Woes of a Geek

I've recently decided to upgrade my phone---I've had it for going on three years and it's started acting quirky (though as one of my friends insists, it's because it knows I'm planning to replace it. :D) But I'm also on a budget (who isn't?) and there are other things I want to spent my money on so...

I did some online research but I still had some questions (and it's impossible to play with a phone online anyway,) so in I went to my local store. I should probably preface this by saying a few of my friends go to this store and have never had this particular issue, but it was apparently my day for it. I told the sales clerk what phone I wanted to look at, and making a long and torturous story short, the salesman apparently thought I was only interested in what colors the phone came in.

Right. 

I wonder what gave him that idea? Because I was female? Probably. It's not the first time I've dealt with this attitude; I once walked off a car lot because a salesman refused to pop the hood on a model I was looking at (I couldn't find the release latch) because, as he said, "Why?  You'll never look at it."

Right. 

The thing is, I like technology. I was a PC user for years, and now I use a Mac full-time. I've used computers, of one sort or another, since I was ten. I was also lucky that my dad, the main gadget geek in our house, never discouraged me from learning. So my interest in computers, in phones, in cars, tends to be a little bit more than "Oooh, what color does it come in?"

Sigh. I walked out of that store, of course. And if I need help with my phone, I'll go to another store. But in this day and age--2012--it's astonishing that the view that woman= not good with technology is still so pervasive.

Ready? Not me. :-)

Today, my daughter finished her last day of preschool. Aside from summer camp at her preschool (if we decide to send her) and some time in February where she might return there (bless preschool teachers who don't mind if their former students return) when her school is out for break, this is it. My daughter is no longer a preschooler.

I got to thinking this afternoon how unready I was for so many of life's biggest changes. I was ready to graduate from college, but not ready to be self-supporting. I was ready to settle down, but I knew nothing of being a wife. I wasn't ready to no longer be pregnant when my daughter tumbled into my life ten weeks early. And although my daughter is ready for kindergarten and is going to a good school this fall, I don't think I'm quite ready for her to no longer be one of the six students at her itty bitty preschool.

But I became self-supporting. I got married---next April is our tenth anniversary---so I suppose I figured that out. I guess I'll get used to having a kindergartner too.

Change is coming---faster than any wheel, and I know I won't get to dictate how or when or why it happens. All I...all we...can do is hang on and try to enjoy the ride.

Meanderings on making banana bread

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

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?" :)

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...

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.

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....

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.

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

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

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....

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.

...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...:-)

(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 :-)

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

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...

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"?

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

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....

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