Eyebrows McGee

Picnicking Needs Work

2010-04-10T14:57:00.002-05:00

Today we went for a hike and a picnic, which was really fun and wore the baby right out, but he wasn't so good at the picnicking part. I thought eating outside on the ground was, like, every child's favorite thing, but Mini McGee didn't want to pick his food up off the ground (well, off the picnic blanket) and kept putting his feet in his food (ewwww!) and only wanted whatever WE were eating. Which was mostly the same thing HE was eating, but he wanted ours instead of his.

I don't know why none of these potential roadblocks occurred to me but somehow I thought we'd have a picnicky idyll where we relaxed and ate and he played with his Cheerios on the blanket and was adorable and perfect.

Oh well, at least all the dining al fresco tired him out so much he's been napping for two hours! (Ninety minutes of which I wasted napping too, but I guess that's okay.)

Moving Up the Totem Pole

2010-03-11T21:10:00.002-06:00

This morning, I yelled at the cats because they were wrestling and fighting. "Hey!" I shouted to get them to separate. Mini McGee looked at me, surprised and a little wounded, because I used a loud, stern tone.

"Oh, no, sweetie, you're fine," I soothed. "I was yelling at the cats because they were being bad."

He looked at me for a minute, then he turned to the cats, who were still crouched down and facing off, and he shouted, "AAAAH!" at them in exactly the same tone as I shouted "Hey!"

He now apparently ranks above the cats on the totem pole.

It's the Magic of Your Loyalty Card

2010-03-07T20:34:00.003-06:00

I went to Kroger today to pick up a couple forgotten things (olive oil, ground mustard, marshmallow peeps) and for the first time in at least nine months, bought NOTHING baby related -- no diapers, no wipes, no baby food, no formula, no bottles, no teethers, no baby Tylenol, no baby accessories of any sort.

As I finished checking out, the coupon machine started frantically spewing forth coupons for baby food, formula, and other baby accessories.

"I think your coupon machine thinks I'm not feeding my baby," I said to the clerk, bemused.

"Yeah, sometimes it's like that," he agreed.

The obvious and inevitable next step is for the coupon machine to get a direct line to DCFS so it can just report me directly for negligence instead of frantically spewing coupons.

HA HA!

2009-11-30T21:43:00.002-06:00

I am on Google Wave and you're not. So there!

Breastfeeding Redux

2009-11-24T18:54:00.003-06:00

I realized over the weekend, when Mini McGee turned 6 months old, that I had met all my breastfeeding goals. I was like, "Huh. How about that."

The goals went like this. I'm the sort of person who, when faced with a large, difficult, or unpleasant task, likes to break it into smaller steps or achievable pieces. So, being surrounded by friends and family who support breastfeeding but have nothing against formula either, I decided my goal would be to breastfeed while in the hospital and see how that went. If it went well, I'd aim for two weeks. If THAT went well, I'd aim for six weeks. Then for three months, then for six months, which was so unimaginably far away I didn't think past that. That way if I was having trouble in the first week, I could say, "I only have to make it to two weeks, then I can stop." And of course most trouble clears up by then, and I can go on. This is a way I've always incentivized myself -- "You just have to get through the first 100 words, then you can stop," on college papers. Of course once I've got the 100 words I want to keep going and get to my 500-word check point. And so on. It works well because it keeps me wanting to get to the next achievable goal, but when I do decide to stop I don't have to feel guilty, since I stopped at a goal.

I bring up the goals because this was among the many, many, many things that the lactation consultant at the hospital told me I was doing really, really, really wrong. Of this entire breastfeeding experience, the top 3 worst things would be:

3. Plugged Ducts
2. Cluster Feedings (Growth Spurts)
1. The Lactation Consultant at the Hospital

She asked if I was planning to breastfeed and how long, and I cheerfully told her about my laddered goals system. Oh, no, she insisted, shaking her head gravely. That won't work. You can only breastfeed if you COMMIT to it. There are going to be so many challenges and people trying to make you stop -- if you want to breastfeed until he's six months, you have to decide RIGHT NOW that you're going to DO IT for six months, no matter what, and you have to make your husband get on board.

I was like, "Um, no, I think I'll stick with my system, thanks."

She warned me darkly that that system doomed me to failure because I wasn't COMMITTING. (Because obviously, ALL HUMAN PSYCHES ARE EXACTLY THE SAME.) We moved on to more questions, where she gave me instructions that contradicted my doctor's about medications (and I curtly informed her that she was not a doctor and was not competent to issue instructions relating to my medical care). Then I got the baby and nursed, and she totally objected to his nursing position: Lying flat on his back, with his head turned 90 degrees. "BELLY TO BELLY!" she barked at me, repeatedly. But when turned belly-to-belly, Mini McGee flatly refused to nurse and wriggled until he got to be flat again. He still mostly prefers this flat-back pose, although he's more relaxed now and doesn't lie there stiff as a board.

So having achieved all my breastfeeding goals, I thought it was a good time to reflect. I posted about breastfeeding before, but now I have stuff to add.

My experience: I generally had a very easy time of it. Mini McGee is a good latcher, I have compliant boobs (they keep up with demand, and they aren't real picky about missed feedings so I can usually get away without pumping), and I can't really complain. A few plugged ducts here and there, but nothing dire. We began formula supplementing 1 bottle a day in week 2 because I needed more than 2 hours of sleep at a time; he's happy to eat either. Now that he sleeps, some days he gets formula, some days he doesn't, just depending on if I'm around all day or not. I didn't really have any problems with pumping, but I don't like doing it, so I mostly don't.

Education: Breastfeeding education is awful! It was so. much. information, and it was all apparently designed to scare the bejeezus out of me ... the 8 billion things that can go wrong. The 62 different ways to time feedings. At age 2 weeks 1 day and 6 hours, baby needs this much milk, but 4 hours later it's different. The 502 things you can't eat, look at, or sneeze in the vicinity of. Don't introduce bottles until week X but before week Y, because too early and he'll get nipple confusion, but too late and he'll reject the change. Good. Lord. (And most of it backed up with claims that drastically overstate the medical literature.)

Here's what I needed: A 1-page summary with pictures of the common holds and the baby's latch. Information on caring for the equipment. Information on a couple common problems (plugged ducts, mastitis, thrush) and a list of symptoms with when to see YOUR doctor and when to see BABY'S doctor. Where to go for more information. And a reassurance that YOU'LL LEARN EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW FROM THE NURSES IN THE HOSPITAL. (Yeah, not the lactation consultant. The nurses.)

All the educational information assured me breastfeeding was natural and wonderful and easy, then made it seem terrifyingly complex and prone to horrific problems. The same literature also frequently made a big whoop about people who don't support breastfeeding and how persecuted you will feel while breastfeeding, especially in public. I have not yet met one of these people. Even in public.

The Verdict: For me, I think the biggest benefits of breastfeeding was that it was WAY cheaper than formula feeding and that it's frequently more convenient, since I can go out and about without bottle-feeding paraphernalia or having to think ahead. But I would tell anyone thinking about breastfeeding to skim one book (or chapter in the pregnancy book) and then know you'll learn everything else at the hospital, and not worry over it or read too much about the stuff that can go wrong. (If it goes wrong, it goes wrong, and you can't possibly keep straight all the scare literature -- I had to look up plugged ducts when the moment arrived, despite my diligent reading.) I would also say, take it one day at a time, and if it doesn't work out, isn't it great that modern formulas are so nutritious and convenient?

Now that I've achieved the unthinkably-distant goal of six months, I guess I'll keep going. I don't know until when, but that's probably because I'm insufficiently committed and won't succeed at -- oh, wait. Never mind.

(And how weird is it that it's about "succeeding" at breastfeeding ... implying that other options that result in a healthy baby are somehow "failure." Modern competitive parenting is awesome!)

Swine Flu in Peoria

2009-11-09T07:38:00.001-06:00

I understand the Peoria County Health Department (PCHD) is working under constraints, and by all accounts the clinic at IVC on Monday was well-run and efficient. But I was just out at Woodrow Wilson for today's clinic, and there has GOT to be a better way. A long line of families with small children, many of them fussing and running around (near busy roads), standing in the cold, for an indeterminate amount of time. Surely individuals could go to the health department and sign up for 15-minute appointment blocks (15 shots in 15 minutes or however fast they manage them), or at least hold clinics places the lines can be indoors. An adult standing in line for half of forever is no big deal -- Lord knows I've done it at the Cook County DMV -- but trying to corral little kids in line that long is a nightmare.

We were not able to wait and get me a shot; it was simply too cold for Mini McGee to be out in the cold that long, particularly as I had no idea if it would be 30 minutes or 90 minutes or 3 hours. (Plus I have to teach later.)

Enter the Peas

2009-10-30T05:33:00.003-05:00

Last night we introduced peas to Mini McGee. He's been eating rice cereal for about three weeks now because THAT BOY IS CONSTANTLY STARVING. It took him a few tries to figure it out; he thought having the spoon delivered to his mouth was pretty much the funnest game in the world, except that the swallowing took a few "feedings" before he figured it out. Then there was this loud, enormous gulping sound as he accidentally swallowed the rice cereal, and suddenly he is DIVE BOMBING THE SPOON with his mouth to try to eat as fast as he is able to. At first we were playing a game with it -- "Mommy take a bite -- now baby take a bite!" -- so he would mimic us (which he did, opening his mouth whenever we did) but now it's just, "How fast can I shovel food in?" because if you're too slow, he tries to keep attacking the spoon even when there's nothing on it yet.

So anyway, the peas. He gets about a tablespoon of rice cereal once a day and he is clearly still looking for more, so we thought we'd introduce some veggies while he's still thinking food is super-fun. (The current baby food orthodoxy is to introduce veggies first after the rice cereal, on the theory they're less sweet and the baby might reject them if he gets used to sweeter fruits first. But a friend of mine who's a pediatrician said they're moving towards recommending MEAT as the first food for exclusively breast-fed babies because so little iron comes through breast milk that exclusively breast-fed babies, especially those whose parents delay the start of solids, can end up iron deficient. Isn't it amazing the human race managed to raise babies for thousands of years before the Baby-Industrial Complex started telling us all how to do it, with new rules every 10 years? Not that I don't obey my Baby-Industrial Complex overlords; I have the requisite quantities of American parenting guilt that forces me to obey the rules that inform me that if I accidentally introduce carrots only TWO days after the peas instead of THREE days after the peas, THE SKY WILL FALL, but I try to keep a healthy skepticism going at the same time.)

Okay, the peas. So we introduce the peas last night, which smell exactly like peas, which for some reason always surprises me about baby food. (The entire ingredient list is pureed peas and water, I don't know what I was expecting.) Mini McGee has had his rice cereal already, and I break out the peas, and it goes something like this:

"Oooooh, the spoon! DIVE BOMB! Wait -- this isn't rice cereal. This is ... weird. (Swallow. Make frog-like old-man face while pondering flavor of peas.) I'm not sure I -- oooooh, the spoon! DIVE BOMB! Wait -- this is peas again! (Swallow. Make a "beer face" that makes him look like an 18-year-old at a frat party TRYING to act like he's had a drink before and likes beer but having the beer face giving him away.) I'm really not sure about these peas, but -- oooooh, the spoon! DIVE BOMB! ACK! PEAS! PEAS! (Beer face.) Push them out! Push them out! Phew. Good work, tongue! Oooooh, the spoon! DIVE BOMB! ACK! STILL PEAS! Push them out! Push them out! I knew this tongue was here for a reason, good thing I can push out those disgusting -- oooooh, the spoon! DIVE BOMB! NOOOO! PEAS! No, wait, okay, I'll swallow this. (Beer face.) It's not rice cereal, but it's not the end of the -- ooooh, the spoon! DIVE BOMB! Sure, I'll have another bite of peas. (Beer face.) I mean, I am starving to death, so if this is what -- oooooh, the spoon! DIVE BOMB! DAMMIT, WOMAN, WHY DO YOU KEEP PUTTING PEAS ON MY SPOON???"

I probably got half a teaspoon of peas into him total, and almost all of it ended up down his front. Of course, when Daddy fed him the remainder of the peas an hour or so later, he's all, "I love peas!" and grinning and drooling happy green drool and not making a single beer face.

Motherhood Is Getting to Me

2009-10-28T12:50:00.002-05:00

I keep putting clothes on inside out. Not just underwear ... not just T-shirts ... but EVEN MY PANTS. In fact, I wore my pants inside out ALL DAY the other day and nobody mentioned it to me. I didn't notice until I went to take them off that night and couldn't get the button and zipper undone, because THEY WERE INSIDE OUT. I guess with the "deconstructed" look in and with my shirt covering the tags, nobody noticed my pants were inside out. And I guess I was so tired when I put them on in the morning that I managed to figure out the inside-out zipper with out actually registering it was inside out.

Doh.

Technomom

2009-09-21T22:32:00.000-05:00

My mom, who is now totally hot for Peoria politics, was following last night's board meeting on the PJS feed on Twitter, which raises a totally important question:

My mom knows how to use Twitter??????

In His Own Room

2009-09-15T09:18:00.003-05:00

I'm trying to get back to blogging a little more often, but I've been a little busy and distracted.

We put the baby to sleep in his own room last night for the first time, in his crib instead of in the "sidecar" bassinet that he's rapidly outgrowing. He also is responding more and more to us rolling over in bed, etc., which wakes him, so it's time for him to have a quieter sleeping space (where he can go to bed at a nice early hour for babies). It was good -- he slept from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m., ate, and then slept again until about 7:30. Mr. McGee looked more rested this morning than he has in weeks. I heard the baby as soon as he woke up in his room -- I was afraid I might not hear him until he was wailing, but I heard him as soon as he started sleepy-hungry muttering. He went right back to sleep and woke up this morning cheerful and chatting with himself in his crib, and grinned at me when I came in to get him.

So it was good. But it was so sad! I know this is just the first in a long, long line of bittersweet parenting moments, but it was still sad. I kept asking Mr. McGee if I should go get the baby and bring him in, and Mr. McGee kept reassuring me he was fine. I checked on him about six times in the night (which is why I'm not quite so rested as everyone else), which for a worrywart like me is a low number.

I know I'll be glad he's in his own room because I am an extremely light sleeper and with him right next to me, his every wiggle and snorfle wakes me up and I end up exhausted. And now that he's only nursing once in the night most nights, it's easier to put him in the nursery than it would have been when he was up every two hours. But right now I'm sad that my baby doesn't need me quite as much as he did yesterday, and isn't quite as little as he was yesterday.

Shopping List

2009-09-12T10:34:00.000-05:00

"Bean-jolly? What is bean-jolly?"

"Beaujolais???"

"... OH! That's a 'u'!"

"Yes. But I kind-of like bean-jolly."

DMV

2009-08-27T12:29:00.001-05:00

Went to the DMV. NO LINE AT ALL. Felt this deserved blog commemoration!

Peoria Nuisance Van in the WSJ

2009-08-17T09:21:00.001-05:00

One summer night, Chief Settingsgaard was pulling out of police headquarters when he did a double take. Rusting in a corner of the police parking lot was a hulking Brink's truck. It had been purchased -- for a dollar -- to use in emergencies but had yet to be pressed into service. The chief thought it could be the perfect nuisance-deterrence vehicle, seemingly indestructible and inarguably an eyesore.

Article Link

Nerd Parenting

2009-08-10T08:12:00.001-05:00

"Boy, he really likes that lion in the sky." (On the mobile above his swing.)

"Aslan? Is that you?"

"If the lion is Aslan, what does that make the elephant and the monkey?"

"Um ... Ganesha and Hanuman? That's all I got for elephant and monkey Gods ... ."

"Dude ... ."

Breastfeeding

2009-08-03T09:38:00.002-05:00

So, as far as I can tell, the point of the ninth month of pregnancy is to make you SO ready to be done being pregnant that you're willing to go through labor and delivery. And the point of labor and delivery is to take away all your shame so you're willing to breastfeed in front of other people. (And I'm pretty sure the point of breastfeeding is to make you ready to never pee alone for the next six years or so when you have to use a public restroom and your little friend has to come with.) This applies even if you have a C-section; I'm all, "Meh, a whole operating room full of people saw my intestines. WHAT DO I HAVE LEFT TO HIDE????"

For some reason it didn't click for me that feeding a baby every 90 minutes to 3 hours meant that it would eat up hours and hours of my day. I got that I had to do it all the time, just not that every time would take so long! I worked it out and on an average day I spend 7 to 8 hours doing nothing but feeding and burping the baby. (THIS is what they should be telling teenagers in pregnancy-prevention programs!)

None of the books I read adequately explained "cluster feeding," and I'm irate about this, since it is possibly THE WORST THING I'VE EVER GONE THROUGH IN MY LIFE. For the uninitiated, cluster feeding is when the baby is about to have a growth spurt and decides to up your supply of breastmilk by feeding CONSTANTLY for 24 to 48 hours and it's AWFUL. Interrupting your sleep/life every 3 hours for 1 hour (so that's 2 hours you get to sleep or do something like dishes) is one thing; interrupting it every freaking hour for twenty to thirty minutes makes you a zombie from lack of sleep, and a VERY ANGRY ZOMBIE from lack of freedom to follow a thought from one end to the other. This being my first child, I'm accustomed to being able to concentrate on things for a couple hours if necessary (husbandly interruptions notwithstanding), so I was shocked by how short-tempered it makes me to never have the freedom to concentrate. It's not so bad during his (the baby's, not my husband's) normal schedule, now that I know my concentration comes in 2-hour blocks or shorter, but during cluster feeding I become the crankiest person on the planet because I don't ever get to THINK.

Another thing that nobody told me is that breastfeeding is BORING. You can only stare into a baby's eyes so many hours a day. (Bottlefeeding is equally boring and has the disadvantage of taking two hands so you can't read a book, but bottlefeeding you can hand off to the non-dairy parent.) I've been watching a ton of Hulu, so that I can have an interesting show ready on demand, and I've been reading a lot, but the reading is limited to books I can hold and read one-handed, which means basically mass-market paperbacks, ideally with cracked spines so I can hold them open easily with one hand, but not read so many times that the pages are too soft to turn with just a thumb. It also helps if I don't lose the thread of the plot reading it in short bites and constantly being interrupted; I haven't gone through books so slowly in YEARS.

I also wasn't particularly prepared for how HEAVY a baby is when you're trying to hold him up to eat. This is fine at home with my Boppy, but when out running errands or visiting people whose couches have inadequate pillows, I might was well just have someone kick me in the spine and throw my back out all at once instead of slowly by degrees.

Not that it's all cranky-making. It is terribly convenient to carry less stuff in the diaper bag and have the baby's food supply with me at all times while out and about. I'm also a pretty big fan of the 500 extra calories a day that *I* get to eat to be a functioning dairy animal. And formula is NOT CHEAP.

I'd like to say that it's worth all the missed sleep when he smiles his milky smile at me, but the truth is he's pretty indiscriminate about handing out toothless grins, and he usually only grins when eating when he's about to spit up all over me. Oh well; it's still cute!

Towels are BAD

2009-07-22T11:49:00.003-05:00

I put the baby down in his crib so I could take a much-needed (at least psychologically-needed) shower after he had the sort of diaper-related incident very little babies have. He was fussing when I got out, not liking having been left alone so long, so I went in to pick him up with my hair still wrapped in a towel. He stopped fussing as he heard me and I picked him up, but then he looked at my face ... then up at the towel ... and stared at the towel for a loooooong minute ...

and then BURST into tears and could not be consoled until I got rid of the towel.

Now my hair looks funny. And now I know better than to wear a nasty evil towel on my head!

New Blog

2009-07-20T15:49:00.003-05:00

In accordance with thoughts I expressed during my campaign, I've started a new blog at http://petelle150.wordpress.com/ (at wordpress largely for the greater ease of comment moderation) for communication with constituents about District 150 issues. It's bare-bones right now but I wanted to get it up and running; I'll pretty it up and get a better handle on the wordpress dashboard as time goes by.

I ask that you keep District issues to that blog; this blog is really my personal blog full of cat blogging and chronicling my son's every fart. :)

The Sulphurous Bowels of Hell

2009-07-13T15:55:00.002-05:00

The baby was baptized yesterday, and as we always do in my family we were joking about the exorcism and going all, "Satan begone! Get out of the baby!" Today he's farting the stinkiest farts in history.

"Phew, his farts smell like the sulphurous bowels of hell!" I complained to my sister.

"Oh, he's just getting out the last of the Satan," she replied.

Some Cool Baby Stuff

2009-07-09T17:02:00.003-05:00

I've been neglecting my blog because I've been exhausted (and busy), so I thought I'd do a quicky on neat baby stuff we've found particularly useful, since pretty much everyone we know is pregnant, men included.

We got an Arms Reach Co-Sleeper, which is a bassinet where one side folds down and it attaches to an adult bed (still leaving about a 4" high barrier between the baby and the adult bed). This allows the benefits of co-sleeping -- having the baby handy for nursing, being able to watch and touch the baby all night, etc. -- without the terrible risks of having a baby in an adult bed. It was particularly helpful while recovering from the C-section so I didn't have to get out of bed to get him. We got the mini (in blue gingham).

If you get an Arms Reach, the Mighty Bright book light perfectly fits on the bar and makes a very nice nightlight for checking on the baby or nursing without waking up the non-dairy parent. I think this would be my new trick for any bassinet, finding a book light that clips onto it!

I had one of these color-changing light balls that I picked up at Cub Foods for $5 a while back, because I'm weirdly fixated on lights that change color. This thing turns out to be BABY CRACK. He will stare at it for minutes on end. I'm getting another to use as a nightlight in his room.

One of the neatest things I got is a Milkband (front page cycles through pictures, one of which has a nursing woman in case nursing boob is disallowed for your workplace surfing). This is a bracelet of the "live strong" type, with two little sliders and a series of numbers so that you can mark the last time you nursed, and on the outside it says "Left" and the inside it says "Right" and you flip it inside out so you know which side you last started on, instead of mucking around with paperclips on your bra or whatever. The "left" is lowered (debossed into the bracelet) and the "right" is raised, so you can even tell in the dark. This was perhaps the coolest $6 I spent, since the first few weeks I was waaaaaaay too tired to remember when I last nursed (let alone on which side), but writing it down after the first pediatrician visit just seemed tedious. (Also, Milkbands had a computer hiccup so my order went out late ... so they sent me five of them instead of one!)

Three May Enter, One May Leave

2009-06-26T20:17:00.002-05:00

I put three baby "lap sheets" (they're like 12x12" squares of a heavier cotton fabric, but lighter than a burp cloth; helps protect your clothes from baby orifices and their products) in the wash today. They were brand new, came in a package of three, I took all three out and unfolded them and put them in the laundry basket. Threw the laundry in the washer, then the dryer, then came back upstairs with it ... and there was only one lap sheet.

I have been all through the laundry area like four times now trying to figure out where the other two went.

Apparently my washer is like a death cage match for lap sheets.

ZZZZZZZ ...

2009-06-25T13:16:00.002-05:00

The baby is having some stomach trouble, which means the rest of us are having some sleeping trouble, which means I'm not real clear on what's going on, like what day it is or how to count to ten. I keep trying to count to ten (recording feeding times) and running out of numbers before I run out of fingers, so I know I'm missing one in there somewhere, but I can't for the life of me figure out which one. Probably six or seven, which have always been tricky bastards.

EDIT: Oh, look at that, my blog says it's Thursday. Who knew?

Great Minds Think Alike ...

2009-06-16T10:27:00.004-05:00

Eyebrows mass-texts the family: Flippy said "ga"!

Immediate return texts:

Aunt McGee: Aww. A clear attempt at 'Aunt McGee'

Grandpa: Cool! I think he was trying to say "grandpa."

Grandma: Short for grandma of course

Phone call from husband: I think he was saying my name.

They're all wrong. Obviously he was working towards "Mama."

The New Normal

2009-06-09T08:17:00.003-05:00

I woke up yesterday morning feeling like having a baby in the house was normal, instead of waking up and thinking, "When is your mother coming to pick you up, baby? Oh ... crap." or "OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG" or "I CAN'T DO THIS!!!!!" It helps that he seems to recognize us both now and interacts a bit more, so he's less of a newborn lump of neediness and pooping and more of a baby (still full of neediness and pooping but now with personality).

Then last night he slept between feedings instead of fussing and spaced his feedings about 3 hours (instead of ONE hour, which has been the story of the past few days and I thought I was going to actually die). I got almost six hours of sleep, in two-hour chunks, so I feel like people again. Tired people, but people.

I know this doesn't mean it'll all be sunshine and roses (as likely as not, tonight he'll be up all night and eating constantly), but at least I can see a light at the end of the tunnel when I'll no longer be a zombie. (A zombie that says things that endlessly entertain my husband, like, "Stop! I can't think and talk at the same time!" and a zombie that freezes in panic when asked an open-ended question like "What do you want for dinner?" because that's too many choices for my tiny zombie brain.)

Reflux

2009-06-03T10:27:00.003-05:00

Himself has acid reflux, which is interfering with EVERYONE's ability to sleep and leading to daily laundry loads from the astonishing quantities of spit-up. The pediatrician has him sleeping on an incline, which Himself is convinced is cruel and unusual punishment. (On the plus side, he's getting very good at scooting.)

My mother suggested that baby arms should come as an aftermarket add-on available after six weeks, because all they do until then is flail and get in the way. This sounds about right. Himself likes to get his fists up in his face when he's excited or mad or wound up, which is pretty much every time he's about to eat, and then he gets mad that he can't get the bottle or breast into his mouth because THERE ARE FISTS IN THE WAY, so he parks his fists more firmly in front of his mouth and gets madder.

Doing Well

2009-05-28T10:03:00.003-05:00

Baby (whom I'm tempted to call Pink Baby after someone was clever in the comments about my cat names!) is on the gaining weight side of the equation now, eating heartily, farting copiously (and making hilarious faces as he tries to manage it). I'm wiped out but recovering.

Looked at my incision with a mirror. Kind-of wish I hadn't, though I'm sure it'll look better as it heals more. Having been awake for a grand total of two hours, I think I need to go nap now.

Parenting, Day Three

2009-05-24T11:12:00.002-05:00

We're all still doing well. My C-section incision is healing nicely and I'm allowed to have real food again. I finally looked at the C-section incision this morning ... I got out of bed yesterday but I was afraid to look in case it was really gross or creepy and I passed out or something. But it just looks like my belly is very, very happy.

Baby has lots of hair and is fairly chubby right off; he has all the nice newborn characteristics and none of the ones that make them look like coneheads or Winston Churchill. He latched on at his first nursing attempt and while it hasn't been all smooth sailing, he's doing pretty well at it. Sometimes he gets so frantic looking for the food that when he finds it, he doesn't realize he's got it, and keeps looking, getting madder and madder. At 1 a.m. while full of painkillers without having slept much the night before EITHER when he started doing this, I became suddenly worried this parenting gig was going to be waaaaaaay too much for me. But eventually he goes back to sleep and looks adorable and I forget.

I actually went into labor right about when we arrived to the hospital for the C-section, and by the time I went in for the surgery, the contractions were as close as 3 minutes apart! But I only felt them for about an hour before the epidural came on board. I DID NOT like getting the epidural and I DID NOT like the sensation of having the epidural in me, but the C-section itself wasn't so bad. They had him coming out before I realized they'd really started (I could feel him coming out, the pressure as they pushed from the top). Then there was interesting him to watch being checked over while they sewed me up. They were so speedy I was almost done being stitched up when they took him to the nursery.

I'm uncomfortable and tired, but not unbearably so. Baby loves his dad already, and dad is a pro with him, swaddling like an expert, changing diapers, and soothing the baby when he's frustrated. And yes, baby does recognize his Frank Sinatra song when we sing to him.

(And I'm typing this from my hospital bed, because Proctor has wifi! Yay!)

I think this probably isn't very coherent because I'm still fairly drugged, but I seem to be using punctuation semi-correctly so hopefully it's at least readable.

Baby Has Arrived

2009-05-23T08:51:00.002-05:00

And I'm too sleepy to say much except that he's here, and I'm Sleepy, Dopey, Happy, Grumpy ... and a whole host of other dwarves besides.

C-section went off without a hitch and he's learning to latch on pretty well. 7 lbs. 13 oz., 18.5 inches. More later. :)

My REM Sleep Is Now Rare. And Weird.

2009-05-21T09:54:00.003-05:00

I'm pregnant enough that I don't get much REM sleep, because I wake up every couple of hours for a bathroom break and/or to host a dance party in my uterus.

Last night I slept long enough to have the first dream I've had (or at least recalled) in a couple weeks, which was my REM-y brain making a mash-up of "Tootsie" and "Mrs. Doubtfire." It was a surprisingly good movie, I have to say, though my brain was having difficulty sorting out whether Robin Williams or Dustin Hoffman was in the starring role.

Waking up from this required blinking at the ceiling for two solid minutes going, "WTF?"

Ass-Backwards

2009-05-16T18:03:00.003-05:00

My son is absolutely determined to enter the world ass-backwards. He was head-down at 37 weeks; and then on Wednesday I had such terrible pain from Braxton-Hicks and from massive, super-active fetal movement that I thought I might actually be going into labor; and on Thursday we went in for the 38 weeks position ultrasound ... and he had turned himself head-up! (Which is apparently what all that excruciating activity was.)

Flippy is in a frank breech position -- like a diver in the pike position, knees to nose. His butt is settled nice and low in my pelvis.

We went in this morning for Cephalic External Version, which is where they push on the abdomen from the outside, guided by ultrasound, and try to maneuver the baby into going back to head down. Flippy was quite happy to move his head and spine all around as directed by the doctor's pushing, but his butt is locked too firmly down in my pelvis and he just kept rotating on his ass. The doctor couldn't get him popped up, so the CEV was a flop (or at least definitely not a flip).

And, yes, the CEV was freaking painful (though not intolerable), and, yes, I now feel like I have been pummeled from the inside AND outside of my belly. So all I want to do is lie down ... and frantically prepare the house.

We weren't able to participate in our neighborhood garage sale today because we had to go in for the CEV, so I have a giant pile of STUFF I was planning to be rid of today that's, well, not gone. And a bunch of stuff around the house to do that I thought I'd have a couple more weeks to do, plus time recovering when I could sit still and do brainless tasks like sorting through old files.

Instead we're in a big hurry to get ready for a C-section for my ass-backwards son, which will occur earlier than anticipated, and then I'll have a longer and more difficult recovery than I'd hoped.

On the plus side, with enough frantic cleaning and frantic grading (to get all my grades turned in before the surgery), it's possible I can avoid thinking about the surgery until the last possible moment. I do not particularly cope well with sharp pointy objects, and if I were going to make a horror movie specifically to scare ME, it would definitely involve MAJOR ABDOMINAL SURGERY WHILE I AM AWAKE. I honestly think this is one of the most horrifying ideas modern medicine has ever come up with, up there with the brain surgery where they cut your head open while you're awake, poke at things, and ask you to say if anything happens (they do this one all the time on House). I thought the medical establishment would never inflict anything worse on me personally than that eye-puff glaucoma test (*shudder*), BUT I WAS SO WRONG.

My friends are generally of the opinion that I've had such a difficult pregnancy, culminating in him turning breech at the last second, that he will be an absolute angel child. My family is generally of the opinion that Flippy is exerting his contrary streak early and will keep on as he's begun. Given that my husband and I both have contrary streaks a mile wide, I have a sneaking suspicion my family is right.

I have been threatening Flippy that on his birth announcements, instead of "Flippy McGee: born 10 a.m. on date at place," I'm going to change the wording to read, "Flippy McGee: entered the world ass-backwards at 10 a.m. on date at place," but he seems unimpressed.

Stupid Cat Tricks: All Your Bassinet Are Belong to Us

2009-05-13T06:53:00.002-05:00

I've noticed cats are always crazy in the spring, but mine seem to be outdoing themselves this year, perhaps because Striped Cat is now a cat-years teenager and perhaps because the house is in a certain amount of uproar as we get the nursery ready and clean as comprehensively as possible.

The problem with a baby arriving is the cats suddenly have a zillion extra places to sleep -- bassinet, pack 'n' play, changing table, baby laundry basket, etc. Flippy will come home to a room pre-covered in cat hair just for him. I'm spending an awful lot of time chasing cats out of baby sleeping areas, which I kind-of feel bad about, because first of all, they're really perfectly cat-sized and secondly, they're just trying nap! Geez!

This morning I woke up to a strange, repetitive sound, and after I lay there for a few minutes, I realized it was the sound of someone rolling the toilet paper over and over. "Argh," I think, stumbling out of bed and to the bathroom. Indeed, it was not just someone but TWO someones, both furry, who were sitting there TAKING TURNS AND COOPERATING (sign of the Apocalypse #147) to unroll the entire roll. Very patiently and peacefully rolling and rolling and rolling the roll. Great.

This is a new trick. Grey Cat will on occasion take a couple swipes at the roll, generally when he's really bored and has been left alone too long (like if his people get the flu and refuse to get out of bed and play with him), but this was new. Guess I'll be turning all the rolls backwards today.

Carpets?

2009-05-06T15:10:00.001-05:00

Does anyone in the Peoria area have a carpet store/installer they particularly like?

Sympathetic My Ass

2009-05-03T18:55:00.003-05:00

My husband is having the most annoying couvade (sympathetic pregnancy) symptom ever.

I am exhausted, being at 36 weeks and having achieved the point of pregnancy where not only am I carrying around a lot of extra weight, but where I can only sleep for three hours or so before being woken by ninja fetus kicking the heck out of my tiny bladder. So he is sleeping 10 to 14 hours a night and requiring 1 to 2 naps a day. Because there's apparently nothing like rubbing it in that some of us get to sleep and some of us don't.

To be fair, he is doing a ton of yard and housework. But STILL.

McArdle Firing

2009-04-28T11:39:00.002-05:00

I know exactly as much as everybody else about the McArdle firing, as I'm not privy to private Board info until July 1. Peoria Pundit broke the story and has done a good job reporting it.

My thoughts are:

Proximity of firing to whistleblowing does not prove retaliatory firing; I can imagine a dozen scenarios in which the firing was justified, and a dozen scenarios in which it was retaliatory. The Board has information we do not have. Whether that information justifies firing McArdle independently of the whistleblowing on financial misconduct -- well, I imagine we'll all get to see it all during the lawsuits that are doubtless on the way.

If in fact McArdle WAS wrongfully terminated as retaliation for bringing up financial misconduct, I am absolutely furious and that is absolutely unacceptable. And regardless of whether McArdle's termination was justified, I certainly expect the Board and administration to act with the same speed and alacrity to fire those engaged in financial misconduct, as that misconduct is proved, as they have acted with in firing McArdle.

If, as the Journal Star is reporting, the District was first informed of the financial shenanigans six months ago and has failed to take action until now -- that in itself is appalling.

Journal Star coverage is here.

Things You Wouldn't Think Would Be Difficult

2009-04-26T06:57:00.002-05:00

So I was looking for a simple countdown timer for the left column there to count down to the due date, now that the question I get most often is, "What's the due date again?"

Simple turns out to be impossible. So if anyone knows of a widget that doesn't flash, doesn't count down in seconds, and doesn't involve a semi-creepy bouncing fetus (like the one I ended up picking) AND fits in the left column, I'd be much obliged.

Cats & Pregnancy

2009-04-24T06:23:00.003-05:00

Things Cats Dislike about Pregnancy:

*The disappearance of my lap.

*The appalling number of times I get out of bed in the night that does NOT result in someone feeding them (everyone knows the only reason people get out of bed is to feed the cats). The first couple times they patiently follow me to the bathroom, figuring it's a pitstop on the way to the kitchen. By time number four, they're vocally expressing their irateness.

*Rearrangement of furniture.

*My inability to refill their water bowls. I can no longer get down there and back up. I have to pour water from up high and hope my aim is good; they HATE this and refuse to drink out of them for a good ten minutes, just in case the terrifying waterfall comes back.

Things Cats Like about Pregnancy:

*The sheer quantity of things I drop, some of which are food.

*The space heater appended to my belly. I'm super-warm! They love to lean against me.

*Pregnant-lady-hormone-smell, apparently.

*My total inability to catch them. They're too fast and I'm too clumsy. There's no rule enforcement regime in this house anymore other than shouting "NO!" And definitely no vet trips.

*Morning sickness. I don't know why, but they seem to find this entertaining. I'm delighted I could provide this service for them throughout the ENTIRE pregnancy instead of cutting off the show after three months.

*Extra people naps.

*Boxes! Baby stuff comes in boxes! Cats love boxes!

Things I Dislike about Cats During Pregnancy:

*The underfoot game. I cannot step over them. I have to wait for them to move.

*Tails. See above. I step on them a lot. I miss Orange Cat, the tail-less.

*The smell of cat food.

Things I Like about Cats During Pregnancy:

*Purring and kicking. When they lean against my belly and purr, Flippy kicks like crazy towards the purring. I don't know if this is, "Get that thing away!" or "Ooooh! Neat sound!" but it amuses me every time.

*No litter for months and months and months. Thanks, toxoplasmosis!

---

(Yes, I have successfully combined catblogging and mommyblogging. Yay me!)

Stupid Fur-Having, Live-Bearing, Milk-Making Animalia

2009-04-17T12:57:00.003-05:00

My primary objection to pregnancy is that it's just so mammalian. With the carrying around a live fetus for a ridiculous period of time and the LIVE-BEARING THE YOUNG, which is appalling no matter how you look at it, and then the milk-producing and breast-feeding, and the hormones -- oh, the hormones. Ugh.

I would be much happier if we could just lay eggs and be done with it. People keep telling me that sitting on an egg for nine months would be boring, and I agree that 50 years ago it would have been, but now we have the internet. I could sit still for 9 months and surf the web ... you could even telecommute!

When I told my husband I wished I'd laid an egg and how I'd be happy to sit on it for 9 months as long as I had internet access, he pointed out that if humans laid eggs, we would have been putting them in incubators for 50 years now. And I said he was probably right, except now there'd be a cadre of judgy upper-middle-class mothers who would insist that if you didn't sit on your egg 24/7 for nine months, you wouldn't be properly bonded to it and be simultaneously all holier-than-thou and martyr-y about it. And they'd make the rest of us feel like bad mothers and guilt us into feeling like we had to egg-sit whether we wanted to or not. But at least in our modern egalitarian society we could split the egg-sitting duties between parents, and we could be judgy at fathers who didn't do their share of egg-sitting.

Anyway, now every time I walk in the house, I'm trying to decide where we'd put the incubator if humans laid eggs. Would you put the incubator in the living room so everyone could admire the egg and you could keep it company? Or in the nursery so it had quiet and its own space? Or would the incubator go in the kitchen, because, well, that's where one keeps eggs?

---

*Yes, I realize monotremes lay eggs. But it's a less-amusing post if I'm busy specifying placental mammals and marsupials for all you overspecific people out there.

It Just Isn't Dignified

2009-04-14T16:41:00.003-05:00

I've passed the point in pregnancy where I can look sharp-dressed or dignified. I can still look cute, but courtroom dignified is now beyond me. I can look comfortable and pregnant or cute and pregnant or slobby and pregnant, but those are pretty much my only options at this point.

Also not contributing to my appearance of dignity: The old-man noises I make getting in and out of chairs, and the crumbs all down my front every time I eat.

What next?

2009-04-08T05:35:00.005-05:00

So, woah, I seem to have won. My super-exciting celebration involved reheated pizza on the couch with my husband and then bed. Flippy's celebration involved a 4:30 a.m. dance party in my uterus, which is why I'm posting so early. I gave up on getting back to sleep.

So what next? Well, I cannot attend the April 20 school board meeting -- I have Lamaze class. I'm hoping to spend this month and next month meeting people, particularly those of my new counterparts whom I haven't met, talking to people, reading and studying up like crazy, etc. I'm hoping to do most of this quietly and behind-the-scenes, as I've never been 9 months pregnant before or given birth before -- Flippy's due May 29 -- so I'm a little hesitant to make firm plans for May or June. (I'm told fetuses are quite bad at reading calendars and showing up as scheduled.) But I'm going to do everything I can to be ready to hit the ground running July 1. (Edited to be clear: The term begins July 1. This is about my plans until that time.)

If you'd like to talk with me, you can reach me via e-mail (lpetelle AT gmail DOT com), twitter (on the left there), even instant messenger (PetelleLaw on AIM), or by that dinosaur, the telephone.

VOTE!

2009-04-07T07:22:00.001-05:00

Don't forget to vote today! Ideally for me.

Honesty, Transparency, Accountability

2009-04-06T09:57:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow, April 7, is the big day -- municipal elections, where I get to punch my own name on the ballot, which I'm anticipating will be kinda cool. I've been endorsed by the Peoria Journal-Star (endorsement). I just wanted to reiterate, briefly, some of my primary campaign positions. (Much of this comes from my prior post, here.)

The most crucial thing that I would like to focus on, if elected to the school board, is student achievement. That's a broad topic, and an easy thing to say, but it's clearly at the heart of what we all want for the students of District 150, and it's the purpose of the system. It's why we pay the taxes into the system. The District isn't a babysitting service. It isn't a jobs program for administrative cronies. It isn't a feeding trough for consultants. Its purpose is to educate, and District 150 should be a first choice, not a last resort. We have excellent students -- I teach some of them at ICC. We have excellent teachers. These students can achieve if we can only create the environment for them to do it. Some of the policies I would pursue include:

Free teachers to teach, as much as possible. Miring teachers down in red tape or forcing them to spend more time administering discipline than teaching is not a recipe for achievement. Obviously, there are constraints that neither the schools nor the district can change -- NCLB, for example. But within those constraints, the Board should do everything possible to create an environment where teachers can teach with a minimum of interruption and distraction and a maximum of support from principals, administration, and the Board. Micromanaging the classroom, however, is an inappropriate behavior from the School Board; teachers are professionals whose professional competency should be respected.

Create an alternative school for disruptive students. The small number of students who create real disruptions and discipline problems should not be allowed to continue disrupting the learning of those around them. At the same time, expulsion is an unattractive option, as it leaves students who are most in need of education and direction without resources to improve their lives. An alternative school -- a good alternative school, whose focus is to reintegrate the student into the mainstream and provide an excellent education until that's possible -- is necessary. Removing these seriously problematic students from the classroom will allow them to get the focused attention they need, and the other students to focus on their studies in a safe environment conducive to learning. This would be a high-cost initiative, but providing the high schools and junior highs the ability to staff a room five days a week for an "in-school suspension" as a first step is NOT a high-cost initiative, and can be effective intermediate step -- we can create one room for the high schools, one for the junior highs, at a centralized location for the cost of one superintendent salary.

Focus on "the next step" after high school. I've heard a lot of enthusiasm from current and retired teachers about improving both college prep and vocational education opportunities. Specifically, create a comprehensive college prep curriculum open to all high school students (if located at one school -- Richwoods has the most comprehensive current program -- we can cluster APs and college prep classes in the mornings and emulate suburban Chicago models where students are bussed to one school for morning APs and then back to their home school for the afternoon) and work with the unions to create a direct-entry vocational program for the skilled trades. The trades are graying, Peoria has great skilled-labor jobs available, and my plumber makes more than I do. This wouldn't be a throwaway voc-tech program, but a serious academic endeavor preparing students for demanding skilled jobs. (Bonus: Plumbers and electricians can't be outsourced or off-shored.)

However, we need to commit to programs and stick with them -- District 150 has done quite a bit of "we'll try this, no wait, now that," picking up programs and discarding them before they have a chance to work. There is no perfect program, and there are probably a variety of methods that will work to improve student achievement. But none of them will work if they're implemented for a year and then dropped; this creates confusion and waste.

A second set of issues, and ones that the Board is probably able to influence more directly, revolve around governance and communication. In recent years, there hasn't been a great deal of openness and communication from the School Board or the administration about various decisions. Stories change constantly -- "A longer school day is good for students, except when it isn't." I don't think anyone in Peoria is under any illusions about the financial status of the District, and that that constrains the District's options. It's up to the School Board to be open and honest about that, to set priorities, and to say, "Yes, that would be nice, but we can't afford it." It's up to the Board to be a voice for taxpayers and to demand accountability from the administration -- and that includes justification for expenses such as four (now three) superintendants and various consulting fees.

The simplest way to begin with the dire budget situation is to divide expenses into three tiers -- Tier I is everything that directly affects students and their education (instructional time, classroom size); Tier II is anything with indirect effects on students; Tier III is everything else. Tier III gets cut first, end of story. Tier I is cut last, if at all. Any expense on Tier II or III that wants to stick around is going to have to provide massive justification for its existence at the expense of any Tier I core functions.

The picture is less clear and less easy for buildings and maintenance, but a similar scheme can be considered. I also believe the District should consider performance contracting, a state program which updates buildings to increase their energy efficiency with no capital outlay -- the outlay comes from the state and the contractors, who are paid back out of the energy savings over time. The cost-savings take some time to appear (as they're initially paying back to capital outlay), but there is no capital outlay and the program is particularly effective with older, historic buildings that tend to be well-build, well-insulated, and nicely adaptable to modern energy efficiencies.

The closed culture of the Board and Administration has created an atmosphere of distrust. There are issues where the Board and District are legitimately constrained from public discussion -- issues that fall under FERPA, or various personnel matters that are legally private -- but this constant refusal to openly discuss issues that are open has created a situation where Peorians are no longer willing to believe the District when it says, "Trust us."

While one vote on the School Board can't change District policy alone, one person on the Board CAN communicate directly and honestly with constituents, and that would be one of my primary aims.

-----

On a personal note, regardless of the outcome of tomorrow's vote, I've really enjoyed running for the Board -- meeting so many people in Peoria who are so deeply invested in the future of our city, talking with my opponents, and really learning how much local democracy matters. It's been a real education for me, seeing this part of a functioning democracy from the inside, and by and large it's been a heartening experience -- watching America work the way it's meant to work, with people of good will working hard to improve their communities. Whatever the outcome, I am enormously grateful for that experience.

Being a Husband Is Hard

2009-03-30T22:45:00.002-05:00

"Ack! Stretch marks! Why didn't you tell me I have stretch marks??? You know I can't see that part of my belly anymore!"

"I thought I wasn't supposed to mention them!"

The Little One LOVES the Big One

2009-03-27T12:27:00.004-05:00

<---Pirate Cats packaged for shipping!

Thought I'd do a little update on Striped Cat and Grey Cat. I have never seen an instance of feline hero worship quite as dire as Striped Cat's worship for Grey Cat.

Striped Cat routinely follows him around the house ... any time we see Grey Cat on the move, we can be sure Striped Cat will be about 5 feet behind. Striped Cat likes to snuggle up against Grey Cat to sleep, but first he always checks to see what position Grey Cat is sleeping in and then mimics that position. Seriously. And if Grey Cat moves, Striped Cat checks and adjusts his position accordingly.

Striped Cat only wants to eat out of whatever bowl Grey Cat is eating out of. He will even half-hang on Grey Cat's back so he can eat the kibble Grey Cat drops. (Still not kidding.) He's lucky Grey Cat is pretty mellow about being messed with while eating. Grey Cat will switch bowls so Striped Cat can have the bowl Striped Cat is trying to share with Grey Cat, which results in Striped Cat following Grey Cat to the new bowl.

Grey Cat loves lettuce, particularly dark leafy varieties. Striped Cat does NOT love lettuce, but every time Grey Cat has lettuce, Striped Cat wants a piece, which he then eats, makes a terrible face that says, "Ugh, why are we eating this?" and then he eats the rest of it anyway -- or at least until Grey Cat stops eating HIS lettuce.

Grey Cat loves showers. He thinks we take showers just to provide him with sauna opportunities. Striped Cat, again, not such a fan -- the noise of the shower terrifies him, like it does all normal cats. At first he would pace outside the door while we showered and Grey Cat sat inside enjoying his schvitz. Then he started sitting against the outside of the door. Then he would sit half in and half out of the door, staring frantically around to make sure escape routes had not been cut off. Now he follows Grey Cat in and sits inside the bathroom for the whole shower, the entire time with this look on his face like, "Why is this supposed to be fun? PLEASE can you turn off the noisy monster sound?" But if Grey Cat is going to do it, Striped Cat is going to do it.

Grey Cat seems resigned to his worshipful shadow, though now and then he makes a gargantuan effort to have a nap to himself (it never works). Once I had to separate them when they were fighting, and I had to lock up Grey Cat because I'm too cumbersome to catch Striped Cat (who is speedy and slippery). When I came to let Grey Cat out of the bathroom after a cooling-down period, he refused to come out -- he was having such a peaceful, worship-free nap in there.

Life is hard on the pedestal.

al-Marri hearing

2009-03-23T14:42:00.001-05:00

I attended the al-Marri hearing today in Peoria. Been tweeting about it (after, not during!) on my Twitter stream for those who are interested.

Pool Therapy

2009-03-12T16:51:00.003-05:00

Went for my first pool therapy today. It felt SO GOOD to get Flippy off my spine and hips for a while and let everything just RELAX.

Flippy, on the other hand, was somewhat non-plussed. Flippy's not a fan of me reorienting gravity on him (by, say, turning over) to begin with. Turning gravity OFF by getting in the water freaked him out. If I can transcribe the sensations coming from my belly, Flippy was saying something like:

"Wait ... WTF ... WHERE IS GRAVITY? WHERE'D IT GO???!?!!?!?!?!??!"

He has pretty recognizable patterns of behavior by now, and the water definitely threw him for a loop.

Threw me for a bit of a loop too when I got in -- it turns out you're a LOT more buoyant when you're pregnant. I thought I was going to pop right back up like a cork!

Stupid External Brains

2009-03-10T13:06:00.002-05:00

Apparently the hospital will not accept "speed dial - 2" as the emergency contact number for my mom. This is what I get for storing all kinds of vital information that I used to remember myself on external brains like my cell and my e-mail autocomplete.

Of course, I still remember the first 50 digits of pi, because that's TOTALLY going to come in useful and not be look-up-able!

The singularity needs to come faster.

He Did It His Way

2009-03-02T08:16:00.002-06:00

We went to do all the registering for Flippy this weekend, which is an exhausting process because a) babies DO NOT need this many choices (in Soviet Russia, registry picks you!) and b) it's hard to pick things for someone you've never met and don't know anything about.

Which is not quite true. In addition to knowing he's an unusually active child, we learned this weekend that Flippy likes Frank Sinatra.

We go on many Saturdays to see Bridget and the Boogiemen at Panache (7 to closing), with various friends, which is about the right speed for me currently -- leaning back on a couch and listening to music while eating incessantly is about all the social excitement I can handle.

Back when my baby books informed me Flippy could hear and would recognize sounds he heard in the womb later when he was born, I started trying to think of what good jazz I would expose him to, so he would not be born a cultural philistine (or too tainted by my unholy love for Eurotrance). I settled on Fly Me to the Moon as a good song to sing him -- catchy melody, fun words, makes an appearance on Sesame Street as "Slimy to the Moon" with astronaut worms, one of my favorite songs -- and started singing him that now and then.

We requested it when we first went to Panache and the band now plays it for us whenever we drop by on a Saturday. Well, this Saturday, when they started playing it, Flippy suddenly went crazy and kept kicking around until they finished the melody, calmed down during the solos, and then went nuts again when they played the melody at the end.

Which I thought was pretty cool. (And part of me is at least a little surprised to learn that this whole "baby can not just hear but recognize sounds in the womb" thing isn't just nonsense.)

So we know at least one thing about Flippy: He likes Fly Me to the Moon. You should, too. It's a good song!

Update

2009-02-24T21:05:00.002-06:00

I was reminded this evening I haven't updated lately about Flippy. Flippy continues to do very well. I continue to survive. They're sending me to physical therapy because Flippy is wrecking my back; I've started gaining weight (after losing in the first trimester and then mostly maintaining in the 2nd); and I'm starting to slightly panic about getting the nursery ready and getting registered!

My belly went SPROING a week ago, but this week it's been mostly maintaining (although I have a sneaking suspicion we're about to start another growth spurt ... I feel stretchy).

Whenever Grey Cat leans against my belly and purrs, Flippy flips like crazy. I'm not sure if this is excitement or protest. But it's super-cute!

Overheard in the Adjunct Office

2009-02-18T09:55:00.001-06:00

"I hate mice with balls!"

Too Much Cuteness for One Blog Post

2009-02-11T08:20:00.002-06:00

The cute! It burns me with its cuteness!

Personality

2009-02-09T22:07:00.003-06:00

It's weird how 24-week-old fetal Flippy has already got habits and a bit of a personality. Flippy gets quiet when Mr. McGee talks, and likes to do his morning calisthenic workout around 5 a.m. Evening calisthenics occur reliably around 7 p.m. and again at 10.

All the discussion of how the fetus can "already hear" has made me very aware of what I talk about during my day. Flippy is getting an education in philosophy as well as trance music. And seems to spend a lot of time lot of time listening to people complain about current events.

People either think the name Flippy is adorable or think we're pre-emptively scarring Flippy for life. I haven't been able to identify a pattern to who finds it cute/awful, but there's no middle ground!

Wisdom Turds

2009-01-31T12:08:00.000-06:00

Me: "I've been married to you for six years. I know when you're full of crap."

Him, indignantly: "I'm not full of crap! I'm full of ... wisdom turds."

Impeachment

2009-01-29T17:00:00.002-06:00

I've watched much of the impeachment proceedings (on the Illinois Information Service feed, which one of the local networks should put on as one of their digital subchannels, that'd be very useful, very cheap, and they could run local ads across the bottom as a scroll), and it's been a really interesting undertaking.

I really felt like the State Senate did a very good job of making the proceedings clear, as unusual as they were, and I thought the prosecutor was excellent. Blago's rank nonsense made me want to put a fist through my screen while he was talking, but the prosecutor's rebuttal was good. stuff.

But I think the really comforting part of the whole proceeding was how even when democratic government fails fairly catastrophically, it still succeeds. Our idiot ex-governor was ousted peacefully, openly, with a clear and public process. Our new governor was sworn in moments later. Even as state government was embroiled in this catastrophe, the legislature kept meeting, the bureaucracy kept working, and everybody, inside the statehouse and in the state more generally, waited patiently for the process to work itself out.

It's sometimes hard to remember that the often-dull and overlooked work of state government (as well as the ponderous machinations of their federal counterparts) is in fact one of the greatest achievements of mankind. There was no violence, there was no coup, there was no secret voting -- just an open process of removal, conducted under the law, resulting in the peaceful transfer of power from one guy to another. That's a neat thing.

In Which My Husband Discovers the Baking Cupboard

2009-01-28T08:50:00.005-06:00

I should preface this by saying Mr. McGee is an excellent cook, and when we got married, he could cook and I could not. I baked, but I didn't cook. So it's not like he's not in the kitchen fully as often as I am doing fully as much of the cooking.

Last night we're watching television, and I see cookies on TV, and, as I now do every time I see food on television, I said, "Mmm, I want cookies." (I even want vile and disgusting things I would never actually eat. All food is appetizing now!)

Mr. McGee said, and this is not all verbatim, but pretty close: "I was just thinking that too. I really wish we had some cookies."

"Why don't you go make some?"

"Do we have the stuff to make cookies?"

"Flour, sugar, butter ... yeah, I'm pretty sure we even have brown sugar and baking soda!"

"But don't you need special stuff?"

"Dear, we always have the stuff to make cookies. I just hate making them, cakes are easier."

"Well if I'd known we had the stuff, I would have made some!"

"Why don't you go make some now?" I asked.

"Oh," he said, "I've never made cookies from scratch."

Long pause. "Are you screwing with me?" (Only I didn't say screwing.)

"No, I've never made them."

"Wait here." I go in the kitchen, find the Nestle semi-sweet morsels, and come back with the chocolate chips and the mixer attachment. "Here's the recipe. Here's the right attachment for the mixer. Go nuts."

He goes in the kitchen and makes the cookies, with lots of lawyerly over-exactness, which is why I have to be in the other room so I don't feel the burning urge to micromanage when he bakes. When I (and every girlfriend I asked) make the Nestle chocolate chip cookies, I just throw everything in one bowl and turn on the mixer. (As one friend said, "If the butter isn't frozen solid, I call it a win!") He's in there softening the butter, creaming it with the sugar, pre-mixing the salt, baking soda, and flour in a whole separate bowl (extra dishes! Ack!). In his own defense, he pointed out that I always tell him to read the recipe before he starts cooking, since he has in the past started a recipe before realizing he doesn't have all the ingredients, and that he's just doing what I said and following the directions. This is true.

He successfully bakes the cookies, with much fretting over uneven browning of the bottoms, are how do I get them done without burning, and taste testing of each batch. We're sitting on the couch enjoying his very tasty cookies, and I ask, "Now that you've made cookies, aren't you proud you can make them whenever you want?"

"No, now I'm wondering why you haven't been making me cookies all the time!"

"Because I hate baking cookies! I make you cakes!"

Now my big fear is that since he's discovered the existence of the baking cupboard, I will never, ever again have baking stuff on hand, since I replace the brown sugar when there's a cup left or the baking soda when it's getting low -- when there's enough for one more recipe but not two more recipes. He tends to not replace things until they're entirely run out. I foresee a future devoid of vanilla extract.

It's a Boy! I Think It's Paul Bunyan, in Fact.

2009-01-26T16:38:00.005-06:00

We learned at the 20-week ultrasound that Flippy is a boy. It would have been difficult NOT to learn it, since him was very proud of him's little penis, as I'm told boys often are on ultrasound. They're focusing in on his butt and I'm going, "Three lines or a snail? Three lines or a snail? Oh, that is DEFINITELY a snail!"

(Parents will know that three lines means it's a girl, a snail means it's a boy.)

We also learned that Flippy is, to use the technical medical term, GINORMOUS. At 20 weeks they estimated he weighed about a pound -- average at 20 weeks is 10.5 ounces. Uncool, Flippy! Uncool! (Apparently women with higher levels of education are more likely to have extremely large babies. I knew that second graduate degree was a mistake!) Everyone at the office also commented that he has the longest thigh bones they've ever seen. Flippy is definitely his father's son.

Which explains why I appear to be big. Upon finding out I'm about 4 1/2 months along, everyone says, "You're only four and a half months? You look SIX!" Part of this is because I'm short, only 5'2", so there's nowhere for Flippy to go but out. Part of this is because I'm gestating Paul Freakin' Bunyan in here, and Paul Freakin' Bunyan's father is 6'4". (And has a big head. I know. I've bought him hats.)

Which leads me to my first complaint about OTHER PEOPLE during pregnancy. I know that most things people say to pregnant women that come off as inane or annoying are just people making conversation. "You're so big!" isn't code for, "You whale," but code for "OMG you're pregnant!" So I'm cool with that. I'm starting to get a little neurotic when people point out I look six months along because I'm a little freaked out about having a ginormous baby, but I'm still trying to be cool.

But if ONE MORE PERSON tells me I'm eating too much or informs me I have gestational diabetes, I will scream. Seriously. (And what kind of obstetricians are you people going to that they don't make you pee in the cup to check for sugar every time you come within 30 yards of the building?) Some random lady in the supermarket sternly told me, "You're too big for four and a half months. You need to stop gaining so much weight. It isn't good for the baby." (Which is extra-awesome because not only is it almost-inconceivably rude, but because I'm still UNDER my pre-pregnancy weight due to the epic morning sickness, the December stomach flu, and Paul Freakin' Bunyan in here eating all my calories to fuel his constant flipping.)

I do finally understand, though, why my husband has the metabolism of a rabid squirrel*. It's been particularly irritating since I got pregnant since I'M the one over here creating life and HE'S the one sleeping 9 or 10 hours a night. I'm discovering it takes enormous amounts of calories and energy to sustain the constant Flipmotion of Mini-Mr.-McGee, so I guess it takes correspondingly more to sustain the full-size version of Mr. McGee.

All of this is good because it means Flippy is healthy and growing well, and that's really what's important here. However, if I end up in the national news as "Peoria Woman Gives Birth to 14-Pound Baby," I am going to be PISSED. OFF.

-------

*Actually, squirrels don't really get rabies that much.

More Name Nerdery

2009-01-20T06:58:00.001-06:00

"You know, I'd really kind-of prefer a saint's name, or a Biblical name."

"Sariel?"

"WE ARE NOT NAMING OUR CHILD FROM THE APOCRYPHA."

"But --"

"NO. Canonical texts only."

A Hint of Things to Come

2009-01-16T20:55:00.003-06:00

We had the 20 week ultrasound this past week, and I'd been kinda freaking out because I wasn't feeling Flippy move. (Okay, totally freaking out.) Turns out my placenta is anterior, so the Flipster is mostly beating on the placenta, not me. But we go and get the ultrasound and I'm all reassured everything's fine ... and the next day Flippy starts moving where I can feel it. Non-stop. For hours!

Contrary child!

What's In A Name?

2009-01-14T12:04:00.002-06:00

"What about Galahad, if it's a boy?"

"We are not naming the baby Galahad. Or Percival. Or Lancelot."

"Of course not. Lancelot would just be silly."

"?????!!!!!!"

Dear Blagojevich,

2009-01-09T14:45:00.001-06:00

Stop ruining poetry by quoting it every time someone indicts or impeaches you.

114-1

2009-01-09T10:55:00.000-06:00

I love the smell of impeachment in the morning!

This Is Harder Than I Expected

2009-01-03T09:57:00.002-06:00

So I turn out not to be very good at pregnancy. I'm into week 19, and I'm still barfing my brains out with morning sickness. (Seriously, I throw up so much I end up with a vicious headache just from the barfing, before we add in the hormone part of the headache.) It's backed off somewhat so it's worst morning and evening, but it's still more or less an all-day affair. I'm not even hungry anymore (except when the Sudden Onset Starvation -- all you people who've been pregnant know what I'm talking about), but of course I have to make myself eat, even though I know it'll be coming back on me shortly. After this pregnancy is over, I'm not sure I'll be able to ever eat a plain cracker or a peppermint candy again, since those have been my primary morning-sickness-fighting tools. Peppermints are already starting to totally gross me out.

I'm down 10 lbs. from my pre-pregnancy weight, making pregnancy officially the most effective diet I've ever been on.

Now let me hasten to say that Flippy continues healthy, and while I'm absolutely miserably uncomfortable, none of this is dangerous. Just miserable. And morning sickness isn't particularly treatable, either. So I have to suffer through, and Mr. McGee has to suffer through me suffering through (I suffer loudly). The second trimester woes -- back aches, ligament pain, etc. -- are starting to kick in, which I think is brutally unfair, as I am not doing with the FIRST trimester woes yet! Get in line, you rotten woes! Wait your turn!

I'm trying to be philosophical about it and count my blessings -- Flippy's healthy, I have good medical care, pregnancy only lasts nine months, I have a husband who's being really cool about having to do all the housework and shopping and cooking -- but I'm getting less philosophical by the day. Especially because it's difficult for me to leave the house, so I'm really freaking bored. The ob/gyn keeps telling me to lie down and rest, which I do (the couch is growing an imprint of my butt), but OH MY GOD, I'M SO BORED.

I swear, though, what annoys me the most is that my skin looks like absolute crap. For some reason I feel the most cheated by the fact that not only am I not glowing, I look like the cryptkeeper's wife. My skin has never looked this terrible, and I went through puberty without getting this many zits! Brutal.

Bits & Pieces

2008-12-27T08:16:00.002-06:00

So they say by this age (18 weeks), Flippy can loosely hear things outside the womb, and that songs the fetus is exposed to a lot in the womb are calming and soothing after the fetus is born.

This led me to the slightly uneasy conclusion that Flippy will probably go down for all his or her naps to the driving strains of trance music (such as this), since that's what I always like to have on when I'm working.

-----

NOBODY likes ANY name I pick out for the Oscar-Cat. I'm tempted to call him Stubby Cat now, no matter what anybody thinks, because his legs are about three sizes too short for his body.

Anyway, last night we learned that Oscar Cat DOES NOT like thunderstorms. There was piteous crying and wailing every time it thundered. I patted the bed up near me so he could come get petted and maybe calm down, but this just resulted in him attacking my hand with all available teeth and claws. Uncool, dude.

-----

I had a slightly less-merry-than-expected Christmas, as I came down with a stomach flu (RIGHT when I'd finished with morning sickness! So unfair!) and I wasn't able to travel to the family Christmas. But my family came down through the fog and ice to see me on the 26th, so that was cheery at least. And at least I have plenty of video games and books to keep me entertained.

My mother pointed out if I keep this up, I'll be a size 2 after I give birth, since apparently I'm not going to actually digest anything I attempt to eat until spring. :P

(Grey Cat's latest trick, incidentally, was an attempt to comfort me with headbutting while I was attempting to worship the porcelain goddess. This almost ended EXTREMELY BADLY.)

Christmas Cat Blogging

2008-12-22T16:27:00.003-06:00

Okay, now I've gone and gotten all self-conscious about my "cat-blogging." But the cats have fans who want to know why I'm not blogging about them! So here's your update.

Beige Cat -- That's the new one. My mom said she'd disown me if I called him "Weird Cat" or "Photoshopped Cat" on my blog. Maybe Striped Cat? Still working on it. Anyway, Beige Cat is settling in nicely, though he only likes Mr. McGee and me when we're sleeping. Standing-up humans scare him.

But Beige Cat LOVES Grey Cat. There was an initial period of skepticism, and of course there's still plenty of wrestling, but Beige Cat ADORES Grey Cat. Beige Cat follows him around the house, insists on sleeping curled up against him, wants to eat the food Grey Cat drops instead of the perfectly good food in Beige Cat's bowl ... it's insane. Beige Cat does a lot of kneading of Grey Cat's belly, which is what kittens to do their moms. Grey Cat constantly has this look on his face like, "Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot." But he's being pretty tolerant about the whole thing.

Beige Cat's most disconcerting habit, to Grey Cat's mind, is attack snuggling. Beige Cat will be racing around the house being crazy and kittenish, spot Grey Cat, and go racing over, purr motor already running, to LEAP upon Grey Cat and snuggle on top of him (falling immediately asleep as kittens and babies do). I sort-of feel like this is payback, as Grey Cat weighs 20 lbs. and frequently leaps upon ME unexpectedly to look for snuggles, and it's very funny to watch Grey Cat get startled awake (yet again) by the bundle of Beigeness that is DETERMINED to love him to pieces.

On the plus side, Grey Cat has regained his waistline since we got Beige Cat. Grey Cat had gotten a little tubby as Orange Cat slowed down and the two spent most of their time sleeping ... and then as Orange Cat quit eating and Grey Cat started some opportunistic food theft. In just a month or so, Grey Cat has slimmed down considerably, which makes him look much less like a cuddly fluffball and much more like a linebacker/professional mafia kneecapper. I'd forgotten quite what a bruiser he is under all that fur!

And the Bun Keeps Cookin' ...

2008-12-19T21:03:00.002-06:00

Latest checkup shows fetal heart rate at 155 bpm, everything moving along normally!

I have a twitter stream where I'm twittering minor baby updates (at first it was mostly complaints about barfing, now it's cheerier). It's a private stream; if you'd like in, e-mail me via the link in the upper left there. :)

... and Baby Makes Three. McGees.

2008-12-10T09:07:00.002-06:00

Because we've come to the point where people start to awkwardly wonder if I had a giant burrito for lunch or if something else is going on, it's time to confess, blogosphere, that something else is going on. Specifically, I am pregnant.

We're thrilled, of course. We've seen Flippy on ultrasound, and we've named him/her/it Flippy because it was so frantically paddling its then-flippers at the 8 weeks ultrasound that the tech had to chase Flippy down to get a heartbeat -- and warned us we were in for it, as they're never this active that early. (Where d'you think you're going there, Chief?)

I am 15 weeks along, and I've had a fairly epic battle with morning sickness, so it hasn't been a fun first trimester. Other than class, I've been basically house-bound since the end of October. It seems to be tapering off, knock on wood, so hopefully I'll get to this magical part of pregnancy everyone keeps telling me about where it's "fun" soon.

So the answer to basically every question you've had for me for the last three months is, "pregnant."

Eyebrows, why were you so tired and boring the last time I saw you out? Pregnant.
Eyebrows, why haven't I seen you out among people since Halloween? Pregnant.
Eyebrows, why haven't you blogged in like forever? Pregnant, and it was hard to think of other things to blog about when one topic was totally consuming my mind and I couldn't say anything!
Eyebrows, how did you manage to sprain your wrist? I was racing for the bathroom and Grey Cat thought I was going somewhere fun and played the underfoot game, resulting in me tripping on him and falling really hard, spraining my wrist. Or, short version: Pregnant.

Flippy is due to arrive May 29, although fetuses are notoriously bad at observing calendar dates.

And now I have to tell the story I've been dying to tell since I found out I was pregnant, because it was hilarious and I had to keep it all to myself. I went in to get the blood drawn to confirm the pregnancy, and the first thing that had happened to me as soon as I got pregnant was that my fingers swelled up so huge I couldn't get my wedding ring on (they remain huge), and the second thing was that I got really emotional, especially right at first. The day of the blood draw I'm all bloaty so I'm wearing my loose jeans and a grubby T-shirt. Meanwhile, we just switched textbooks for intro philo this semester, so I'm sitting in the waiting room highlighting away as I prep for class.

One nurse comes out and asks the other, "Is Eyebrows here?"

Nurse Two replies, "I think she's the student with the textbook there."

I'm just like, "Whatever," and the nurse comes to get me and I follow her back to get the blood drawn. The nurse leaves, and sitting there I start to feel kinda-of emotional as the enormity of "Holy crap, I'm pregnant!" hits me. The nurse comes back a minute later, and asks in a somewhat concerned tone, "Now, who is this Mr. McGee who's on your chart, is he the father?" (Because recall, my husband and I have different last names.)

At this, I just BURST into tears, mostly because I'm overwhelmed and full of hormones. But the nurse has now decided I'm a pregnant unwed college student.

"Is this a good thing? Are you unhappy about the pregnancy?" she asks, in a very concerned and sympathetic tone.

"I'm married *sob* and he's my *sob* husband but *sob* I just can't *sob* get my wedding ring *sob* on," I wailed. "I'm really *sob* excited *sob, hiccup*."

It still makes me giggle.

Why I'm Running

2008-12-09T11:00:00.004-06:00

As you may have heard or seen, I am running for District 150 School Board, for the 3rd District seat that Mary Spangler is vacating. I don't promise this post will be elegant, but I wanted to lay out some of the reasons that I've chosen to make a run for school board.

On a personal level, there are probably two driving factors: First, I really like this community. I like living here. I like Peorians. Second, I believe in service to the community. I liked what Bob Manning said recently: "Step up to the plate when it’s your turn, do the job to the best of your abilities, remember who you represent, and don’t stay too long."

The most crucial thing that I would like to focus on, if elected to the school board, is student achievement. That's a broad topic, and an easy thing to say, but it's clearly at the heart of what we all want for the students of District 150, and it's the purpose of the system. It's why we pay the taxes into the system. The District isn't a babysitting service. It isn't a jobs program for administrative cronies. It isn't a feeding trough for consultants. Its purpose is to educate, and District 150 should be a first choice, not a last resort. We have excellent students -- I teach some of them at ICC. We have excellent teachers. These students can achieve if we can only create the environment for them to do it.

I am talking and listening to everyone who's got something to say about this and is willing to talk to me about it -- local teachers, District 150 students and grads, 150 retirees, support staff, parents, local professors, board members in 150 and in other districts, even my mother, a junior high teacher in Des Plaines (District 62). Some of the policies I would pursue include:

Free teachers to teach, as much as possible. Miring teachers down in red tape or forcing them to spend more time administering discipline than teaching is not a recipe for achievement. Obviously, there are constraints that neither the schools nor the district can change -- NCLB, for example. But within those constraints, the Board should do everything possible to create an environment where teachers can teach with a minimum of interruption and distraction and a maximum of support from principals, administration, and the Board.

Create an alternative school for disruptive students. I was frankly somewhat appalled when I discovered Peoria doesn't have one. The small number of students who create real disruptions and discipline problems should not be allowed to continue disrupting the learning of those around them. At the same time, explusion is an unattractive option, as it leaves students who are most in need of education and direction without resources to improve their lives. An alternative school -- a good alternative school, whose focus is to reintegrate the student into the mainstream and provide an excellent education until that's possible -- is necessary. Removing these seriously problematic students from the classroom will allow them to get the focused attention they need, and the other students to focus on their studies in a safe environment conducive to learning.

Focus on "the next step" after high school. I've heard a lot of enthusiasm from current and retired teachers about improving both college prep and vocational education opportunities. A lot of these programs sound very interesting, and very workable.

However, we need to commit to programs and stick with them -- District 150 has done quite a bit of "we'll try this, no wait, now that," picking up programs and discarding them before they have a chance to work. There is no perfect program, and there are probably a variety of methods that will work to improve student achievement. But none of them will work if they're implemented for a year and then dropped; this creates confusion and waste.

A second set of issues, and ones that the Board is probably able to influence more directly, revolve around governance and communication. In recent years, there hasn't been a great deal of openness and communication from the School Board or the administration about various decisions. Stories change constantly -- "A longer school day is good for students, except when it isn't." I don't think anyone in Peoria is under any illusions about the financial status of the District, and that that constrains the District's options. It's up to the School Board to be open and honest about that, to set priorities, and to say, "Yes, that would be nice, but we can't afford it." It's up to the Board to be a voice for taxpayers and to demand accountability from the administration -- and that includes justification for expenses such as four superintendants and various consulting fees.

This closed culture has created an atmosphere of distrust. (I've written about it previously, here. And there is no situation in which taxpayers should have to FOIA obviously public documents.) There are issues where the Board and District are legitimately constrained from public discussion -- issues that fall under FERPA, or various personnel matters that are legally private -- but this constant refusal to openly discuss issues that are open has created a situation where Peorians are no longer willing to believe the District when it says, "Trust us."

While one vote on the School Board can't change District policy alone, one person on the Board CAN communicate directly and honestly with constituents, and that would be one of my primary aims.

If you're interested in helping out my campaign, or if you want to talk to me about your concerns, you can contact me at the link on the top left. I look forward to hearing from you.

I Can See the Light!

2008-11-20T08:21:00.002-06:00

... at the end of the tunnel. This semester has been brutal on me, but I'm over my biggest hump of grading until finals, and I can finally see finals up ahead, so I just have to sprint to the finish.

I'm not sure I've ever been so eager for Thanksgiving in my life! Teaching six days a week, with other obligations as well, I haven't had a day off since October. I've also had nothing interesting to blog about, since I go to school, teach, come home, sleep. Eat absolute crap. Lose weight from stress anyway. Gaze at kitchen counters in despair but decide if I ignore them, they'll go away. Discover to my disappointment that's not true. Continue ignoring them anyway. Find self standing in shower motionless suddenly wondering how long I've been in there, and am I already late for class? (With this low-flow showerhead, we never run out of hot water, so I really could be in there for eternity and not get an icy wake-up-and-get-out!) And so forth.

Oscar Arrives from Atlanta

2008-11-18T08:20:00.004-06:00

We think we're going to name him "Oscar" and call him "Ozzy" for short. He sheds white, which is irritating because now all my black clothes look awful. It's not a great picture, but he's basically a Siamese with a tabby overlay -- it looks like someone Photoshopped him together. He's beige on the body with cream tabby stripes; and then black on his Siamese color points (tail, legs, head) with grey/silver stripes. He is a weird-looking cat. (Perhaps I shall call him Weird Cat. Or Photoshopped Cat, but that takes a long time to type.)

He's getting along well so far -- he and Grey Cat are alternately tolerating and ignoring one another, and alternately playing and fighting (but nothing too serious). He has good cat manners -- uses his litterbox, doesn't use his claws -- and he sometimes likes to snuggle, but he's still very skittish around people and he's only a year old, so he's got a lot of youthful energy. (A LOT of youthful energy. It's exhausting watching him!)

Oscar has a strange backstory. My aunt in Atlanta is a cat vet, and a client came in with a one-eyed cat she'd found stray, and was saying, "Boy, it's too bad he just has one eye; he's sweet-tempered, but nobody's going to adopt a one-eyed cat." (Client already having more than enough cats herself.)

My aunt said, "You know, I have a niece who adopts nothing BUT one-eyed cats; it's too bad she's in Illinois."

And the client said, "I'm a flight attendant and I'm flying to Chicago next week! I can drop him off!"

Even crazier, she had a doctor's appointment in the suburb next to my parents', so she flew with Oscar to Chicago, dropped him with my mom, and mom drove him downstate, whereupon Oscar, who had had no idea there were so many methods of conveyance with which to torture a cat, decided hiding behind the toilet for 16 hours was probably his best strategy.

(He even arrived with his own little pair of wings, like they give little kids on airplanes.)

So despite all the mocking about "What, did they run out of strays in Peoria?" Oscar was clearly sent by God or something. It was foreordained. One of my students said, in awe at the story of how he ended up here, "Wow, that cat's going to save your life or something!"

New Cat!

2008-11-13T19:59:00.003-06:00

So, a bright spot in an otherwise difficult week, our new cat has arrived. He is as yet nameless, but one-eyed and sweet tempered. He came all the way from Atlanta and is curled up on Mr. McGee's lap sleeping. He and Grey Cat are interested in each other but no hostility so far. Full story to follow, perhaps after we come up with a name!

Whoever Has My Voodoo Doll, Stop Sticking Pins in It

2008-11-09T21:35:00.002-06:00

All right, so this hasn't been my easiest semester ever, and I've been pretty swamped with work, extra work, some family stuff, dying cats, the basement renovations, and a couple other things. In short, my life's been out of control, and minor catastrophes keep happening.

Well on Saturday I stepped up to larger catastrophe: My wallet got stolen. Fortunately I carry basically my drivers' license and a couple credit cards, so it only took an hour to get everything canceled (except the Blockbuster card, which you apparently do have to cancel if it gets stolen, but can only cancel on weekdays). This also rendered it the least successful wallet-stealing EVER, as I carry no money in my wallet and all the cards were canceled before the idiot managed to charge anything, and he got no juicy personal data.

As everyone who's ever had their wallet stolen knows, this is ENORMOUSLY upsetting. (I had it happen to me once before, in high school.) Even though being slightly organized (being able to immediately put your hands on the credit card details to start canceling) makes it not actually that big a deal, it's just horrible. There's the first heart-stopping moment when you realize it's gone, followed by the panicked rummaging, the dumping out of the purse on a table, and then the frantic searching of everywhere it might have fallen out/gotten left. And then, really, the sense of violation that someone has your wallet. The bits of your life. Ick.

(And then there's the special extra trip to the DMV, which is just salt in the wound.)

One thing the experience reaffirmed for me is how much better AmEx is than other credit cards. There's a minimum of phone-tree hassle, someone picks up in seconds, and they canceled quickly and efficiently. They express the new card at no extra cost, and when you have two people on the account, THEY HAVE DIFFERENT NUMBERS, so Mr. McGee can still use his AmEx because his number wasn't compromised.

My Bank of America MasterCard, on the other hand, took FOREVER to get to a live person. They canceled it okay, but told me it would take 7-10 days to get the new card and there was no possible way to speed that up. (What am I supposed to do for money????? This is the 21st century! Who carries cash???) But then, this is the kicker, THE FRAUD PREVENTION GUY STARTS TRYING TO UPSELL ME ON MORE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES FROM BofA. I am almost never rude to phone people, but I said in total disbelief (and in a pretty pissed-off tone of voice), "Are you serious? I have to call and cancel all my other cards! I don't want your crap!"

I realize he was on a script, but OH MY LORD, how inappropriate. Proving for the five billionth time that AmEx is a vastly superior company to do business with in ALL POSSIBLE WAYS. Every time we deal with either card we're reminded of this.

Some of Us Don't Understand How Stupid Jokes Work

2008-11-05T16:19:00.001-06:00

"How many vampires does it take to change a light bulb?

"........"

"It's REALLY ANNOYING how you THINK ABOUT THE ANSWER."

"Fine, how many?"

"None, vampires like the dark."

"I was going to SAY none, but then I wasn't sure ...."

Yay!

2008-11-05T08:25:00.001-06:00

I got weepy. But so did Oprah, so I feel okay about it.

VOTE!

2008-11-04T09:43:00.002-06:00

Don't forget to vote!

Mr. McGee went right at 6 a.m. when the polls opened. I went a little later. Make sure you go get your sticker too!

21st Century Mom Worries

2008-10-28T16:54:00.001-05:00

My mom called yesterday to make sure I had assigned her a "good" ringtone after reading about the latest round of ringtone assignments on my blog. Does it GET any more 21st century than that for mom worries?

She hoped it was upbeat. She got "1985" by Bowling for Soup, which I think is definitely upbeat! But she made skeptical noises as she's unfamiliar with the song.

Headless Chicken

2008-10-26T22:32:00.002-05:00

I am entirely unsure if I am coming or going. I am working 6 days a week now, and I gave up my one day off this week to (wo)man a booth at the Women's Lifestyle Show.

I feel like I've been down a deep hole for two weeks between the bronchitis (cleared up now!), the doubled work schedule, and the 8 billion other major life events all landing on me at once.

We did finally manage to get new phones, which we've needed for ages (Mr. McGee's wouldn't even hold a charge anymore), so I spent part of my afternoon assigning ring tones to my relatives, which gave me great joy. We haven't managed to make it to PAWS yet and I haven't started laundry, despite my laundry room being all beautifully finished now.

I feel like I haven't seen any of my friends in forever, which bums me out a little.

My primary life goals right now are a) get past the election (soooooo tired of attack ads!) and then b) get to Thanksgiving. I need four days off!

Academic Haiku

2008-10-21T15:11:00.002-05:00

Some of my friends and I began, a few years ago, to put frustrations with idiotic situations into haiku. It's amazing how therapeutic it is.

While most of my students remain great, there's a minority this semester who are driving me CRAZY. To that end, I give you Academic Haiku. (They're only haikus because they're 5-7-5; they bear no real resemblance to the other formal structures of haiku.) My favorite is the second-to-last one.

Academic Haiku:

E-mail handle tip:
"sexyboy69" is
inappropriate.

Complete text: "dude, what
is that paper for that class?"
No name. You got me!

"I could not do work:
Blackboard broken." "Blackboard fine:
Upgrade your browser."

"You did not post work."
It's right there. Life tip: Before
lie, check evidence.

Screams echo in night:
"Answer my 3 a.m. e-
mail!" I'm sleeping, jerk.

One-hour response on
all e-mail? Your premise is
unreasonable.

I cannot answer
your e-mail when I am in
class. I suck that way.

Students cannot seem
to locate staplers, ever.
They need red Swinglines.

Life tip: Do not claim
hospital stay after you
pass me in the hall.

Loving Jesus nice,
but your grade is based on works,
not faith in Yahweh.

Theme threatening prof
with eternal damnation:
Not best strategy.

General Update, Things Have Been Hectic

2008-10-17T16:07:00.003-05:00

I have been hassled all week for not blogging, to which I plead guilty. I didn't feel much like it for a couple days after Orange Cat went to the great snugglefest in the sky, and then I promptly came down with a cold, which has now turned itself into a ridiculous case of bronchitis that is making me a very sad girlie. Poor Mr. McGee has not has a wife this week, but an ugly bag of mostly water that keeps him awake with coughing.

So, things that require updating:
Grey Cat is lonely. He gets especially worked up at bedtime, as Orange Cat never missed the overnight nap and its attendant sunggles, so Grey Cat keeps looking around the bedroom and upstairs bathroom to try to find him. He's also been very demanding about attention. I think sooner rather than later we'll have to find him a new feline companion at PAWS (though they totally don't have any one-eyed strays in stock right now).

We received a lot of kindness and support after Orange Cat's death, and I haven't had a chance to respond to a lot of it (what with all the coughing I'm busy with), but we do appreciate it, very much.

I am picking up a few extra classes, to help out a colleague who's off for a little while, so my blogging time will probably be even more scarce for the next little while.

Mr. McGee has finished painted the floor and walls of half the basement. The plumber comes Monday to hook back up my washer and dryer (it is not, sadly, Troy the Cat-Loving Plumber, because he's booked through the end of next week and I am running out of underwear too fast to wait that long, but rather one of his colleagues). So the unfinished, "service" side of the basement can finally be put back together. The upstairs of my house can't go quite back to normal yet, but it can get a lot closer now that I'll have my storage space back!

I also got a very nice shout-out on Consumerist; I'm pretty sure getting a Gawker-network shout-out makes me at least as famous as some minor wannabe celebutantes.

Orange Cat is gone

2008-10-10T17:43:00.003-05:00

We had Orange Cat put down this afternoon. He'd been getting weaker since the beginning of the week, and had declined precipitously in the last day and a half. We knew it was time.

It's hard, of course, but he had a good life and it was time to let him go.

The staff at Meadowbrook Vet and Dr. Wulfkuhle in particular have been fantastic through Orange Cat's whole diabetes/kidney failure/etc., and we were glad Dr. W was able to do the euthanasia. It was very peaceful and painless.

In the Adjunct Office

2008-10-08T07:56:00.004-05:00

Adjunct One, muttering: "And grade THAT ... and class NOTES ... and this goes BACK ...."

Adjunct Two: "Your interior monologue is leaking!"

Adjunct One: Brief Silence. Hysterical giggling.

Calling All Gamers

2008-10-05T10:55:00.002-05:00

As regular readers probably know, my husband plays a table-top RPG. Due to the normal moving, changing job schedules, etc., his table's a little thin right now, so he's looking for a couple players to fill it out. It's a group of married, gainfully-employed guys (there's one woman who sometimes plays, but it's not me). They play on Saturday afternoons and it's pretty flexible when someone can't make it.

I know I've seen other local bloggers talking about gaming, so I thought I'd give him a little plug in case anybody's looking for a game. Shoot me an e-mail (top left there) if you're interested!

Gravity Broken: Cat May Not Land on Feet

2008-10-02T07:59:00.003-05:00

As if Orange Cat didn't have enough troubles, last night I woke up around 4 a.m. as he is FALLING OFF THE BED. And then can't manage to stand up. I have no idea how he managed to fall off the bed, since nobody was rolling over and accidentally shoving him or anything, but he fell, and our bed is pretty tall, and the floor is wood, so it was a pretty big fall.

He eventually got himself up and is now extremely gimpy in his back right leg, poor thing. We've been carrying him to his usually napping places this morning so he doesn't have to walk far (I even got out of bed to put him back up on the bed), but he is moving himself around to where he wants to be, so I think he'll be okay.

He sat on my lap for a while this morning while I read the paper and I tried a cold pack very gently on his gimpy leg. At first he seemed suspicious of this and kept looking at it and sniffing it, but then he decided he liked the cold and kept leaning into it. Now he's sitting ON it with it under him, which does nothing for his leg but apparently he just likes the cold. He is a weird cat.

Anti-Darwinian Warnings

2008-09-29T18:37:00.002-05:00

We finally just installed a CO detector. The instructions with the detector note in BIG BOLD TYPE:

Warning! Silencing the CO alarm does not eliminate the source of carbon monoxide!

While Lord knows I've made incredibly stupid use of common household tools and/or failed to understand the use of common appliances ... this seems like one of those warnings that maybe is preventing the gene pool from some self-chlorination.

Men Need Sheltering

2008-09-29T07:41:00.002-05:00

Mr. McGee was there for part of my book club last night. It's possible he's scarred for life, as topics of discussion ranged from the gynecological to ones that just provoked hysterical, gasping laughter from the women and a look of wide-eyed puzzlement from him. Men really shouldn't be exposed to women in groups. It's not good for them.

Orange Update

2008-09-27T22:15:00.002-05:00

When Orange Cat was first diagnosed with kidney failure, they didn't think he'd make it to August. It's almost October now. He's still pretty happy, but he's moving somewhat gingerly now, and he's starting to have some more bladder problems. When he went to the vet this week, his kidneys were deteriorating faster than they had been. He looks so sadly thin.

But he's still doing his Orange thing and finding people to snuggle up against and sunbeams to sit in.

By my count, he's cheated death four times now: being abandoned, being left in the shelter past his "euthanize" date -- they only kept them 30 days at that shelter, but he was so sweet tempered they kept him well past that even with his one eye and stubby tail -- getting his diabetes under control, and now outliving his kidney diagnosis by two months and counting. So he's a pretty lucky cat any way you look at it.

Blogger Bash

2008-09-25T06:50:00.002-05:00

It's time for another Blogger Bash, bloggerinos.

For those who've never been, we all get together on the fifth Tuesday in months when there are a fifth Tuesday (because City Council doesn't meet when there's a fifth Tuesday), and drink, chat, shout, etc. It's a good time and it is, as my mother says, a real slice. (Which means a slice of life. Which means there are some characters there.)

You don't need to be a blogger to show up; we've had commenters, random students, local pols, city employees, MSM folks, the people working on the new city logo, etc.

And you do not, contrary to popular belief, need to buy Billy drinks.

This month's bash begins at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 30, at Richard’s On Main, 311 Main Street in downtown Peoria.

It's slightly tricky to find, but you know that place on Main Street across from the courthouse where it looks like there's a subway entrance, which doesn't totally register because many cities have subways so it's a normal city-looking thing, and then you remember Peoria doesn't have a subway, and you go, "What the heck is that about?" That's the entrance to Richard's on Main, down the subway-looking stairs to the lower level. I guess you can get in from inside the building too.

I'll be arriving a little later, probably between 7 and 8 p.m., but I'll be there!

Ah, The Young Padawans

2008-09-13T20:43:00.004-05:00

They're catching on to me too quickly. I asked, "What color are carrots?"

About half the class uncertainly mumbled, "Orange?"

About a quarter of the class cried out, almost simultaneously, "Every color but orange!"

And about a quarter of the class flatly refused to answer on the grounds it was a trick question.

I said, "Okay, guys, if this WEREN'T a philosophy class and you WEREN'T assuming I was asking a trick question, what color are carrots?"

Only then would they all agree, arguendo, that carrots are orange.

Fall Music Festival: Venue Change

2008-09-12T09:58:00.002-05:00

Live Music Peoria forwards on this information about tomorrow's Fall Music Festival:

Well, because of the beautiful weather we are changing the Live Music Peoria, Fall Festival to the Opera House at Expo Gardens. We will still have a beer tent, and we will have shelter!!!

See my original post for full info!

Student Behavior

2008-09-12T09:31:00.002-05:00

This semester I've had an unusual number of student bad behavior issues, and it's only the third week. Most of them have revolved around e-mail. Without getting specific, I've gotten winners like the student who uses an e-mail address like "sexyboy69@yahoo" which is not only relatively inappropriate to send from when you're sending to a prof, but means I can't see his name. The subject line is "yo" and the body is something like, "What's that paper for class?"

I e-mailed this student back, saying, "Who are you? Which class? What paper?" and got back angry invective from the student for my failure to answer his question. (If he has so much faith in my psychic abilities, shouldn't he fear sending anonymous invective?)

I had a student contact my dean complaining that I hadn't resolved her non-emergency non-problem fast enough when I had assured her I had to working down a list (with actual emergencies and actual problems ranking above her) and I would get to her long before her issue became a problem. She e-mailed me five times and left two frantic voice mails in the space of 24 hours (on a weekend!) demanding I fix her non-emergency non-problem immediately.

I keep having students e-mail me at 10 p.m. on a Wednesday night saying, "can u email me back plz right away what is the reading for tomorrow? so i can get it done b4 class. this is important so respond quick. thx." Then they become incensed when I don't respond until Thursday morning, an hour or two before they have to be in class. As if it's somehow my fault they didn't write down the reading and didn't think to e-mail me about it until late Wednesday night.

I've even had a student complain very sarcastically that I was somehow directly responsible for a campus-wide e-mail outage.

It's a minority of students behaving this way, and there's always a mannerless minority of students, but it's an unusually large minority this semester. I had a come-to-Jesus with my classes yesterday about appropriate e-mail etiquette and descriptive subject lines and response times and things that are and are not within my God-like powers, which made me feel surprisingly better. I was slightly anxious that they'd all turn on my like hyenas, but in fact most of them were appalled by the bad behavior and sympathetic -- and just as glad to know *exactly* what I wanted.

I'm experimenting with a few technology-based ways to cut down on the number of questions that students can answer for each other instead of turning to me. I'm hopeful!

Fall Music Festival

2008-09-07T11:39:00.003-05:00

Next Saturday, make sure you check out the Fall Music Festival in Glen Oak Park. Starting at 2 p.m. and running until late, at the Ampitheater, the fest honors Dan Fogelberg (Fogelberg is fun to say) and features:

* 2pm Doors open / children's activities begin
* 3pm Ralph's World performance
* 4pm Ralph's World autograph session
* 4:30pm Dave McDonald
* 5pm Lollester Rocket / beer garden opens
* 6pm The Peoria Acoustic All Stars: A Tribute to Dan Fogelberg
* 8pm John Sebastian

Cover: Children 12 and under $7; Adults: $20/advance, $25/door

The Peoria PlayHouse will be on hand providing children's programming throughout the festival. Moreover, the Peoria PlayHouse will receive $4 for each adult ticket and $2 for each child's ticket sold by the Junior League of Peoria. Tickets are available at www.livemusicpeoria.org. Please select JLPADULT or JLPCHILD when purchasing your tickets online (and use JLPADULT or JLPCHILD as the password) to ensure your tickets are tracked with those sold by the JLP. (Direct link to tickets.)

Lots more info at Live Music Peoria, which is doing a fantastic job promoting live shows in the area. Check them out!

UPDATE: Venue change, due to weather: Well, because of the beautiful weather we are changing the Live Music Peoria, Fall Festival to the Opera House at Expo Gardens. We will still have a beer tent, and we will have shelter!!!

Reading: Dorian Grey

2008-09-03T08:09:00.002-05:00

I just finished The Picture of Dorian Gray, which for whatever reason I had never read before. Never read any Oscar Wilde before, I don't think. Anyway, I really enjoyed it, and only had one complaint: Wilde hints about the horrible debauchery that Dorian gets up to, but only actually tells us about murders and opium. How is that fair?

My Teeth Are Naked

2008-08-25T19:41:00.003-05:00

After 17 years, my bottom retainer finally snapped off at dinner tonight. My tongue is FREAKING OUT, man.

(Interesting sociology experiment: How much will my hits go up because of the phrase "naked teeth"?)

Back to School

2008-08-25T10:56:00.002-05:00

I'm back to school as of last week, and so far, so good. The first week or two always exhausts me so I've been sleeping a LOT. Wish I had something interesting to blog about, but mostly I'm thinking about lectures and timing and trying to remember how to arrange for AV to deliver stuff to my classroom.

I have two days of 4 1/2 straight hours of lecture; a third day of 3 hours. I'm going to have to be extremely careful of my voice this semester. (That probably means cutting back alcohol and caffeine to levels my bloodstream may find unacceptably low.)

One of the worst first-day worries is that your fly will be unzipped or you'll have something on your face or in your teeth or whatever. After a week or two I generally feel good that my students would let me know, but I'm always kind-of freaking out on the first day that my hair's all standing up in back or something and they're all morbidly staring at it instead of listening to me. I also started the semester with two giant zits and trust me, starting the first day of school as a student with a giant zit is NOTHING compared to standing in front of 35 students with a giant zit. (Although at 30 I realize that probably nobody cares about my zits but me; at 16 I suffered under the common teenaged delusion that other people had nothing better to do than worry about my pimples.)

Classroom-wise, I have one smart room and three "dumb" rooms with no computer technology -- so irritating when I go to all the trouble of creating computer-enabled curricular materials, then get stuck in a dumb room. Of my dumb rooms, one has a chalkboard and no TVs! The other (which I use twice) is whiteboard and does have TVs at least. I'm always torn on the chalkboard/whiteboard question -- chalk gets ALL OVER your clothes. Whiteboard residue just takes up residence under your fingernails and refuses to be budged. It's also somewhat more likely to end up smudged across your cheek. It being the beginning of the semester, all the whiteboard rooms have good pens, but by the end of the semester, they'll all be crap and everyone will be hoarding their secret supply. I noticed the other day that I now carry a whiteboard marker in my purse, which is a little sad.

On the exhaustion, I'm not sure that people who don't public speak regularly understand what a level of emotional energy goes into a lecture. Other professors and people who public speak regularly are horrified to hear I have a 4 1/2-hour lecture block without a break between classes; people who don't public speak for a living, when I mention I'm a little worn out from the first week, tend to respond with puzzlement, "I work 10-hour days," because my paltry 4.5 isn't adequate hours for exhaustion. Which, right, I know; it's not that that's a "long day," it's just that it's a long damned time to lecture and lecture well. I've got office hours right after my 4.5-hour block, and it's all I can do not to fall asleep as soon as I sit down in the quiet (and I'm not a daytime napper!).

Six Years and Counting

2008-08-18T11:21:00.004-05:00

Mr. McGee and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary last week, and you can tell it's been six years because we celebrated primarily by NOT DOING ANYTHING, given that we're both exhausted from our fairly hectic and stressful summer. I think we had bacon and eggs for breakfast instead of his usual cereal and my usual, "What happens to be on the shelf of the fridge that I don't have to do anything to before I can eat it with my fingers?"

Anyway, in honor of the occasion, I present another edition of Mr. McGee Unplugged, because I love him and he cracks me up.

---

While we're having a long argument about something that's really annoying me:

Him: ... for several reasons. A, blah blah blah. Second, blah blah blah. And three, blah --

Me: I'm sorry, a, second, three?

Him: ...

Me: A, second, three????

Him: Okay, but I'm still right.

(Probably true or I wouldn't have been objecting to his lack of parallelism.)

---

Rousing me from a sound sleep with frantic motion in the closet.

Me: What? What's the matter?

Him: Have you seen my belt?

Me: (groggily, sitting up, looking around) What?

Him: My belt! I can't find it!

Me: (confused, half-asleep) The one around your waist?

Him: (looks down, touches belt to confirm its existence, starts to blush)

Me: Really? REALLY?

Oscar Wao

2008-08-14T16:48:00.003-05:00

I just finished reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao for my book club, and upon reflection, I have to say I don't think I liked it.

Now, for starters, we did JUST READ a coming-of-age novel about a multigenerational immigrant family suffering from a curse (Middlesex), but that wasn't really my problem with it. (However, ladies, no more multigenerational immigrant curse stories for a while, 'kay?)

The writing itself was wonderful -- sprightly, vivid, entertaining. The writing itself kept me engaged in the book. I also was proud of my ability to pick up on the more obscure nerdy references (And here I thought I was the only one who ever referenced "All Summer In a Day" to make a random point). But I came away from it feeling dissatisfied and emotionally unmoved, and after reflection I realized this is because I don't actually believe in the character of Oscar.

Oscar is spectacularly nerdy. He suffers under the dual burden of his minority status and of his obesity, but what isolates him most, the author wants us to know, is his nerdtasticness. And that's true, to a point, and everyone who's nerdy has felt that at some point, but the narrative hinges on Oscar being totally isolated from everyone but his sister and his sister's sometime boyfriend Yunior, and that I just don't buy.

First, Oscar is good-natured and kind-hearted. He's not malicious or angry, he's just weird. Follows girls around like a puppy, fumbles inappropriate approaches. But even obese, bad-looking, talks-like-a-dictionary nerds have friends if they're basically good people on the inside. I have spent my entire life related to and surrounded by nerds. I'm familiar with their taxonomy. And a nerd like Oscar might sometimes be lonely or have self-esteem issues, but he wouldn't be totally isolated and friendless unless there were something drastically wrong with his personality. There are even nerd girls (hello!) to be found at colleges across America who would have shared his interests and spoken Sindarin with him.

Second, Oscar plays D&D. And D&D is simply not a solo pursuit. He goes off to college at Rutgers and, the narrator tells us, has no friends but his sister and the narrator (and at one point a hot girl in the dorm). Rutgers is, apparently, the only college in America without a D&D club.

Third, the novel runs to 1995. By 1995 there was this series of tubes called "the internet" that someone as nerdy as Oscar would certainly have been aware of and plugged in to (as he is in college and then teaching high school at the internet-era parts of the narrative, he would certainly have had access). The internet is where even the epically socially awkward can make friends and find a tribe. Oscar probably would have been wandering a MUD slaying orcs and using his tragically sesquipidalian pick-up lines to good effect on chain-mail-bikini-clad lawful good half-elves.

So while I enjoyed the more historical parts of the narrative relating to his family, I just wasn't emotionally invested in the main character, since he seemed like a puppet on a stick to me and the narrative surrounding him depended on such an artificial construction of his reality.

The one way in which I do sort-of feel for Oscar is that I find myself thinking, "Come on, man, couldn't you have given him just a little dimensionality as a character? Just a little?"

Cookbooks

2008-08-12T19:10:00.002-05:00

As I've probably mentioned before, I made it to about 25 before I learned to cook. I lived in the dorms in college, so ate at the dining hall, and went off to law school basically able to make pasta and nuke frozen food. I would TRY to cook and I kept scorching things, which is a problem when you're on a student budget. (To this day, I have no idea why I kept scorching things, except that lack of experience in cooking makes things not turn out even when you follow directions.)

My mother sort-of tried to teach me to cook, but I had no interest and she's lefty and couldn't stand to watch me wield a knife wrong-handed. Frankly, nobody can stand to watch me wield one right-handed ... I am klutzy. (Got a band-aid on right now.)

So around 25, after I got married, it occurred to me that I could not go my entire life eating food that came in frozen boxes. Mr. McGee is actually a very good cook, but he had a pair of problematic beliefs: 1) if you don't use every pot and utensil in the kitchen, you're doing it wrong; and 2) he who cooks shall not clean. I realized very quickly I was getting the raw end of this deal since all I could make were one-pot meals AND I clean as I go. So I started learning to cook in self-defense.

Now I'm a pretty competent cook, and I even enjoy cooking for people (I'm still pretty lazy when it's just me). A friend was asking me what cookbooks I learned from, and we got off on a cookbooky tangent, so I present the cookbooks I learned from and cook from:

My very first cookbook was The Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook. I actually own the edition that link goes to -- I got it free with my bedspread -- but I vastly prefer the one my mom got me when I was in junior high that has all the pictures at the front and is just much, much better. My new edition never gets used; my old edition opens directly to the pages with the cakes I make the most often. (Like many non-cooks, I was actually a pretty good baker, since baking is just following directions. However, due to my clumsy, my frosting jobs always look like crap.) Part of what makes this a fun cookbook is all the instructions on how to set a table for, like, a state dinner, and fold your napkins into swans. It's not a "how to boil water" basic text, but it's a good all-rounder.

One that DOES start with how to boil water is The Seventeen Cookbook, from 1964, from Seventeen Magazine. It starts with boiling water and "what is a sauce pan?"* and works up to cooking for the prom. There's some good recipes in here, and very clear instructions for beginners, but really the fun of it is the cultural glimpse into the past: What to make for the boy who carries your books, what to cook for your sock hop, all that.

One of the things that perplexed me when I started to cook was that the cookbooks were very helpful for making Beef Wellington, but how did people cook every single night without turning to prepackaged crap or spending hours at it? How to Cook Without a Book to the rescue. She explains principles and how to vary recipes to taste and what you can change and what you can't -- all those things good cooks just KNOW and so can't explain to you. She gives you little poems you can memorize to cook various dishes to, but what was really useful to me was the how and why of cooking by ear. (I look up the recipes I want. In the book. It's a lie!)

Seeing how much knowing the "how and why" helped me, I moved on to the James Beard Award-winning On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (and learned what a James Beard Award was!). It's a hefty, but it basically explains the science (and some history and mythology for good measure) of everything you do in the kitchen. It is one of my favorite books ever and I tortured Mr. McGee with tidbits from it for MONTHS as I read it. For some people this will be dull, but if your brain works like mine and you like the how and why, this made me a better cook than anything else I read.

Far and away the cookbooks we cook out of the MOST, however, are the More-With-Less Cookbook and its companion volume, Extending the Table: A World Community Cookbook. (Spring for the spiral bound, trust me.) I pimp these books so much the Mennonites should pay me royalties; I give them as wedding presents all the time. More with Less is full of simple, healthy, tasty recipes of basic, everyday foods. The cookbook has a philosophy of simple eating and eating low on the food chain. Extending the Table is collected recipes from all over the world -- not what you'd get at an Ethiopian restaurant, but what you'd eat at someone's home in Ethiopia. We cook almost exclusively out of these two and highlight and annotate the crap out of them. (When we give them as a gift to someone we know really well, we like to write in some of our annotations and highlights to make it more personal.) I absolutely ADORE these books and you MUST own them.

Finally, I recently acquired the epic How To Cook Everything. Lots of explanations of basics, lots of recipe variations. Good for going, "Now what the heck am I going to do with 8 turnips?" Far too much reliance on the food processor (meh), but really good for meat dishes and things like that -- I can think, "I have two frozen chicken breasts and a spice rack -- what can I do with that?" and find the answer in here. It's too new for me to say it's a must-have, but I think it'll turn out that way in the end.

What cookbooks can't you live without?

---

*True story: It took me like a decade to figure out what a saucepan was. Stove-top cooking vessels came in two categories, as far as I knew: Pot and Pan. A PAN was obviously something flat, like a frying pan, but the instructions in the recipes obviously were not contemplating a skillet or frying pan (and the recipes ended badly when thusly attempted) so I was stumped. They really should call it a sauce POT. The secondary question is why I never used a dictionary but I guess it mostly occurred to me to wonder when covered in sauce.

IM: Unintentionally Deep Philosophical Commentary

2008-08-10T20:56:00.001-05:00

me: are you going to come see me before you start school?

bro: gah!

bro: you minimized civilization!

me: I am always emphasizing how man is a solo creature with no need for culture, it's true

Some Storm!

2008-08-05T14:02:00.004-05:00

Most of my Illinois readers were aware of the storm last night, which treated Wrigley to 60-80 mph gusts during a night game (night games -- boo!), but didn't reach us until about 4 a.m. due to the diagonal nature of the storm system. The wind alone was so loud it woke me up and I was honestly somewhat scared. (The cats, being intelligent creatures, decamped to the basement.)

Around 4:45 a.m., I heard a horrific snapping and cracking and smashing sound, and I was absolutely convinced it was my roof. (So I waited, quiet, to hear the water pour in ....) Turns out it was my neighbor's sycamore, snapping right in half:

I also heard this bang into the side of my house; lucky it didn't break a window!

The mystery of this is where did this half-of-a-maple-tree COME from? I looked up and down the block, and up and down the alley behind, and I have not been able to identify anybody missing half of a maple tree.

I'm a little stumped as to how to get it out of there -- it's heavy enough for two people, and it's complicated by being entangled in the bushes and there aren't too many places to step.

... and the nice men from the city picking up big branches just came and were kind enough to carry it out of there for me. Yay!

Anyway, I still have no idea where that half-a-tree came from!

Orange Cat Is an Absurdly Good Cat

2008-08-01T19:48:00.002-05:00

Orange Cat is getting fluids every night, subcutaneous fluids that require him being poked with a fairly large needle and then 100 mL of fluids being pumped into him from one of those IV bags. (Which, if you've never had it done, feels weeeeeeeird. I had fluids when I had mono, and it feels cold and creepy.)

So Orange Cat is SUCH A GOOD CAT that when we get out the IV bag, he COMES OVER TO THE COUCH AND LEAPS UP ON IT TO SIT BETWEEN US so that we can give him the fluids. Normal cats HIDE from medical procedures. Orange Cat comes over, sits in the right spot, and then gets himself all tensed up with his tiny stub of a tail poking up anxious readiness so he can get his fluids.

It's really ridiculous. We get out the IV bag and he comes rushing over to the couch to assume the position. It would not be possible to have a better-behaved, sweeter cat.

---

Orange Cat goes back to the vet next week for another checkup and set of tests. I am bemused by Orange Cat's quasi-celebrity status; he is such a sweet boy, and so locally famous from my blog, that everyone in the neighborhood, from my allergic-to-cats neighbor who takes care of him when we're out of town to the 3-year-old down the street who calls me "the girl wif the cats wif one EYES, mom!" is dropping by to give him some love, and the entire local blogosphere is concerned for his wellbeing.

Orange Cat's also well-known and well-beloved at the vet; it's been a while, so let me once again toot the horn of Dr. Bryan Wulfekuhle at Meadowbrook Vet, who has been spectacularly awesome through this entire ordeal with Orange Cat, from the beginning of the diabetes to this kidney failure. I really, seriously, can't recommend him and Meadowbrook Vet enough.

Bash Rehash

2008-07-30T08:17:00.002-05:00

Blogger Bash was a hoot; half the universe was there, and we had a rollicking good time. We did have an ongoing battle with the other half of the bar: We kept asking them to turn the music down; the other side kept demanding it be turned back up. My throat's sore from shouting.

Billy says he'll link to photos so I'll be lazy and just link to Billy.

Blogger Bash

2008-07-29T14:16:00.000-05:00

Been busy with finals, in-law visit, etc., but tonight I'll be at the Recovery Room on Pioneer Parkway, round about 6 p.m., for Blogger Bash! Come on out!

Everyone Is Willing to Believe Your Life Is a Sitcom

2008-07-21T08:46:00.002-05:00

... Or, A Break From the Cat Posts

I have this strategy I use when confronted with aggressive salesmen who appear to think that my lack of Y chromosome makes me an incompetent purchaser, typically in electronics and appliances, but it also works when car shopping.

"Where are your UberTech IIs?" I ask.

"No, no," says aggressive salesman, "you want the UberTech IV! It has a million more features that you'll never use and only costs three times as much!"

"No, I want the UberTech II."

"Oh, but the UberTech IV comes with a high speed diagnostic Turing engine!"

(Here comes the technique:) "Oh, but my husband told me to buy the UberTech II, he knows just what he wants, and I think he'd be mad if I got something else."

"But the UberTech IV is better, I'm sure he'd like it much better. You could surprise him!"

"No," I say, sounding very concerned and now opening my eyes wide and dumb, "he doesn't like it when I don't buy the right computery thing. He gave me the exact name and specs, and I have to get that."

(Which is all particularly amusing because I do more of the tech management stuff in this household.)

Typically at this point the salesman gives in in frustration and sells me what I've been trying to buy for the last fifteen minutes. But a few times the salesman, sensing that I'm too damned dumb to know he's ripping me off, but frustrated by his inability to sell to me without passing the absent gatekeeper of "the husband," will suggest we CALL my husband to get "permission." At this point I cease to feel bad about messing with them, put on my emptiest possible expression and say, "Oh ... no, I don't think he'd like it if I disturbed him at work."

What kills me every single time is that these jerks are perfectly willing to believe that a) I know nothing about technology and b) I live in a TV marriage from 1950 where I can't buy anything without my husband's permission (and I specify TV marriage because, hello, I know most of your grandmothers kicked ass and took names in the 1950s like mine did; those were never real marriages). I mean, seriously, it's 2008 and the world is still stocked with pre-feminist electronics salesmen who fail to recognize 50% of their market!

(And I hasten to specify, I never do this until the salesman starts his, "well, little lady, this computer comes with a lipstick mirror for you to look your prettiest!" schtick. If he talks to me like a person, we don't need to go to sitcom world.)

My husband was so amused by this technique that he's tried it himself once or twice, only he goes for "henpecked husband sitcom." If he's buying a shirt, say, and gets an aggressive salesperson insisting, "Oh, you really should get that in green, it would look so nice with your eyes" or whatever, he'll say, somewhat conspiratorially, "My wife said I needed a blue shirt, and she gets really picky about the whole thing," in a sort of, "you know how women are!" tone.

Last week I accidentally stumbled on the king of the sitcom scenarios, the one that makes service people come to your house in a timely fashion. I was talking to the window guy, still trying to get this broken window fixed, and I said, somewhat exasperated, "Look, my mother-in-law is coming to visit next Thursday, and I'd really prefer for my window not to be broken when she gets here."

"Mother-in-law?" Window guy says in a suddenly chummy fashion. "I know how that is. I'll squeeze you in special Thursday morning."

Yes, I start thinking to myself, the picky mother-in-law sitcom ... I wonder how many contractors I can call between now and Thursday ...

Because my window having been broken for four months is not remotely an issue worth hurrying for, but, because everyone is totally willing to believe your life is a sitcom, my mother-in-law coming to visit is worth a special trip and they feel like they're doing me a favor!