heebie-geebie

You're a hepatitis risk, Old D.

2009-12-03T21:41:16Z

At lunch today, a colleague told me that she was surprised I kept my lip ring in while I was pregnant. I asked why. She said, "I was surprised you'd expose your baby to the hepatitis risk."

It took me a minute to be offended, but then I was pretty offended. In that minute where I didn't yet realize I was offended, I said "I think you're conflating a bunch of risk factors. Having a piercing is not itself a risk factor for hepatitis. Getting pierced at an unhygenic piercing place would be, but it's pretty easy to make sure a piercing place is not reusing needles."

The conversation drifted off, and I got more and more bristled and pissed off. After lunch, a quite conservative member of the faculty said "Good for you for standing up to her. Usually people are just shocked and don't say anything, when she says something like that." That helped me feel better.

The offensive colleague I call Old Deuteronomy in my head, after the old hen in Flossie and Bossie.

Now I must run off. Soccer playoffs are tonight! We had all the advance warning of two hours ago. I only brought my cleats to school on an outside whim. These kids really do not understand that the adult world operates with a day or two advance notice.

Give a little hop.

2009-11-29T15:41:00Z

I decided I want to build a scale model of my parents' house. I want to build it out of balsa wood or something, and put photographs of each room on the walls so that you could stick your head in there and recall the feeling of being there.

This was borne out of my overwhelmedness of their house as an institution, and how much my mom talks about the disassembly once she and dad are gone. Neither of my brothers will keep anything. (I totally resent this.) I would love to keep everything, but I don't want to own everything, and I'm sort of paralyzed by this gap. My plan is that Mom and Dad should never die. Mom being sick is highlighting the possible weakness in my plan.

So I was supposed to take photos during this trip. I failed to even take photos of one single room. I feel awful about this. I worry that something will happen before my next trip home. I didn't want to photograph any room that wasn't set up as historically accurately as possible, which ruled out a couple rooms. And I didn't want to tell my parents, because I was embarrassed. I guess I was embarrassed to show them how intensely I care about this. Putting on a facade of coolth, I guess, but how unnecessary. I didn't think critically about this, I just obeyed.

Anyway, we're home and I feel sort of sick when I think about failing to act and photograph those rooms.

We discovered how to put Hawaiian Punch in a state of hysterical belly laughs. This may be the best thing I've ever seen. I was changing, and Jammies reached out and smacked my jiggly behind, and Hawaii just burst into serious gales of laughter. We sat there for ten minutes smacking each other on the backsides, all holding our stomachs and crying because we were laughing so hard. Holy crap, that is a memory that I want to just cherish and replay for ever and ever.

Later we discovered that if you smack someone's ass and they give a little hop, like they were knocked upwards from the blow, that she finds that hysterical as well. Really, she has finally started laughing, and it is wonderful.

The flowers are on the tips of the stems.

2009-11-25T20:05:11Z

We are back in the land of esophectomies and houses where I grew up. For the third time this year. It's starting to feel very ordinary to be here. Which is nice. Mom made fresh beer bread, which is probably the most delicious thing I can think of.

An important tradition is to listen to Alice's Restaurant on Thanksgiving day. So I like to provide my faithful readers with a link to the song - no download necessary, it'll just start to play - so that you can listen to this very important Thanksgiving song on the very day. Enjoy!

Mom's friend arrived with flowers just now. I asked Mom about vases, and Mom said, "There's an orange vase in the new pantry, on the top shelf. You'll want to fill it with water, then take the scissors from the drawer next to the sink and cut the tips off- "

and I said, "You mean cut the tops off?"

and Mom said, "No, no, the tips of the stems!"

and I said, "You mean the flower heads?"

and finally Mom rolled her eyes. I love it when people take jokes seriously. I felt very pleased with myself; hence the writing it down to share, here.

I have felt disconnected from Mom for the past month. Her voice changed with surgery. I don't think it's a permanent change. They deflated her lungs during surgery. Apparently reinflating your lungs is tough. She has fluid around her lungs, and in her lungs, and a breathalyzer-style gadget to blow in and measure capacity, or maybe to work on improving her capacity.

So her voice changed with the lung capacity, which seems impermanent. She is wheezier and raspy and hard to hear, and can't talk on the phone for very long. So it felt like I wasn't talking with Mom. It even colored my (lack of) enthusiasm for this trip. Being disconnected has been emotionally easy, although I'm a little embarrassed to admit I was hiding out there.

Now we're home. With the rest of Mom attached, her voice doesn't seem so radically different. Her voice is not disembodied and unfamiliar anymore, it's regular old Mommy-pants with a wheeze. As soon as I got here, I became very glad to have made the trip.

Mom is discouraged. I don't believe in cheering people up. Or rather, I believe that most of our cheering-up methods make people feel worse. What people want is empathy, and cheering up feels like you're being fixed and that the other person wants you to stop bitching. So I empathize instead, or try to. Despite myself, I've been doing a little cheering up, because it's so dang hard to watch Mom stew. It's so out of character for her.

This is my new jacket:

I love it very much.

Probably the current issue of The Week.

2009-11-22T04:37:37Z

On Friday, I was pumping, all hooked up to the wheezing electric machine, when I realized my thighs were getting very warm. Because I forgot to attach the bottles. So the milk was just pouring down all over my legs. And then as I realized what a doofus I was, I still had to find and attach bottles, while rigged at the torso to the wheezing machine, sending droplets of milk all over my office.

I forgot to put a TMI warning at the top of this post, I guess. Anyway, it was totally ridiculous and I went to teach with big milk stains on my pants, but with utter confidence that no student would ever guess that it was breast milk.

All my soccer got cancelled this weekend, on account of the standing water across much of central Texas from this week's deluge.

Hawaiian Punch is a champ at going to sleep, and terrible at staying asleep. This struggle from 2:30-3:30 am until 5:30 am every morning, to keep her down, is really starting to wear. I think what I'm trying to say is that I'm going to cut this post short and go to sleep.

Maybe I'll read in bed. I'm embarrassed to say what our new book club book is, because I suspect it to be a terrible book. I'm really rooting for this book club, and I'd like us to make wise selections. I have a real concern that this next one will be provide more counterevidence against our group wisdom. (But I don't yet own it, and that's not what I'm reading right now.)

To many Punchy Wednesdays to come.

2009-11-19T00:23:11Z

Today is Punchy Wednesday. I hung out at daycare for awhile, because they have great toys and lots going on. I pushed her in a swing. Hawaiian Punch smiled and crowed a lot. When the other babies were going to take a nap, we came home. There's a danger in putting Hawaiian Punch down for a nap any time after 4:00 pm, which is that she might just be down for the night. And then at 4:30 am - that's the morning 4:30, in case you missed that - her eyes go BING! LET'S PLAY! And that's just bullshit.

Book Club was perfectly pleasant but free of fireworks. No one liked that crappy book. I didn't get a vibe that I should really rip it a new one, so I exercised restraint. There's a mother-daughter pair, and the mother is of the Pollyanna generation who prefers to find some good in everything, and she sort of liked the book. Although she admitted that parts made her roll her eyes.

The neighborhood! I love seeing everyones' houses and neighborhoods. I didn't love this neighborhood but I was fascinated by it. I've never seen a new development like it. Instead of giant snout houses, every one of these these (giant) brand new houses were extremely southern, with the big porches and pillars, and lots of second story porches. But brand new. It made it feel like a movie set.

I'm uncomfortably beginning to realize that I quite enjoy people of suburban ilks I never thought I'd cavort with. I thought the lines I drew in the sand were permanent. After all, it's sand. Stay on your side, you friendly people in your giant suburban houses with your slightly uptight but mostly endearing mannerisms, like fretting about your children, or which recipes are healthy and low-carb. It's confusing.

Let's make this place owl-friendly.

2009-11-16T21:37:41Z

I cleaned my desk at work. Next I am going to order curtains and bring in a rug. It's time to smarten this place up.

I have returned to my pre-pregnancy weight (awhile ago) but now I am a bit dumpier and stumpier. It's okay. That makes it seem worse than it is, so I probably shouldn't have picked pejorative words. I should say, I'm now rollier and pollier.

Tomorrow is the big exciting conclusion of Did Anyone Love The Awful Book Club Book?

From now on I am taking Wednesday afternoons off, to play with Hawaiian Punch. Being apart as much as we are during the workweek is just too dang stressful. I'm taking matters into my own hands. I can get work done at night instead. (Sort of.) I feel better now that I've got a plan. I ought to think up a cute name for the recurrence. This coming Wednesday I have a soccer game, so I have to put my money where my mouth is. I am missing a soccer game for Punchy Wednesdays.

A colleague keeps bringing me owls. He saw my owl keychain, and he likes owls, and so he's brought me three so far. He also brought me a lot of food when I was pregnant. He brings food and gifts for a lot of people. I generally don't bring other people gifts. But the owls are adorable. Especially the Native American one. The owls prompted me to clean my desk, get curtains, bring in a rug, and generally smarten this place up.

Determinants commute with products.

2009-11-13T02:18:39Z

Hawaiian Punch is sick. Again. Last night she couldn't nurse because she was so stuffed up. The sucky bulb couldn't get enough out. We bulbed and bulbed and she screamed and screamed. Finally we turned the shower on hot and let the bathroom steam up, and that gradually loosened her nose up enough to run all over the place, and we could suck it out and she could nurse. So that's how we spent the 3 am and 4 am hours.

We crossed our fingers and sent her to daycare. She didn't have a fever in the morning. They called us at 10:30 to come pick her up, because she was running a fever of 103. Poor thing. Are you really supposed to be sent home from daycare with a fever weekly?

Yesterday I had a therapy appointment. I'm going in every now and then to talk about Mom. I kept the appointment even though I haven't been that upset lately. So I asked him about Chaunda. This guy was Chaunda's therapist, and he is still doing grief counselling with her husband and son. I never did get enough details about her illness and death.

At one point I said, "She was one of my favorite people, ever. I miss her so much." The therapist started to say something and stopped. I asked him what he was going to say, and he said, "I didn't want you to be offended."

I said I was curious now, so he admitted that he stopped short of saying that he prayed for her. I was kind of stunned that he'd think that would offend me. I don't even get the mechanism by which it would offend. (Maybe if I knew the content of his prayers I'd be outraged.)

On the other hand, I am a judgemental judgeasaurus, so I thought maybe I had said something flippant at some point. I asked him. He recollected a session from the summer. Here's what had happened: while I was talking, he got up and got his laptop and started futzing around. I trailed off. Eventually he found the website of some wellness institute that promotes positive thinking and smiley faces. I was totally pissed off. It's a short session, and I wanted to make some progress on whatever I was upset about, and now we were going down this digression about Mom's treatment options within the fruity science realm. It ate up the remainder of the session and I was pissed off.

Anyway, pray for whoever you want, especially if they're already dead. Pray away. I don't care. I'll miss Chaunda in my own way, you do whatever you want to do. (Maybe it would piss me off if he'd been praying for me.)

I am just cranky and having trouble juggling everything.

Let's count down till Thanksgiving.

2009-11-09T02:52:02Z

I got terribly upset on the drive home from the conference, Saturday, because I felt I'd been apart from Hawaiian Punch for too long and I missed her. I knew she was fine; this was all about my maternal clinginess. If I had to redo it, I'd have brought her to the conference, and driven each way after her bedtime so that being confined to the carseat wouldn't be such an ordeal. Now I'm sad about going back to school tomorrow.

It's just that I hadn't seen her enough all week, and she had crashed the moment we got home on Friday, and then I left at 4:30 am on Saturday. She gets so tired around 6 at night. On weekedays we barely get home by 6. It's kind of upsetting to always put the baby down for the night right when you finally see her.

Have carseats put a major cramp in family road trips? When we took road trips, we had a bean bag in the back of a suburban. I think it would be uncomfortable to be strapped down in your 5-point Safety Harness for the better part of a day.

The Christmas List

I finished it. It moved at a decent pace, and had an unbelievable amount of white space. A full blank page between every few chapters. Chapters that started mid-page and ended mid-next-page. It was like a college student fluffing an essay.

I have two absolute favorite parts that I must share.

So, Evil Bad CEO Dad opens the paper and reads his obituary. Then he reads an extremely unrealistic comment thread about his death, and decides he must make amends. (His long dark night of the soul lasted about 15 minutes on a Tuesday morning. Ok, that was another favorite part.)

He asks his secretary to draw up a list of all the people he has wronged. She gasps, "But, but, there must be thousands!" Nevertheless, he is resolute. She shows up the next morning and says, "Here are the ones that kept me up at night." There are five. That made me laugh really hard. Again, does this author just not like to write?

Okay, so Bad Dad starts making amends, and it's going really badly. Christmas is almost here, and he's gone down the list, and he has struck out big time. He says to his ennobled secretary, "Originally I just wanted to fix my legacy. But now I really care about people, and I wasn't able to help any of them." She solemnly drags out the moment and eventually says, "Bad Dad, this is what Christmas is all about. Redemption."

That was a big favorite moment with me, how she tied it up with Christmas. Christmas is about redemption? I thought it was a birthday party. And how does that help him? Should he forgive himself? (No. He should just nod thoughtfully and know what to do.)

Then there was a painful ending where Noble Mom dies, which made me cry, which pissed me off. But then! THEN! After the end of the book, there is a blank list, numbered to 5, where the reader is encouraged to make their own Christmas list. Oh, thank you! Thank you for the opportunity for me to write out the five people I've wronged, and make amends. Christmas just isn't Christmas if it isn't Yom Kippur and a 12-step program.

So that was that. Next week I'll find out whether my book club is sane or not.

Mom is home from the hospital! It ended up being quite abrupt. On Thursday she was in the ICU; on Saturday she was home. They found a good combination of pain meds and were able to remove the tubes from her chest. I'm very relieved that she didn't pick up an infection. At one point I said to dad, "Now that the surgery's over, what's the worst that can happen?" He started listing off complications and then trailed off and said, "Don't worry, Heebie, she's going to be just fine." I laughed and thanked him.

We are so pooped that we found subs for ourselves for our soccer game tonight. I played this afternoon, in the rain, and Jammies had a hockey tournament, and it's rainy, and Hawaiian Punch is asleep, and sometimes it's so nice to curl up by the glow of the TV.

Lefty, he can't sing the blues

2009-11-05T03:33:12Z

Thanks for all the warm congrats!

We spoke with our agent today. Because now we have an agent! Actually, it was a conference call so that we could meet and assess our new agent.

We said that Mom had laryngitis. So Dad put the phone on speakerphone, and when Mom had something to say, she whispered it and Dad repeated it for us. We were worried that the ICU machines would start beeping, or a nurse would walk in. But nothing happened. And so the agent never knew that she was talking to someone who can't be released down from intensive care until they can remove three tubes from her chest. To keep the liquid draining from around her chest. She is easily out of breath - like from eating - when the fluid accumulates in her chest.

Mom and Dad do not want either the agent or the editor to know that she's in the throes. I'm not sure I would be so secretive, but then again, I type up my dirty laundry and air it publically. Like Pancho, I wear my dirty undies outside my clothes, for all the honest world to see. I respect their decision, though.

This Saturday I am taking students to a conference. I didn't want to spend the night, but the dang thing is four hours away. So we're leaving at 5 am, and getting back at 11 pm or so, and there are eight hours of driving in between. I really resent it. I want my weekend. I have a bunch of shit to get done. I don't want a long, exhausting day, another day of pumping and not seeing Hawaiian Punch. I don't want a one-day weekend, and then to dive back in to another week. I resent the unspoken charities that you do to get tenure.

This semester seems particularly full of these faux-charities. I've got five students that I'm doing senior research projects with. There are scavenger hunts and Honors Book Clubs and conferences. And committees, and IM soccer teams, and grading. And whenever there's a break, we've spent it flying to see Mom and Dad or getting married.

Eh, ignore me. I'm just tired.

Hawaiian Punch Gets a Bug

2009-11-03T02:15:49Z

Hey, I have big news!

1. This morning, when looking up the website of the awful bookclub book, I noticed this in the top paragraph:

"Glenn Beck said, “It’s Evans’ best yet…a fantastic book and a fantastic message…It is really the spirit of what I’ve been talking about for a while now.”

Well, it all makes sense now why it's such a terrible book. I'm giving the host the benefit of the doubt here - perhaps she just wanted something holiday-themed and chose rashly. I am now beginning to gleefully hunger for how I will rip this book into a bloody mess. I am the predator, and this book is my prey, and you all are turned to the Discovery Channel to witness the smell of bad book blood as it wafts up my nose and rouses me from my slumber. I snuffle, sneeze, and cock one eyebrow. My belly rumbles and we all know perfectly well that this book is in for a severe disembowelment. Stay tuned!

2. Mom and I officially got a double book offer, for our two children's books. Remember the ten lines or so that I posted last spring? Mom has been illustrating, and plus we did this before, a couple years ago, so there are two whole books. Over the summer, a publisher bit, and today we got a real live offer. So cool.

3. While I was on the phone with Mom and Dad, revelling, Jammies called to say that daycare called to say that Hawaiian Punch had been puking all day and needed to be picked up. So I rushed there to get her. For the next five hours, she slept on me. We just stepped off the daily routine. I kept the radio and TV off. I watched the shadows and absent-mindedly played online with one hand. Every twenty minutes or so, she awoke and screamed a little. And then she'd abruptly fall asleep, mid-scream. I gave her some pedialyte, which she has kept down.

She has had a cold for most of her life, but I've never seen her so exhausted. Poor sweetie Punch.

WHOA! SIX!

2009-11-02T01:34:59Z

I talked to Mom for the first time today, which was heartening. She is still in the ICU, until they can take the tubes out of her chest.

(I think) I hate the book we're reading in book club. (I think) I detest it. (I've barely started it.) I think the only way I'll be able to stand it is to blog it, so that you all can marvel along with me. On the inside cover, the author says that he wanted to write a Christmas story of redemption, like A Christmas Story.

The dialogue is packed with backstory until it pains me. "Mom, are you meeting with Dad and the divorce lawyers today even though you have chemo?" "Yes, son," his mother said, trying not to let on that she would die sooner than her son realizes. "Are you finalizing wedding plans with your fiance?" she said, hoping her face didn't betray that her dearest wish was to see her son married. "Yes, mother," he said, wondering how he would juggle final exams and wedding planning, hoping his mother didn't realize how worried he was about her.

Evil dad who schedules divorce meetings while his wife has chemo is the subject of the redemptive journey. We are still revealing what exactly makes him such an evil cad through detached chapters about people whose lives he's ruined. That fucker. "Henry, even though you're only seven, I hope you have the best Christmas ever," said his single mother, hoping Henry wouldn't realize the stress she has been under as a single parent working three jobs. Henry said, "Mama, all I want for Christmas is for you to be happy and for us to be back in our home." Henry's generic mama thought of the evil, wicked man who had sold them a house they couldn't afford. She put all their money into the down payment and they were evicted for nebulous reasons within five months and it's clear that their misery is a result of this one man's greed.

That's all I've read so far. But I'll keep you posted!

I'm playing mega-soccer. Guess how many games I'm playing in one week, if you count from Thursday to Wednesday: six. WHOA! SIX! I'm playing on an intramural team at Heebie U which has games last Thursday, and this Tuesday and Wednesday, as well as the regular three leagues. At some point something is going to have to give, but we don't know what.

The last time we hung out, I just kept looking down

2009-10-30T20:48:46Z

I ~~proctored~~ ~~chaperoned~~ baby-sat a bunch of college kids last night as they turned down the alcohol and up the scandalous outfits, at a campus Halloween party. They seem so sober and unlike my own college experience. So many girls tottering on stilletos, arching their backs and displaying bustier cupfuls of breasts. Or bowlfuls. Or even more. So many fishnet stockings and boyshorts, or hanky-lengthed skirts, (or skirts with many petticoats, depending on the costume. But still crotch-high. "See my bloomers!") They all give nominal homage to a real costume, though. And they're all so sober. The whole thing seems like a mysterious exercise in unfun patriarchy.

I st-st-stuttered when you asked me what I'm thinking 'bout.

When I was pumping the other day, some students called me on the phone. They had a question about the scavenger hunt. It seemed faintly undecorous to be milked while talking to students.

I've continued to use the electric pumper, even though I replaced the handpump. I'm getting huge results. It works better, I'm forced to admit. My personal best is 8 oz in a single sitting. (Who knows, I might be pumping while I write this very entry!) (I am.)

Felt like I couldn't breathe. You asked what's wrong with me.

A funny thing from the wedding: a family friend cornered me, delightfully drunk, and began talking about childbirth. "The vagina!" she proclaimed, "Is a GODDAMN rubberband! Springs right back in place! It's magic!" She paused for effect and looked me dead in the eye. "The pooper never recovers." She then repeated this whole thing several more times. We talked about the sad fact that labor causes hemorroids. It was kind of awesome.

My best friend Leslie said, "Oh, she's just being Miley."

Dad left a message on my phone yesterday, which he handled with extraordinary diplomacy. He began with a long detailed list of how, medically, Mom is doing wonderfully. Finally, he said "Subjectively, she's in a lot of pain," and described some problems they're having. Without the long leading perspective, I think I would have had a hard time. As is, it's still kind of hard. (I've talked to him every night. This just happened to be the message last night.)

The next time we hang out, I will redeem myself. My heart can't wait till then.

I just ate the rankest, stalest, Twix. What a disappointment. It came apart in the wrapper, and the caramel was glued to the wrapper, and the chocolate crumbled off.

Raining and Complaining

2009-10-26T22:04:36Z

Now Mom is about to have surgery. Last week was just a fake-out. I'm strangely detached from the whole thing at the moment, but I'll talk to them tonight, which will probably make it seem more real. I don't really want to think about it too much.

We decided it was time for Hawaiian Punch to learn to put herself to sleep. We plotted our tactics. We decided we could handle five minutes of all out wailing. At that point, the first time, we would try to soothe her without lifting her out of the crib. After five more minutes of wailing, we would lift her out, and soothe her, but put her back down, awake. Repeat for the rest of the night.

On Saturday, for her nap, Jammies put her down and walked out of the room. She murmured for a little bit, and went to sleep.

On Saturday night, we put her down awake, and she made muffled sounds briefly and went to sleep.

On Sunday during all her naps and when she went down for the night, it could not have been easier.

And then, when I went to transfer her to our bed, when I was going to bed, she woke up. This is about 11:00 last night. And I swear to god, she more or less stayed up until she went to day care this morning. Joke's on us, suckers! She probably dozed, but every time I opened my eyes, she was wide-awake, and she started fussing and getting progressively more upset around 3:30 am. Jammies stayed up with her from 3:30 until morning, (because he is my hero.)

More griping.

On my way to soccer yesterday, I passed a bike race. Neat! Bikers! Be safe, have fun! About three miles later, traffic stopped. We inched forward over the next twenty minutes. The bike race path crossed over the road. Whenever there was a sufficient gap, the traffic cops would say Go! Go! Go! and wave their arms, and one car would scoot across.

I made it through, eventually. The line was full of cars with little soccer balls hanging from the rearview mirror.

Then traffic stopped again. It turned out that the bike race crossed this road twice, about two hundred yards across from each other. Sonofabitch. Seriously. (Oddly, at this point, some cars turned around. You realize you're going to have to re-cross the crossing you just crossed?)

I made it to the game on time. The other team had one player. About 30 minutes after gametime, there were enough people. I was most worried that they'd cancel the game and send us back into the horrible traffic again.

I played soccer four days in a row. It was kind of too much, but kind of fun.

Less griping

I spent the past day putting together a scavenger hunt for the kids in math club. They have to solve problems and it takes them all over campus to different professors' offices. I hope they show up. I hope I didn't make it too hard. I hope I think of a prize before any team finishes.

Steampunk breastpump.

2009-10-23T18:11:04Z

I hosted book club on Wednesday. Each guest got to take home one gallon bag of meat. Would you like a gallon ziploc of sausage? Or brisket, ribs, or turkey? I gave away five gallons of meat, which put a sizable dent in our leftovers. Also each guest got a tupperware container of barbecue sauce. Meat bags! A meat bag for all!

I joined this book club via my doula. We are finally starting to make friends in town, instead of always having to drive up to Austin. This is a relief.

One of them told this story: She was driving her child to kindergarten, and the kid said, "There are four slaves in my class!" Wow. Good luck detangling that one during your three minute car ride. Apparently she had been reading or watching something about a runaway slave, and was not quite putting all the pieces together correctly.

My hand pump broke, so I am back to pumping with the big, heaving electric breast milk pump. It is such an elaborate contraption, and it feels vaguely humiliating to hook your disembodied breasts up like that. I prefer the convenient, simple little hand pump, both for the dignity and for the pretentious analog-ness of it.

This weekend promises to be full of soccer and not much else. I would like to celebrate what fun Hawaiian Punch is right now. Six months is a wonderful age.

I bet you're wondering how I knew

2009-10-20T01:10:15Z

We're married. I made an honest man out of Jammies. It's so ordinary to be back at work today that the contrast is surreal: was I really standing up in front of everyone two days ago?

Today Hawaiian Punch is six months old. Happy birthday, Sparvey twins!

Tomorrow Mom's insides are being removed. This is a very harrowing set of days we are wading through.

I like wearing my wedding ring. It feels steady. It's very solid and works well with my dislike of having skin-on-skin, by giving my fingers a nice texture to rub against.

We came very close to walking down the aisle to I Heard It Through The Grapevine. Boy, would that have been perplexing to hear in the imminent moments of a wedding.

The plan was to walk in to Marvin Gaye's You're All I Need To Get By, right? Jammies called me about one in the afternoon, after he'd left to go shower and watch the football game. I was in the reception hall with friends, baby-sitting the electronics and the laptop.

Jammies called me and said, "I just decided to play the CD, to see how long the song is.We've got I Heard It Through The Grapevine on there." Holy smokes, was that close. But I'm wildly tickled by the averted confusion. Well I heard it through the grapevine not much longer would you be my baby. Yeah, yeah. Jammies went home and downloaded the correct song.

I got dressed at home with my three best friends and two cousins. The house felt dreamlike and unreal because I was full of butterflies, and strange people who don't live here were preening at the mirror, and the photographer was sitting in the living room. Earlier he had asked if I wanted photos of us getting ready. I hemmed and hawed. It seemed weird to be documented, but perhaps nice to see the photos later on.

He admitted that he was expecting to see more of a production. I said "This is it!" He didn't snap too many photos and left for the ceremony. I didn't think ill of him for that.

I was very nervous about two things: carrying Hawaiian Punch in high heels through spongy grass, and having the officiant read a letter I wrote during the ceremony. I still have no idea if the letter was actually that great, but your friends and family will dutifully compliment everything, and so later I felt good about it. It was really long. I didn't realize how long it takes to read one page out loud. Regular reading is so speedy.

* * *

Mom and Dad just called. The surgery has been postponed a week. That is anticlimactic. The surgeon said he wanted to have a heart surgeon there, too, because of the location of one of the lymph nodes that they are removing. So good for precautious docs, but tough for Mommy to have to wait in suspended animation for another week.

Also, we ordered a dozen times too much barbecue for the rehearsal barbecue, and by "we" I mean not me. The fridge and freezer are all packed full of meat. I don't love meat that much. So much meat. Meat meat meat.

The whole weekend was wonderful. I loved everyone being here. I am happy that it's just the three of us again and I also miss everyone dearly.

I can't believe I still feel so awful.

2009-10-14T01:49:30Z

Oh look, I'm updating again. From my lofty position as a fevered soul.

I felt so awful when I got home. It turned out my fever was 101.5. Today was so tiring. Today was so long and tiring and so many students had so many questions. But that's not the only reason I felt awful.

I started fretting about Mom's surgery, and how much work I've got to do at school, and how sad it is that this weekend can't live forever. Plus my eyes were hurting and my skin was prickly, and I was very upset.

It's so sad that this weekend hasn't even started, and it will end on schedule, next Sunday, just like every other weekend. So many friends and family who I'd like to keep by my side, and they'll all be dispersing and we'll go back to our life. I like our life. But I miss everyone and want to keep them close and shower them with love.

If you need to buy expensive Italian gear, go to Etro at the San Marcos outlet mall and ask for Brandon. Then you will be helped by Ira Glass Turned Salesman. He's our new best friend. He even offered to come over next Saturday and help Jammies' arrange the hanky in his suit pocket that offsets the green in the tie. He's very helpful without being overbearing, and just has the right mix of debonair and friendly and intellectual that you want when Ira Glass helps you pick out a tie.

The Trousers land at 3.

2009-10-13T17:11:00Z

Wow, this goddamn flu just keep lingering. Lingerin' and malingerin'.

Last week, Jammies and his mom picked Hawaiian Punch up at daycare, and her mouth had a deep impression of a pacifier. Which she never would take for us. But I guess daycare got her to take it, so perhaps she was excessively upset one day. So she pacifies, now. I guess it's not a big deal. I'm sure they use an organic, BPA-free, dye-and-detergent free pacifier made of kidskin.

Speaking of daycare, I can't figure out how they stay afloat, financially. At least the baby room must be hemorrhaging cash. There are three babies, and we pay $610/ month. So they are bringing in $1830/month.

They staff the room from 7 am to 6 pm. I guess Miss Annie and Miss Priscilla probably aren't fulltime with benefits. But that's roughly 220 hours/month. Plus administraitors's salary, supplies, buidling lease...it does not seem like enough. I am sad that Miss Annie and Miss Priscilla must make minimum wage, parttime, no benefits.

I assume the older rooms subsidize the baby room, because you can have more children per adult. But still.

Mommy-pants and Daddy (-trousers?) arrive tomorrow. Mom's surgery is next Tuesday. She talks about getting her will and affairs in order before surgery. I know that people sometimes don't pull out of anaesthesia, but I prefer not to think about that, MOM. At any rate, the wedding is fast upon us.

I'm very excited. I'm a bit stunned that everyone I love is coming to celebrate. It's kind of incredibly amazing.

Little naked butts all over the board.

2009-10-10T01:01:37Z

After a trip to the doctor, a friend's three-year-old daughter said, "If it's a boy nurse, does he still have a penis?" Oh how rich when children inadvertently trip cultural hot spots. I laughed.

The administrator of our building is being unreasonably dumped on by the rest of the school, and she's also becoming kind of a pain in the ass to work with. (Of course these are integrally one and the same.) We did away with having deans, and she was one of the dean secretaries, and now she has taken over the work of the other dean's secretary. She is also being asked to take care of stuff that used to fall to the deans. It is absurd and exploitative, and she has been very stressed out.

On the other hand, she keeps leaving the sink full of her nasty ass dishes and food-chunks. She went on vacation for a week and left the sink grody.

It's determined that I'm en-swine-ulated. Be-swined. Pigged out. Flu of Pork. I honestly don't feel that bad, but I've been running a decent fever for a few days, and my throat is sore and I'm lately developed a hacking awful cough. There is phlegm rattling just south of what I can cough up.

This is perfect timing, because I'll be better by the time the guests arrive next week.

Apparently I forgot to tell one of the bridesmaids that she is a bridesmaid. The thing is, I vividly remember the e-mail conversation. But she does not, and neither of us can find the old e-mails. And believe me, I don't get around to deleting e-mails. Maybe it was over texting.

In precalculus, we're graphing. When I want them to fill in coordinates, I write an empty coordinate pair on the board next to the point I'm talking about. Like so: ( , ) . I make the commas bigger than the typeface does. They look like little naked butts to me. All over the board, little naked butts. I haven't said anything to the students yet.

There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

2009-10-07T02:35:07Z

We ended up going back to ACL. Whattya know. It didn't rain a drop. But if it had, we were all set with ponchos and umbrellas and dry-making strategies.

Instead, we found four inches of mud. It stunk, too, from the compost they had used to get the grass to grow. Poor two million dollar grass. But we had fun. My favorite acts were The Dirty Projectors, Raul Malo, and GirlTalk.

This is what we bought for Hawaiian Punch to wear to the reception:

But not during the ceremony, because I have a trace of decorum.

We found a poem that we like for the ceremony. It makes us laugh.

Litany, by Billy Collins

You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table

I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow--the wine.

I like to say to Jammies, "There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air." Because it's true. Other than this poem, most of the ceremony is some Unitarian mumbo-jumbo.

(Although there is one hidden joke: the officiant is going to begin by saying - without lisp, just straight delivery - "Marriage. Marriage is what brings us together, today. Marriage is a dream within a dream.")

We're walking in to You're All I Need To Get By. We're walking out to My Summer Vacation, up there on the side bar. I guess I just ruined things for a few of the guests. Who now have to feign surprise because they are under strict orders to keep my secret identity secret.

Perhaps they could identify each other with a keyword or gesture. Perhaps if you're attending the wedding and are reading this post, you ought to wear a red fez, so that you can ferret each other out. Then you can nod slyly to each other. But please don't speak of it, unencoded, for fear of busting my secretive ass.

When the Geebies got very wet.

2009-10-04T14:16:27Z

We had about an hour or two of beautiful weather at the Austin City Limits festival, yesterday. It was overcast and 75. Hawaii sat on a blanket with a friend's baby and they lunged at each other and tried to put each other in their mouths. It was pretty cute.

I gazed at Jamaal, in our chairs, and felt quite content. We even had a flag, waving high above the chair on a tent spine, proclaiming our allegiance to New Mexico State University. Jammies went to school there.

Then it started to drizzle, and then pour, and we were still game. It was still okay. Hawaiian Punch was dry because our chairs had fancy attached little roofs, which worked very well. A friend came by and shared a bit of smoke with me, and it was mellow and great.

Then it just kept raining. The water dripped off the attached roof, into the edge of my seat, and I abruptly realized that the reason I was fucking freezing was that I was sitting in four inches of water. After about three hours of solid rain we decided to pack it in.

I don't know if I want to return today. It's supposed to pour some more. Maybe I'll stay at home with The Punch while Jammies frolics, unencumbered. Maybe if Jammies really wants to go as a family, I'll rally. I'd certainly go if we weren't trying to keep a baby warm and dry.

It seems like baby toys were designed with five month olds in mind. She is just fascinated by them. It's like she's the right age for everything for babies. Hawaii is so much fun these days. I feel very strongly that the Mommy Wars - whether to work or stay at home - are being massively side-tracked by not considering individual variations between families. Having miserable parents is hard on families. Do whatever makes life sustainable and content for your family.

I should say that I wasn't miserable over the summer. But I did feel like I was going batty by the afternoon, each day when I was home alone with Hawaiian Punch. I think I would have been miserable if I hadn't known the summer would draw to a close in finite time, and I'd go back to work. If the summer had no shelf-life, I would have been quite cranky.

Jammies' Mom arrives on Wednesday. The wedding is getting very close, indeed.

Look at the core muscles on that Punch.

2009-10-01T22:29:38Z

Thank you all for the cheers and hoorays! I've the warm fuzzies, guv'nor.

On Tuesday, we went to the Open House at Hawaiian Punch's daycare. Sure, why not. Miss Annies squirted a glob of orange paint onto a paper plate with a jack-o-lantern face. Hawaiian Punch merrily slapped it all over her hands and the plate, and so we have more artwork.

Then we sat around with two other sets of parents and let the babies roll on the floor. Hawaiian Punch sat up, unassisted, for the first time. I made sure everyone knew and applauded this achievement. I am still very impressed with her.

The other two babies' fathers are cousins, apparently. The fourth baby did not represent at Open House.

This weekend is Austin City Limits festival. It's supposed to rain. The whole next few months are supposed to be unusually rainy. It is likely that we'll have a very ironic wedding. That will make the whole weekend a bit harder. I really hope the barbecue is not drenched.

So relieved and elated.

2009-09-29T20:37:26Z

The tumor responded beautifully, and Mom is officially scheduled for surgery the Tuesday after our wedding.

The Aftermath Club

2009-09-29T14:47:42Z

Yesterday I stayed late for Math Club. I hate arriving home after Hawaiian Punch has gone to bed. It makes me feel just awful.

I ran a bunch of errands after Math Club, since I was already arriving home late. First I went to the Gigantic Double Outlet Mall, which weirdly sometimes lifts our small town onto top ten national lists of great places to shop. (Not according to me.) (There is a steady stream of very rich Mexicans from Monterrey who drive up to shop here.) It is open until 9 every night. On a Monday evening it is deserted. At the Neiman Marcus outlet I bought Jammies a back-up tie for the wedding. It is green with orange roses on it and I quite like it.

Next I went to the pet store and bought aquarium gravel to put beneath our little rubber duckies, for the centerpieces. The girl at the check-out counter asked me if I had an aquarium, so I lied and said yes.

Then she asked how big my aquarium was, and I squirmed and said "Mediumish" and she said "60 gallons?" and I said yes. Then she said, "Wow! That's big!" and I felt like I'd been set-up. I waited uncomfortably while the credit card machine took its sweet time, hoping she didn't ask me about saline content or bubble viscosity or the names of our fish. Instead she said, "Planning on replacing the gravel?" and I said "Yes." She looked at me expectantly, so I lamely added "I like these colors better."

At the gas station, I listened to a phone message from Grandma saying it was terribly urgent that I call her tonight. It turned out she had a question about distant cousins who were left off the invite list. Grandma kind of calls wolf on her use of urgent.

Last I stopped at the drug store, where nothing happened. They didn't have any Hawaiian Punch sized costumes, which was not why I stopped there, but as long as I'm there, I thought I'd linger in the candy and costume aisle. There are now Double Peanut Butter Reeses peanut butter cups, which sounds like it'd make you very thirsty.

If it were so easy that it practically just fell in my lap, I'd put her in some sort of seaside-themed Halloween costume for the wedding. Like a squid costume, perhaps. We'll see.

Today we find out whether Mom qualifies for surgery or not. I'm kind of on tenterhooks here.

Unpacking the trip home last weekend.

2009-09-26T15:28:45Z

Here's a partial post that I wrote while I was at home last weekend:

Everything from my childhood is old and grubby, or brittle. Or gone. (I'm so melodramatic.) I'm feeling very melodramatic. I feel like the neck of an hourglass: my childhood and my parents growing old and grubby and brittle, (my parents aren't grubby though) and my future and babies and family stretching out in front of me.

I was thinking about everyone that my Grandma knows and loves. None of them were more than toddlers when she was my age. She has said goodbye to everything she knew and loved in the first half of the hourglass, and replaced it with children and new friends and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, in the second half of the hourglass.

I went jogging through my parents' neighborhood this weekend. I jogged by a big house with light blue siding, and saw the window to a room on the left, and remembered that it was dark, and all brick, like a dungeon, off the side of the kitchen. You had to go down three steps from the kitchen. The couch and rug were plaid. I watched Little House on the Prairie in that room.

All the houses were old and grubby, or totally rennovated, and I felt melancholy.

Here is a catalogue of the wallpaper in my parents' house:

This means you just entered the back door, which is to the left of the bathroom you're looking at, and turned around to see where you came from. Let's enter that bathroom:

This is the same mirror that was visible in the previous photo, and you can see the top of the toilet in the lower left. It's hard to see the wallpaper because of the museum-quantity of artwork on the walls. This is how the whole house is, and I find it comforting. Here's another view of the bathroom, this time over the sink:

It takes so long for my puny laptop to upload each picture that I fear I'll never get this post up. Hawaiian Punch is napping, I'm grading, and Jammies is spending the weekend at the lake with his boyz in a bonding bachelor partyish homage. I'll keep uploading until she wakes up, but then I'll save the rest for later.

From the view in the first photo, we will now turn right, where the wood of a bookcase is visible. We're crossing the reading room, of which there are no photos today, because it is not wallpapered. This is a tour of wallpapers. On the far side of the reading room is the Dog Bathroom, where we bathe the dogs.

Just out of sight, under the window on the left, is a bidet. Directly above the bidet on the ceiling, it is moldy because we used to turn on the bidet full blast and it would hit the ceiling. And mom never noticed and so never made us stop. To the right, also out of sight, is the bathtub where we bathed the dogs.

The study and the playroom, and the piano room, and the kitchen do not have wallpaper. It is a big elaborate house frozen in time. The last room downstairs is the dining room. Let's visit it.

and a close up of the wallpaper:

There are a lot of faces hiding in the wallpaper.

We will save the upstairs for another day.

I am extremely attached to this gigantic house filled to the gills with treasures that Mom has accumulated. I am terrified of the day when it comes time for me and my brothers to disassemble it. Jammies and I don't have very much space. I can't acquire all these things, and my brothers aren't sentimental.

Mom mentions this future disassembling on a regular basis, and I get quite upset. She wants me to advocate for the worth - financial and sentimental - of all these treasures. I will but I'm scared that there is no home for everything besides this one. And plus I'll be in the throes of grief. I'm scared the whole thing will consume me.

Amid the boughs

2009-09-23T01:28:15Z

Grandma was in rare form over the weekend. Lecture, lecture, lecture. So many monologues. And then more monologues about how rude we are to interrupt. We spent hours each day - Mom, Dad, Jammies and myself - parked around the kitchen story while Grandma lectured. She even schedules these talks. She announces, "When would be a good time that everybody could listen while I shared about my recent trip?"

Topics that Grandma lectured on:
1. When we drop Hawaiian Punch off at daycare, we should say "Be kind!" instead of "Be good!" because I can't even remember why. But in the course of that lecture, she managed to interject her "Good Enough" speech. Her vision could be better, her hearing could be better, but she's good enough.

2. We're giving Hawaiian Punch broken neurons, a nervous temperament, and restless leg syndrome, because we bounce her on our knees. We got many many lectures about this.

3. I should have validated some point she made instead of saying that the research I'd read contradicted her point. There's good parts in everything, and I should have first validated her comment instead of just shooting it down.

4. We all interrupt a lot. Because Grandma loves a silent, nodding, captive audience, but the audience was brought in on the pretense that it would be a conversation, and they're bored. Grandma tells us how it is petty and immature to redirect the focus of conversation away from the person who is talking and onto oneself. It's hard to take her seriously when your father is snickering.

5. The airport security should not be streamlined, because what about the shoe bomber? This was a total deliberate set-up. She asked me if I thought airport security should be streamlined, and I said yes, and talked a little bit about international diplomacy and diffusing anger of marginalized people. But I got a lecture about how you need both. She even interrupted me. I squawked indignantly, and she waved her hand and said "I know what you're going to say." She didn't, either, but if that's the test we're using then she would never get to finish her Good Enough lecture ever again.

Down, down, down

A friend was over, and the old yearbooks were brought out. At one point she said, "Hey, do you remember [John Smith]?" I didn't remember him at all. She said, "He's a registered sex offender in town." We flipped through my sixth grade yearbook to find a photo of him, and I had taken a Sharpie and blacked out his photo and name. I was a mini-archivist child who felt very strongly that the yearbook should be a historical document kept in pristine condition; it was way out of character that I blackened out this kid.

I remember blacking it out, too. Afterwards I wondered if I'd regret it, but I was so revulsed by him that I did not want to risk inadvertently glimpsing his picture, and so I was glad I'd done it.

He'd never done anything skeezy to me. I know we were friends, and I think he made some romantic overture, and instead of merely being not interested, I had this visceral revulsion and suddenly hated him with a passion. I felt guilty over this reaction, though.

Swing, swing, down

Anyway, we're home and I was exhausted at work today. And I'm still exhausted. Everything is hard.

I write a lot more about Grandma than Mom. Grandma is more of a self-parody and says more outrageous things. Mom is quieter and more measured and, I don't know, my mom. There wasn't enough of her to go around this weekend. Next Tuesday we find out if her tumor is operable. I didn't realize that it was possible that it wouldn't be. (I knew, I just decieved myself for the past few months.) There's only a 10-20% chance that it will be inoperable, but that is still way too scary.