ketchup

One month from today until Jake turns six.
Five was a big year.  A hard year.  A rewarding year.  A good year.  Mostly.

Yesterday he wrote a little love note to me and stuck it in his take-home folder so I would see it when I went through his papers.

Kindergarten has taken the babyness out of him.  Which is okay.  He's still cuddly and huggy and kissy.  Those aren't baby things, he'll tell me, those are things that everyone needs no matter how old they are.
He's right.

No more baby words.  No more pembaroni pizza or any of the other words he used to say that I can't think of right now.
He remembers those words every so often, and uses them just to be funny.
Sometimes he would just make up words for things he doesn't know the name of, and still uses that sometimes.
"Texas-ball" is my favorite.  It means tumbleweed.

I miss the baby he was, but it's fun to get to know the kid he is.

***

My cat is sick.  Again.  Kidney failure, I'm sure of it.  Probably end stage but who knows, we've been back and forth with this for over a year.  I haven't taken her to the vet because that would be crueler than not taking her.  Last time I took her out of the house she was in shock for about two weeks.  No eating, no drinking, no coming out of whatever hole she crawled into.  If I take her out again, it will be to have her put down.
Her eyes are sunken in so far it's hard to keep them open, she smells bad, she lays like a meatloaf, her breathing is irregular, she's cold, she screams sometimes when she moves or sees me, got a case of the twitches, keeps licking her ulcered lips, unsteady on her feet, she hasn't pooped in a week and she hovers over her water bowl.  All the signs are there.
Last night we were in bed all curled up together and I was sure she had stopped breathing for good, but she started up again. 
I like the idea of her going like that- peacefully in her sleep, all nestled up against my belly with my arm around her and her head under my chin but when an animal dies they usually let go of everything inside them and in the morning I'd find myself wrapped around a dead animal, both of us covered in shit and piss.
She's almost 15 years old and I've had her for her whole life.
My life would be weird without her.

I plan on getting two kittens as soon as possible after she goes.

I have a six-day vacation coming up, live or die she better decide which before then.

What do you do with a dead animal when you live in the city?  I guess you have to take them to a vet and have them Disposed of Properly.  There's no burying them in the back yard or any of that.  I do have friends out in West Philly with a giant grassy back yard.  Maybe they'd let me put her back there.  Maybe their dog would dig her up though.  So maybe I shouldn't ask.  Dave's mom lives in Jersey, I could ask if I could put her out there.  Or there's that tree in front of my house.  How deep do you need to bury an animal?  I wonder how much it is to get a cat cremated.  I wonder what I'd do with her ashes. Spread a little of them at the doorway of every house she ever lived in maybe.  A variation of what I want done with my own ashes when the time comes.  

***

I'm considering having my grandmother's engagement ring re-set.  It's old.  The jeweler who I took it to to make sure it was safe to wear said it's safe to wear, but was probably bought used, as most rings were back then.  My grandparents got married in 1944, but the stone- based on the type of cut- is probably from the late 1800s, and the setting could be new in the early 40s, or as old as the stone.

I wear it on my right hand with my other grandma's wedding band which is inscribed with DMJ DNB 6-18-38
Daniel Melford Jones and Della Neely Ball.  Del and Mel.  Because you know, if your name is weird like "Daniel", it's only natural that you go by Melford. 
My dad's dad went by his middle name too.  Charles Noden, everyone called him Noden.  Again, "Charles" is SO WEIRD. 
My middle name is Neely too.  So is my niece's. 
I use it like a last name if whatever I'm doing requires a last name but I don't want to give my real last name.

Three things that are keeping me from having the ring reset:
1) the price of gold.  I like yellow gold.
2) settling on a design.  It has to be fabulous and wearable and classic.
3) I'm not ready to stop seeing the same ring I used to see my grandma wear

***

Live in or near New York City?  Want to see me and the rest of Asteroid! live on stage?
March 24th, 8pm at the Underground Theater
123 East 24th Street (24th near Park Avenue South in Manhattan)

***

The sulfate free shampoo is going well enough.  I've used it twice, I wash my hair every four days or so.  More often and I'm a greasy mess.  Funny how that works.  Scalp oil is like breast milk.  The more you take away the more your body makes.  There needs to be an adjustment/stepping down of the frequent washing, but it's amazing how unoily a human can become in the absence of scrubbing.
No sulfates definitely makes for a very different cleansing experience.  You feel like you aren't getting clean because there are no bubbles, but then when it's said and done you realize you've over-cleansed and now you are a dried out mess. 
By "you", I mean "me".
Maybe by the NY show I'll have it down pat.  At least I don't have an embarrassing rash anymore.

***

Only one more class and some paperwork/tests and I'll be a certified Trauma-Competent Family Professional.  Holy crap was that a frigging journey.  I'm glad I did it, I'll be more gladder when it's over.

Next up I'm taking a class in Over Indulgence. 
"...this course provides family professionals with the research around overindulgence and ways to describe it to their audiences, to share how it happens, how it can be prevented and how it can be addressed when it already exists. Family professionals receive concrete suggestions and opportunities to explore ways to impress, inspire and inform their audiences so they can be more aware and better equipped to identify, address and prevent the many problems overindulgence can create."

We don't like to use the word "spoiled" or "rotten" in the field.  Meat gets spoiled.  Plots get spoiled. Children are at the mercy of those who may over indulge them.  Behavior that we may call "spoiled" is a natural and expected reaction to a caregivers' over indulgence.

That's not a professional quote, I just made that up now, but that's the gist of it.

***

It's Friday!  Get off your computers and get the rest of  your work done so you can mentally check out at 3pm like the rest of us schlubs! 


 

more romance

On Monday I read an article someone hung up at an office I was working in about young children and love interests.  How it was very normal for the 5-7 set to "fall in love".  The jargony mumbo jumbo talked about attachment and healthy separation coping mechanisms and transition objects/individuals and measurable brain waves and tiny bits of hormone secretions.  The take home message was that it's totally reasonable and acceptable and healthy for a child to begin to "identify with" another child (and caretakers. see also: hot for teacher) in a way that makes them feel safe and happy and gives them a sense of belonging and squishy warm warm. I took home none of it, assuming that it pertained to other children.  Certainly not mine.

On Tuesday Jacob sheepishly asked me if I knew who his most special favorite Valentine was.

Me?
No.
Ms A?
No.
Kat Kat?
No.
I have no clue, I'm all out of guesses.
Bianca, mom.  I think I might be in love with her.  How do I know for sure?

Oh, right.  Bianca.  The one girl I never hear anything about.  I hear everything all about the billion other children in the classroom, but never a peep about Bianca. I almost forgot about poor Bianca.

Jacob went on to say how beautiful she was.  And funny and smart and caring and kind and he wishes he was 18 so they could get married but they are too young and he has no idea what he is going to to until then.  And I told him that she is very lucky to have him love her and she must be wonderful if he picked her out of all the girls in the whole wide world to fall in love with.

There's just one problem, mom
What's that?
She hates me.  No matter what I do she just won't love me back.
Well, you have a lot of years between now and 18, maybe she'll come around. 
Mom, is it true that girls tell boys they don't like them if they really do like them and maybe she really does like me?
Sometimes, but sometimes girls tell boys they don't like them because they really don't like them so you have to respect her words until she says otherwise.  
(pause)
(pause)
(pause)
Mom, can you please tell me the secret for reading minds?  
There's no such thing.
Then how come you always know what I'm thinking about?  Man, I wish I could read this girl's mind.  Girls would be so much easier if I could just read their minds instead of guessing all the time.

And scene.

Then we talked about Mario Kart and Ninjago and ate pizza and did the other evening stuff we always do, just like old times. 

This morning he kissed Bianca's Valentine on the way out the door.

Romance

malocchio

Last Friday I worked at the top of the city, very early in the morning.  Very early for work that is far away from home.  8.45 after a 7.45 kid drop.  Six miles straight up through, I knew it would take me at least an hour to get there in the car.  I could have taken the subway but I was due for a long drive.

I love driving through the city, especially in the morning.  Thousands of lives waking up, stumbling out the door, rushing/not rushing to work and school and the corner store.  Past the million dollar apartments and the $10K houses.  Past the crossing guards, the dog walkers, the drug dealers, the night shifters stumbling home. Up 17th to just past Temple U, up 13th to the jog at Glenwood Ave, up Broad to Oak Lane, back over to 13th, around the block to find a spot.  Into an elementary school that was better/nicer/cleaner/brighter than I expected, little tiny voices coming from the classroom almost makes me want to be a teacher.  Almost.  At the very least it makes me verklempt that I wasn't in Jacob's school that morning, doing Room Mother stuff.  Decorating bulletin boards (paper cuts).  Helping with coats (head lice).  Sharpening pencils (lead poisoning).  Tending boo boos (infectious diseases).

Sometimes I feel like working moms are worthless moms when it comes to the school.  I don't get all the last minute calls to come in and help.  I don't get personalized letters sent to the house addressed to Mrs. So and so (they always say Mrs, even for the Miss' and the Ms'.  So archaic.  I'm a Ms.  I have never once gone by Mrs.  It's gross to me, reminds me of control top panty hose hanging on a shower rod and jarred cold cream and potluck bible studies and male dominance/ownership.  But I'm a weirdo, so what do I know?  Nothing.) asking for baked goods or my hand in putting together fliers for the insert-holiday-here celebration.

There is a Valentine's luncheon at the school on the 14th.  I can make it to that, I rearranged my schedule so I can fit it between site visits.  The kids don't have to wear their uniforms, because photos will be taken.  I guess one of the moms is a professional photographer and does stuff like this for the school all the time.  So I hear.  They aren't calling it a Valentine's party.  They are calling it a "Special Persons Event".  Lame.  I didn't know that Valentine's Day had fallen victim to the Political Correctness Movement.

A little bit of Independent Internet Research shows that in 1997 a school district in New Jersey banned everyone from saying Valentine's Day because it is actually Saint Valentine's Day so they renamed it Special Person's Day and ever since then other districts and organizations have been catching on.

Of course.  New Jersey.  They have (according to Gallup Polls) the fourth largest concentration of Catholics in the US at close to 50% but you can't celebrate a Catholic Saint for fear of offending the minority.  I wonder what percentage of people really give two craps about Saints at all.  Or Valentine's Day.


I'm in the percentage of people who do not give two craps about Saints at all.  Or Valentine's Day.
I'm also in the percentage who thinks something totally different when she hears the words "Special Persons".  See also "Jerry's Kids".
I thought they were holding a fund-raiser on the 14th until I read the flier.  The flier that I didn't help put together.


When one drives from the bottom of the city to the top, one passes lots of churches.  Spanning the spectrum of Mostly Catholic at the bottom to Mostly Baptist at the top.  The Methodists and Presbyterians and Eucharists and Episcopalians and Mormons and Jews and Mennonites and Muslims and Seventh Day Adventists and Others falling in the middle.  Shaken up and spread out like Yahtzee dice.  I get a kick lately out of the huge banners on the church fronts of every denomination inviting those who have been "hexed by witchcraft, bad luck, voodoo and the evil eye indoors for a spiritual evaluation".  Somehow I always thought that churchfolk didn't believe in witchcraft, bad luck, voodoo, or the evil eye but I guess they do whatever it takes to get the neighborhoodfolk inside.  There is a banner printer somewhere in this town who made a great fortune on these, I'm betting.  The church near Broad and Lycoming had the banner flying right over top of one that said "Press Your Luck at Our Annual Casino Night".  Under that was a Whammy.  Remember Whammies?  They sort of look like little devils.  It was all very confusing.  One of the downsides of driving is that it isn't very practical to take out my camera phone and snap proof of the ridiculousness that happens all over town.

I like to sing in the car.  
Our car has Sirius Radio.  I know words to most every popular song put out between 1963 and 1979.  I start to tank after 1980, with a resurgence of popular music in the mid-90s.  Thank the Radio Gods for Classic Vinyl, 60's on 6, 70's on 7, Coffee House and Classic Rewind.  I also like the Margaritaville channel except when it steers toward country music and the Grateful Dead channel except when it steers toward space jams.  I'm not a jam band sort of girl.  
I like to sing in the car.

I like when people take pictures of themselves in the car.  It's one of the things I miss about Faceboob.  It's always either very serious or very silly.  I tried. It's hard to take a decent picture of yourself in the car with your sunglasses off and your driving face on and your make up off.  The older I get, the harder it is to take a decent picture of me anywhere.  Especially with my sunglasses off because my eyes are super sensitive and I squint even at night time.  I'm like an Ocular Princess.  Plus my face isn't symmetrical which is made worse by the Trying Not to Laugh.  I also blame the false bone in my head, but I think it is just age taking a toll. Five points to the first correct guess which side of my face is surged.

I wish the word symmetrical was symmetrical.  Or at least a palindrome.
"Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?"

It's hard to take a picture of yourself and not feel like a smacked ass.  I guess I missed that generation of the self-portraiteres.  Seems that Kids These Days do it all the time.  Duck faced little brats.

See that red rash around my mouth and eyes?  Hardly, right?  If you know me in real life you'd know it has been nasty since summertime.  Actually, you might not because you probably haven't seen me.  It was so nasty I haven't been doing much socializing.  
At first I thought it was a herpes and freaked the eff out.  Then I thought it was eczema. Psoriasis. Ebola.  
You can google "perioral dermatitis" if  you want to see how gross it was.  Embarrassingly gross.  And all over my eyes and muzzle.  And chest and back and hands and sometimes in places where my body makes a V.

Turns out it's a sensitivity to sulfates.  Three days without toothpaste (I subbed baking soda) and it was 50% gone.  A week with a sulfate free facial cleanser (I got Trader Joe's Spa stuff) and it was even better.  Now I have to switch shampoos (I picked up some Whole Foods 365 Every Day Value Grapefruit Citrus for Normal- Dry Hair but I haven't used it yet because I'm not an avid shampooer.  I'm a co-washer.  A co-pooer).  I had the rash on my hands too, and subbing a mix of 1 cup Dr Bronners Citrus Orange + 1/4 cup water + enough drops of Lemon Essential Oil to make it smell good for dishes is helping that.  Why I ever switched to regular detergent from Dr B's I don't know (read:lazy).  I don't have a dishwasher.  I am the dishwasher.  Anyone know of a good sulfate-free laundry detergent?  The rash is gone but there are some scars, hopefully those will fade if I stay out of the sun and keep away from sulfates.

Poor me.  It's so hard to be this girl. 
Y'all don't know what it's like.
Being middle middle class and white. 

Am I middle middle class?  I'm not sure.  I hear the middle class is disappearing, I don't know whether it is taking me with it or not.  Like that picture Marty McFly carries around, we all just start fading away until one day there is nothing left but the tree and wishing well we are standing in front of.
But for now I'm here.  Doing well.  
Standing around my own proverbial wishing well.

Oh, and the bedbugs have been gone for quite some time.  Right around the time the rash started, so of course on top of everything else I thought it might be, I assumed it was something I contracted from the bugs, then I thought it might have to do with the extermination chemicals.  No.  It was because I chose the wrong things to clean myself with. 

Today's moral: stay dirty, biznatches.

coming out

I'm just going to go ahead and come clean about something here.
All these posts last month on all these blogs keep going on and on about the best and worsts of 2011 and I feel like I should get on that wagon.  There were some good things that happened in '11.  And some crappy things that happened last year, but the worst for me?

Bedbugs.

There.

I said it.

Bedbugs
bedbugs
bedbugs.

I had bedbugs.

Not me.  I shouldn't say that.  My house.

My house had bedbugs.

And now I'm ready to talk about it.

I only ever saw one live one.  It was a baby, clear and about the size of a pinhead.  I saw it when I was changing the bedsheets.  I always check for things like bedbugs when I change the bedsheets.  It's a side effect of living in a Major East Coast City.  I saw some dead ones after the exterminators came.  They were in the folds of the slipcover near the legs of my couch.  I'm convinced that the couch was the mothership.  It's where we got bit up the worst.

I didn't have many noticeable bites.  A row (it's the row thing that gave it away.  Bedbugs usually bite in rows of three or four) on my neck and a row on my belly.  Curved rows, like the handle on the Big Dipper.
I think one on my wrist too, and a couple on my fingers.  There is nothing worse than a bug bite on  fingers or toes.  The burning is unbelievable. I'm an avid non-scratcher, so I didn't get scabs on my bites.  They looked like pimples.  They itched.  Nothing helped.  Dabs of toothpaste worked the best.  Toothpaste is a good mosquito bite remedy too.

The house isn't huge.  I think it's something like 1300 square feet.  A normal rowhome.  It costs $1200 to treat a house that size for bedbugs.  Bedbugs can't be killed by the normal extermination stuff.  They need the big guns to bring them down.  And they know you are desperate so I'm sure the price is jacked up for that too.

I never see bugs in my house.  Sometimes fruitflies, but nothing else really.  When you bring in the major chemicals?  All the bugs that you never see crawl out of their hidey holes and die on your floor.  Bugs I have never seen anywhere anytime have secret homes in my walls.  Prehistoric looking nasties that can't handle the light of day walk the beams under my floorboards, behind the plaster, over top the ceilings.

Bugs are one of the reasons I can't live in the burbs.  I didn't know they lived in the city too.  I thought mice and roaches were the worst of it. 
No.
Wrong.
They just hide better.

When you have bedbugs, you have to launder everything that can be laundered and hermetically seal it for months and months before you can ever see it again.  Your basement gets loaded up with duct-taped contractor bags and you live out of ziploc freezer bags that hold three or four of your favorite outfits that get washed so often that they wear out by the end of the extermination process.  You hope no one notices you guys don't change your clothes often, especially the teachers at the pre-school.  You hope they just assume your child is going through a stage where they will only wear one or two things or else they throw a fit.


You have to pull all your furniture three feet away from the walls and keep it like that for a month or so between exterminations.  Even if your house is so small that you don't really have the space to pull things three feet away from the wall. You have to deep clean everything.  Bedbugs like to hide in electrical outlets and switchplates and bedframes and behind drawers and other creepster places.  You aren't supposed to throw anything away because they say that adds to the problem because of trash pickers and the bugs jumping on to passersby, but the house lost about 1000 pounds last summer.  Old blankets and clothes and crap that accumulates in underused corners and shelves.  Some Ikea furniture that has put in its five years and has earned its retirement.  Buying something at Ikea is akin to participating in indentured servitude.  It works hard until the release date.  Then it just crumbles if you try to make it work anymore.  Books.  I got rid of a lot of books.  Bedbugs are bookworms.

That hurt the worst.

My books are my friends. 
My friends live inside my books.
I don't know if that shows a healthy devotion to literature or an unhealthy social support system.

You have to cancel Wednesday Spaghetties and tell your friends that you'd rather go to the bar and watch the Phillies game even though you'll have to pay for beers there and you'll spot them the cash because you "just feel like getting out of the house for awhile" and you understand that they are about to lose their mind but they can't hide from their husband at your house and no you can't watch their kids even though there is a family emergency and you can't go anywhere in fear of having a bug in the hems of your pants that might escape and wreak havoc on someone else's house and you can't have anyone over for your 35th birthday even though 35 is divisible by 5 and you should always have your friends over for birthdays ending in ohs and fives. You have to buy $300 slipcovers for your mattress and box springs that are somehow rubberized or something and makes your bed 500 degrees hotter than it ever should be. You have to call/text/email all of your friends in New York City and beg them to tell you that it's okay, that you aren't going to die, that you aren't dirty, that you aren't nasty, and that you'll get through this somehow.  You have to tell your kid not to talk about the bugs with anyone, even though we don't keep secrets normally and if anyone else tells him to keep a secret it is very very not okay but this is something that we only talk about in the house and even though it's not technically a secret, it is and we'll call it "family business" so we can give it a name but please don't have "family business" with anyone who isn't mom or dad. 

You have to call your friends who have been over in the past month or so.

That's awkward. 
Awkward like in telling a sexy time buddy that you had a bad day at the clinic awkward.
So, um, you know, like, that last time you were, sort of, over at the house?  Um, yeah.  Have you noticed anything weird, like, I mean, like while you are in bed?  Or something?  Er, do you, um have any unusual spots or itchies or rashes or anything?  Because it turns out. I just. Are you sitting down?  I need to tell you something but please don't tell anyone else because I'll just die if anyone else knows...

And as you tell people, slowly and quietly and discreetly, you find out that you aren't alone in this.  That it sucks to spend hundreds of hours cleaning your house and losing sleep and googling solutions and tricks and coping methods but you aren't the only one spending hours.  And it sucks that you have to spend the cool grand you have saved up on fucking exterminator services instead of redoing the bathroom or going on vacation or getting a roof deck or a finished basement or something sparkley but you aren't the only one spending cash.  And it sucks that no matter where you go or how many times the exterminator tells you he's pretty sure the problem is cleared up or how long it has been since you've seen a bug or have gotten bitten, you will itch and your skin will crawl and every tiny dark speck you see anywhere makes you jump but you aren't alone in that either.  And it sucks that you can never sleep well in a hotel ever again or go to the movies and rest comfortably on the seats or sit at one of those plush and pillowed bank-bench-seat things at a swanky restaurant without feeling things crawl up your back anymore but you aren't the only one. 

It gets a little better every day.  Because you find that it's actually almost normal to have this happen, and you aren't the dirty kid, and people do understand that bad things happen to good people. 
That bad bugs happen to good people. 
That bed bugs happen to good people.

(dis)comfort levels

On the day I got the Reiki Attunement, we had to do some group-type things that required us to close our eyes.

For some most people, closing eyes in a group can be very uncomfortable.  Especially when you are closing your eyes and doing something you've never done before.  There is that overwhelming temptation to peek, just to see if you are doing it right. And an even more overwhelming temptation to peek and look how stupid everyone else looks.

(hint: Never Peek.  If you keep your eyes closed and just do what feels right and natural, you are doing everything correctly and the people who are peeking will think you are the bizzy and do exactly what you are doing, making everything that feels right and natural to you feel right and mostly natural to everyone who looked to you and saw you with your eyes shut and doing what your body does all by itself)

I was pretty lucky because I was in a room full of people that I sort of know.  People who work in Parenting under the same City Money that I work under. People who I look up to, people who have the same underlying philosophies about being parenting professionals and parenting educators and just plain old parents.
And one other girl who was really cool and turns out she lives in my neighborhood so I can't wait to be better friends with her and I fingers-crossed hope she doesn't google my name and find this blog and read this and think I'm crazy because now I'm blogging about her and what if she never returns my calls or the email I sent to her saying I'm available for coffee or for lunch whenever she is because I'm pretty flexible especially if she doesn't mind an almost six year old tag along.  Her hair was really pretty too, and she kept doing that thing where the pony tail goes out and the pony tail goes back in and sometimes it's up high and sometimes it's down low and it was really all just follicular magic.

Anyway.  I'm usually pretty comfortable closing my eyes in front of people, thanks to improv and attending so many squishy warm warm professional development classes and City Funded parenting classes (I know I've reached a certain level of comfort within the universe when I can be locked into a room full of untethered maximum security prisoners and shut my face down completely.  Good or bad, you be the judge) and other stuff where they make you close your eyes and last Saturday at the Reiki Attunement wasn't much different.

But I did something I've never done before there in a circle with my eyes closed and my hands clasped around two others'.  I chanted, along with the entire group doing the same, my own name.  Starting out really quietly, like a whisper.  Then spoken, then sung. 

Sung the way you might sing your baby's name, the way your name probably hasn't been sung since you were a baby. 

It was pretty powerful.  And really super unnatural for me and really hard to do and my voice choked up and hardly came out and I'd like to try it again but I want an empty house and a finger or two of something strong and I'd feel much better if maybe the neighbors aren't home either, just in case they hold glasses to the wall or whatever.

Honoring yourself as someone who is loved and cherished and wanted and valuable and precious and and and is really outside of the everyday spectrum of normalcy.  For me at least.