh Ebil (an opinion with which I sometimes concur, especially when they monkey around with our privacy settings again...grrrr) and that was why she closed her account that first time, or what.

But I find myself hoping I don't get a friend request from her. Unless they install a button that says "Fool me once, shame on you..." :-D

Things That Make You Go, "WTH"?

2010-08-25T20:11:00.001-07:00

Sigh. It's been one of Those Days. A full moon, Mercury in retrograde (which is supposed to really mess up communication) for the next month or so and...yeah.

But today's WTH moment is courtesy of a police officer (who shall remain nameless, to protect what I suspect is the perpetually stupid.) In a nutshell, the police officer was supposed to do something for one of my attorneys in preparation for her trial (which started today--and yeah, of the three most dangerous life-forms on the planet, two of them are attorneys in trial.) So he came in today, after much prodding and threats of a court order ordering him to show up...and brought his three young kids with him.

Now, I like kids. I like my kid. I like my friends' kids. But when he brought the kids in, one of my male co-workers asked me and the law clerk (also female) if we would watch the police officer's kids. Um, no. I was swamped, as was the law clerk. And secondly, just because we have two X chromosomes does not, automatically, make us babysitters.

It all ended well in the end (cop did his job while one of my male co-workers kept the kids entertained,) and I'm not actually insulted, just bemused. I'm a mom, and a happy one, but it's not all I am. It's just funny how sometimes that label, or the label of being female, can drown out everything else.

The Only Constant

2010-08-13T20:29:00.000-07:00

I know I've not been posting here recently (well, not since *gulp* June LOL) and that's mainly because things have done a fair amount of changing since I last posted.

The major change involves my daughter. On Tuesday, she started preschool. No tears, no sniffling, she just waved bye and was off like a shot. I guess I could have been offended LOL...but the reality is, I'm not. I'm proud of her, for being the kind of kid---even at almost four---who isn't afraid to try something new. It's the start of a new journey for her, and for us...and if we're a bit more nervous about it than she is, I guess that's normal too.

(And for those of you who are wondering...no, no sign of another child yet. If it's in the cards, it'll happen. :)

The other change is that I finally got to meet the members of the writer's group I'd been collaborating with for the last year or so. (If you've been following my BatB fanfiction blog, yes, I'm referring to the ladies of "Everything...") We met in July, at a very small con (aka, "family reunion," the main difference being that no one's cheeks got pinched. LOL) and it was like we'd known each other all our lives. I confess I was surprised by that; many years ago, in another fandom, I'd met an author I'd been chatting with and when we finally got together, we had virtually nothing to talk about.

I can still say, nearly a month after the con, that that wasn't the case this time. And I can't tell you how happy that makes me feel. We all come from different backgrounds, but we never ran out of things to say, or laugh, or cry about. And you can never have too many friends.

So that's the update, such as it is. I'll try to post more often :)

Dear Spammers....

2010-06-15T19:12:00.000-07:00

Yes. That means you. The people who keep leaving responses to my posts in Chinese with embedded links to porn sites, or bootleg video sites. Whatever.

Maybe you haven't noticed, but this blog is on moderation, which means I have to approve each and every comment you make. And you know what? I'm not going to approve anything you say. Ever.

So, here's a thought. Since you apparently have so much time on your hands (well, time enough to keep spamming my blog, which doesn't get a lot of traffic) go find some other blog. Someone who wants your links to porn sites or who wants to buy bootleg DVDs. Or both. There must be someone.

It's just not me. Or my reader(s). kthxbai

Some thoughts on Mother's Day....

2010-05-08T11:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, yes, I know, it's not Mother's Day yet...but since I plan to be out with my family tomorrow, I'm writing this now.

Tomorrow is Mother's Day and like I do every time this year comes around, I wonder about it. I remember being infertile and knowing that the odds of us ever conceiving a child were highly unlikely. Then, it was a day of what felt like endless cruelty, a reminder of the thing we wanted and couldn't have. And the holiday was everywhere---on the radio, in the stores, on TV. You couldn't escape it, even if you wanted to. And during those years, we desperately did.

Now that Ms. "Highly Unlikely" is three and a half, I think about it more. So much of Mother's Day--the ads, the cards, the flowers--seemed based on a massive guilt trip. "Buy these flowers for your mother, be her favorite kid." (Yes, I heard that one yesterday. I'm an only child but...gaaack.) I don't want guilt from my child--she doesn't "owe" me anything. I chose to get pregnant, I chose to become a mother. I try my damndest to be the best mother I can..but my daughter doesn't owe me flowers, or a card, just for being her mom.

I confess I bought into the hype---my mom (who is home and recovering from her hospital stay) loves her Mother's Day cards and would be hurt if she didn't get one, so I sent her one. But the more I think about it, the more I'm not sure I like the guilt of Mother's Day. I'm going to go out tomorrow with my husband and daughter and enjoy the time we have as a family. And when my daughter is old enough---I'll tell her that the only thing she owes me is really what she owes herself, to be the best person she can. The cards, Hallmark can keep. :-)

My mom is in the hospital

2010-04-23T18:56:00.001-07:00

I'm posting this sort of late (as in, a few days after she went in) but it's taken me a bit to process this whole thing. In a nutshell, the spring bronchitis/pneumonia she always gets has changed into not only pneumonia, but reduced lung function and heart trouble. The upside---and there is one---is that her doctors seem to be good at putting the puzzle pieces together, figuring out what's wrong and working on a treatment. So I don't have any concerns there.

The bad side of it is...it's not over yet. She's still in the hospital and probably will be until next week at the earliest.

I worry a lot about her now, probably more than I would have, say, a year ago---not because I wouldn't have cared, but because losing Chan...Chan, who was exactly my mom's age when she died, put in focus that no matter how much I don't agree with her on matters political, no matter how tired I get of her endless grumbling....the reality is that one day, my mom won't be there. My mom, one of two people who remembers what I was like as a child, who did her best for me no matter what...one day, she won't be there.

I just hope that day...isn't soon.

What Was Worth the Saying

2010-04-18T09:45:00.001-07:00

We had an earthquake on Easter (yes, I know, Easter was a couple of weeks back but I'm the busy mom of a three year old and if I get ten minutes that I'm not hearing, "Hey mommy," I'm writing on my fanfiction blog LOL.) We live in SoCal, the San Diego area more precisely, and we don't tend to get a lot of earthquakes in our area. Usually.

So we'd just finished Easter dinner and my dad and my daughter were racked out on the couch snoozing, when I heard the dishes in the china cabinet rattle. And keep rattling. I looked through our kitchen window to see our neighbor's satellite dish rotating and then I knew---this wasn't the earth having a small fit. This was a huge nasty quake. So I grabbed my daughter and my mom and my dad and my husband and great grandfather and I all dove under the mahogany table* and waited the quake out.

We suffered no damage, aside from some goddess statues on my upstairs altar who were really not amused by the shaking, and some shredded nerves. It was a 6.9, later upgraded to a 7.2, but the point was, we were all alive.

There is something about huddling under a kitchen table while the earth throws a tantrum that tends to put things in focus. I'm not always a big fan of holidays, for the most part--I don't like the pressure to be the perfect family when none of us are, or the inevitable ick feeling that comes when some relative you know has been an asshat is also at the same gathering. I wasn't particularly looking forward to the Easter lunch---for one, it's a hassle to clean the house and get everything dusted and in its proper place for visitors, and for another...sometimes it's hard being around my great-grandfather (lots of water under that particular bridge.)

But, we survived, probably due in no small part to the earthquake. A lot of the tension was just gone...I didn't care about the dust I'd forgotten about on the coffee table, or worry about what was going to come out of my mom's mouth. I just didn't care.

So, we survived the earthquake. And maybe what I thought was important, wasn't.

*I am reliably informed now that diving under the table in an earthquake is a Very Bad Thing unless said table is uber sturdy. Our table is nearly 65 years old and, so far as I know, has lived in southern California its entire life. So, I think it could handle being an earthquake shelter in a pinch. Though next time, I think I'll just run out into the parking lot or something.

Planting seeds

2010-03-28T09:44:00.001-07:00

Today, I planted the first seeds of spring--chamomile, for the teas I hope to make, and rosemary, for the cooking herbs I hope to grow. I also transplanted a rather stubborn lavender plant into a larger container (which will have to be transplanted again before summer's heat hits, but hey, you do with what you've got when you've got it.) The only thing we have left to plant is the assortment of heirloom tomatoes and the sunflower seed mix and the container herb garden---those, I'll need help from my husband because of the amount of dirt involved and the size of the containers we'll need.

I had lots of help this morning too...my daughter. Give her a shovel and she's more than capable of putting a few shovelfuls of dirt on top of those tiny seeds. Of course, she's also more than capable of running around and jumping into the mud puddles on our patio too but hey, she'll clean up quickly. ;-)

I also poured some milk into the corners of our patio and asked the help of the Old Ones for what we were trying to do. I'm not sure if my daughter understood that part of things, but that's okay. That's another seed I'm planting---and like the others, if it's meant to be, it'll grow too. :-)

Happy is the Return of Spring

2010-03-20T07:01:00.000-07:00

Today is Ostara, the pagan holiday marking the return of Spring (it coincides with the Vernal Equinox and if you're noticing the similarity to the name of the Easter holiday, that isn't coincidental either.)

I find myself needing spring badly this year. I can't complain about the Winter weather (hello, San Diego, anyone?) but it's been a hard one nonetheless. We've moved, dealt with any number of unforeseen maintenance issues in our "ready to move in" apartment, put up with several ugly work messes that seemed destined to drive me nuts, and gone through several minor (but annoying) illnesses that come and go and come again. We're no closer to having a second child than we were when we started trying (though all of the situations above might have something to do with that :-P) We're all just sick and tired of being sick and tired, and we need the spring and the flowers that grow to remind us that life isn't all sick days and doctors visits.

Next week, we're going to start planting our garden---all we need is some soil, and some help from the resident green thumb (my husband LOL) and maybe soon, we can start some life growing, within and without. :)

Blessed is the return of spring. :)

For Whom the Bell Tolls

2010-03-13T06:21:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, I found out that a good person had died. I can't claim her as a good friend---we only talked once, in a chat room online, but she was beloved by all who knew her and in my own interaction with her, I noticed that she was wise and funny and unfailingly generous.

Chan (I'm using her screen name because that was how I knew her) was a long-time member of the Beauty and the Beast fandom community (the TV show, not the Disney movie.) She was a fantastic artist, but more than that, she was a good friend to many people. She leaves behind a husband, daughters and the children she taught in real life.

What I remember about Chan---besides her art, which was sensitive and beautiful and touching---is how generous she was. I remember reading a comment thread on one of the boards; younger artists were talking about how they drew this character or that character and because Chan was on the board they asked her for advice. And she gave it, without a hint of ego or condescension. She tried to encourage other artists because (as she said at Winterfest Online this year) she wanted to encourage them to take her place after she was gone.

That was in February. I don't think she thought that she'd be gone so soon. None of us did.

I can't claim to have known her well...that category goes to other friends of mine. But from what I did know, we've lost something special in her passing.

Goodbye, Chan. We'll miss you.

UPDATE 3/22/2010: Chan is gone. I'm choosing to picture she and Michelangelo battling for colored pencils or debating drawing techniques. We have all lost someone truly special.

Can I Take the 5th?

2010-03-07T17:59:00.000-08:00

I have become convinced that somehow, I have given birth to the world's smallest defense attorney. Or prosecutor. Whatever. Today has been an endless round of questions, answers, more questions, more answers...and this, from the time she woke up at 6am until, um, now. I think she stopped when she took a nap, but I can't be sure.

All of which, I am told, is normal for a three year old. She's trying to start a conversation, and more power to her. But my ears are pretty much worn out and her dad is hiding under his desk upstairs (just kidding; he's upstairs playing a computer game) so I think it's a safe bet his ears are getting worn out too. The conversations have gone like this:

R: Whatcha doing, Mommy?

Me: Putting the dishes in the dishwasher.

R: What's a dishwasher?

Me: (looking at her over the tops of my glasses): What do you think a dishwasher is?

R: A dishwasher washes dishes!

Me: Very good. (Turning on the dishwasher.)

R: Mommy, what's that noise?

Me: *bangs head on counter*

It's not the first time she's heard a dishwasher, mind. And we seem to have the conversation about dishwashers and what they do at least once or twice per day, depending on how often we have to do the dishes. All of which taps into one of my pet peeves: having to repeat myself to someone who knows the answer.

I'm trying to be patient. I don't want my daughter to complain that her mom never listened to her, because that's not it. I know she knows what a dishwasher is, or whatever else the topic is, and is just asking because she's trying to figure out how conversations work, the give and take of things. And we're trying to teach her the rules of polite conversation too---not interrupting, not talking through or over the adults who are talking at the same time. I know it's all normal, and necessary and all that, but I think I'm about ready to plead the 5th and hush up now. Maybe then my little attorney will stop questioning me for a bit. :-P

Itchy Green Thumbs

2010-03-04T05:41:00.000-08:00

A number of years ago, when my husband and I were first married, we had a garden on the back patio of our apartment. I remember looking out our back patio window and loving the slice of life he created back there and even though--as we discovered---corn doesn't really like being grown in containers, the leaves, the smell of earth and the colors of the vegetables made everything more alive.

But we moved when word came out that the apartments were going to be converted to condos (*eyeroll*) and for a few years, there wasn't space to garden (and once the neighborhood cats started using what land we did have as their litter box...ick. Why would you even try to garden then?) Since we've moved again and---once again---we have a patio with enough sun to get some plants growing, we're going to try a garden going, on a small scale. No corn, no eggplant (a plant we grew until we both realized we hate eggplant,) no zucchini or squash (for now.) Just some herbs, sunflowers, and tomatoes. Enough to give us some greenery and life in the middle of apartment central. They're all in seeds for now, but eventually...yeah. It'll be green again on our back patio.

I can tell spring is coming (no points for observation to me there LOL---Ostara, which falls on the vernal equinox--is just a couple of weeks away.) I'm getting that itchy need to go dig in the dirt and smell potting soil and see something we've planted grow. And I want to show my daughter how miraculous and beautiful things can come from the smallest of origins.

Spring is almost here. Whew. :-)

Random Acts of Randomness :-)

2010-03-01T20:04:00.000-08:00

As I sit here writing this tonight, there is just the (very slight) chance that I'm pregnant. It's too early to test yet and my cycles are irregular anyways...so another week should prove or disprove the point. If I am...I'm happy about it but also nervous. My pregnancy with the wee one took a left turn at Albuquerque (to quote Bugs Bunny) about 22 weeks into it and was high risk the rest of the way through. Now that the docs know what the problem was, they can treat it earlier, but I'm never going to be one of those women who has a boring pregnancy where they go overdue; the best we're all hoping for is that I make it to term with a healthy baby. And if I have to go on bed rest again...well, nine weeks was a pretty good trade-off for the rest of the wee one's life, and it'll be the same with this baby too.

I spent a fair amount of time after she was born being upset---with my body, that I couldn't carry her to term (though there was nothing I could have done differently); with the universe, with fate or what have you. Distance and time and healing have led me to a different reality: life is...random. And you can't predict or control random events, you just can't. The wee one spent five weeks in the NICU through no fault of anyone's...and although I'd have not chosen to have her that prematurely, she's now a healthy, happy child, so it worked out okay in the end.

So if I am pregnant, I'll do my best, again. And the docs will do theirs. And maybe the outcome will be different, a healthy child that goes to term, or close to it. Maybe the random will work more in our favor this time. :-)

Teach Us to Be Still

2010-02-27T20:00:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking Deep and Weighty Thoughts recently, now that we're moved in and the only water in our apartment is located where it's supposed to be. We're in the middle of a spell of abnormally wet weather and there's something atavistic, maybe, that makes me want to go into the back of a cave, light a fire, and do nothing but think while the rain falls all around me. Or sleep. (I'm easy to please. :-)

One of the things I promised myself when we moved was that I would carve out a sacred space, somehow, in the middle of our busy and hectic lives, and I've started doing that. There's a shelf in our bedroom that has my small collection of goddess statues, a couple of small white and black taper candles, and a plaque of the goddess Brighid. It's small and spare as altars go, but I'm a very young witch still as far as this path goes, and I like what I've managed to create. It feels peaceful, somehow.

I have hopes of being able to meditate in front of it one day, but that whole sitting still thing? It's a lot harder than it looks. I can sometimes find my mental "OFF" switch in the middle of writing, say, or just before I go to bed at night, but trying to relax when every other nerve is telling me that there are a million and one things to do, that I could be doing...is hard. And I'm not there yet. And with a toddler...maybe I shouldn't be surprised LOL.

So I'm trying to learn to be still, to find some inner peace in the middle of our crazy lives, to carve out some place that is calm and quiet and restful. Maybe I just need the rain. Or maybe we're not all that far from the cavemen after all. :-)

Those Were the Days...:-)

2010-02-20T20:06:00.000-08:00

We've finally begun unpacking in earnest and one of the joys has been finding family photos. I found a small book of wedding photos that didn't make it into our wedding album...and I opened it up and for a second, I couldn't believe we were ever so young. It was only six years ago (seven years in April) but I looked at the picture of my husband and I under the shady trees at Heritage Park, or the huge grin my husband had on his face as I walked down the aisle, and I thought about all the things that Rob and Krista hadn't gone through yet.

We hadn't learned to depend on each other. We hadn't yet gone through 2006 (the year that will forever remain in my memory as both the best and the utter worst of times.) We hadn't moved into (and out of) three apartments. We hadn't been parents yet. We hadn't gone through the roller coaster of a high risk pregnancy and a child in the NICU. We hadn't set up one night playing "pass the baby" as we dealt with an inconsolable preemie newborn who wanted to do anything but sleep.

As much as we loved each other then---enough to get married and make all sorts of very scary promises about life and love and fidelity and friendship in front of family and friends---I can honestly say that no matter what we thought love was then, we didn't know the half of it. Love isn't all flowers and poetry--most of the time, it's just about being there for the other person, no matter how bad it gets, or what life throws at you, and rising in the morning to do it all over again because you promised your partner you would.

So, nearly seven years out and after a whole range of ups and downs and everything in between...I wouldn't change a thing. We were younger then, but we're wiser and happier now. :-)

Surfacing and Growing :-)

2010-02-17T19:28:00.001-08:00

Well, after a week where we were all sick (again) and our water heater leaked (but was replaced,) I feel like it's been ages since I posted though it's only been two weeks. Whew. The next time I say I want to move---unless it's to a house---someone please slap me. Or send me away to a nice padded room somewhere....:-P

Tonight my hubby and the wee one and I went out to a local Italian restaurant whereupon our daughter---who is a whopping three years old and three feet tall---informed us that she was too short. I don't know where she's getting this (though it might be just her noticing comparisons; her dad is 6'2 and I'm not precisely short either), but I wonder if she's starting to make the connection between the things the "big kids" can do and the things that she can't yet.

The thing is, she is growing (and how) into someone who's neither her dad nor I, but herself. I looked at her tonight and was reminded of a poem Khalil Gibran wrote years ago about children in The Prophet:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

Moved In and Worn Out

2010-02-02T09:31:00.001-08:00

Well, as of about 2pm yesterday afternoon, we are FINALLY moved into our new place. (The shower no longer leaks, by the way, though the jury is still out as to whether we actually have a leaking pipe somewhere, at least we can't see it. Yet.) There are boxes everywhere and we're both about as tired as you'd expect. But we got through it with no broken bones and minimum of aggravation, so that's something.

Gaaaahh, the boxes. I knew we had a lot of stuff (a fair amount of which is baby stuff that we can't get rid of since we want to have another child) but the sheer amount of Stuff is mind-boggling. And of course, what does the resident toddler want to do but climb in the boxes and pull things out of them? Yeah. We've managed to distract her since Rob is removing bricks from our back patio (long story--the short version is that they definitely are a hazard, so our former landlord is taking them) and she's discovered the joy of earthworms and salamanders and dirt. Which provided an opportunity to talk about what these littlest creatures do for the earth and how we need to leave them alone and let them do it....but if she's like every other little kid, I'm sure she'll be bringing them inside soon enough. LOL.

So that's our life, for now. New beginnings in a new place. :)

Here Comes the Rain Again....

2010-01-24T09:43:00.000-08:00

...no, not the rain outside (though we've had plenty of that in the last week and we'll probably have more next week.) The rain I'm referring to is the type that fell from our ceiling late last night, as my husband was taking a shower in our upstairs bathroom.

Yeah. Our first night in the new apartment and we have not one, but four leaks. The management has been paged (and paged again...I'm nothing if not persistent) but we've still heard nothing back. It's not so much of a problem today--it's Sunday and given the amount of dust Rob inhaled yesterday while packing, his allergies have pretty much gone nuclear, so today was going to be a slow day anyway.

But tomorrow, I have to go back to work. Which means I'll have to get up even earlier, go over to our old apartment, take a shower and leave from there. And Rob will have to do the same, if he wants to get a shower before resuming our moving tomorrow. Can we say "massive inconvenience," boys and girls?

And I know that...manure...happens. Along with lots of other things. But we paid good money to move into this place, an apartment that was "move-in ready." Somehow, I doubt "move-in ready" means the waterfall from the leaking shower.

Le Sigh.

Packing, and other exercises in frustration

2010-01-18T15:21:00.000-08:00

So, I've had a three day weekend and although I've gotten some packing done, it's mainly been in the tossing of things no longer needed that I've really been excelling. However, I did discover one thing that I really should have known:

Tossing old baby bottles in front of the toddler who used to use them...is just asking for trouble. Because no matter how much you tell said toddler that she's a big girl now and doesn't use those any more...she won't believe you. No matter what. (And sometimes...yeah, I don't believe she used those either, though I know perfectly well that she did. They're so small.)

Then there are the boxes. As I joked to one of my friends, our boxes apparently came with a toddler inside. Because our daughter just wants to play and play and play with those boxes...which is great for her imagination, but not so great if you're trying to pack with those same boxes.

So, yeah. Looks like we'll be packing after she goes to bed tonight. :-)

Four days and counting until we can start moving....and 17 days until we have to be out of here for good. Whew. :)

And Our New Word for the Day is....

2010-01-16T11:30:00.001-08:00

..."No." Or, "NO!!!!" Thus sayith the toddler.

Yeah. Everything we ask the toddler these days is met with a "No." (Or, if she's particularly in a snit---stomped feet, folded arms, lower lip out and the inevitable, "It's not FAIRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!" Yes, someone discovered the joys of Time Out after that episode, how did you know? :-D)

And yes, I know this is all normal for her age and stage, that she's acting like she's supposed to and it's our job as parents to make sure she knows what behaviors we will (and won't) allow. And I'm okay with that---the best piece of parenting advice I ever got was, "Don't become a parent if you're afraid of being the bad guy." (Personally, I think that advice should be handed out with birth control, but that's just me :-P)

But I'm getting awfully tired of "No." And don't get me started on "fair" :-)

Passages, Large and Small

2009-12-31T15:39:00.001-08:00

My husband and I are going to be moving to a larger apartment next month. This was not exactly in the plan, but we've vastly outgrown our itsy bitsy teeny weeny apartment (which was fine for the two of us but when two became three, and three came with baby stuff and then AND GOT BIG...yeah. It's time.) We were supposed to have been in a house by now but if there's one thing 2009 taught me (again) is that sometimes, things really aren't in my control---or anyone else's.

So I wrote out our notice to our landlord---it'll go out with tomorrow's mail---and I feel a pang. It's not that I want to stay (gods forbid---when I say we're cramped, I'm NOT kidding) or that we're making the wrong decision in moving. But this place was our home for almost five years and a lot of good (and bad) things happened here. I found out I was pregnant here, and miscarried here. My husband came home from coronary bypass surgery here, and our daughter was conceived here. My water broke here, and five weeks later, we brought our daughter home from the NICU. My cat passed away while we lived here. And so on, and so on. Life happened, in other words.

I don't know who will live here after us. That's the thing with apartments---they're supposed to be transitory. But I wish them well, whoever they are.

And to anyone who may be reading this...may 2010 bring all for you that you didn't get in 2009, and may you stay safe and healthy with those you love.

Blessed be.

The Age of Reason. Sort of :)

2009-12-30T06:46:00.000-08:00

I'm home today---my husband has a nasty migraine (though really, is there any such thing as a non-nasty migraine?) and has been suffering from it since about o'dark thirty this morning. So it's pretty much me and Roisin today. This, coming on top of the Cold Virus of Doom (which we all had over Yule and are all---still---trying to get over) makes me really want to go throw a pity party, table for three. We're all just getting sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Which brings me to my daughter. She's had the crud since Christmas day (and for one of Dante's rings of hell, nothing quite matches a sick, cranky three year old with parents who've had roughly three hours sleep between them.) When Roisin is sick, she alternates between being cranky and being clingy. But as she's been getting better, I've noticed something.

I can reason with her now.

No, I'm not talking about advanced level discourse---we'll not be solving the problems in the middle east anytime soon, or ending the war in Iraq. But she's getting to the point now where I can talk to her and at least explain what she's doing wrong and what Rob or I have asked her to do. I don't pretend that she immediately does it, or that we don't have to repeat ourselves---she's three, after all. But it's the difference between not being able to explain to her (because she wouldn't get it) and being able to communicate fully with her.

It's a nice change, if a little unnerving at times. She's changed so much in just the last year---it wasn't so long ago that we were seriously considering having her evaluated for a possible speech delay. But to look at her now...she's growing more into her own person. And I wonder what else she'll tell us.

To My Daughter, on Her Birthday

2009-12-06T04:51:00.000-08:00

Today, at 2:45 am, you turned 3. (When you read this, I know you'll wonder, as I used to with my mom, how in the heck I could remember the exact time, but trust me. When your life changes forever, you tend to take notice of the time.) They dried you off and your dad and I waited for your first cry and there it was---thin, but annoyed as hell. You were a fighter---but then, after all we went through just to get you here, I knew that.

When I look at you now, the only sign of your NICU stay is the couple of IV scars you still have---you might lose them in time, but I sort of hope not. They're your history, symbols of how strong you had to be before you even knew what strong was. And, incidentally, how strong you made us. You were there for five weeks, and every day we saw you, every day we took pictures. I'm glad we did, because to look at those pictures now and remember, is to see a miracle.

You're walking and talking and trying so hard to figure out your world that you astonish your dad and I both with how much you're understanding. And you've discovered the fine art of pouting, lower lip and all. Your dad and I are doing our level best to teach you right from wrong in spite of the lower lip tremble, just so you know. (And by the way, it's very cute, that look. We can't give in...but it's cute, just the same.)

So this is my wish for you on your third birthday: that you continue to be strong and healthy, that you love carefully but fully, and that though you won't always agree with us (I can guarantee that) that you'll never doubt how very much you're loved.

Happy birthday, Roisin. :-)

Actually, the Winter Solstice is the reason for the season....

2009-12-03T21:02:00.001-08:00

Dear Co-worker,

I've known you forever. You're a good person, and a great friend. And I'm thrilled you've found your faith again. I really am.

But, for the love of [insert deity of your choice here] can you please stop sending me religious emails? You know I'm Wiccan. This means that I celebrate Yule at this time of year, among other things which we've talked about and which I know you know about.

I don't want emails about how "Jesus is the reason for the season"---it's a nice rhyme, but it's not true, since Jesus wasn't born in December.

I don't want emails about how we should pray for our country (apparently, we need to pray extra hard now that our president is reaching out to members of other faiths. Right. Because this is SUCH a problem, and the fact that 1 in 8 Americans is on food stamps is a minor concern. /end sarcasm.)

I don't want emails about how there should be prayer in school. There shouldn't be, unless it's a private religious school. I believe strongly in the separation of church and state.

I don't want that email about St. Theresa's money prayer that I know you've sent me ten or twelve times in the last year---don't you think the saint has better things to do than monitor our emails and keep track of who forwards it?

I don't want the email on the latest conspiracy theory/doctored picture/email scam that you've received and decided to send to me because "I'll know if it's fake." Your trust is touching, but really, I use Snopes.com. Nothing complicated or mystical. Trust me.

And finally...before you hit "Send," please think twice. I know the temptation is to assume that everyone around you is some form of Christian, but a good many of your co-workers and friends may not be. We are not all the same and many people keep their beliefs out of the workplace. I don't have a problem with your beliefs. Please respect mine.

Things I Learned from My Cats :)

2009-11-16T20:55:00.000-08:00

1) Love carefully, but love fully.

2) No matter what the question is, sleep is the answer.

3) Don't forget to sleep in the sun whenever possible.

4) Stop and listen to the birds.

5) Never underestimate the ability of small silly things to make you happy (anyone seen a cat with a shoestring lately, or a piece of foil? 'Nuff said.)

6) Stretching feels gooood.

7) There's nothing wrong with being independent.

8) Don't be afraid to take a risk for fear of looking silly. If you fail, you can always claim you meant to do that in the first place. (This isn't completely original. George Carlin had a skit years ago in which he talked about how cats would fall and yet make it look like they meant to do that. But I think the principle holds true.)

9) Getting through life is at least 90% a matter of attitude.

10) And finally, there isn't anything wrong with the world that a warm cat, a soft blanket, and a cup of hot chocolate can't cure.

My thanks to Tess, Tasha, Shadow, Cilla, Earl, Elvis, Griffin and Sochi who taught me these lessons. May Bastet watch over you all.

RIP, Soichiro-chan 1994 (???) - 2009

2009-11-14T11:28:00.000-08:00

I had to say goodbye to a good friend today. I had to put my cat down today.

Sochi found me in 1997. Those of you who are cat people know that you don't find them---they find you. Sochi found me in a muddy, oily hole-in-the-wall segment of a parking lot (literally; he'd crawled into a loosened area of brick to hide.) He'd been dumped---to this day, I can't imagine that. For the 12 years I was privileged to know him, Sochi was the best example of a cat. He was faithful and fearless and a good friend and companion (and, until I met my husband, he was my most stable male relationship.)

He had such personality, I can't begin to describe it. He might have had some Siamese in him (I certainly couldn't tell it from looking; he was a tuxedo cat through and through) but he sure was vocal enough to make me wonder. There was one meow for "it's time to get up and feed me" and another for "it's time to go to bed" and several thousand others for all the conversations he had in the course of a day. For the longest time, it was just he and I and his talking made me feel much less alone.

I let him go today because he was old and sick and his kidneys had finally, finally shut down. He was a good friend and among the best of cats, and I owed him a graceful exit (and so much more.)

Sochi, my friend, rest in peace. Go play with Tasha and Tess and Shadow and Ginger and Gypsy and Schatze and Klein and all the other animals we've loved and lost. They've been waiting for you. I'll miss you.

It's Me. Posting Again :)

2009-11-10T19:29:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

Sorry, I fell off the earth there for a bit (well, not really---I was active on my fanfic blog, just not here.;) I've spent the last month or so trying to stay off the radar at work (and mostly succeeding) and trying to keep track of an active, growing toddler (and definitely succeeding there. :-))

We're looking at moving to a larger place after the holidays. No, not to a house---we don't have near the money we'd need to pull that off, and in this economy, I'm not sure we want to take on a California-sized mortgage just now. We're looking at moving to a larger apartment so that the wee one can finally have a room of her own (yes!) and my hubby can have some place for his book business that doesn't involve, oh, every other room in our house. :)

Which brings me to the one change that I fear will be coming sooner rather than later. Sochi, the cat whom I almost had put to sleep in July, is ailing once again. Nothing wrong with him besides being older than Noah, but it's obvious he's coming to the end of the road. I just hate the idea of having to be the one to make a choice to end his life---but after all the years we've had together, I think I owe him more than keeping him alive and in failing health just so I don't have to make the decision. It's a tough call, again, but one I think we'll be making pretty soon.

Tomorrow is Veterans' Day here in the US. If you are veteran, or are serving now, thank you.

Please Don't Feed the Drama Llama :-)

2009-10-12T19:41:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a long time (well, a couple of weeks) since I've posted--sorry about that :) I've been busy writing, but the bulk of my time lately has been spent keeping up with (and staying calm around) our resident drama llama.

Yup. NA strikes again.

In brief, she went to my supervisors to blather about how I wasn't doing my job properly. [insert eyeroll here] Without being too specific, the mistakes I made were a direct result of her piss poor communication skills, incomplete directions, as well as some things I should have been made aware of, but wasn't. (I'm not sure who dropped the ball there...but it's annoying, no matter what the ultimate cause was.)

And while I will apologize for mistakes I legitimately made--because, hey, we all make them---I'm not about to fall on my sword just because some attorney with an over-developed sense of drama decided to (metaphorically) stomp her feet and throw a fit.

Other than that...life is going pretty well right now. Hubby is healthy. The wee one (who is not so wee---but growing like the proverbial weed) is happy andalso healthy and (blessedly) normal (or at least as normal as she was going to be coming out of our gene pools. :-P) And I've been writing a lot on my fanfiction blog...it's nice to have the muse back. :-)

I could do without the drama, though. Le sigh. :)

What Was Good About Today

2009-09-24T05:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, it's early yet, so I'll write about what was good about yesterday because what's good about right now is that I have my coffee :)

1) One of my favorite authors, Diana Gabaldon, released a new book in her long (and wonderful) Outlander series. I got a copy of the new book, An Echo in the Bone, the day before yesterday and I've started reading it during lunch. Wow. The only downside is that I hate putting the book down...but you take what you can get.

2) One of my longer fanfiction stories was posted, with its endnotes intact, on one of the main "Beauty and the Beast" fanfiction sites. The endnotes had disappeared when it was first posted and the site owner and I were trying to figure out how to get them back in. I checked this morning, and voila, endnotes. It sounds like a small thing, but there were translations in those endnotes so they were necessary. I'm just glad I won't have any confused readers now. :) (The story, if you're interested, is on my other blog.)

3) I got the project off to NA, after crossing my t's and dotting my i's a number of times. I'm crossing fingers that this particular storm has blown over (for now.)

4) Roisin is going to get her bangs trimmed today; her dad is going to take her while I'm at work. So she'll be happier not having everything in her face. :)

5) And finally...tomorrow is Friday. Whew.

Happy Friday eve, everyone :)

I'll Give That All the Consideration It's Due. Really.

2009-09-22T22:12:00.000-07:00

This has not been one of my better days at work, though I suppose I should have seen it coming. About six weeks ago, we had a major shakeup, in which we were assigned new attorneys. No big deal, it happens periodically and while it's an adjustment, it rarely causes problems beyond the first couple of weeks.

Except I didn't get off on the right foot, somehow, with one of my new attorneys--from the start, things have been awkward and uncomfortable between us. And today, that particular chicken came home to roost. She's going into trial next week--and for those of you who don't work with attorneys, the general rule when they're in trial is to throw your work under the door, never turn your back on them, and don't feed them after midnight. (Wait, that last one is for gremlins :) At any rate, even the most even-tempered of them get touchy.

So I offered to help NA (New Attorney) with the section of her trial prep that secretaries traditionally do. She said, no, she'd handle it. Fine. It's her choice to accept the help or not. Before I left today, though, she called me into her office and basically gave me a lecture about all of the things I'd done wrong on her cases. Firstly, she is particular about how she wants things done---and when she's told me about it, I've done it. No arguments, no questions. And yes, I've made minor mistakes, but I've owned up to them and done my best not to repeat them (and at any rate, these were not earth-shaking, verdict-reversing errors.)

My main problem is that the entire speech boiled down to her talking to me like I was an incompetent four year old who'd have to "earn" the right to be given more challenging work from her. Riiigggght. I've been doing my job since she was probably in high school and I have worked for some very, very tough attorneys with extremely demanding caseloads. Not a one of them has ever complained. (Well, one maybe has, but that's Idiot Attorney, and no one takes him seriously anyway.)

So anyway, I've been given the "chance" to redeem myself by helping her with that trial prep that she originally didn't want my help on in the first place (because I was so untrustworthy, don't ya know.) And I'll do it tomorrow, because that's my job and this is one of the things I do well. But if this keeps up---I'm going to have to go to my supervisor. It's been a long time since I've dealt with an attorney that I've had this much of a conflict with (aside from IA, and everyone has a problem with IA) and I don't really want to involve my supervisor unless I have to, because the risk then is ending up on the radar. And who wants that?

Le sigh. I need a vacation.

Drama, Facebook Style, Parte the Second

2009-09-11T20:13:00.001-07:00

Well, it finally happened. I got defriended on Facebook, by the same aunt of this post. And to be honest, I'm not quite sure what to think. It's not like we were close or anything, but it seems so immature somehow. "I don't agree with you, so I'm not going to talk to you," that sort of thing. I don't know what the final nail in the coffin was for her, but maybe we were just too different.

On my profile page, my religion is listed as Wiccan and my political leanings as "moderate liberal," neither of which is a lie, but I'm wondering if she found my liberal leanings more disturbing than my religious beliefs. ;) She and I weren't ever going to agree, and maybe that was too much.

And I guess that's my real problem with being defriended. I didn't know when she did it, so I never got a chance to have any context or explanation for why it happened. (And yes, I know why Facebook does it this way; I blocked an asshat from my past who tried to contact me, and I was relieved that Facebook would never tell him I'd done it, that I'd just disappear off his radar screen.)

So I'm perplexed and a little saddened. I would have liked to think that someone who sought me out, as my aunt did, would have been more tolerant of what she found. I would have liked to have discovered that her definition of being tolerant didn't mean agreeing with her all the time. But that isn't the reality, apparently.

So, dear aunt, I hope you stay healthy and happy on the path you've chosen. Goodbye and farewell.

Chakra Aligning 101

2009-08-29T18:57:00.001-07:00

...yes, as you can tell, I've started taking yoga again. The last time I did any sort of yoga practice was almost four years ago, but I ended up stopping when my hubby ended up in the hospital. Then I got pregnant and we all know what an adventure that turned out to be :-P

So I've joined this studio close to us and I have to say that it's precisely what I didn't know I needed. That is, it's not a gym bunny class; there are no rail thin teenagers who can do lotus position for six hours. It is, however, a safe, comfortable, nurturing place to learn this ancient practice. The women (and it is mostly women, though the studio does have a few male students) are of all ages and physical conditions--some are largely healthy but overweight (like yours truly,) some are battling MS and CFS and a whole host of other conditions, and some are just trying to live a more healthy life.

Something the instructor said during the meditation part of the class today struck home: "What can you let go?" It sounds like a simple question, but it's not. She talks of yoga practice as a system to understand your body from the outside in, and that means letting go and forgiving and understanding your body as it is. So when she asked what I could let go, I thought of all the drama around the wee one's birth. Our daughter is healthy and happy now, but I was angry at my body for a long time because I couldn't carry her to full term. Irrational, I know, but there you have it. ;)

So I 'm trying to let that go, to let go of the feeling that my body had betrayed the both of us, despite doing everything I was supposed to do. With any luck, I'll get pregnant again and I want to start that process cleanly and positively. And positive, for me, means letting go of some garbage.

Namaste. :)

I love the smell of chutzpah in the morning

2009-08-13T19:25:00.000-07:00

No, not another IA story. :)

A little background, so you don't have to go back and read all my posts on this debacle: back in May (it seems so long ago now!) we nearly bought a house. The deal fell through for one really big reason: the first time homebuyer's program that we were told by our broker that we qualified for, decided that we didn't qualify after all. And looking back, nearly 99% of that disaster could have been prevented had our broker called the county agency which administered the program to find out what their guidelines were.

But he didn't. And so, we trusted that he knew what he was talking about...and lost $2000 (between earnest money and the appraisals/home inspection on the house) that took us forever and a day to save up. This is not counting that we also lost a house that would have suited us very well, had things been as they were represented to us.

Yesterday afternoon, the phone rang. It was our broker. Lovely. Apparently, he's changed jobs for the third (fourth?) time in a year and wanted our contact info so he could contact us again when we were ready to restart our loan process. :-O

Yeah. We'll call you five years after hell freezes over, buddy.

(And I don't think it's entire coincidental that his wife---who was our real estate agent---wants to meet me for lunch next week. After all these months, I can't quite believe this is purely a social call. But we'll see---I only get a half hour for lunch so if this is some sort of sales pitch, she can only ruin my day for 30 minutes.)

The chutzpah, it burns....:)

Sure. We'd love to lose our jobs for you. Not.

2009-08-06T19:47:00.001-07:00

A bit of work-related hilarity, here. Those who know me IRL know I have a co-worker I will call IA (for Idjit Attorney.) He reminds me each and every day how lawyer jokes got started because he's the punch line for most of them. (On a personal level, he's not that bad. On a professional one...yeah. Not so much.)

At any rate, IA was on vacation this past week. His wallet got lost (or stolen) and without an ID, he couldn't board his plane. Instead of doing the rational thing and fixing his problem himself, he called his paralegal. At work. When we're all so swamped that even if we had an evil twin and a clone, we'd still be short-staffed.

His request? IA wants us to go into the DMV computer system and print out his driver's license photo so he can board his flight.

Um, no. For one, those databases are restricted---that is, unless you have a damned good reason to be there (like a pending or current criminal investigation) you don't go playing around in there. Them's the rules and breaking them means termination. (Yes, we're civil service and all that, but there are some rules you just don't break. This is one of them.)

So the paralegal pretty much handed his hat to him and told him to contact HR to see if they could fax over his work ID or something. And then she hung up on him...because, you know, she was busy.

There are a thousand IA tales in the Naked City. This has been one of them. :)

Happy Lammas/Lughnasadh!

2009-07-31T21:02:00.000-07:00

Tonight is the holiday of Lammas/Lughnasadh. In the medieval Irish calendar, it was one of the four main festivals, marking the first harvest and was traditionally a time for handfastings, market days, and family reunions. It's generally celebrated on August 1st, but since the old calendar started the holidays on the night before, it is now, officially, Lughnasadh.

In some of the Wiccan/neoPagan traditions, Lughnasadh is the first of the three main harvest sabbats (the others being Mabon, in September, and Samhain, in October.) There are rituals aplenty to thank the lord and lady for their bounty, or the god Lugh for the rain he allows to fall on the crops, but I have to admit, as far as rituals go, I'm a slacker pagan as yet. We are, simply, crunched for space and time, so most of my celebrating, I do in my head or in quiet times snatched between more mundane activities.

I choose to celebrate this Lughnasadh by counting my blessings. To my friends, those I've met in real life and those I've met through the internet, thank you. You helped me immeasurably during the rough time I had with my cat Sochi this past week, and in many other ways and many other times before. Maybe you didn't know you were helping, but you did, and I thank you.

To my husband, who keeps me grounded and keeps me from taking myself too seriously, thank you. I had to go online to meet you (and to find out we lived a few blocks away from each other) but you're still the best thing I ever "downloaded" off the internet. :)

To my daughter, who keeps me from obsessing too much on life by reminding me to find the joy in silly things...thank you. You're three feet (or a little more) of miracle---demanding, laughing, feisty, and loving ---and a miracle nonetheless.

You all have been my harvest of blessings. Happy Lughnasadh, my friends, and may your own "harvest" be plentiful.

Doing the happy dance because it's Friday...

2009-07-31T05:43:00.000-07:00

Oh, what a week.

Right now, I've got the sinus cold that will not go away---which means I'm coughing and hacking and sounding a lot like a plague victim. I'm more or less feeling better, but the whole coughing thing is not fun. If it's not gone by Monday, I'll be calling my doc (yes, I know colds are caused by a virus, but I have a bad history with bronchitis and pneumonia too. Eeep.)

On the upside---and there is one---Sochi seems to be on the mend, or at least as much on the mend as a 17 year old cat is likely to be. He's eating, and using the litter box and grooming (not easily, but he IS grooming.)

And tomorrow, I'm meeting a couple of people from the Beauty and the Beast TV online group for lunch. I'm not entirely sure how that's going to play out, but the last time I went to meet someone for lunch that I hadn't ever met before, I met my husband. :) So I'm thinking it'll be fun--and who can beat lunch at Panera, anyway?

Anyway, if you're reading this, have a wonderful weekend. :)

A picture of Sochi...

2009-07-25T13:01:00.000-07:00

This picture was taken in January this year. I use it as proof that Sochi and the wee one do, somewhat, get along. :)

A Left Turn at Albuquerque....

2009-07-25T12:49:00.000-07:00

...and I know it's just delaying the inevitable, but...

My friend J and I took Sochi to the vet today. The vet---a good country doctor, much as J said---examined him thoroughly and said the only real problem that he could see with Sochi (aside from old age) was that his kidneys were smaller, which is not uncommon with older cats. So we talked about options, treatment expenses, and Sochi's quality of life.

And bottom-line it, I just couldn't put him down. Not today, though I know it's coming; I don't fool myself there. What the vet suggested was a course of fluids, a change in his diet, a cortisone shot for his arthritis, and bloodwork--all of which are not expensive. But if the treatment gives us six months where Sochi is feeling at least somewhat better, I'll consider it worth the little bit extra. He's never going to be completely well, and I know that. At this point, I'll settle for the cat not being in pain and eating.

Conversely, though---if the bloodwork turns out something truly, imminently fatal (like cancer)...then I'll make the decision once again. At least I will know we tried everything reasonable to make Sochi's quality of life a little better in the time he has left.

So, we have time. I don't know how much more, but you can either curse the river or accept what it brings. In the meantime, we have today.

A small chuckle :)

2009-07-23T21:06:00.000-07:00

Because I need the laugh just now--and hey, who doesn't?---here's a small chuckle from the other day.

My husband and I were having this conversation in the car.

Him: I like this CD. I just wish all the songs weren't so pagan-themed.

Me: The CD is called "The Best of Pagan Song."

I love my husband. :)

Highway Robbery, Part 2

2009-07-23T10:04:00.000-07:00

Well, we have a solution. My friend J's vet was just as she said, and quoted us a price that is much more within our budget. So yeah, this Saturday morning at 11:30 is it. :-(

It feels pretty surreal, I have to say---Sochi is old and ill and failing yet the whole idea of making an appointment to end his life is just so odd. In my mind's eye, I see him launching through the windowscreens to jump another cat who dared jump onto "his" balcony (as he did more than once when he was younger.) Or chasing his tail. Or mow-Wowwwwwing at passersby (or growling at them---hey, I didn't call him my "attack killer watch cat" for nothing.) He was so alive then, and now...yeah. It's hard, because I remember him as he was, but that's not him, now.

I'm trying to focus on the mercy aspect of it, that as my long-time friend, I don't want his suffering to continue (or get worse, which it surely will.) I know we've made the right decision, and it's right that I'm the one who's going to walk that last path with him. But goddess, it's hard.

Highway Robbery, Part 1

2009-07-23T05:48:00.000-07:00

Well, I called our local vet's office yesterday to get an appointment for our cat. Turns out, because he is not a patient of theirs, they'll have to do an exam. And if I want to stay with him when they euthanize him, that'll be even more money. And since we want his ashes back...yeah. You guessed it. By the time all was said and done, the total was somewhere in the neighborhood of $400. Eeep. In the same week we're paying rent and car insurance. :-O

The whole exchange left a foul taste in my mouth. Sochi had a bad reaction to a vaccine a number of years ago, and because he's an indoor, and only, cat, he hasn't really needed vet care since then (aside from one ear infection and one blocked gland.) But now, when we want his life to end humanely and painlessly, this particular vet saw only a chance to make a profit. Lovely. Not.

So my friend J gave me the name of her vet, an old country doc who sounds much like the one I remember as a kid (who met us at his clinic late one night because our Siamese had pneumonia and was dying.) I'll call him and another vet today and hopefully, I'll find out that the procedure can be done for a little less money. Conversely, if we find out that $350 really is the range, then we'll still do it...but we'll have to wait a couple of weeks. In the meantime, we'll keep Sochi comfortable.

Hard choices suck.

The Journey to the Rainbow Bridge

2009-07-21T19:55:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, we made a decision about our cat Sochi. He's nearly twenty and it's becoming apparent that it's time to let him go...and it's hard. Before I met my husband, he was my most stable (and sane) male relationship---he saw me through two bad breakups, three or four moves and times when I was nearly at the end of my rope. He's been a good friend, and someone I could always count on to be there.

Now, I look at him and his fur is all dulled, and he's not eating often, and I know this is the beginning of a downhill slide that is only going to get worse the longer we prolong it. So it's time, soon, to let him go across the bridge and be healthy and whole. I'm not sure if it's the Rainbow Bridge he'll cross, or go to the green fields of Summerland, but wherever he goes, I know he'll be among friends, the other cats and dogs we have loved and lost. It doesn't make it easier to lose him now, but I know we're doing the best we can for him.

I'll post more on him this weekend.

Drama, Facebook Style

2009-07-19T16:29:00.000-07:00

I have a Facebook page. I've had it since 2008 and aside from one too-close-for-comfort email from an asshat from my past (who subsequently got blocked right after he contacted me, because I didn't want to talk to him ever again) it's been pretty trouble-free.

Until today.

It's no secret that I'm a liberal democrat--one of the more moderate ones, but I'm still a liberal (and it says so on my Facebook page.) Anyway, I posted an article from the WSJ about Sarah Palin's recent resignation which sparked a back and forth discussion between me and a friend of mine. That's not the problem. My aunt chimed in, which is.

My aunt is one of my mom's six sisters, and one of many that she has no contact with. Consequently, I've also had virtually no contact with her until a couple of months ago, when she found me on Facebook. I know enough about my aunt to know she's a conservative, fundamentalist Christian. But I figure since my leanings (and beliefs) are on the profile page, and she found me, she also knew what she was getting.

So she cuts into the conversation with a rather snide comment about how Sarah Palin must be too conservative or too intelligent for us. (Yeah. She went there.)

Leaving aside that this kind of thing irritates the crap out of me, because I wouldn't dare go to her page and make a political or religious statement, I didn't quite know how to react. So I thought about it, drank a coke, thought about it some more and said, in so many words, that I respected my aunt's beliefs and her right to have them but I was asking for the same consideration. I told her my beliefs regarding Ms. Palin (which had nothing at all to do with her religious beliefs and everything to do with her qualifications.) I figured that would end it and I went on with my day.

I have now received two more emails from my aunt---one in which she tells me that she is asking for respect for her beliefs (um, yeah, you went to whose page to make that comment?) and another one in which she told me she shares many of Ms. Palin's beliefs and has now realized that Facebook is not the place for political topics. And she said she was sorry.

The thing is, I do talk about politics on my Facebook page--more than I do here (but less than I did around the election LOL.) It's something my friends and I enjoy debating---and for sure, we don't always agree but that's the way of it. I just don't want to be in the position of censoring myself on my own page.

Le sigh.

One Toe Back in the Water...

2009-07-19T07:05:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, my husband and I went and looked at a couple of houses---not with our realtor, just on our own. (We're still saving the $$ we'd need for a down payment, so there was no need to get her hopes up or waste her time just now. :)) This was the first time we even looked at a house since the Great House Disaster....

...And you know, it wasn't bad. We looked at one house and immediately scratched it off the potential list as being about two inches away from being razed. The other house, though...that's the one that we both hope is still up for sale when we have the money to go forwards (and in this market, with a glut of short sales, that's a distinct possibility.) It's in a more rural area just outside our city and it's got a huge yard and tons of potential. And it's close to an award-winning grade school.

I'm not saying that this house is The One. I thought the last house was and we all see how well that turned out. But it's a possibility and one we hope to investigate further eventually. :) For now, it's enough to know that gently, we're getting back into it.

Today I Said No...

2009-07-16T21:18:00.000-07:00

...and true to the wisdom I learned on Ehell, it is a complete sentence.

Some background:

At work, we are dreadfully short-staffed. So people with my job title were paired with a "buddy," someone who would be assigned a limited amount of the work we do, in the hopes that they'd learn enough to help the rest of us out. For the most part, it's worked out okay; my buddy is a reasonably intelligent person and we get along fine.

(And a qualifier here: I get along well with pretty much everyone I work with. There are days, however, when enough's enough. And today was it.)

So, I was helping one of my co-workers with a new part of the computer system when L shows up. L is not my assigned buddy, but I don't mind helping her when I have the time. I didn't have the time today (remember, we're short-staffed.) And I told L "Hey, isn't M your buddy?"

L says, "But M is busy."

I told her--gently, I hope: "L, I'm busy too."

I don't know whether L liked being told no. But the reality is, I think I'll have to start saying it when I need to---not because I want to be "the mean bitchy secretary" but because I have work to do that I can't do if I'm off helping people who should be trying to help themselves first. And at the end of the road, if I don't get my work done, I'm not doing my job.

So..yeah. "No" is a complete sentence. Who knew? :)

Of bugs, ER trips, and fellowship :)

2009-07-11T17:21:00.000-07:00

(Yes, now how's that for a lead-in? :-))

This weekend has been...fun. In the same way that labor is fun, when it's over. :) I had a stomach bug on Thursday and my hubby went to the ER on Thursday night-Friday morning. (He's fine, by the way---just a skin condition called cellulitis, and not the blood clot we feared it might be. When a guy's had cardiac bypass surgery before the age of 40, we tend to get a little paranoid.) The ER docs took good care of him and he was home by 5am that morning.

Which brought to mind all the times he's been at the ER since we've been married---more than I care to count, that's for sure. And it's unnerving, and it makes our world feel a little askew, because---well, who asks for an ER visit?

As to the fellowship....well, I belong to an online fandom community for a TV show that lasted barely 3 seasons back in the late 1980s. They're having a convention in New Orleans this year and San Diego next year, but tonight, those of us who couldn't get to NO went online, in chat, to have an episode discussion. And that was nice, just a few of us from all over the world, chattering away like a bunch of fangirls about what we loved about the episode we watched.

Things are starting to feel more normal now that I write this down. Maybe this weekend won't turn out so bad after all....:-)

The Blog Roll Returns...

2009-06-30T19:51:00.001-07:00

...or so we hope because when it's up and running, it's a lot of fun.

Courtesy of the Ehell Blog Roll, here's the topic for this week:

What's the farthest you have traveled for food? Did you fly across the country just so you could have the perfect bowl of clam chowder? Did you cross the state line just for a scoop of ice cream? What was it, how far did you travel, and was it worth it?

The farthest I ever traveled for food was...

Several thousand miles and multiple time zones away. It wasn't like the episode of "M*A*S*H" where Hawkeye gets a food craving and has ribs delivered to him in Korea...from Chicago. :-P Nope, my food experience happened on my honeymoon back in 2003.

My husband and I went to Ireland and when we were in Belfast (I think---I could almost swear to it) we had dinner at a hotel that served this orange soup. When I say "orange" I mean, "CALTRANS" orange, the kind of orange they tell you to wear sunglasses before looking at. That kind of orange. Come to find out, it was The World's Best Carrot and Basil Soup.

We've looked for the recipe several times since, and even tried to make it three or four times, but it's never tasted the same. So if I could order take-out from Belfast, I think that's what I'd get. :)

Monday, Brighid and the Working Mom. :)

2009-06-29T21:38:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it was a Monday. Though not, strangely, a bad one. Maybe the Green Man helped a bit? I don't know, but I know I got a lot done today that needed to be done. I got in the zone, or what-have-you, whatever you want to call it. I was focused, for the first time in about a week (ah, PMS, what would I do without you? Oh, right. I'd be sane. :))

I kept having bits of poetry cross my mind today too---and I'm not at all sure what that was about. But since I've adopted the multi-tasking Brighid (goddess of the hearth, of fire, of poetry and childbirth to boot) as the main goddess I work with, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. These are poems I've read and loved, or simply been moved by.

So here's some of the ones that popped into my head today at weird moments.

"Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to be still"
-T.S. Eliot, "Ash Wednesday"

"I am the wind on the sea
I am the stormy wave"
-Song of Amergin

"I arise today, through strength of heaven"
-Breastplate of St. Patrick, or, "The Deer's Cry."

"The cow is of the bovine ilk
One end is moo, the other milk"
-Ogden Nash.

Okay, I'm weird. Shoot me. But hey, whatever gets me through a Monday....:)

The Green Man cometh....

2009-06-27T10:34:00.001-07:00

...and hopefully, soon.

For those who may not be familiar with the Green Man, he's a traditional, ancient icon of renewal and regrowth, of survival from the dead of winter. His face adorns many churches in Europe but I think, from what I understand of the history of the image, his history dates from pre-Christian times.

And I need the renewal badly, today. I'm fighting off a bout of depression that is at least 80% hormones (gotta love them...not) and some is just plain situational. I've been doing the same job for the last nine years and I'm no longer quite certain that I want to keep doing that same job for the rest of my life, or even the next five years. I'm pretty good at what I do, but I'm also realistic: there isn't anywhere to go from here for me, unless I want to be a supervisor. (And I really, really, REALLY don't. Been there, did that, have the scars to prove it. :))

In this economy, I won't be making any sudden decisions, and it's not like I have to make a decision now. But it's coming. My attitude may change if/when the economy recovers; we're having a hell of a time dealing with the budget shortfall and it's making everyone tense and terse, to the point where misunderstandings are becoming rife and, frankly, to the point where my tolerance for b.s. is getting very, very low as a result. None of which is, shall we say, a really good attitude when working in an office environment.

So this weekend, I'll be focusing on trying to work a little renewal within myself. Because---and it's trite, but true---change can only come from within.

Your friend might be nice, but he's still a kook

2009-06-19T20:26:00.001-07:00

Yes, that was our day yesterday, more or less. I wasn't feeling well yesterday so I stayed home from work. I was dozing off on the couch when our landlord, "Al" (names changed to protect the clueless) came by.

Al is...different. He's a nice guy, and he charges below-market rent for this place, so that's two points in his favor there. But I really don't want to know him more than just our business relationship. I just want to write the rent check, call him when there's something that needs to be fixed, and that's about it. The problem is, Al found out about the house debacle and has now started coming by a lot more, offering all manner of advice. And this is a problem because---guess what---Rob and I have been through all of the scenarios and we're really not in the mood to be told, "Here's what you should have done." Or the really helpful, "You know, your broker screwed up." Um, you think? Really?

(And no, if I'd had my way, Al wouldn't have found out we were moving until the day we closed escrow, at which point we would have turned in our notice. But the universe didn't work my way there either. :-P)

Anyway, Al's latest bit of "helpful" info (and yes, I know the guy means well, but still...) was this. He has a "friend." (Cue Don Corleone saying, "I know a guy....") His "friend" knows "all there is about first-time homebuyers' programs. (Where have we heard this one before? Oh, yeah, the broker who messed us over said nearly the same thing. Pull me once....) And we should "really check out his website." Yadda, yadda.

Well, we did. His friend is a kook, somewhere to the east of Michael Savage and the west of reality. So yeah, I think we'll be taking a pass there. Unfortunately, that leaves Rob with the unwelcome task of having to dodge Al's questions (since he's home during the day) but that's life. Maybe he can just not answer the door....:-)

Boldly going, and all that

2009-05-30T06:43:00.000-07:00

Well, on May 26th, I turned 35. And so, my hubby took the wee one and I out to see the new "Star Trek" film

Oh. My.

I loved it---not all aspects of it, to be sure. (Hello, Vulcan's sky is *red*, thankyouverymuch.) But the interplay among the characters and the new actors who play them is wonderful. These are, and aren't, the characters we've known and love, and the reboot has some intriguing possibilities.

And as for Spock and Uhura...wow. That works pretty well too. There was always a lot of flirtation among them in the original series---at least, in the early episodes (and before, I suspect, some suit at NBC flipped a grip over the concept of an African-American woman-gasp!-flirting with a half-human/half-alien---GASP!) So it follows over pretty well.

The wee one, however, was somewhat less impressed (though she did really like the Enterprise.) And no, we weren't one of "those" parents--we went to the earliest show, and sat way in the back so we didn't disturb anyone, and kept her supplied with goldfish crackers and munchies to keep her busy. She was pretty good, for the most part, and a good time was had by all. :)

And you couldn't have thought of this...three weeks ago?

2009-05-30T06:33:00.001-07:00

Welcome to the irony that is our life at times. :) Yesterday, FHA (the underwriters for our mortage loan) announced they were starting a program to allow their buyers to use the $8000 tax credit for first time homebuyers as part of their downpayment.

Yeah. That would have been nice to have had say, last month. Grrr.

But the more I think about it, maybe we dodged a bullet. The house we lost was lovely (really lovely, I have the pics to prove it *sigh*) but while I don't believe in the concept of god (or gods) acting as real estate agents (though the picture of Cernunnos in a three piece suit is highly amusing,) I do think things happen pretty much for a reason, and the way that they're supposed to. I wonder if we'd moved in there, if we would have found something that the home inspection didn't pick up or wouldn't have discovered...and if that had happened, how would we have paid for it?

And yeah, I know those worries are SOP with houses of any age. But having loved and lost one house on what seems, even now, to be perfectly goofy grounds, I have to think that something else was going on. Maybe this will free us to find the house that is for us. But in the meantime, we're regrouping and healing and saving. That's the best we can do for now. :)

Letting Go...

2009-05-22T18:29:00.000-07:00

Yeah, we lost the house. Well, I'm not sure you can say we really "lost" it, since technically, we never should have had it in the first place, but more on that later.

Monday, we got news that the down payment/closing cost program had declined us because didn't have enough debt. (Irony, much?) So after that, there really wasn't much else we could do, so we pulled the plug.

And it hurts, in ways I never thought it would. We've been through such a rollercoaster with this house, and now to find out that it was all for pretty much nothing...yeah. It hurts. And it makes us both angry, because the one thing that could have saved us all this angst was if our broker had done his job and called the agency which administers the program and asked them if we qualified. He didn't, but was more than happy to keep telling us we'd qualify. I'm not sure if he was sure we would, or if he was just ignorant, but whatever. We're back where we started now.

So now we're getting practice in letting go. We've been through worse things in our marriage, so I'm not worried on that score. It's just the letting go and starting over that's hard.

With much crossing of fingers and toes...

2009-05-09T17:33:00.000-07:00

...we're not quite out of the housing market. Yet. :)

Our realtor and I had a talk the day after this whole thing blew up...by putting our respective heads together, we came up with something that might---might---end up saving the house for us (ethically.) In a nutshell, the county agency which administers our down payment programs has never seen our file. In other words, the lender (from the bank that bought First Unethical Bank of California) was telling us that we wouldn't qualify for the down payment program due to some mythical (and esoteric) formula, but he didn't really know, because the agency didn't even have our file.

Yeah. I'd call that a small detail, wouldn't you?

And it might be a long shot, and a failed one at that. The lender could be right, yadda, yadda. But he could be wrong. So it's our last shot, but one we needed to take. So we did.

And ethically, I'll feel a lot better in either case. If it fails, we know we tried everything. If it doesn't fail, and we can get into the house on terms that work for us, then we did something right and ethical to get there.

The ethics of the whole thing really made me think. In real estate, as in life, there are a lot of grey areas and things which can be done which are not, precisely, illegal or unethical, but are bumping up mighty hard against that line. And that's a kind of karma (for lack of a better term) that we really don't want. Karma like that has a bad way of following you around.

Or put another way: whatever you put out, comes back three times over...so it's best to be mighty careful about what you put out in the universe. If we get the house ethically, then that's fine. If we don't...it wasn't meant to be. And we'll regroup and try again later.

But for now, we're content, knowing we did the best we could with what we have.

We've lost the house

2009-05-06T21:17:00.001-07:00

Barring a major miracle tomorrow, we will no longer be almost-homeowners. :-(

Our funding has completely fallen through; the lenders our broker went to had no problems approving us for a mortgage but they've all refused to deal with the first time homebuyer's program we need. So two weeks before closing...we're SOL.

(And yes, I've noticed the bitter, galling irony that the same banks that beg the government for help are the same ones who won't bend to help us now. Grrrr.)

I can't say our realtor and the broker aren't trying to be creative in helping us, but since we don't have a rich uncle or a money tree growing in the back yard, we're pretty much screwed. It would take us about five grand to get into the place without the down payment/closing cost assistance, and who has that these days? No one, that's who. And even if they did...who would just give it to us? No one, again. My parents would, if they had it, but they don't. Rob's dad would, if he had it, but he's developing some pretty serious health issues and so, if he had it, we wouldn't ask.

So I'm heartsick. And disappointed. I don't think we could have seen this coming but I still feel like maybe I was stupid to think it would work out after all. We did our best, but sometimes, it just ain't good enough.

Enchanted, Enraptured, Embalmed...

2009-05-02T22:47:00.000-07:00

...with mucho apologies to the Three Stooges, but it pretty much describes our whole home issue right about now.

After a one week period in which we were contractually obligated to buy a house (but had no lender,) and after many scurrying of emails between our realtor, our broker, and the new lender...we now have a lender. And it's not First Unethical Bank of California, but the bank that bought First Unethical Bank of California, so that's not precisely ideal from an ethical standpoint. But at this point...if we want the house (and we do) we sort of have to roll with it.

The newer wrinkle, though, is simply this: the downpayment assistance program we qualify for has its own set of guidelines, and we may (or may not) meet those...and we won't find out about that unti this coming week. And if we do meet the guidelines, we may not qualify for the maximum amount of downpayment assistance.

Oh, and the new lender has been slower than snail trail in getting us a good faith estimate---this is crucial because he's quoted us a mortgage price that makes both of us question what numbers he's using to make this all happen.

So many things are up in the air, and sometimes, it's (unintentionally, I'm sure) funny. Like the revelation that at least one calculation has my husband and I not having enough debt to qualify for downpayment assistance. With one car, two credit cards and a student loan debt hairy enough to be mistaken for Sasquatch...we don't have enough debt?!?!? Good grief. :-/

But it's like our realtor said (and I tend to trust her over our broker---they're married, but he's sort of...well, an idjit at times): everything thus far is fixable and so far, we're on track. So we just have to keep plugging along.

I'm tired. Rob's tired. We knew this whole "buying a house thing" was going to be a rollercoaster, but we could have done with a little less drama. :)

Are we at all sure that it's not secretly Friday the 13th?

2009-04-22T21:26:00.000-07:00

Yeah. It's been one of those weeks. I'm thinking that instead of having the bottle of wine when we look at the amoritization chart (as my dad jokingly said) I should just cut to the chase and start drinking now.

Because, for a 24 hour period, there was a situation in which we had committed to buy a house but had no funding lined up. None. Because the bank our broker went with did an about-face and decided that no, they weren't going to adhere to the guidelines of our first time home buyer's program after all (and how nice of them to tell us a month before closing. /sarcasm off.)

It does look like things are looking up, but slowly. Our broker is hot on the trail of another bank who actually will write the loan the way it needs to be written. Now if he can just do that before our first-time homebuyer's program runs out of funds....yeah, who, me worry? :-P

The one upside of this is that I'm finally starting to hear the family horror stories behind when my parents bought their first home. (I was four or five, so yeah, I missed a lot of this.) It's been pretty funny by turns, and strangely reassuring to know that no, this isn't really that unusual. Odd. Annoying. And damned inconvenient...but not unusual.

So now, we wait. As of now, our COE is May 18th. That date may change, but that's where we are now. And in the meantime, we hope. :)

Well, now about a month from closing...

2009-04-18T20:02:00.000-07:00

..yeah, our close of escrow (COE) got extended due to the requirements of our first time homebuyer's program. Which is fine, but frustrating...still, we plan to be in that house for many years to come so a few more weeks won't matter. On the upside, First Unethical Bank of California decided to go ahead and fix the few things that needed to be fixed (like the water heater, the leaking pipe under the kitchen, and the toilet. YAYYY) All in all, not too bad for a house that's almost 70 years old.

Today we had such plans---we were going to take the wee one to the zoo. Except that a) the wee one and some killer indigestion kept my hubby up last night and b) hubby on three hours sleep does not a pleasant day make. So he slept in, I kept the wee one off her daddy, and we went to a garage sale instead this afternoon.

We really hadn't planned on the garage sale--it was one of those "Hey, they're having a garage sale, let's stop" things, so we did. I scored with a $2 CD of an Irish artist named Sinead Lohan and a scarab paperweight. (Who, me, eclectic? :-)) And we had a good time, which is more important.

We also had company today...of the sort that makes you go, "Huh?" My friend Alwyn's (not her real name) ex-husband (or husband, I'm never sure what's going on with those two) was on some sort of long distance bike ride today and called us to see if he could come down and visit. Mind you, a) the house wasn't clean and we weren't really prepared for company and b) when Alywn and her husband hit the skids, things got pretty nasty pretty quickly between her husband and us and c) are they together or not? Who knows? And why did he want to see us, really?

So...yeah. It was a little awkward, but I called Alwyn before he came down just to make sure things were fine on her end, and they were...and the visit wasn't bad. So while this was all totally unexpected (to say the least) it hasn't been a bad day at all. Whew. :)

16 Days to Closing and Counting....

2009-04-14T18:44:00.001-07:00

...yup, that's right. We are thisclose to closing escrow on our first house. And I'm sitting her shaking my head, because I literally cannot believe it's really going to happen for us.

But still, I'm nervous, because things just don't happen this smoothly for us. Ever. (In fact, about the only thing that's ever gone smoothly was the wedding and the honeymoon--after that, it was a rollercoaster. Which is fine---I like rollercoasters, but I could have done with some warning first. :)) So, we're working on crossing our t's and dotting our i's and maybe, just maybe, things really will work out.

Well, it's official...

2009-03-22T07:16:00.000-07:00

...we're in escrow. We don't have the house yet (it has to pass a couple of inspections first) but we're on our way to owning our own place for the first time ever.

And that's a nice feeling but scary (when you think of just how much money you're committing to pay for that house over the life of the loan; my dad suggesting looking at the amoritization with a bottle of wine. I think he was kidding. :-))

But if everything works well, we'll have a yard for the wee one to play in, for us to grow a garden, and for our family to grow too if that's in the cards.

Roots. It's nice to have them, finally. :)

That sucking sound you hear...

2009-03-18T20:27:00.000-07:00

...is the hose attached to our bank account.

Because a) we just bought a house (I think...more on that later) and b) everything from here on out is tied up with the house---inspections, appraisals, weird fees I've never heard of (seriously, there's probably some funding for NASA buried in there.)

So, here's why I think (but don't "know" yet) we've bought a house. The seller (in this case, First Unethical Bank of California, as I mentioned in my earlier posts on the subject) sent us a purchase agreement. Our credits aren't as high as we would like, but since they're not pulling (yet) the dirty trick of forcing us to use them as the lender, I'm not all that inclined to fight it. Yet. So we talked it over with the realtor, agreed that the offer was fair, and signed it and sent it back. Depending on where we are in the seller's list of Things To Sign, we could find out in 3-5 days if they were really serious about accepting our offer. This is First Unethical Bank, so anything's up for question.

I hope we get this house. I hope we have the money to get this house. And I hope that if we are secretly funding NASA, that we get to Mars sooner rather than later.

With apologies to Jane Austen...

2009-03-18T20:13:00.000-07:00

...it is a fact universally acknowledged that if you have a profile on Facebook, some asshat from your past will find a way to find you.

It happened to me this morning. I was contacted (at 2am, no less) by a guy I hadn't seen, heard, or thought of since we split almost fifteen years ago. It didn't end well---we were engaged, but by the time I was getting ready to graduate from college, I was also getting tired of his mind-games and his jealousy and control issues. Finally, we had a huge fight while I was driving and he hit me once, hard, in the throat.

And I left him. I should have left him bleeding on the side of the road, but I was younger then and I thought I still loved him. But I did leave him, and many times since, I've thanked [insert deity of your choice here] for that decision.

I'm not scared of him anymore. He's welcome to whatever life he has, provided he has it far from me and my family. I will confess that there was a part of me that stopped breathing when I saw his email in my in-box, along with the stupid-ass message of, "I think we used to know each other." Really? You think, you jackass?

And I still don't know how he found me on Facebook. I use my husband's last name on Facebook (my "real" name is hyphenated, but since both names are unusual, I figure it's better if I'm not too easy to find.) And I've got my settings set pretty high---people who want to contact me have to email me first to ask for permission. If I respond, they can see my profile...but I didn't respond to his email. I just blocked the son of a bitch. Let him wonder why he can't see me anymore, or why I didn't respond.

And please, let him stay gone.

#$&#%(*&!!! Friday the 13th

2009-03-13T21:42:00.000-07:00

No, the day went fine, why do you ask? :)

Seriously. Someone needs to do a travel advisory, or a sig-alert or something. Don't work on a Friday the 13th when it's the full moon. It's really NOT a pleasant experience.

For starters, our network went down for almost four hours this morning at work...which meant, we couldn't do anything. At all. For any reason. I read a book for four hours and got paid for it. Normally, I wouldn't have minded this, but today I had a lot of work I wanted to get off my desk, and I only got through half of it. Yippee.

And then there was the house debacle. DH and I have put in an offer on a second house, and all seemed to be going well until today's blow-up. Basically, the house that had no offers, now has multiple offers...which is not good, but not unexpected in this market. What is bad, and what still has me torqued off, is that the bank that owns the house wants us to get pre-approved with them as a condition of even looking at our offer. While that's not necessarily illegal (a bad case of the law not having caught up with the market, I suspect) it is unethical. It's the technical equivalent of, say, buying a car and being told you can only go to Bank X for the loan. Which is ridiculous in any context.

Adding insult to injury, the bank that owns the home has had some major issues with unethical behavior that's gotten the attention of federal and state regulators in the past---so no, we're not exactly jumping for joy to have to deal with them over this house.

I think we struck a compromise---our broker will give them the info to do a pre-qual, which means they won't have enough to pull credit, but it should give them enough info to evaluate our ability to pay for the place. But with multiple offers and ours not being a high one (for budgetary reasons as well as our own assessment of what the place is actually worth and the amount of work we'd have to put into it) I'm not at all sure that all of this aggravation is going to result in us getting this house.

Sigh.

The offer is in...

2009-03-07T16:09:00.001-08:00

...but I'm not sure whether to cross my fingers yet. :)

On Wednesday, my hubby and I went househunting. Again. And we found a house that we both liked, in an area we weren't sure of. After much dithering/discussion (and much pulling up of the local crime databases,) we went to go see the house again.

So we put an offer in on the casita (I think that's the technical term; it's a Spanish-style bungalow)---it's been the only house (so far) that my hubby and I both liked. It's in decent shape for a house built in 1925 (and hell, it's still standing so they must have done something right. :)) And aside from some interior painting glitches, it's pretty darned cute.

So we bit the bullet and put an offer in today. Now, we wait, because the house is a short sale and it seems like everyone and their mother has to be involved before we even get close to getting the keys. Which means that nothing is really resolved; like an Ebay auction, we've put our "bid" in but there's just no guarantee we'll win. And if we find something better in the meantime...well, that'll be as it should be too.

Us. Homeowners. Wow. :)

Um, it's 6:30am here. What time is it in YOUR universe?

2009-03-07T06:43:00.000-08:00

Ugh.

We just got a phonecall from one of DH's aunts (he's got I don't know how many, but due to his, er, complex family situation, we don't really hear from most of them. It's not a problem for him, so I don't sweat it either.) She lives on the east coast and was calling to tell him to meet her for breakfast tomorrow since she'll be in town.

Nice. So not only are you completely ignorant of the time zone issue, but you don't even have the common courtesy to ask him if he wants to go to breakfast. He's 41; I think he passed the "ordering around" stage around 35 years ago. And besides, we might have plans tomorrow. (Granted, those plans could include various activities along the lines of underwater basketweaving, but they are plans. :-P)

I no longer have any doubts about why DH has as little contact with this woman as possible. (Though my first clue was when she came out the last time---she seemed to think that DH's sole reason for existence was to drive her and her son around town and play tour guide. Just what a man with an infant and busy life wants to do without even being asked.)

Grrr.....

Well, at least today went better :)

2009-03-04T21:02:00.000-08:00

Today was a much better day at work than yesterday, thankfully. I got lots of work done (which always makes me feel better---there isn't anything worse than having spent eight hours doing something only to realize that you really don't know what you did all day. ) So things are pretty much back to what passes for an even keel there. Whew.

And after work, DH and I went house hunting. And we found two houses we would be perfectly happy in. I'm pretty sure we're going to put an offer in on both of them (no, we're not rich, but most of the houses here are short sales, so putting two offers in really means we might get one of them. Maybe.)

It's a nice feeling being able to put roots down somewhere. In a (more) perfect world, we would have brought the wee one home from the hospital to a home, not an apartment, but as the Vulcans of "Star Trek" say, Kaadith. What is, is. (Yes, I'm at one with my geekness. Why do you ask? :)) So, what we hope for now is to find a house we can afford, with a yard for my husband's garden and the tree we're going to plant for our daughter (and whoever comes after her.)

In short, the normal things people want for their families. I just hope our house of cards that's gotten us this far in the process stays up and sturdy. :)

Krista and the Awful, Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day....

2009-03-03T21:15:00.001-08:00

Okay, it wasn't quite that bad. But it was plenty bad enough.

I love my job. The people are great, the work is challenging (for the most part) and I get a lot of job satisfaction out of what I do. But we, like everyone else, are being affected by the economy, the state budget crisis and (for all I know) whether Mercury is in retrograde or not. ;-) The end result is a lot of nervous people who are stretched too thin, being asked to do even more with even less. Layoffs aren't imminent or even likely, but like one of my co-workers said this morning, she's not sure whether it's worse to be laid off or to be the last one left. I see her point some days.

So, yeah, things are tense. And when things get tense, goofy stuff tends to happen. In the last week, I've been honked at four times for things which wouldn't have been considered wrong, raised an eyebrow or rated a comment even six months ago. It's not that I'm a bad employee (I'm not---I've got the personnel ratings and the division awards to prove it, and I work damned hard at my job) but I think, as another co-worker said, management is under pressure to show they can Do Something Important---because they, like the rest of us, are nervous for what could happen if they come under the microscope.

So, for right now, I've got a target on my back. And I don't particularly enjoy it. But I'm an older and wiser employee now, and well, the only thing I can do is go to work tomorrow and hope things are better. And that Mercury stays out of retrograde. :-P

It's just a number. Sure it is. :)

2009-02-21T14:14:00.000-08:00

Today I went clothes shopping. Now, in fairness, I must admit that I'm a plus-sized woman. (In fact, see that picture of the Venus of Willendorf on my blog? She and I look a lot alike, except that I don't have her fancy hairdo and I have a face. :-P.) And I'm okay with that---while, yes, I'd like to be thinner, I'm also realistic about my size and, for the most part, I'm comfortable with it. I won't say that "getting comfortable" was easy, but I'm fine where I'm at now. And I'm healthy---my blood pressure is low, I get regular exercise and I'm not showing any signs of a pre-diabetic condition.

So, I go shopping and I notice that all the pants sizes have changed, drastically. I normally wear a US women's size 18 or 20, depending on who's making the clothes (don't get me started on why they don't size them by inseam and waist, like mens' pants are.) When I was looking, they were all sizes 1, 2, or 3, and color coded for "fit." (Which I presume means "curvy," "really curvy," and "CALL OMAR THE TENT MAKER NOW" :-P) Apparently, the smaller number size is supposed to make me, the consumer, feel better about buying, because my "size" is now smaller.

Um, no. First of all...look, I wear an 18 or 20. I know what a size 2 looks like, and I've never been that (well, unless you count third grade. Maybe. :-P) And I don't like being patronized---there is nothing worse than the feeling of having some nameless Madison Avenue exec. metaphorically patting me on the head and saying "There, there, fat chick, we'll make the numbers smaller and you'll feel better."

The thing is, I don't. It took me a long time to get to the point where I was okay with who I am and what I look like, and if I can walk into a store, and hold my head high while I pick out the clothes that look good on me and my body style, I figure the least Madison Avenue can do is back off and let me do it. Shameless marketing ploys need not apply. :)

Things You Don't Expect to See at Chez Target :)

2009-02-10T20:19:00.000-08:00

Chez Target is literally down the street, so close I could walk there if I felt like freezing. And, perhaps not surprisingly, we end up spending huge amounts of time there---between the pharmacy, the all-important Toddler Stuff (man, it'll be like getting a pay raise when she finally gets off diapers. :)) and just general odds and ends, I think they should probably name an aisle after us, or something.

Anyway, DH was in a Mood. He's not the moody type, but when he's in a Mood, it's best just to take the wee one and give him some space. So she and I went down to Chez Target and did the usual drill: unhook toddler from carseat, put Toddler (and the all-important Tigger) in the cart, lock car, go into Chez Target, yadda, yadda. I was midway through the frozen food section when I realized that someone had left a dirty diaper in a Target shopping bad in our cart.

Okay, granted, it was in a Target bag, but...ew...just....ew. Who does that? I have a baby, and I've seen my fair share of diaper changes done in the back of the car, but come on. The trash can was right inside the store, and there was one right outside the store too. I should know, because that's where I threw someone else's diaper. So they could take the time to wrap the diaper in a Target shopping bag, but not to throw it in the damned trashcan?

Eww.

Wow, my very first piece of spam

2009-02-04T11:55:00.000-08:00

I just deleted a comment made on my previous blog entry---it was obviously inaccurate that, frankly, I couldn't let it stand. So, bye-bye. :)

However, this comment was from someone I don't know, will never know, and I have no idea as to their motivations. Really, who does this? Who has the time to do this? And why my blog?

Egads.

Upheavals, Large and Small

2009-02-03T20:46:00.000-08:00

No, nothing serious. I promise. Well, unless you count planning to buy a house in the middle of a recession, that is.

Right now, as the title of this blog suggests, we are a family of three. We fold neatly into small spaces with nary a whimper...but right now, that family of three is crammed into a too-small apartment where my husband is also trying to run a business. So needless to say, we don't have room for anything. The wee one still doesn't have her own room, and while I don't think she's noticed, we need to get into a house before she hits high school. :-P And long before we have baby #2, obviously. :)

And, to add another monkey wrench into things, we presently live in one of the most expensive cities in California. (And if any of you are thinking, "Well, you could always move to someplace cheaper," I say, "Nice try, but fie on you." If you think I'm giving up a job I love with great health insurance in this economy, you're insane. :-P)

Until recently, DH and I were priced far out of the market, far enough that we watched people all around us buy houses we knew they couldn't afford, and wondered how they'd make the payments, because we knew we sure as hell couldn't.

So here we are, planning to buy a house. We actually started the process last fall---I went to the first-time homebuyer class required for our down payment assistance program, and we got pre-approved (or is it pre-qualified? Whichever one it is that really means something.) We looked at houses for weekends on end....

...and then we got scared. Really scared. Most of the homes were bank owned, and they needed a ton of work, or were in a sketchy area, or were too small for the larger family we hope to be one day. And bottom-lining it, mostly we were just scared of finding out that work needed to be done now on a house, work we couldn't afford to pay for. No landlord to call on when your sewer pipe busts, after all.

So we've waited these past few months, and we're slowly getting back into it. It's no less scary than it was last fall, but I think we have a much better idea of what we're looking for and what we won't settle for. Here's hoping we can find something :)

If it's Monday, It Must Be a Wardrobe Malfunction

2009-02-02T19:02:00.000-08:00

No, don't call me "Janet" (or "Ms. Jackson, if you're nasty." :-P) This morning was living proof that a) the deities exist and b) they have a rip-roaring sense of humor.

So here's the background: we don't have a washer and dryer at our apartment, so our laundry routine consists of doing laundry about once a month (or more often, if the wee one has been sick.) I looked at Mt. Clothesmore last night and realized that it was too late to washing something up in the sink and hope it would dry by morning, so I dug through my closet and found a clean top and a clean pair of black slacks. Ah, bliss....

I get dressed the following morning and meet my carpool. So far, so good. And then I sit down and I realize two things simultaneously. 1) My zipper is kaput and 2) one pants leg is slightly lower than the other one because it's come unhemmed.

Egads.

Fortunately, I don't work with the public at all, and my top is long enough to cover the zipper. But still---yeah, it was a Monday. And I bet the deities are having a celebration over this particular prank. :-P

Babies, Babies, Everywhere...

2009-02-01T16:07:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I'm having those feelings again. Those who have children might recognize it; it's the feeling that comes just before the feeling that says, "Hey, let's have another one." :) I'm noticing babies a lot these days, when I'm not noticing mine, that is. :-P Babies in strollers, babies with sticky-up hair, babies in their mother's arms.

So, we're hoping to try for another one at the end of March, and hopefully, that will go a LOT smoother than our pregnancy with the wee one did. At least the docs know what caused my preterm labor and can do some preventative measures much earlier in the next pregnancy...which means we'll probably have a healthy, nearly full-term baby. We can hope. :)

Which brings me to the octuplets that have been in the news lately, along with much speculation about how the mother is going to take care of all 14 of her kids when the 8 babies come home. I confess to wondering about that too, as well as wondering what the hell happened there. DH and I did undergo some fertility treatment (though that wasn't how we got pregnant with the Wee One. She was a surprise, in every sense of the word.)

So I can understand the burning desire to have kids. I can even understand not wanting to have a reduction, as this woman apparently decided. There's just something so heart-wrenching about finally being pregnant with a much-wanted child, only to be told that you should consider aborting some to save the others. But what I don't understand is this: if the woman knew ahead of time that she wasn't going to reduce, why did her doctor implant all eight embryos? Did he/she really think it was worth the risk?

And in the end, the babies are the ones that'll suffer. Multiple births mean multiple hazards and it's extremely rare that a family like the Gosselins (of "Jon and Kate + 8" fame) would not have at least one child with cerebral palsy, developmental delays, etc. Plus, there's the NICU itself---it's a great place and it can do a lot to help early babies out (and don't we know it) but it's not a mother's womb. And it's not a place I would wish on any parent or any baby.

So I don't know who I'm more annoyed with---the mother, who decided that six wasn't apparently enough or the doctor, who decided to implant all of the remaining embryos? Somewhere in there, I keep thinking that someone should have decided that just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.

Where on earth will they find enough sage for THAT?

2009-01-16T20:22:00.000-08:00

Happy new year, everyone...sorry I've been a bit off on the posts, but I've been under the weather recently.

So, here's my tangent de jour :). I was watching the Rachel Maddow show tonight and one of the guests mentioned that she was going to celebrate Dubya's impending exit by arranging, with some of her friends, to smudge the White House. No, they won't be going in the White House (I rather think that the Secret Service might have Issues with that idea, for some reason :-P) but will instead be standing on one of the streets outside the White House, trying to smudge (or "sage," as she put it) away the foulness of eight years of Dubya's rule.

Major bad juju, as my friend Alwyn would say.

Sageing/smudging has its roots in many ancient cultures, in more than a few neopagan traditions and in some major religions. I've smudged to rid my apartment, and my life, of the residue of a boyfriend who broke my heart. I did it because I couldn't move on unless I forced his memories out...and when the sage had burned to embers and my heart had healed, I met the man who later became my husband.

So smudging can have good benefits, obviously. :) But as I watched Rachel's guest talk about smudging tonight, I began to wonder if they'd ever find enough sage to chase away eight years of war, death, bad decisions, arrogance, pride, ignorance, greed, stupidity and self-pity. Not to mention a president who can't pronounce "nuclear."

But somehow, I can't blame them for trying. Every little bit helps. :)

Handbags, best friends, and orange chicken

2008-12-27T06:18:00.000-08:00

(Hey, I did warn you that this would be...err..tangential, didn't I?)

Yesterday, my best friend and I went out and did girl stuff. She lives three hours away and has four kids and a night job to boot, so it was something of a miracle that she made it down at all. But she did. And we had a blast. We hit our local metaphysical supply store (hey, where else are you going to get both altar statues and incense?), our local Coach outlet (bwahaahahahah!) and brought orange chicken home for dinner from our favorite Chinese place. (Or in other words, we fulfilled our evolutionary destiny as hunters and gatherers by shopping. And we helped the economy too...you can't beat that. :-P)

Alwyn (not her real name) and I have been friends since we were *mumble, mumble* teenagers and when we were out yesterday, it struck me how nice it was to have known someone that long---before I was a mother, before I was a wife...back to when we were both teenagers working at the Ren Faire. We've grown and changed, of course, and there have been times when we've been thoroughly annoyed with and by each other, but after nearly 20 years, we're still friends. I've known that she'll be there for me no matter what, and she knows the same. She helped keep me sane when I was on bedrest and was there when I had my daughter. And somehow, even though it's been nearly a year since we've talked to each other, we can just pick up after we left off...like we were never apart at all.

Anne Rivers Siddons in her novel Colony wrote of another friendship that the character's spouse was her heart, but the friend was her soul. I can't think of a better way to say it. :)

Ding, dong, the Blog Roll's Back :)

2008-12-26T10:04:00.000-08:00

Yes, the (in)famous blog roll from Ehell is back. The topic this week is a Christmas memory, so...here goes. :-)

On Christmas, 2006, DH and I had a two week old baby in the NICU. What I remember most when I think about it is how very small she was and how scared DH and I were. We knew she'd probably be premature (I still can't decide if I would have been happier not knowing that particular detail) but knowing it and seeing it are two different things. Everything is in miniature--hands, feet, toes, fingers. Her feet were just the length of my thumb. Her skin was so thin, thin enough that I could see the red light of the oxygen monitor as it pulsed against her foot.

I remember noticing the fine hairs of her eyebrows and the angel kisses on her forehead and the small birthmark on the back of her neck that was just like my father's. I remember how we learned to tune out the noises of the NICU--the monitors, the chatter, the faint whirr of breastpumps, just to be able to concentrate on our own child....and how we learned to read our daughter's monitors and speak NICUese. But most of all, I remember wanting her so badly to come home.

Here comes the sun :)

2008-12-20T09:54:00.000-08:00

With apologies to George Harrison, of course. :)

Last night, my hubby, the wee one, and I went to our first ever Solstice celebration at our local Unitarian Universalist church. It was quite the experience---wassail, carols, poetry readings, dance, song and most of all, a sense of community recreating the magic of the longest night of the year.

I'm not quite sure what the wee one thought about it; it was getting close to her bedtime when the ceremony started and I think she wanted to stay up to watch it, but was also overtired and close to meltdown, so DH and I played "pass the baby" more than a few times. We got through it, though, and I bet next year, she'll really get a kick out of it.

There were some mysteries last night too...and of all nights, when the sun doesn't come for hours upon hours, I think that's appropriate. There was an old woman there (the crone? Who knows?) who sat upon a throne while people came up and talked quietly to her, and she to them. I don't think she was a priestess---though she certainly could have been. Maybe she was just known for being wise. I don't know. But as she sat upon her throne, surrounded by Christmas lights and the Green Man and poinsettias, I got a dim sense of what it must have been like for those ancient people on the longest night of the year.

To all my reader(s)...whatever your beliefs, I wish you peace and happiness this holiday season. Blessed be.

Oh, boy, is it ever a Monday...

2008-12-15T20:08:00.000-08:00

Just a little Monday misery I thought I'd share:

1) It's raining. Not usually an issue (it's the only weather we ever get) but it's freezing rain and that makes the freeways not so much fun.

2) My pentacle pendant has disappeared. I think---because it's so tiny---it probably bounced somewhere in the bathroom...so it's more on vacation instead of really lost. And if it is lost, I know where to find another, but I just don't want to. I liked that particular pendant. Le sigh.

3) Our Christmas tree is up (yay) but our ornaments and lights aren't...because they're buried somewhere in a bin which---with our luck---is way the heck in the back of the second bedroom (aka, our storage room.) And frankly, I'm not sure it's worth moving everything out and putting everything back in just to find one storage bin. But it sure would be nice to have them on the tree.

And yes, I know that none of these things is really all that bad, considering. I still have a job, DH is pretty healthy (knock wood) and the wee one is, well, a typical toddler, just getting in touch with her inner drama queen. But man, I hate Mondays sometimes....:)

Happy Birthday to my Wee One

2008-12-08T05:45:00.001-08:00

The wee one turned two on Saturday (gulp) and we had the usual festivities---lunch with her grandfather (my FIL,) cake and presents. (Though I'm not entirely sure she understood why she was getting gifts, but she sure seemed to enjoy them.) And then Sunday, we took her out to the Wild Animal Park, where she was enchanted by birds (well, not all of the birds, but most of them,) giraffes, lionesses and zebras.

And once again, I was struck by how ordinary all of this was. She's a normal two-year-old, all mood swings and smiles and tears, and I'm so very, very grateful that she is so normal. She's also picking up words at a faster pace---dinosaur (um, wonder where she got that from? :-P) and carrying on whole conversations on her play phone. (Mostly consisting of "Hi, hello, what," and "bye-bye." At least she's polite...)

So, happy birthday, Wee One. Your father and I love you very much and bless the day you came into our lives.

Just give a damn...

2008-11-26T23:56:00.000-08:00

(Warning: you are now entering Tangent Land)

A number of years ago, I read an excellent Star Trek fanfic (yes, they do exist :)) where one character asked another what she expected him to do. The answer was, "Just give a damn." For some reason, that line stuck in my head---maybe it's because what we all expect someone to do. Just give a damn about us, our lives, and for the love of deity, don't pretend you get it, when you really don't.

Which brings me to this

http://community.livejournal.com/obama_daily/153184.html

These are photos taken of the Obama family's trip to St. Columbanus High School in Chicago to hand out food at a food bank. I'm as cynical as they come (especially given the antics of the last eight years) but I don't think this is an act for them. They get it. They give a damn. And you can see it in their faces and in the faces of the other people in the photos.

I don't know what kind of president Obama will be yet. I don't know if his attempts to help us get our bus out of the ditch will make things worse, or better. But it's nice to have someone at the helm who gives a damn.

And on to a last, minor tangent:

To all my reader(s): I wish you all a Thanksgiving full of good food, good times, good friends...and lacking drama, angst, or undercooked turkey.

The Turn of the Wheel

2008-11-22T18:49:00.000-08:00

In the old Celtic pagan calendar, Samhain (or Halloween) marked the end of the year. So, in a sense, it's already 2009. (Yikes.) So my thoughts tonight are on the new year and a dilemma that's tickling at the back of my mind.

I'm still in the broom closet at work. I work with a lot of very good people, don't get me wrong, but many of them are also very devout Christians...and some of them are of the evangelical persuasion. And there's the rub. I respect their beliefs, and their right to have those beliefs, but I can't guarantee that mine will receive the same respect.

I don't talk about religion at work, which is fine for the most part, but sometimes it strikes me that I should be free to wear my pentacle, as a symbol of a faith that, while private, is not something I'm ashamed of. (I often wear a Mother Goddess pendant, which doesn't get so much as a hairy eyeball...but then, in my experience, people don't initially associate the Mother Goddess with paganism. I'm not sure why. :))

So with the turn of the wheel, I'm starting to ask myself if it's time to take a step out of the broom closet. Wearing the pentacle openly is more than it seems---it's also a step into fully acknowledging my beliefs and being prepared to defend them.

Do I want to open that can of worms at work? I'm not sure.

Stay tuned for further details :)

"Hi, Mommy"

2008-11-21T20:24:00.000-08:00

Yeah, that was said to me today, for the first time. On the phone. My daughter is now speaking. Not in sentences (yet, though that's clearly coming) but the wheels are turning and she's talking. She's talking. :)

Preemies sometimes have speech or motor delay, and yeah, her dad and I were a little concerned. Not about her motor skills (good gods, the kid doesn't spin, she pirouettes...so, no, nothing wrong with her motor skills.) But her speech seemed very mildly delayed...and yeah, we were worried, the more so because we know how lucky we are that the wee one escaped her stint as a preemie with only a few IV scars. Lots of other kids aren't so lucky...and besides, telling the parents of a preemie not to worry is like telling them not to breathe. It just doesn't happen.

So yeah, today she's speaking. She knows I'm her mommy and she hugs me. Life is good. :)

Some loose ends...:-)

2008-11-15T19:09:00.001-08:00

*We survived last Sunday's trip to the No Obama Zone. Mom only made one comment about how she loves Sarah Palin (hey, someone has to) and how we're all "just soooo unfaiiiirrrr to her" but that was tolerable. Save me from one of her rants any day of the week.

The wee one was her usual cute self, and stunned the grandparents with her growth. (They hadn't seen her since July, so...yeah. She's grown. Like two or three inches.)

*The wee one got her flu shot on Wednesday, in which we discovered a few things. 1) She likes trucks, and cars, and things with wheels, and giant legos. 2) She is not bothered at all by boys who have three inches and ten pounds on her and who won't let her play with THEIR truck and 3) She trusts everyone. As a parent, I know that means it's because she's never been hurt, and I know it can't last. And that makes me sad.

*She also got her first haircut yesterday. She looks like a toddler now, not my tiny baby. Oh, she's still small (though catching up pretty darned quickly) but you can see from looking at her that she's leaving her babyhood behind. I still haven't figured out how I feel about that--mostly, I'm happy she's growing, but I guess I wouldn't be a mom if I didn't miss the baby she'll never be again.

Oh, for goddess' sake...

2008-11-07T17:52:00.001-08:00

Yeah, I had "that" conversation with my mom tonight. Being a dedicated Republican, she voted for McCain. Fine. It's a free country and it's her right. But then I got called a "feminazi" (thanks, Rush, for that particular endearing term, you bastard) because I told her---when she asked---that I didn't like Sarah Palin. (And again, this isn't any great shock. I voted for Obama, for deity's sake---not because I believe in sunshine and rainbows and purple fluffy unicorns, but because I believe, truly, that he's the best person for the job.)

Sure. I'm a feminazi because I insist that having two "x" chromosomes doesn't mean diddly if you aren't qualified for the office. Riiiiggghhhhttt....

So, yeah. We're heading to the No-Obama Zone this weekend (seeing my parents on Sunday) and I'm pretty sure my tongue will be near bitten off come Monday.

Le sigh.

Oh, you know I have to say it...

2008-11-05T05:19:00.000-08:00

YES, WE CAN!!! AND WE DID!!!

I cried last night watching the people at Grant Park, in Atlanta, in Times Square. I saw hope in their faces and I knew I'd voted for the right man. Obama's facing a world of trouble---some within the country, some without. But last night, he made us believe in ourselves again...and so, no matter the work that has to be done, I know we as a country can do it.

Yes, we can. And we will.

No, "we" are not discussing this. Ever.

2008-10-20T21:52:00.000-07:00

Let me be the first to say that my relationship with my mom can be a bit strained.

Nevertheless, I know she loves me. But every so often, she gets on a kick and it's all I can do to keep from pounding my head against a wall. Sunday was that kind of conversation. I was telling her of my shopping trip to Wally World, how I saw the preemie clothes there and how, once upon a time, even those would have been too big for my daughter. (The wee one was a whopping 3 1/2 pounds when she was born, which gives you something of an idea.) For me, this is a happy thing---when your preemie daughter is now into normal clothes for her age (and is also as normal as she can be with our genes) it's something to celebrate.

But oh, no, not for mom. The conversation went off the proverbial deep end. Mom started on with, "But you won't want to do that again, it's just too hard, you don't want to have another child."

Oh, really? How nice of you to tell me what I do (or don't) want to do with my reproductive organs. /end sarcasm

I bean-dipped* her. No joy there---she went off the subject for a little bit, then was back on it again, with a twist. Now, it seems, I don't "understand" how hard it was for everyone else. (Hey, lady, nine weeks of bedrest ain't exactly a cakewalk.) I got the lecture on how concerned she and dad were (which, to be fair, I'm sure they were) and how---again---I couldn't possibly be thinking of ever having another child. (Of course not. I'll be 35 in May and I love being a mom just as much as DH loves being a Dad. Of course, we couldn't possibly want to be parents again. /sarcasm) And yes, we know what the odds are of us having another premature baby (less than what they were with the wee one) and yes, I know I'd have to spend some time on bedrest. And that's...well, it's not okay, but it's how my "normal" pregnancies go. :)

The thing is, if she'd actually treat me like, say, an adult, I'd tell her this stuff. I'd also tell her that it's by no means guaranteed that we will even be able have a second child (not to put too fine a point on it, but all those TV shows where they show one night of unprotected sex and the woman gets pregnant instantly? They're lying) and that if it should turn out that way, that we'd be okay with it too.

Or maybe I wouldn't tell her. I don't know. What I do know is that I don't want to hear about it from her. I don't want her advice if I haven't asked for it. And lastly, I just want the simple courtesy of not being blathered at as if I were a disobedient kindergartner. Whatever decision DH and I make, will be the right one for us.

Le sigh. Maybe I should have some cheese with my whine....

*For those of you who don't know what I mean, I tried to change the subject. Repeatedly.