Walter

One week ago today our lives changed. Mr. b and Veronica got in a car accident. He called me from the scene and I could tell from his voice that he was in shock. He claimed they were both fine but that he was sore. But “sore” can mean just about anything. I immediately left for the bus and met them at the hospital. It was the longest bus ride of my life. Just seeing them both made me feel so much better. I held onto Ronnie so tight. She had been such a good girl for her daddy, who was laid up on an ER triage bed, too sore to move around much. Drugs took the edge off and an x-ray showed he didn’t have internal injuries so we were sent home.

The bruises got worse. Ronnie had a fierce one on her shoulder that started to fade right away. But the two on her thighs deepened to a dark purple. I guess it’s proof that the carseat was installed correctly but it was still brutal to see on my sweet bundle. Mr. b’s bruises are still going strong. The one across his stomach from the lap belt was darkest at first, along with his side and upper thigh. But it’s the sash diagonally across his chest that has proven to be the most painful. He is still tender to the touch and his skin is a sickly green color where the seatbelt crossed his torso.

Life can change in an instant. Every time I hold Ronnie, I find myself thinking that it’s precious time that could have been taken from me. Even when she’s being brutal and hitting me in the head, pulling my hair, ripping my nose ring out, I’m just so glad to have her here. Yesterday was our 13th wedding anniversary and it took on increased importance to me because I nearly didn’t get to celebrate.

But the bureaucracy of life is already doing its damnedest to diminish the lucky and blessed feeling. We still don’t have a car. We have a loaner pick-up from my dad but it’s unwieldy and just a poor fit for us and our lifestyle. Our insurance will cover the medical bills and the car loan but then what? We won’t have a trade-in vehicle and we won’t have a down payment and we only have one full-time salary. I miss Walter. Ensign Walter Pontiac bravely gave his life to save my family. RIP.

Morning

I think we’ll settle into a new getting-ready-in-the-morning routine pretty quickly. So far it seems to be that I’ll get Ronnie out of bed and change her pants while Mr. b is making Kirk’s lunch. Ronnie wakes up as soon as I open the bedroom door but Kirk wants to lay in bed and pretend he can avoid getting up. At first I thought that I’d eat breakfast with them but my appetite has completely changed since having the second baby. I’ve been eating breakfast at work because I’m just not interested in food for an hour or so after I get up. That’s radically different from how I’ve been my entire life previously. Kirk so far doesn’t seem very hungry either but it’s hard to guess how much of that is just dragging his feet and how much is for real. Either way, he has to eat because I’m not sending my kid to school on an empty stomach.

I leave for my bus stop about 15 or 20 minutes before Kirk has to be at his so I’m not part of actually getting them out the door. But already I feel like I get to spend more time with my family. I have less of that sadness of not being able to see my kids, particularly Ronnie, as much as I’d like. I hadn’t realized that the pain in the ass of getting the kids up and off to daycare at least gave me a half hour with them I wasn’t getting with me sneaking off before anybody was even up for the day. Yeah, it’s not much but it’s something and I like getting to snuggle my sweet bundle for a minute before starting my day.

First Day

I find myself grinning as I walk down the hall. My son is at kindergarten! I keep wondering what he’s doing right at this moment. Did he put his lunch bag into the basket and get a clothespin with his name on it clipped to the handle? I bet he totally forgot and left it in his backpack. But he’s got his lunch with so he’ll figure it out. Will they go down to the lunchroom to eat? I guess because some of the kids will buy hot lunch. Kirk’s got a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, an apple, some carrots, a box of raisins, a granola bar, a cookie, and a juice box. Yes, that’s too much food for one kid. But it’s all stuff he likes and he can pick how many things he’s going to eat. Hopefully he understands he can just bring home the rest.

I’ve said hopefully he ______ a lot the past week.

The bus stop went well. We rushed out of the house, entire family heading the block and a half to his assigned corner. I wouldn’t say that Kirk was excited but he wasn’t terrified either. We’d been talking about school and busing for quite some time now so it’s not like it was a surprise. I guess I’d say he was resigned to his fate. And he was the first one on! Maybe he just wanted to get it over with? He took a seat nearly at the back of the bus and then waved to us out the window.

Then Mr. b and Ronnie and I raced home and hopped in the car. Mr. b drove like a bat outta hell, totally freaked that the bus was going to get to school before us. I think Kirk’s is the last stop on the route. We caught up with it no problem, and pulled into the school lot at the same time the bus was turning around to get into drop-off position. So we were able to watch Kirk actually get off the bus. I’m not sure what he thought when he saw us standing there. He walked inside on his own though and we hung back. Supposedly there were going to be PTO helpers holding balloons so the kids could get assistance finding their classrooms. Not a balloon in sight. We watched Kirk wander down the hall and then slowly went inside after him.

We caught up to Kirk when he happened to be almost to his classroom, still on his own. He said he remembered the directions the principal gave us at open house last week! And when we dropped off his remaining paperwork in the office, we discovered the balloon helpers were only at the front door for the parental drop-offs. That makes zero sense to me. We lurked about in the halls, waiting for the bell to ring. Kirk quietly sat in line outside his classroom door, along with all the other kids in his class. We peeked around the corner at him several times and he was stoic and slightly bored looking.

I put a note in his pocket with his bus number on it. Apparently the teachers take the kids down to their buses at the end of the day but still. He needs to remember which one is his and get on the right one. Mr. b and Ronnie will be there to meet him when he gets off. I can’t wait to get home and hear all about his day.

Conquistadores

Recently I’ve found myself obsessed with learning about the Spanish exploration of America. As a holder of an Anthropology BA and former professional archaeologist, I like to think of myself as reasonably well rounded in my Western Hemisphere history. Obviously I know the broad strokes of the conquest of the Aztecs and the Incas and it’s really colored my impression of the Spanish. I hated them. For breaking so many truly amazing civilizations with their stupid Catholicism and never-ending quest for gold. Fuck the Spanish! You could get me to go off on the Spanish at the drop of a hat.

But as I’ve gotten older I’ve seen the other side of the argument. The one that remembers that to the Spanish of the time, the empires they destroyed were EVIL. It’s hard to think of another religion that indulged in as much institutionalized human sacrifice as the Aztecs. And the Mexica had themselves conquered the previous empire as had those that came before as had those that came before. It was not a long-lived regime. The Mayan empire was already in collapse long before Tenochtitlan was even built.

The start of my new conquistador fixation came from reading Tony Horwitz’s A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World. I’ve read all of his books and love how he mixes travelogue with historical information. In this one, he visits the sites of all the pre-Pilgrim explorations into America, starting with the Vikings in Newfoundland. It was reading the chapters on the various Spanish expeditions, such as De Soto in Georgia, that I learned about the Black Legend of the Spanish. The slanderous one that said that *all* the Spaniards did was torture and maim and rape and burn alive and enslave and desecrate. Oh sure, that happened. A lot. Especially in Peru. But that was more the minority than I had in my head. As I kept reading I found myself thoroughly engrossed by the chapters about the American Southwest. Specifically about Cabeza de Vaca and about Coronado. Horwitz had two books in the suggested reading that caught my eye, both called Cities of Gold.

Cabeza de Vaca was one of four ultimate survivors of a shipwreck on the Gulf coast of Florida in 1527. Originally a large number of the crew survived, made rafts, and made their way to Texas. There, separated from the others now lost at sea, their raft and one other shipwrecked again, on Galveston Island, where they were enslaved by the Indians. Cabeza de Vaca, Dorantes, his slave Esteban, and Castillo escaped, and then wandered their way back west and south to Spanish territories. Wandered for years. Upon their return, they were heralded not only for the extraordinary tale of their survival but also for bringing back news of an even greater empire to the north. This empire was what Coronado then attempted to locate and annex for the Kingdom of Spain.

I’ve previously read a couple of books by Douglas Preston but they were both fiction. Cities of Gold: A Journey Across the American Southwest was non-fiction. Preston moved to New Mexico from the east coast, got interested in the Spanish explanation, and in the late 1980s, decided to go check it out for himself. So the author and his weirdo artist buddy actually retraced a section of Coronado’s route, from the Mexico/Arizona border to Pecos, on horseback. Very intrepid. He gave lots of great historical information – cowboy, Spanish, and Native – in between the amazing tale of his adventure. I actually would have liked to learn more about the Spanish themselves but the book was truly fascinating and it was great getting such a grab bag of historical anecdotes related to each point along the trail. Preston has a very engaging voice and struck just the right tone when bringing up sensitive issues, with land use or Indians or whatever.

The fabled Seven Cities of Gold turned out to be Zuni Pueblo, then called Cíbola. Vázquez de Coronado had been following a route scouted for him the year before, 1539, by a Franciscan friar from Nice, Fray Marcos de Niza. Marcos didn’t actually make it all the way to Cíbola. And he himself had been following behind none other than Cabeza de Vaca’s fellow survivor, the black Moor Esteban. Esteban was killed and Marcos turned around within sight of the pueblo to report back that it existed and was just as awesome as described by Indians. Ever since, there’s been non-stop controversy. The lush route Marcos described was not what Coronado’s army encountered. And the city was hardly the rich capital he had been promised. Coronado had invested much of his personal wealth, not to mention all of his political clout, in this mission and wasn’t about to go back to Mexico City empty handed. He continued his expedition all the way into Kansas, still chasing after a prize worth the effort of his army’s travels.

Currently I’m reading Cities of Gold: A Novel of the Ancient and Modern Southwest by William K. Hartmann. As the subtitle implies, it’s fiction and Hartmann switches between a modern narrator and historical narrative. The first person narrator in 1998 is telling the story about his own past as an urban planner in Tucson in the late 1980s. He’s caught up in the mystery of attempting to unravel the motivation behind Fray Marcos’ supposed deception in his reports back to New Spain about the Seven Cities of Cíbola. The historical chapters follow Marcos on his mission to both scout a route to the fabled Cities as well as report back to the viceroy on the location of the west coast. The author is obviously sympathetic to the Franciscan, finding his reputation as a liar and fraud undeserving. Thankfully it doesn’t come across as heavy handed by using the device of having the narrator believe that Marcos was wronged. And it’s definitely an engaging tale. I am very curious to see how the ultimate descriptive discrepancy is explained away in the end. Hartmann has quoted a lot of primary sources from the 1500s and onward the narrative which help to accentuate the changing opinions of scholars from many eras. I do find it a bit jarring each time the perspective switches and yet I am engaged with both the modern and ancient stories.

Unfortunately, Esteban himself never wrote down any account of his travels. He was killed before Marcos managed to catch up to him on their scouting trip so yet another mystery remains unsolved regarding just exactly what happened. I find it poetic irony that the first “European” to explore into the future US was an African slave. Esteban was said to be quite the dandy and was definitely a hit with the ladies. He had been the main translator for Cabeza de Vaca’s group. They survived their wanderings by becoming, essentially, rock stars. They were considered great healers and developed a literal following. Hundreds of people roamed with them as they made their way across the continent. The four survivors became quite sympathetic to the Indians’ way of life and were horrified when their followers were captured as they entered Spanish territory. Cabeza de Vaca wrote a detailed account of their experience which I intend to read as I continue my exploration of Spanish exploration.

The other one I would like to read was written by Pedro de Castaneda. He was one of the soldiers in Coronado’s army and wrote an account of the exploration after the fact. It came to be considered a key anthropological record of the native peoples they encountered. Castaneda went beyond just a sympathy to the Indians and instead developed what is now called cultural relativity when describing differences of customs and practices. His is often the only record of Pre-Colombian life as many of the tribes and cities and villages were wiped out thanks to the germs that came along with the Spaniards. When later settlement took place en masse, there were vast empty spaces where there once lived flourishing peoples.

Biking Battles

No, do. Or do not. There is no try.
--Yoda

Unless you’re a five year old, then there is most certainly try. Kirk was grounded all weekend. Grounded from television and movies, grounded from video games, grounded from Star Wars. And he lost his blankie. His infraction? Refusal to try.

We bought Kirk a new big boy bike with training wheels for his 5th birthday. He was so excited about it; he rode it all over the store as we secretly picked out other presents and passed them back and forth behind his back. We brought it home and he rode it all over the neighborhood with his daddy and around the block on a walk with his mama and sister. And then he stopped. For some reason he got scared of it and we can’t figure it out. “I don’t know how.” So we told him he had to ride it every single night so he could learn and practice. But even then he’d freak out. “I can’t.” Both of us lost our tempers on several occasions.

I decided to try getting him used to the bike slowly. We explored how it rocks between the training wheels and how that lessens when he sits on it and his weight lowers them. We explored how the front and back brakes grab the front and back wheels. We explored how far you can turn the handle bars to the right and the left and how it will make the bike tip over if you go too far. We even explored standing on the front pegs while I anchored the bike. Kirk will sit on it and cheerfully put his feet on the pedals. But actually pedal the bike? “I can’t.” And then he said, “I quit.”

Mr. b realized that there must be something else going on and did a little bit of online child psychology research. Apparently there are several reasons why a child might refuse to try and the one that seems to make the most sense with Kirk is perfectionism. He’s good at riding his trike. He’s not an expert at riding his bike and doesn’t know all the ins and outs of it yet. So we put too much pressure on him and made it worse, which just sucks and makes us both feel horrible. But we also can’t let him win and had to figure out a way for him to earn back his privileges without making him ride the damn bike. So he had to try new food.

Trying new foods has always been a battle with Kirk. ALWAYS. It’s ridiculous how often we fight over him eating, or rather not eating. But this time it’s like he knew that this was the best compromise for all parties. Sunday supper, he ate a half a hamburger for the first time ever and had an entire ear of corn. And got his blankie and TV and video games and Star Wars back.

Now, thinking back on it, we’ve had this same issue with bikes before. When Kirk switched from the little sit-down scooter thingie to the Thomas big wheel, he was extremely reticent to learn how to pedal. I remember being so frustrated as he scooted with his feet instead of pedaling. And then when he switched from the big wheel to the tricycle it was the same thing. He was so good at the low to the ground pedaling and suddenly being upright on a trike was a major change. He liked the concept of the trike but was hesitant and rarely used it. Which drove me nuts. So I guess this isn’t new behavior. I just need to remember it for when the time comes to take the training wheels off. Hooboy that’s going to be tough.

Melancholy Musings

Sometime around 15 years ago my dad had a tumor removed. It had been growing inside his sinus cavity and was the size of a grapefruit. It was benign. But it was so weird and fucked up that the surgeon requested to have students and other staff witness the operation and went on to write a paper about it. I’m sure the tumor itself resides in a jar somewhere.

On Friday I noticed a strange solid lump under my nostril, deep within my lip tissue. Naturally I immediately went to the paranoid place and thought of my dad’s tumor. Yesterday the doctor assured me it was either another staph outbreak or, more likely, a zit or cold sore type thing that is simply too deep to actually erupt. That would certainly explain the swollen feeling. He called it a furuncle, wrote me up a prescription, and I at least psychologically feel better.

Over the weekend I found myself thinking about my own untimely demise. After the sudden death of a coworker this year I find myself less and less afraid of death itself, which has always been too horrifying for me to even contemplate. It still quickens my pulse to think about too realistically but I’ve come to realize that I won’t actually care when it happens. It’ll be those that are left behind that matter. And that’s made me worry about being remembered by my children.

Luke Skywalker asks Princess Leia if she remembers her mother. She claims that yes, she does. Now obviously, if she means Padme, this is a bunch of bullshit. I can retcon/fanwank it that hey, she’s probably teaming with the Force, too, and so maybe she actually does have a vague recollection of that one image of her mother’s face, minutes after being born. But that’s seems like crossing into Dune territory and Leia is no Alia. It’s far more likely that Leia is talking about her adopted mother, Bail Organa’s wife, who apparently must have died when Leia was still quite young. Now the fact that Luke knows he’s adopted and Leia seems to be unaware is a separate issue that I’ve also spent far too much time pondering.

Kirk is five. He remembers things that I don’t remember. He brings up incidents in his past that once he’s jogged my memory I can recall but I never would have given them a second thought if he hadn’t called attention to them. What about Veronica? She’s 16 months. Even if she was teaming with the Force, would she remember more than a vague impression?

Ronnie and I have been missing each other a lot lately. We somehow came to the mutual realization that we really don’t spend all that much time together. I get home from work, we have dinner, we go for a walk or play outside, then it’s bath, jammies, bottle, bed. I see her only for a couple of hours every day. That’s not enough time and yet I don’t know how to make it more. We’ve spent some long weekends together recently and that’s helped. But I still long for her and she still immediately defers to me once I come home, no matter how much she loves spending the day with her daddy. What would happen to her if she grew up without a mother?

I’ve been keeping this blog since I found out I was pregnant with Kirk, nearly 6 years ago now. In some ways I consider it a text for his future, a record of his early years that’s almost certainly filled with too much information. I don’t think the same can be said for his sister. I write less and less often of late and though I try to give equal time to both kids, there’s just no way to include as much detail about Ronnie because she’s younger and she’s not an only child. She has to deal with being the second kid in so many ways. I haven’t written word one in her baby book. We haven’t gotten portraits of her to send to all her extended family. She has virtually no toys of her own, playing instead with cars and action figures that her brother already acquired. I know she’ll never know any different and so won’t have an issue with that. I know she’ll come into her own with language development and we will get her separate things as she gets older. But will she have a record of what her mama thought? I hope so. I hope she’ll be able to ask me directly. If not, I hope she’ll have as many years of blog entries as her brother. And yet I feel like I’m just about ready to retire this whole blog endeavor. What comes next?

Stories

Despite the ongoing video gaming in our house (Mr. b and his son purchased Crystal Skull yesterday; then again I may or may not have downloaded the free Batman demo the night before), Ronnie is more and more interested in books. And not just to destroy them. I’ve already removed all the books with actual paper pages from their bedroom because I was sick of the carnage. I need to go through the drawers of board books and see what’s salvageable and come up with some kind of a creative art project to use the rest. At any rate, she’ll toddle up to me with a book in her hand and demand that it be read to her. She’s getting better about actually listening, too, and not just trying to turn pages at her own incredibly fast and completely random pace. She seems to have a few favorites picked out, though that might be just because they’re the least damaged…

One of Kirk’s favorite activities (besides playing Lego video games, yes) is to listen to stories of his parents’ childhoods. He truly revels in the tales of us getting hurt, getting into trouble, or just having something interesting happen. Obviously Mr. b is a better storyteller than I am and he also has a way better and more clear memory than I do. So the bulk of the narration ends up being about growing up in SoDak. Kirk will appropriate anything from any of our stories into his own stories about himself. My dad was telling him about a taco eating contest with my uncles before I was born and soon Kirk had a story about a taco eating contest with his best friend E. The trouble with all the story telling is that now nothing can be just a short little anecdote anymore. If I have a quick snippet about something I wanted to share at the dinner table Kirk’s response is, “Tell the rest.” If Mr. b is filling me in on something I missed Kirk’s response is, “Tell the rest.” No matter how mundane and pointless: “Tell the rest.” “There is no rest.” “Tell the rest.” “The end.” “Tell the rest.”

I’ve been reading a lot of short story collections again the past two years (seriously, it’s not all video games, that’s a new development). It’s because I was being a completist about both the Sookie Stackhouse and the Dresden Files series. I had forgotten just how much I enjoy a well crafted short story. But it can be incredibly tricky to achieve the right balance when you’re writing for a series of novels. You have to give just enough background knowledge so that a reader understands the world you’ve already built but not so much that it overwhelms the story you’re trying to write and yet not so little that you’re making assumptions the reader is coming in already knowing everything. Because of that I found that I generally preferred the stories written by authors that were either telling a one-off tale or using tertiary or unique characters set in the world of their main series characters. The absolute best were the straight mystery authors cajoled into contributing to a supernatural collection; they always ended up with a delicious Twilight Zone vibe. I’ve dipped my toe into a lot of supernatural, fantasy, and mystery series now by sampling so many different authors in so many different anthologies. I actually have a couple of full blown series that I think I’d like to check out. But for now, my self-imposed vampire hiatus continues. Nothing new until I take a nice long cleansing break, even if that means I’m missing out on something.

Addendum 2b

When I was a kid and I played dress up it was only for that particular session of playtime. The outfits or costume pieces would go on for the game or the play we were putting on or whatever and that was it. I was never the little girl wearing a tutu out to the store or a tiara to piano lessons. And maybe being in dance and having actual sequined costumes that were more dazzling than anything out of a dress up box helped me to avoid doing that.

Kirk, however, likes to dress like a favorite character All. The. Time. To the point where he actually gets mad if his ability to dress that way is somehow impeded by little things like being in the laundry. Obviously the current favorite character is Indiana Jones. He’s got two main outfits that he switches between: short sleeves and short pants for Young Indy


And long sleeves and long pants for Teacher Indy.


But thankfully he doesn’t have to wear the entire get-up every moment of every day. He mixes up the elements and includes other favorite pieces like his vest


Or one of his ties.


I was thinking about this and realized it’s hardly a phase. Oh, the choice of Henry Jones Jr. might be a phase but not dressing up like a particular character. He was David Tennant’s Doctor from Doctor Who and ran around in a suit jacket and button down shirt, carrying a sonic screw driver everywhere he went. He was Ringo Starr and wore garish rings and carried drum sticks. He was Dave Gahan and wore a black cowboy hat like in Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” video. It does seem that as he gets older he demands more completion to his outfits as each one is more involved and has more required pieces than the previous one.

But I’ve also noticed that Kirk doesn’t try to wear actual literal costumes. Even when he was into Superman he wouldn’t try to wear either his be-caped pajamas or his Halloween costume outside the house. He would put on a sport coat and tie and be Clark Kent instead. When he was into Buzz Lightyear he would ask to wear the Halloween costume as pajamas but again, wasn’t trying to wear it outside of the house. I’m not sure what that means but I think it’s a good thing. Even though Kirk has a very healthy imagination and is constantly exercising his creativity, he’s got a handle on reality and knows what will fly in public. Right?

Addendum 2a

We are collectively obsessed with these Lego video games. Memorial Day weekend we finished the Indiana Jones one. And by “finished” I don’t just mean 100% completion. No. Apparently the game stops calculating your points at the four billion mark. Good to know. So while we’re waiting for the Crystal Skull game to come down in price, we bought the discounted complete Star Wars. All six movies, together at last. And it’s awesome. Favorite level so far: Mos Espa Pod Race. Kicked Sebulba’s ass.

Kirk is starting to think of other things in terms of video games. It’s not just typical little kid playing outside stuff. Like when we’re on a walk and he’s pretending to be Indy and he jumps across a sidewalk crack and talks about the level that he’s playing. No. He’s been telling me about other video games that he’s going to play. Like the Annie video game where you get to play Sandy the dog to stop the naughty kids or the boss battle where Punjab fights Rooster. Or like the Great Mouse Detective video game where you get to pick up the gun that the bad guys drop and then you can carry it until you run out of bullets.

It’s fascinating watching both kids become so used to video games so quickly. I guess it’s like how easily we all played Atari games (or Commodore 64 or Texas Instruments or Apple II) and transitioned into Nintendo (or Sega or…) without batting an eye. Mr. b cut the cord off a useless old PS1 controller and now Bundle can “play”. She totally holds it facing the TV and tries to push buttons and make it do stuff. But she did that with remote controls, too, and I can remember Kirk doing the same thing with remotes. We have a baby LeapFrog that Kirk never played with that I want to hook up and see if Ronnie likes. She’s got more experience with this type of thing so I think it will make sense to her in a way her brother just never grasped at that age.

Addendum 1

Since Ronnie has been fully weaned we’ve also been trying to slowly switch her over to sippy cups. We’re not going particularly fast on that front. She is drinking juice out of a sippy cup and that’s progress. But we haven’t regularly changed any of her milk bottles to sippies. She typically has three regular bottles of milk – in the morning, before nap, before bed – and then however many others throughout the day. We need to start giving her those irregularly scheduled ones in cups. I’ve tried giving her milk with a straw in a restaurant but she just makes a mess. She enjoys drinking water with a straw though.

The only thing about the sippy cups is that she’s rather violent with them. I don’t let her wander the house with her bottle, though she can hold it herself in her carseat or in my lap, but I’ll let her walk around with her juice cup. And she swings it viciously. She’s really strong. Three Saturdays ago, Ronnie was sitting on my lap, drinking from her sippy cup. She then, with no warning, backhanded it into my face. Into my eye socket. This picture does no justice to how bad it looked or how much it hurt.



I still have a very faint spot of red where the blood pooled under my eye but it’s only visible if you’re looking for it.

Bums & Whores

Like most kids in the US, I read Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men in high school. They were fine. I mean yeah, they were obviously Good Books, deserving of the awards and lauds, but they didn’t really grab me. I remember learning in college about how the Beat Poets collectively adored John Steinbeck and I just didn’t get it. I couldn’t see an obvious disconnect so I chalked it up to a generational thing, a different era.

This weekend I finished reading Cannery Row. I loved it. When I saw we had a Steinbeck on deck for book club this year I wasn’t particularly enthused. But this book was amazing. I finally understand the Beat love. This book made me want to go back and reread Big Sur. It made me want to go and pull the more obscure authors that I never got around to reading in college. I have a Brautigan title on extended loan from a friend I plan to dig up presently. And more than that, I intend to read everything else by Steinbeck set in Monterey.

This book was hyper real. The imagery was such a beautiful ode to the mundane, like calling mess left in a frying pan “fried egg lace”. The characters were fleshed out in a way you just don’t get anymore, and yet it felt brilliantly modern while obviously set in the past. I got a better feel for life in the 30s than anything I’ve ever seen or read previously. There was a simple plot about throwing a party for a central character and yet there would be frequent interludes focusing on a different person never heard from again. And instead of being jarring and taking me out of the moment, it only made the story richer, building the world and turning the inhabitants from sketches to living, breathing, heavily drinking kooks, lay-abouts, madams, shop owners, and friends that genuinely cared for each other.

I had no idea this book was part of a loose series. A collection of titles with cross over characters, all in the same universe. It’s what Christopher Moore does and I love that. So much of my experience reading Cannery Row was a sequence of revelations. Doc invented beer milkshakes! I guess that means the creators of “Red Dwarf” must be fans. Hazel intentionally lost a fight just to see how it felt. I guess Chuck Palahniuk must be a fan. And then I found out that my father-in-law is a huge fan and that Mr. b himself loves the 1982 movie version. Yep, it’s been added to my Netflix queue.

Fun for the Whole Family

Kirk is thoroughly obsessed with Indiana Jones. He’s seen all four movies. He has a couple of Lego sets and has fished out pieces and people from unrelated sets to fill gaps in his play time requirements. He has a cheap cowboy set that came with a cloth whip that he hauls around. He’s been freaking out about it being too hot to wear long sleeves and long pants because Indy does not wear short pants and short sleeves. His father came home from his trip to LA this weekend bearing a brown felt fedora for Young Indy to wear, even if he has to acquiesce to t-shirts and shorts. And we downloaded both of the Lego Indiana Jones free game demos on our new PS3.

Mr. b found a copy of the first Lego Indy video game on sale so he picked that up a couple of weeks ago. Has it really only been a couple of weeks? I feel like we’ve had it forever. That game is awesome. Seriously. Kirk never really got into the LeapFrog and other educational baby game systems. He would enjoy watching his father occasionally play Galaga or Destroy All Humans but that’s about it. We’re not really a gaming family. The new PS3 is for media first and foremost. So getting this game was something really just for Kirk’s enjoyment. He’s learned how to use the controller and really does a pretty good job navigating the screens and can do quite a bit before asking for help. He also remembers the pathways through the levels incredibly clearly.

What I didn’t expect is that the rest of us would become so enamored with the game as well! It started out simply enough. Mr. b needed help finding his way through a new level. I found a fabulous guide online and walked him through it. Then Kirk wanted to play the same level but his father wasn’t home so I took over the main driving duties whenever he needed help. Ronnie gets so excited when she hears the start-up music and squeals in delight when she sees the disc case. She stands in front of the tv and chatters at the little Lego dudes as they smash stuff. So gradually we’ve fallen into a routine where Kirk picks the level and starts it out. Depending on which parent is at home or available, we’ll help him and eventually he’ll get bored or it will be too complicated and we’ll finish it off. And now that we have the guide to follow we’re being totally completist about collecting all the various items to unlock characters and bonus levels. And last night I found myself playing it when both the kids were in bed and Mr. b was at band practice.

Bye Bye Boobie

I guess Ronnie is officially weaned. I didn’t really notice it happening, which is probably a good thing. I didn’t need to make some big pronouncement or anything. At some point last week, not even sure which day, she had her last nigh-nigh boobie.

It’s not like she was even actively nursing. But for the last month or six weeks she’d have her bedtime bottle and then still fall asleep on the boob. It was just easier that way. And if she woke up in the middle of the night I was still bringing her into bed with me. I started to give her a bottle in the middle of the night and put her back into her crib. I mean, her father had always been doing that if he was the one the get up with her but I was the slacker hold out.

During the day Mr. b had started laying Miss Ronica down in her crib for naps before she was even fully asleep. This was radical news to me. We never were able to quite crib train her the way we did with Kirk. We couldn’t let her just “cry it out” with him in the room with her! It wouldn’t be fair to disturb his sleeping. Hence the nursing her to sleep and putting her away already passed out. But if she was able to fall asleep on her own for naptime then that meant I needed to jump on her new skill set and let her fall asleep on her own for bedtime.

It didn’t work every time but for the past couple of weeks I’ve been able to put the Bundle to bed with her still awake. She might fuss a little bit but she’d rustle about and then be asleep by the time her brother and I tiptoed in a half hour or hour later for his bedtime. But the nights it didn’t work, it really didn’t work and I would give up and stick a boob in her mouth. I noticed the last few times that nursing her felt weird. Like, physically it didn’t feel the same. Probably because there really isn’t anything in there for her to actually eat anymore! There was a great line in Kim by Rudyard Kipling. The old high caste widow was convinced that mothers shouldn’t be allowed to raise children, only grandmothers, because mothers are too close to the pain of childbirth and the pleasure of nursing. That really resonated with me. The pleasure of nursing. It really was a pleasure. I’m so glad I had the chance to experience that fully. But it was time to end it.

So now I have to really start watching what I eat. It would be bad to unconsciously keep ingesting nursing calories when I clearly no longer need them.

You Can Help

My mom was first diagnosed with MS in 1986. I was 11. I grew up knowing that at any time, with no waning whatsoever, she could suddenly be struck blind or become paralyze and *this time*, it might be permanent. So far, she’s one of the lucky ones. She hasn’t had an exacerbation in many years. Her medication keeps things under control and she rarely needs to use a cane to walk, though she wears an ankle brace every day. Research into the disease has come a long way. But there’s still no cure and there’s still much that isn’t understood. You can help. Please donate to the MS Society to support me in the walk this coming Sunday. I truly appreciate any help you feel willing to give.

Please consider a pledge to create a world free of multiple sclerosis and support me during Walk MS: Cambridge Walk 2010. MS stops people from moving. The National MS Society exists to make sure it doesn’t. Please help by making a donation — large or small — to move closer to a cure for MS. You can also join me on the day of the event. Become a participant and side by side we will move together to raise funds that make a difference.
Whatever you can give will help. I greatly appreciate your support and will keep you posted on my progress. Imagine a world free of multiple sclerosis. We’re almost there.

Click here to visit my personal page and make a secure, online donation.

http://main.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR?px=3531245&pg=personal&fr_id=13782

Bring out cher dead!

I really thought that when I stopped pumping at work that my reading habit would go down. But I seem to be ahead of my pace for even last year’s record haul. I just started title #33 this morning, which is exactly half of my total last year. And, true to form, I totally fell down on book reviews, last discussing a single volume over twenty titles ago.

My book club selection for this month was Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. I haven’t read anything of hers before but I have read nearly all of her husband’s books – my favorite travel writer Tony Horwitz. I hadn’t put together that she was *that* Geraldine until I read the dedication at the start of her book! I really enjoyed her writing style and I think I’ll read more of her books.

This book was historical fiction dealing with the imagined events in a real village in England, Eyam, that really did close its own borders in 1665-1666 to try to contain an outbreak of the Plague. The story follows a young woman, Anna, as she grows as a result of this crucible of change. I found it fabulous. Oh, I couldn’t take it out of the house to read in public until I was well over halfway through because I knew I would be bawling. But it was wonderful.

The book club ladies universally enjoyed the book as well except for the last chapter and the epilogue. I found the location of the epilogue to be unsurprising, knowing the background of the author. There was one element that was perhaps a bit deus ex machina, but not so much that it took me out of the story. In fact, there was a nice bit of symmetry with the protagonist’s ending as compared to Anna’s beginning. The last chapter didn’t bother me either. I was expecting the pat happy ending we seemed to be getting – and I would have been very fine with that! – so I was completely blindsided by the turn things took. In a good way. It perhaps retroactively altered my opinion of another character but not so much that I was disgusted by wasted time or anything of the sort.

The other complaint I’ve read is that the book is anachronistic. I actually found it to be extremely well researched and accurate. At least according to my memory of my college course on women’s life in Medieval Europe! Anna had some very modern ideas and thoughts and yet to me they seemed to follow naturally based on her experiences and observations. This was, after all, a time of great changes in philosophy and politics. Nature gained popularity over Fate as Science started to gain over Religion. I found it to be a very thoughtful way to explore that paradigm shift in a manner that made such a heady topic accessible to the average reader.

Hear Me Moan

Extreme TMI and Whining Warning: Continue Reading At Your Own Peril



This has been a very bad week for belsum’s nethers. It started off with just a bump. I found a bump on my delicate girl parts last week. Figured it was just a zit. Last weekend was the big Ronnie’s Naming Ceremony weekend with my in-laws flying up from Texas and lots of evening fires in our backyard with family and good friends. So I figured if the bump wasn’t gone by Monday, I’d go have it checked out just to be sure. Got the results yesterday from the culture they took: staph. Great. But it so far doesn’t seem to be as virulent as the staph infections Mr. b was dealing with in succession a few years ago. They just prescribed me a topical ointment to apply to the affected area. So far so good.

Monday evening I started feeling all rumbly in my tumbly. Lord knows I ate like a madwoman during all the festivities of the weekend so I didn’t give it much thought. I slept fitfully when I went to bed and then woke up about 1:30 am and spent the next two hours in the bathroom. And then made return trips at far too frequent intervals. Obviously frequent wiping, causing chafing and chapping, is just the thing to help prevent the spread of a staph infection! Oh wait, no it’s not. I was completely wrecked all day Tuesday and still extremely weak Wednesday. Started to come out of it Thursday but still tired. And yeah, when you’re averaging 900 calories on top of violently excreting every shred of food from your bowels, that’s gonna take its toll.

I really thought that was the end of it. But instead…my period has come back. For the first time since I got knocked up with Ronnie I’m menstruating. I spotted a little bit when I went on the nursing pill. And there was the lochia flow after giving birth. But those don’t count. This is actual monthly visitor action. It started out spotty on Monday but was really dark. Like my body was cleaning everything out after not being used for a long time. Which, come to think of it, was probably exactly what was happening. But by yesterday the flow became normal. Everything else? Is so not what I’m used to. Granted I’m out of practice. But I never had bloating this bad. I never had PMS this harsh. I was never ready to call it a sick day just for my stupid period before. And I’m just ridiculous amounts of uncomfortable. Food makes me ill. I’m scared to frickin’ fart. Nothing I’ve tried has brought me any relief. This had better just be part of the system overload of all this happening at once. As my friend put it, a bug sneaking in while PMS had my shields down. I just don’t know how I’m going to adapt if this will be my new monthly reality. Oh, I know there are plenty of women out there that are used to big-time horrible symptoms. But I never used to be one of them. Then again, I do remember a slight worsening after I had Kirk. That’s when the day of icky poo as a late PMS indicator started happening. Well great. So I guess this is the thanks I get for having another baby. It’s like it’s exponentially getting more extreme. Blerg.

Blanket

When Kirk was a baby he got a lot of blankets. Hospital blankets, receiving blankets, homemade blankets, store-bought blankets, flannel, fleece, jersey, cotton, quilted, doubled, lined, trimmed, he must have had at least a dozen. When he was about a year old he picked out a favorite. It was a cream colored blanket with a satin back, satin border, and deeply plush front. There was a satin panel on the front in the center of the plush with an embroidered Winnie the Pooh. He carried it around everywhere. It was about that time that he stopped going to Auntie Daycare and started going to K’s house. So we went to the store and bought a duplicate of that blankie. It seemed smart to have a second one to leave at K’s house rather than cart the same one back and forth every day, risking leaving it there overnight or, gods forbid, over the weekend.

Then Kirk’s cousin visited. He declared that Kirk’s official blankie of choice was instead a blue one, matching the color of his own Uh-Oh (a cotton Sleep-Sack) that he carried around everywhere. This blankie was similar in style to the cream colored Pooh one, satin backing and trim with a velveteen plush front, but without the center embroidery. And this one was a shower gift with no receipt so we had no way of knowing where it came from in order to purchase a duplicate.

Flash forward to today. Ronnie has just three blankies, one fleece and two handmade and flannel. That’s plenty and lord knows we don’t have space to store any others. She’s also recently chosen her official favorite. The same cream Pooh blanket of her brother’s! She can’t tell a difference between the two so far – one is noticeably more worn than the other – but she carries one or the other around often. When she gets tired she’ll lay her head down on it in the middle of the floor. She cuddles with it while fighting sleep in my lap at night. She’s starting to hold onto it when she stands up in her crib, crying to be picked up.

Mr. b wants to get her her own blanket. I’m worried if he buys something similar she might not like it as well. But is it bad for your child’s lovey object to be essentially a hand-me-down? Kirk wants to “dial” it (don’t try to tell him it’s actually “dye” because he ain’t buying that line) purple. I’m totally down with purchasing some Rit and coloring it lavender so it’s “new” to Ronnie. But is it bad to not get one of her own? To let her carry around her brother’s cast-off?

Noise Makers

Ronnie’s been a complete pain in the ass the last couple weeks. She’s super hard to put to bed at night. She wakes up the second you lay her in her crib and stares up at you in dismay and then starts to wah. She’s been clingy and whiny for her father during the day. When I get home from work she demands my attention non-stop. I spend more time sitting on the floor than on the furniture. She doesn’t necessarily even need me to pay attention to her, just be down there so that she can throw herself at me in-between menacing. She rips toys off the white shelf in the corner and flings them everywhere. She pulls books out of the tv consol drawer and destroys them. She climbs up on the couch and throws all the pillows off. She tears great hunks of fur off the cats. She is a total menace.

But she’s also frickin’ smart and has been cataloguing everything in that little developing brain of hers. She points and says, “This” nearly constantly. Half the time I don’t know which this she even means. I’ve taken to keeping a running commentary while I’m holding her so that whichever this she’s interested in will hopefully be covered. I remember Kirk asking, “What’s that” while pointing so I guess it’s a pretty common phase for babies to go through.

Ronnie’s got another noise that she makes when she’s not asking, “This.” I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s like a Spanish rolled r but it’s a th sound instead. It’s pretty hard to duplicate. I don’t know of any language that actually uses that phoneme. It took me a while to realize which sound was being trilled. I experimented with tongue placement at the back of teeth, top of palate, and front of palate before I figured it out. It doesn’t sound quite the same way when I do it as when she does but I think it’s because I have more and larger teeth. Hers sounds more like the brrrrr you make when you make the motor boat noise with your lips – only no vocalization, air flow only. Kirk had a repeat noise, too, but his was definitely a vocalization. I guess I’d transliterate it as “nngink!” and he repeated it frequently enough that we still remember it. Interesting that both of their noises incorporated sounds not found in English.

Obligatory Shakespeare "Rose" Quote

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about names as I’ve been getting everything in order for Ronnie’s upcoming naming ceremony. Specifically, how pet names and nicknames change. I find it amusing that the diminutive form of Kirk’s name, Kirkie, is actually longer. And yet it’s obviously the little kid version. Going with Ronnie for Veronica is more of a true nickname than an actual diminutive but we could have chosen V or Vera or Nic or any of a good half dozen other possibilities. We always knew that Ronnie would be the one we’d use.

But what about Bundle? I find that I’ve been using it less and less in public. I used to refer to her as Bundle almost exclusively and now I rarely even use it at home as a title. I’ll ask her “How’s my sweet bundle” but that’s not the same. Kirk still calls his sister Bundle and I’ve noticed that grandparents and family friends do as well. But none of them ever called Kirk Peepers Pie. And for the first…year or so of his life he was nearly exclusively Peepers Pie to both Mr. b and I. But did we call him that outside of the home? I guess we must not have. We used “Pie” as shorthand for babies his same age and knew if one said, “I saw a pie at the store” that it meant there was a baby the same current size as our little Pie Man. I still sometimes call Kirk Kirkie Pie but it’s definitely less common. When did it stop? I know I call him Buddy or Honey or Sweetheart more frequently than Pie now.

Hunny is Mr. b though. I mentally see and hear the difference in how I use that particular pet name.

There’s a lot of power in names. I like the old traditions of having a temporary name and then a young child earning their name once they got older. Partly that was to deal with high infant mortality rates. But there’s something compelling about the idea that a child has lived long enough to earn their place in the universe. To be recognized as an independent being and not just a baby attached to her mother. I think that’s why I waited until both my children were a year old to have their namings take place. Sure, they already had those names on their birth certificates but the ceremony is a chance to present them to the community of human beings they live amongst. To share their existence with the rest of us and acknowledge that someday they’ll be out there with their place confirmed.

What's next? Trees?

Ronnie is climbing the furniture. Literally. It happened quite suddenly to my mind. I was home sick last Tuesday and not being particularly observant of either of the kids and I realized that she was hauling herself up onto the couch. She seems to do better in the corner of the sectional, probably because she can get a better grip having an angle instead of a straight line. She has been quicker and quicker and has been trying – so far unsuccessfully – to climb the ottoman as well.

Last Monday was her One Year Well Baby (90% height! 85% weight!) and Doc B warned us she would be a climber if she was as much of a menace as we were describing. I just didn’t expect his prediction to come true the very next day.