Triticum Turgidum

Too Cute

2009-01-03T23:41:00.003-06:00

All Beatles fans who also happen to be breeders should be alerted to the existence of these tees, available (on sale!) at chasing-fireflies.com:

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T08:47:00.005-06:00

It's a banner year for the Wheat household. We found out yesterday that the IVF worked. It freaking WORKED. The RE gave us a 10-15% chance of success, and we snagged the brass ring. What's more, the sonogram showed not one but TWO little sacs, and TWO little heartbeats. Sac 1 is measuring right on target. Sac 2 is lagging about a week behind, so the docs warned us that it could be "resorbed" by my body. We'll know more at the 8-week sono, scheduled for December 10.

I can't begin to tell you how lucky I feel. As I posted months ago, I was originally given a 5% chance of ever having another child from my own eggs. 2008 brought us two unsuccessful IUIs and one unsuccessful IVF. This second IVF was our last attempt. I was looking forward to buying myself a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue as a consolation prize. Then I got the two blue lines and refused to believe my good fortune until yesterday's 6-week sono proved it. We're not out of the woods yet, obviously, but I'm hopeful, optimistic, and above all, very, VERY thankful. I hope you too find reason for deep, heartfelt thanks this year.

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-31T03:07:00.011-05:00

So!! It's been ages since I last posted because I've been pre-occupied with fertility matters again. I'm doing my second and final round of IVF. Yesterday they transferred four embryos--four!--because that's all we had and because all four are of lousy quality. Apparently for people like me whose eggs mill around their ovaries using canes and walkers (or as my friend M suggested, Jazzy power chairs, which look like tiny riding lawnmowers, see above), transferring four embryos doesn't raise the risk of us becoming Jon and Kate plus Eight; rather, it maximizes the likelihood that even one will take, which my doc says is about 10-15%. So we're really just doing this to put it past us and get on with life. Thank heaven Illinois is one of only nine states that require insurers to cover infertility treatment. Anyway, here's the gross, Halloween-relevant part--ready for it? After the transfer today I felt all achy and tired and all-around lousy. I chalked it up to the progesterone they have me taking at night. Then I woke in the middle of the night and realized I'd contracted a cold: sore throat, stuffy nose, shivers, headache behind the eyeballs. When the reproductive endocrinologist transferred the embryos today, he was whispering during the procedure. We asked if he was okay, and he said he had laryngitis and felt awful; he would have stayed home except for his commitment to complete my procedure. As far as I know, a cold needs a few days to germinate. Which means I probably contracted my cold from him before he even knew he had a cold, back on Monday when he did the egg retrieval. Since the egg retrieval requires the doctor to sit at the business end of the reproductive system and stick needles through the walls of the vagina and suck out the eggs from each follicle, it's likely that I contracted his cold through my vagina. He sneezed and I contracted his cold through my vagina. Bghggghhlllgghharghhhllgghhhaaargh! **SHUDDER** Can you think of anything grosser for Halloween? I can't. Now go eat some candy (or--heh heh--some eggs).

p.s. I realize this makes two vagina-themed posts in a row. Sorry. Next time I post I'll give equal time to the penis. Election day is coming up so there will be plenty of opportunities to acknowledge the penis.

Mmmm! Are those... tomatoes?

2008-09-28T17:10:00.003-05:00

Beans 'n' Franks are for feebs. Whenever I'm invited to a potluck, I bring Peas 'n' Vaginas.

September 24, 2008

2008-09-24T12:10:00.004-05:00

It's officially one year until I begin reeking.

Better start stocking up on perfume now.

Expired.

2008-08-23T18:15:00.006-05:00

Am I the only one who hates moving so much that she can't be bothered to clean out the cupboards before packing everything away? I have been known to move expired items.

I've moved three times in the past 12 years. Today I discovered just how extreme my laziness can get.

Observe:

The following item was found in my cupboard today at 18:00 hours:

At 18:02, the following information was noted:

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new record.

Ave Satani Bambini

2008-08-01T21:00:00.005-05:00

I recently downloaded an iTunes collection of classic horror film soundtrack songs (Halloween and fall weather can't come a moment too soon), and the theme song from The Omen (yes, it's actually called "Ave Satani") was part of the collection. Am I bad mother if I admit that "Ave Satani" was the first song that came to mind when I saw this picture?

Rabbit Rabbit

2008-08-01T10:20:00.006-05:00

When I was growing up, my mother told me that if I said "rabbit, rabbit" first thing upon awakening at the start of a new month, I'd have good luck for the entire month. Even better, if I said it upon awakening at the start of a new year, I'd have good luck for the entire year. Thus was born my addiction to the monthly challenge of remembering to say rabbit rabbit before any other thought slips from my sleep-addled brain and out through my mouth.

I have good company in my friend M over at c'est chic. She has the same addiction, and every month she posts a picture of a rabbit on her blog. Unfortunately, by the time I read her blog I've already blown it. My hit rate across the span of a year is usually about 33%. What's the first thing I say during the months I fail to say rabbit rabbit? Usually "Goddammit Cowgirl, it's 5:00, can't you wait?" I sincerely hope the love I get from my dog makes up for all the luck she's lost me.

It Didn't Work

2008-07-14T09:51:00.007-05:00

Bummer.

I've been on heavy doses of different hormones for 12 weeks straight. For the IUI, I did 2 weeks on Bravelle, then 2 on Prometrium and Ovidrel; then I immediately went into the IVF with 3 weeks on birth control pills, 2 1/2 weeks on Bravelle, Menopur, and Lupron, and 2 1/2 on Prometrium and Ovidrel.

I'm sure the effect of the hormones is reponsible for the scary thoughts and feelings I've been having. It's more than just disappointment over not being able to get pregnant. I'm holding out hope that these thoughts and feelings go away once the hormones are out of my system, without further need for chemical intervention. I miss my old self, and I think Mini-Wheat and Mr. Wheat do too.

And Now for Something Lighter (and Crunchier)

2008-07-11T12:22:00.012-05:00

In the wee hours of an insomniac morning I wandered over to Jonniker's blog and read a thread about maggots, which led--once I'd fallen back asleep--to a dream that they were crawling out of a boil on my face. Which led--perhaps because my mouth is on my face--to an intense desire to learn about the flavors of different bugs. Here's what I found, courtesy of a report from the University of Nebraska:

Grasshoppers, termites and grubs are not typical American cuisine, but many cultures eat insects with great relish. What do bugs taste like? Here is a sampling...

--Raw termites taste like pineapple and cooked termites have a delicate, vegetable flavor.

--Grubs (which are larvae) of palm weevils taste like beef bone marrow.

--Fried agave worms (canned in Mexico) taste like sunflower seeds.

--Diving beetles (available in Chinatown in San Francisco) taste something like clams.

--Fried grasshoppers taste like sardines.

--French-fried ants (imported from Colombia) taste like beef jerky.

--A praying mantis, fried over an open fire, tastes like shrimp and raw mushrooms.

--Fried wax moth larvae taste like corn puffs or potato chips.

--Fried spiders taste like nuts.

--Fried baby bees taste like smoked fish or oysters.

Unappetizing? Consider that honey, a food that is appropriate in our culture, has been swallowed and regurgitated hundreds of times by honey bees. Source: Invisible Bugs and Other Creepy Creatures That Live With You.

Hungry? Here's a list of 32 edible insects you can buy online. Amazon.com carries Bacon & Cheddar Cheese Flavored Crickets. In the spirit of snappy commercialism, they're called Crick-ettes. (Crick-ettes also come in Salt 'n' Vinegar and Sour Cream & Onion flavors.) You can also buy Larvets and Roasted Pregnant Crickets and Smokey BBQ Scorpions.

At a site called Candy Favorites, you can buy Amber InsectNside Toffee Candy, Butterfly Candy, Cricket Lick-It Lollipops, and, once again, Larvets, here in "tasty Mexican Spice flavor." You are enthusiastically advised to note that "Larvets are now in a larger serving size!" ----SO! Speaking of pregnant crickets, I took a pregnancy test yesterday and it came up very faintly positive due to the residual hcg in my system. I'm taking another tomorrow to see if the line is any darker, which would suggest that my body is making its own hcg. At this point I suspect I'm not pregnant, for several reasons, one of which is the fact that I've seen all these images of edible insects, including the locust tacos (pictured), and haven't once had the urge to throw up.

Happy Independence Day!

2008-07-04T16:55:00.003-05:00

...from one who knows from independence.

Transfer

2008-07-01T15:57:00.006-05:00

So, those two embryos? They were graded on a scale of 0-4, 4 being perfect and rare, 3 being very good, 2 being average, 1 being poor, and 0 being "is this human?".

The better of my embryos merited a grade of 2, with 7 cells and only a small amount of fragmentation. (Fragmentation happens when the cells in the embryo eject undesirable material.) This embryo is my C Student. S/he has potential, but isn't quite there:

The other one, with only 4 cells and lots of fragmentation, didn't receive a grade. Or maybe it did, but the fertility team made the merciful decision not to tell me. I think of this embryo as my Bad Seed:

They assured me that embryo quality isn't an indicator of genetic normalcy, and that lots of perfect, beautiful children are born from meh embryos, which is why they transferred both. I'm praying that one of them takes, and although I expect it to be the C Student, I'm kind of pulling for the Bad Seed. Doesn't everybody love a rags-to-riches story?

On the Lighter Side...

2008-06-30T11:29:00.003-05:00

please watch this. It's only about 4 minutes long. I promise it'll be worth your time. Thanks to MetroDad for leading me to it.

Fertilization

2008-06-29T09:35:00.002-05:00

The IVF clinic nurse called this morning to say that of our 7 retrieved eggs, only 2 fertilized. They were 2 of the 3 that got the ICSI treatment; the 3rd was damaged in the process. It amazes me that the other 4 eggs, surrounded by sperm, still failed to fertilize. It's even more amazing that fertilization occurs at all in the natural world. I looked at Mini-Wheat this morning and thought, You are so improbable, and yet you are a fact. Or as The Onion put it in one of their headlines, Miracle of Birth Occurs for 83 Billionth Time. The fact that it happens so much doesn't make it any less of a miracle.

Originally they weren't going to do ICSI at all because my ER doesn't ordinarily do it on people who've successfully conceived (naturally) in the past. Also, and this is my cynical side speaking, he knows my insurance covers up to 4 cycles of IVF, so he might have just figured we'd try ICSI the next time around if non-ICSI fertilization didn't work this time. My friend Michelle is the one who urged me to ask for ICSI, and I'm so glad she did. The biologist told me that ICSI can damage eggs, so if it's not indicated they usually prefer to go the non-ICSI route -- assuming they have reason to believe fertilization can take place that way. So we split the difference, and now, thanks to ICSI, we've got two.

Please keep your fingers crossed for my two little embryos. They've got two more days to grow and develop before transfer, and there are no guarantees that they'll make it. But heck, at least I've got two, which is twice as many as one, and infinitely more than zero.

Egg Retrieval

2008-06-28T16:04:00.004-05:00

We managed to find friends (generous, wonderful friends) to stay at our house with Mini-Wheat last night, and I did the egg transfer this morning. I had a wonderful intake nurse: she covered me with pre-heated blankets and spoke in soothing tones. The anesthesiologist, on the other hand, was curt and humorless. When they strapped my legs into the stirrups I said I felt like I was in a Terry Gilliam movie (futuristic dystopia with Medieval-looking technology), and the best he could do was smirk. Fortunately he did his job and the procedure was quick and painless.

Now, though: cramp ci-tay. They gave me Darvocet, and I got the obligatory "use it only if you need it" speech. Define need, please. I've just received prescription painkillers legally; you think I'm not going to use them?

So what really matters, and it's good news: I only had 8 follicles, and the reproductive endocrinologist was able to get 7 eggs out of them. It could have been a lot worse. I'll find out tomorrow how many fertilized.

The bad news is, Mr. Wheat's sperm count just keeps dropping (only 2 mil today, normal is 20 mil) so we decided in consultation with the biologist to do TBS (to-be-sure) ICSI (don't ask me what ICSI stands for -- basically it means injecting a sperm right into the egg), meaning they'll try to fertilize 4 of the 7 naturally and do ICSI on the remaining 3. (They originally weren't going to do ICSI at all because we had a natural conception with Mini-Wheat.) Mr. Wheat and I were trying to figure out what we were doing 3 months ago when those sperm cells were developing, and we realized it was around the time of our trip to Australia. Nothing like 36 hours of straight cattle-car travel to stress a person out. Mr. Wheat is the happy-go-lucky type, but we all show our stress somewhere (stomach ulcers, back injuries, etc.). Apparently his stress-expression locale is his bag. Poor guy.

Sono #5

2008-06-26T11:29:00.002-05:00

This is it -- I'll be doing my trigger shot this afternoon for a Saturday retrieval. I've got a grand total of 8 follicles, some bigger than others, so we'll see how many eggs I get.

The nurse explained that I'd be wheeled into the OR for retrieval, and then Mr. Wheat would make his "donation." I said, "Wait a minute -- we have to bring her with us" (indicating Mini-Wheat). The procedure is not occurring locally; we have to drive to a city almost 2 hours away, so the plan all along has been to bring Mini-Wheat and have Mr. Wheat watch her while I'm under.

The nurse goes, "Oh. Hm. That could be a problem." The problem being, who will watch Mini-Wheat while Mr. Wheat proceeds to the back room, donation vial in hand, to groom his poodle?

I can't quite believe they haven't run into this problem before, being a fertility clinic and all, but who knows? The nurse also explained that it's a bit touchy bringing a toddler to a fertility clinic, because the presence of children in the waiting room can be heartbreaking for people who haven't been able to have them. The prospect of this makes me feel like a worm, so now I'm exploring possibilities for leaving Mini-Wheat here with friends Friday night so we can make our trip sans toddler.

We'll figure it out. Whatever happens, it'll be an adventure. At least Mr. Wheat gets an orgasm out of it.

Sono #4

2008-06-25T13:34:00.006-05:00

Can you believe it? Still hanging on here. No hcg shot tonight; they want me to take stims for yet another day. It's been 14 days. I'm one Slooooooow Responder. It looks like, if I'm lucky, there will be 7 follicles, but some are more mature than others, so it's uncertain how many eggs they will yield. I'm at the point where I'll be thrilled if there's even one decent egg that fertilizes and becomes an embryo. I'm not so keen on having triplets anyway. :-)

So!--off to the pharmacy to pick up yet more fertility drugs! *she says brightly*

Sono #3

2008-06-23T09:53:00.003-05:00

Well, I certainly didn't see this coming. My follicles are still developing, albeit slowly. The nurse said, "Things are getting urgent because we're coming up on shut-down." I'm thinking, "Shut-down, like, when you shut down my ovaries?" No. It turns out she means the period in the year when the fertility clinic shuts down and everyone goes on vacation. She said she'd talk to the reproductive endocrinologist today to figure out "what we're going to do." I said, "Didn't you build in a cushion of time in case my cycle went long?" and she said, "Yes, but you've already passed it."

If they cancel my cycle -- after 5 weeks on hormones of one kind or another -- I don't know what I'll do. It just seems so unfair: they're the ones who set up this schedule. I emailed the RE himself to implore him not to cancel my cycle. Please keep your fingers crossed for me.

UPDATE: Lucky me, the nurse got back to say they would keep the clinic open a few extra days to complete my cycle! I have one more sono on Wednesday; they anticipate having me take the hcg shot that night, so retrieval would be scheduled for Friday, with transfer (assuming they get any eggs, and at least one of them fertilizes) for Monday. It's good to still have some hope!

Sono #2

2008-06-21T16:12:00.002-05:00

It looks like things are progressing as they should, but not for all of my follicles. What started out as 7 follicles with promise has become 5 that have grown as expected, to 10x13ish mm; the remaining 2 are itty-bitty dwarf follicles. Estradiol has increased from 90 to 283, which is good. On the advice of my friend Meg, I'm praying to St. Gerard (patron saint of women looking to get knocked up) that all 5 follicles continue to grow and yield eggs. Next sono Monday morning at 7:00 sharp (ugh). :-)

Sono #1

2008-06-18T10:16:00.003-05:00

First sono after starting injectibles. I have 2 follicles on the right and 5 on the left. Not a good response, but there is still hope, as well as time, according to the fertility nurse. They're consulting with the reproductive endocrinologist today to decide how to adjust my protocol. It's still possible that they could cancel the cycle; a lot is still up in the air.

One of my colleagues studies uncertainty management in healthcare contexts. I think I'll head up to his office for some advice. :-)

I See a Bad Moon Rising

2008-06-16T10:18:00.011-05:00

What was I thinking, visiting my in-laws the weekend I started taking my heavy-duty fertility drugs? Dr. Jekyll reigned until about two hours into our visit; then Mr. Hyde booted him in the ass and seized the helm.

The drug information leaflets mentioned "minor discomfort." Physical, I assumed. Wrong. Someone needs to contact the makers of Bravelle, Menopur, and Lupron to tell them to update their list of side effects to include the following:

- Intense irritation at one's mother-in-law, father-in-law, and both sisters-in-law

- A tendency to bark out -- rather than gently suggest -- directives to one's 2-year-old daughter and her 2-year-old and 5-year-old cousins, mainly because one's mother-in-law wants to be liked so badly by them that she can't f***ing say no

- The disappearance of one's BIS (behavioral inhibition system), resulting in excessive and surprisingly unwelcome candor (e.g., "Ray, in one year you'll be 60 and she'll be 30. Will you give yourself permission to stop rescuing her then?")

- Spaciness and disorientation, resulting in the missing of two freeway exits and the running of one red light

- Exhaustion and a desire to sleep for eons

- An overall feeling of social disconnection, resulting in a tape-loop internal monologue consisting chiefly of "Who are these people?"

- A tic-like impulse to bitch sanctimoniously to one's husband about his family for the entire four-hour drive home, all the while knowing that one's own behavior was far more irritating than anyone else's behavior

Oh, my friends. When this is over, if I am not pregnant, I'm running straight to my doctor and demanding a scrip for antidepressants. I'm tired of being a lycanthrope (and misanthrope), and Mr. Wheat wants his wife back.

My reproductive endocrinologist mentioned the power of positive thinking, which annoys me because that kind of Pollyanna mindset justifies blaming the victim -- so all those women who don't get pregnant through IVF should be disappointed in themselves for not thinking positively enough? Come ON -- but some tiny part of me believes that positive thinking may increase my chances just a little, and since I'm pretty sure I don't want to go through this a second time, I did the best I know to do: I invested in comedy. Books and CDs. Right now I'm listening to the Flight of the Conchords CD, and let me tell you, it's taking the edge off. It's not Valium, but I'll take any relief I can get.

For those who are interested: The protocol has been 20 units of Lupron morning and evening, along with 300 units of Bravelle in the morning and 300 units of Menopur in the evening. Injections go in the fat pad on my belly. I don't mind shots, so they're the least of my trauma. It's being pickled in hormones I don't like. The hormones (those listed above plus the birth control pills they had me on for a month before all of this) have thrown off my thyroid levels, so they keep seesawing, and they also seem to have messed with my immune system, because I have contracted yet another cold. (This may be why the thyroid levels are messed up too, because my thyroid dysfunction is the result of an autoimmune disease.) On the up side, it's an interesting way to learn about one's body. Apparently, hormones affect everything.

It's time to bite the bullet...

2008-06-07T11:27:00.002-05:00

...and invest in a bed. The kid's growth rate is clearly out of control.

How to Love Thy Brother

2008-05-30T13:11:00.004-05:00

1) Let him visit, dressed in nothing but a beige prison jumpsuit and black combat boots, because nothing else fits his 6'6", 400-lb frame, and take him and his unshowered body and his shaved head out to a Midwestern family restaurant with your elderly dad and your little girl, and refuse to feel embarrassed when everyone stares at you -- indeed, allow yourself to feel amused and a little proud in an I-am-in-a-David-Lynch-film-what's-your-excuse sort of way -- and treat him to breakfast.

2) Give in to his heartfelt "Please" and allow him to have one more glass of whiskey the night before when it's clear that half a bottle won't be enough to put him to sleep. Resolve to save the intervention for later.

3) Let him hold and play with your baby daughter, and feel grateful that all he does is laugh when she pokes him in the face.

4) After he returns home, let him call you at 6:00am, drunk after an all-night bender (his, not yours), and offer encouragement that he is not stupid, that his life is valuable, that he is immensely talented, and that better times are definitely coming. Repeat weekly for a period of six months.

5) Forgive him for being the monster under the bed of your childhood, and recognize that in spite of all the parental attention he commanded, you ended up the lucky one.

IVF: Let the Fun Begin

2008-05-14T08:38:00.007-05:00

So, last month I did this IUI cycle with Bravelle, which produced 2 follicles. Last Wednesday I found out I was pregnant, and could not believe it. So easy? Alas, no. Over the weekend, with G away and Mini-Wheat sick, I developed very suddenly some pretty severe flu symptoms including fever (103) and aches that felt as though my joints were filled with ground glass. I lamented getting the flu on the perfume board I frequent and was quickly corrected by a couple of cranks who informed me that I couldn't possibly have the flu, because the flu is too severe to allow an upright posture such as that needed to type on a keyboard. What these don't-quit-your-day-job medical intuitives didn't know was that I was also in the early stages of a miscarriage, and received confirmation of same from my docs that afternoon. So it was a weekend of hurry up and wait, and my miscarriage (really, a late period -- I wouldn't insult anyone who's gone through an advanced-stage miscarriage by claiming my experience is anything like theirs) started up on Sunday night. And really, it was just like a late period, but still: I'm sad.

So! Here we are, with a damned rotten cold, waiting to start our first, and we hope only, IVF cycle. Tonight I start the birth control pills. After 3 weeks or so, I start the fertility drugs. They're putting me on their most aggressive protocol. I'm nervous as hell about it, which is why I feel the need to document the experience here. I don't intend to turn this into a fertility blog, but some experiences you just have to share. I feel the need for witnesses, and for some kind of documentation so in the future, if I'm tempted to try it again, I can look back and decide if it's really wise given my subjective experience with the whole process.

The best part of the whole thing? I left the pharmacy with three bags filled with drugs. Those bags you see in the picture? They're the size of grocery bags. One woman in the pharmacy waiting area gaped at me on the way out. I told her, "This is what you need to make a baby the artificial way. If I were doing it the old-fashioned way, these bags would be filled with candles, CDs, and wine."

I feel like a prize chicken

2008-04-20T10:58:00.010-05:00

So--for the past two weeks I've been taking a medication called Bravelle, which is supposed to improve the quality and quantity of my craptastic eggs.

By "taking" I mean injecting into my stomach. Each time I do this I have to erase from my mind the fact that the stuff is made from urine, or I'd never be able to push that plunger all the way in. (Urine... plunger... STOP.) *shakes it off*

The weirdest side effect is that my appetite has skyrocketed. I'm eating about twice as much as I normally eat and craving foods with lots of protein and fat. The other day I ate an entire block of tofu -- plain. (I'm like a vegan Rosemary in Rosemary's Baby.) And yes, I have gained weight. I'm trying to ignore this because it's only 5 lbs and I know it's temporary, but it does create a mild sense of panic because it's the result of The Appetite That Will Not Be Denied. I don't have this appetite, it has me. I'm just its host.

One of the many fertility websites I visit featured a thread called "What was your diet like during the cycle that you got pregnant?" In answer, about eight women all wrote the same thing: "It was my 6th IVF cycle, and I said to hell with low fat, and ate nothing but chicken and hamburger and cheese and eggs and nuts, and whaddya know, I produced 20 eggs and 10 of them fertilized and now I have triplets."

Stories like this, paired with my own experience craving the kind of foods that they pump into livestock to promote tissue growth, remind me that I am an animal, and my physicians aren't so much treating me as they are farming me.

Fortunately, tomorrow they'll induce ovulation and I can knock off the Bravelle and replace it in another week with Prometrium, which is debilitatingly constipating. Please excuse me if I don't post again until then; I plan to spend the next week pooping.

And now for something lighter...

2008-03-27T20:06:00.009-05:00

Photos from our trip to Melbourne!

I love Australians, but I can't claim to understand them. Allow me to illustrate:

For all their quirks, I can't help but admire their devotion to shopping, as embodied by this granite changepurse announcing entry to the city's shopping district:

Oddly enough, I didn't buy anything. Well, except a hip blue oxford shirt that looks like a Maoist uniform with puffed sleeves. The Asian influence is big in fashion there.

Oh--and the moon is upside down. Crazy. And--AND!--Maltesers are way better than Whoppers (the candy, not the hamburger).

The first thing Greg did when we got there was flush the toilet to observe the coriolis effect. The man likes his wine.

Barren

2008-03-08T09:42:00.003-06:00

Is it possible to grieve the loss of someone you've never met?

G and I have been actively trying to conceive our second child for 8 months. In February I battled with my insurance company to get them to cover infertility services, and I'm still astonished that I won: they agreed to start coverage March 1 instead of making me wait until September 1.

We had already paid for some tests out of pocket. There are problems on both sides. The biggest problem is that my test for anti-mullerian hormone (AMH), the gold standard indicator of ovarian reserve, came back almost undetectably low. It's supposed to measure both quantity and quality of eggs. The weird thing is, my cycles have been normal. Usually women going into premature ovarian failure have wonky cycles. So my fertility docs think it might be an indicator of quality for me; they're guessing that my Graves' Disease accelerated the aging of my eggs, so I keep ovulating but every one is a blooper. They said that they don't see AMH levels this low in 38-year-olds... it's as though I have the eggs of a 45-year-old.

They gently delivered the estimation of a 5% chance of conception, even with aggressive treatment (in-vitro fertilization). We're going ahead with it not because I think it'll work, but because now my insurance will cover it and I want to be able to look back and say I did everything in my power.

Off to kiss my daughter. I knew I was lucky to have her, but that was all intellectual before. Now it's in my gut. I'm afraid I'll become overprotective. She's been such a gift. Still, I keep thinking about the one I will never have, and... I'm sad.

Happy 2nd Birthday Cautious Girl!

2008-02-25T19:28:00.006-06:00

How many toddlers approach a spoonful of ice cream like it has a stinger? I hope she's as cautious with boys, drugs, and other thrills when she hits adolescence.

Happy Birthday Flea!!

Duet

2008-01-25T10:49:00.000-06:00

Restraint Part Deux

2008-01-15T13:04:00.000-06:00

Okay, you do know that the kind of restraint I was talking about below is the kind that involves holding off saying/doing/ingesting/smoking something that could hurt you or your loved ones, right? It's the kind driven by respect for the power of your own words and deeds over others, and as such it reflects a sense of responsibility and good will.

I was NOT talking about the kind of restraint driven by fear of being true to yourself lest others reject you. Unfortunately I display that kind of restraint in abundance. I could go on and on about why--family history, brain chemistry--but the end result is the same: I tend to shut up about my own personal beliefs when interacting with people whose views diverge from mine, especially moral views. I am a Libran peacekeeper and a natural mirrorer (is that a word?): I'm always looking for common ground. The trouble is, eventually my beliefs make themselves known and friendships end because I'm perceived by the other to have been hiding something.

So! I've been trying to be more up-front with my beliefs, LESS restrained about expressing who I am. Let me stress: this is not about vocalizing how I think others should be (for my take on that, see Restraint post below). It's just about making my own outside congruent with my inside.

I asked my friend violetnoir to tell me more about herself, and she gave me a wonderful list of personal specifics (favorite color, predictions for upcoming election, etc.). In that spirit, here's a list of truths about me and the way I see the world. By the way, this is a big step for me, silly as it may seem. Only my husband knows most of this. Hopefully someday I'll see my way to saying some of this out loud, to the people who don't read this blog.

I love left-handed people; our brains work the same. All of my serious boyfriends (and now my husband) have been left-handed.

I am a pantheist. I don't believe in a human-like intelligence as God and don't believe that Jesus was anything more than an exemplary human being. In spite of this, I do pray, and always have. I don't know what I would call the receiver of these prayers: the universe, perhaps. I do believe that the basic energy that drives the universe -- the same force that makes electrons revolve around nuclei and planets around suns -- is awesome and divine, and that this force -- I'll call it God -- is within all of us and deserves to be respected and celebrated. I don't believe in heaven or an afterlife; I believe that this basic energy dissipates and ends up in the energies of living things that follow us after we die. Not reincarnation exactly (due to entropy) but shared energy that is neither created nor destroyed, just redirected. So quite literally, I believe that all living things are connected, all part of the same massive energy. I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

I love the Beatles, have since I was a toddler; listening to them feels like home.

I think brown skin is prettier than white skin. No veins showing through. Besides, doesn't chocolate brown look better on people than beige?

I am politically liberal and would be happy to have either Barack Obama or Hilary Clinton in the White House, but I'm leaning toward Obama because the idea of yet another inbred presidency (Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton again??) exasperates me. With 300 million people, can't we find someone ELSE?

I am feminist to the core. Oh--on that note, I learned something new recently. Did you know that Title IX, in addition to supporting funding for women's sports, made it illegal for female students in federally funded high schools and colleges to be expelled for pregnancy? I have classes filled with women who loudly claim, "Oh, I'm not a feminist," but have no idea what feminists have done for them. I had three pregnant students last semester.

I like gay people. My oldest brother is gay, and I feel it's one of the best things about him. I find homophobia incomprehensible and disturbing. Research shows that homophobic men have a stronger erectile response to homosexual erotica than do nonhomophobic men. Somebody's hiding something...

I have an excellent sense of rhythm and am a natural composer of lyrics and music. My child isn't even two and can sing "The Name Game" with just about any name or word you give her. We saturate that poor (okay, lucky) child in music. When I was in 5th grade and they were starting to teach music, I wanted to play drums. I was told that girls didn't do that ("Why don't you play flute or clarinet instead?") and, ever obedient, I complied -- meaning, I didn't play drums. I didn't play any instrument. I feel like I really missed out. When I lived in Ann Arbor, the Unitarian church I attended had a drum circle, and I was all excited about joining--then we moved. The Unitarian church I attend here (who else lets pantheists in?) doesn't have a drum circle, but I'm thinking about starting one up. We need that kind of energy.

I love Public Enemy and all rap, as well as other genres, that function as protest music. The spirit behind songs like "Burn Hollywood Burn" is thrilling.

I think a wicked sense of humor is a sure sign of intelligence in a person.

On a related note, intelligence traditionally defined isn't what I find most attractive in people. It's competence. Take an illiterate man who can make a gorgeous piece of furniture by hand, or an uneducated woman who knows how to make perfect pastry crust, and I'm smitten. I don't care what the talent is; it shows a brain that works beautifully, and that's awe-inspiring.

The thing I admire next to competence is resourcefulness. People who use their creativity to solve problems inspire me. My biggest boosts in self-esteem come when I've used my creativity to solve a problem, especially a fix-it type of problem. My dad is a retired engineer with several dozen patents to his name; perhaps I get that thrill from him.

My favorite color is that turquose-twilight color of the sky about 30 degrees up from the horizon after the sun goes down. I also like dark pink. My favorite primary color is yellow, and I have a yellow coat, yellow luggage, and a yellow car. (Easy to spot in parking lots.)

I'm ambidextrous and can write forward and backward with my left hand, even though I normally write with my right hand. My mother has said that her brother, my uncle, actually types on two keyboards at once. I suspect that's beyond my capabilities.

I love sweets and constantly have to fight the urge to overindulge in them. I'm really surprised that I never ended up being addicted to alcohol, or food, or drugs. I'm the only nonsmoker in my family of origin; both of my parents and my brothers were/are heavy smokers. I do not believe this has anything to do with will power; I got lucky, genetically speaking.

I like Jews because they have no interest in proselytizing. They make good food too.

I am a natural cheerleader and tend to choose friendships that let me be "the wind beneath" someone's "wings." The only problem is that such relationships tend to be asymmetrical, and as such unstable over the long haul. I love people who can laugh when they're gently called out on their snarky behavior, and are willing to call me out in return. I've found a fair number of men like this, but it's a rare quality in women, at least the women I've invited into my life.

I cherish my siblings. We've had very troubled relationships with each other, and they're still troubled. But nobody else shares my cultural and family history. I like knowing that somewhere in the world are two men who would get all of my jokes. Nobody I work with gets my obscure cultural references, and it makes me lonely. If I meet someone who has seen (and enjoyed) every John Waters film, I feel an instant kinship.

I don't like people who don't like dogs, and I don't like people who don't like kids. It's okay to be intimidated by kids (I was and still am), but to actively dislike them? It shows an unwillingness to cede the position of Center of Attention. Grow up already: someone wiped your ass and listened to you tell the same stupid story over and over again. Now it's your turn to play supporting cast.

I live in fear of being trashed behind my back. So -- duh -- trust is an issue (see the "natural cheerleader" comment above).

I'm getting tired of adding to this list. If you've read the whole thing, you are my hero.

So much for restraint. :-)

Restraint

2008-01-03T13:37:00.000-06:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about restraint. Maybe it's because MLK Day is approaching, and King's peaceful approach to political resistance epitomizes restraint.

Having a child has forced me to consider, with a cringe of embarrassment, all of the times that older, wiser people kept their mouths shut while I yammered on about something I was certain was gospel truth. In my arrogance I mistook their silence as passive, wondrous receptivity. Never did it occur to me that someone might be thinking, what a fool... ah, well, such is youth... she shall see. Worse, never did I realize that their silence was merciful, and that I might have had reason to be grateful for their kindness. Sometimes it takes years to realize the extent of people's kindness. Remember back when...? I was such an ass. Thank you for not crucifying me.

A member of my extended family (okay, it's my sister-in-law) thinks restraint is evidence of cowardice. She thinks her tendency toward hostile verbal incontinence makes her a thrilling, dynamic person. I fantasize about explaining to her, after (to quote Chris Rock) shaking the shit out of her, that the surest evidence of maturity, of having evolved as a human being, is restraint.

Restraint doesn't mean inaction. Campaigning for social change, but doing so nonviolently, as MLK and Ghandi did, demonstrates great restraint. In the ordinary-life sphere, actions like holding your tongue and just being there for a grieving friend; or going to bed when you know you need sleep, instead of staying up all night; or giving up on the need to have the last word in an argument, all demonstrate restraint. Allowing your mentally ill adult daughter to make some of her own life decisions, as one of my friends is doing, demonstrates Herculean restraint.

I have been practicing restraint regularly since my daughter was born. It's a big deal to know that you're in charge of writing someone's autobiography until the day she can assume authorship herself. Every word I say matters. Every emotional outburst matters. For the first time I'm aware of the power of my words to make or break someone else's view of herself (worthy of love?) and her home (safe?). Hence: lots and lots of restraint. And good practice for when she's a teenager, or so I hear.

Happy Girl

2007-12-20T12:49:00.000-06:00

God bless the photographer who can coax a belly laugh out of a 22-month-old.
A teething 22-month-old.

Now I've Seen It All

2007-11-27T16:06:00.000-06:00

They're called Footundeez. Underwear for your feet. They're marketed to dancers because the padding under the ball of the foot offers extra cushioning.

Don't ask me what the fly is for.

Is it sick that I actually find them a little sexy, and that I can imagine painting my toenails to match, and that I'm inventing reasons to buy some, like, right now? Oh yeah, those 4-inch heels would feel like Uggs with a pair of Footundeez.

I wonder if they make a bra for the upper foot. My ankle bones could use some support.

You Got Served, Daddy

2007-11-15T18:31:00.000-06:00

Greg thought he was being clever with his filthy bathtub-crayon graffiti.

Halloween 2007

2007-11-03T18:46:00.000-05:00

This wasn't Flea's first Halloween, but it's the first she'll remember. It's reassuring to know she had such a good time.

I take comfort in the fact that she really enjoyed the pre-trick-or-treating festivities, which included admiring herself in the mirror and singing "Baby Bumblebee."

And, as you'll see at the end of the video, telling Daddy where to go.

Quiz

2007-10-23T19:18:00.001-05:00

Q: What do you call the buttons on those floor cushions?

A: Pillow nipples, according to my 20-month-old.

I will never look at home décor the same way again.

Fall's Here!

2007-10-11T18:42:00.000-05:00

Finally, I get to pull out the baby leg warmers again and dress my child like... well, if not the village idiot, the village eccentric. Yippee! That look of forbearance will be on my face in a year or two when she insists on one blue sock and one orange, and I have to start choosing my battles to avoid losing my sanity. So until then: bring on the pointless but darling cold-weather baby accessories! Yippee!

This About Sums It Up

2007-10-01T16:10:00.000-05:00

I love this image, discovered on a t-shirt at http://www.threadless.com/.

The question exemplified by this image drives my research and much of my thought about the development of self within a social context: Why do we aim to be something other than what/who we are? And something fictional, no less--like, for instance, the "ideal" female body, which is essentially a freakish chimera formed of cantaloupe breasts grafted onto a 10-year-old boy's lithe, hipless frame.

In short, why can't rhinos just be rhinos?

Drip, drip, drip...

2007-08-31T11:54:00.001-05:00

I'm enjoying being a parent more with each passing day. Babies are sweet but toddlers are fun, especially when they begin talking.

Fia completely melted my heart the other day when she pronounced cucumber "cu-bum-ber." That's how she says it now, in her little cracked voice: cubumber. "Fia, would you like some cucumber?" Cubumber, yes peeze. I thought my inner Snow Miser would rule until the first time I heard her say, "I love you Mommy." Who knew it would happen first with cubumber?

Ceci n'est pas un auteur

2007-08-23T10:57:00.000-05:00

When the demands of life become so pressing that the block of time you have to devote to your occupation(s) shrinks into near-nothingness, two things become crystal clear:

1) what you like to do

2) what you don't like to do

What you like to do energizes and revives you, and makes you excited about what you do. What you don't like to do depletes you.

I have come to realize that I don't like to write. I'm not a natural writer. I have no talent whatsoever for writing. I love to read, and have since I was a kid, but loving to eat doesn't make one a chef. I've learned to "pass" as a writer because I have to for my job. But I dread writing. I'm a right-brain thinker. As a research scientist, I love devising study designs. I love collecting data. I love statistical data analysis. I love making charts and graphs to present the data. But I don't love writing up the findings; it's just something I have to do to get the fruits of my labor out there for public consumption.

I received academic tenure a few years ago, and since then I've been getting requests to write chapters for books edited by colleagues I like and admire. I want to please them. So I've said yes. And in so doing, I guaranteed that the last year, and probably the next one, was and will be spent in agony. All I do lately, it seems, is write. Writing, which depletes me, has crowded out the aspects of my job that revive me.

As negative as this post seems (I had to write it, after all, so I wasn't in the best of moods), coming to this realization was actually a wonderful thing. It's like a weight off my shoulders, to admit that I don't like writing, that I'm not a natural writer, and that, frankly, I don't really care. There are two steps to crafting a satisfying life for oneself:

1) figuring out what you want to do

2) figuring out how to do as much of it as possible

At least now I've got #1 down.

How I'm Feeling Lately

2007-07-31T20:29:00.001-05:00

Angry-misunderstood, angry-exhausted, angry-frustrated, angry-overwhelmed, angry-isolated, angry-angry. Just angry.

Bear with me while I look for something to smack with this rolling pin.

Good Girl

2007-07-18T14:28:00.001-05:00

I Photoshopped this picture to make it look as though Flea has a halo. In truth, she has no such thing, literally or metaphorically. She's a lover of mischief.

Case in point: yesterday when my back was turned she climbed on the couch and stood up. She knows she's not supposed to stand on the furniture. Now, an ordinary toddler routinely forgets and breaks the rules, or fails to internalize them in the first place, but Flea knows the rules, breaks them wilfully, and gets great satisfaction out of showing me. All was quiet, so I turned around to check on her, and found her standing there, unmoving, a big grin on her face, just waiting for me to see her and say, "Fia, SIT DOWN PLEASE." It was clear that she was just going to stand quietly until I saw her. In other words, she wasn't standing because she wanted to stand, she was standing because she wanted to stand because I told her not to stand.

Do we really get such satisfaction out of disobedience so early in life? As a parent I find this need to establish separateness both exasperating and exhilarating, as though the human drive to establish boundaries--"YOU end there, I start HERE"--is inborn and therefore good and right. I want my kid to define herself as an individual. At the same time, I want her skull to remain intact and my furniture footprint-free. So whenever she asserts her independence in this manner I do my best to keep my expression neutral while I smile inwardly and think--because I too am rebellious and parents are not supposed to say it out loud--good girl.

And so the pendulum swings...

2007-07-10T18:52:00.000-05:00

...from this (the "Brazilian" jean with the 1" zipper):

...to this:

Friends, I don't even know how to process that picture. What is that, a 16-inch rise? Any higher and it should come with underwire support. Good lord above, you'd be spending the first 5 minutes of your bathroom break just getting the zipper down. And those are some deep pockets. No need to fold your dollar bills.

No wonder I can't find a @$#! pair of jeans that fits.

(If you know where I can buy decent-looking jeans with a 36" inseam and 9" rise, I beg of you, respond.)

Genius Baby

2007-06-27T12:00:00.000-05:00

I'm referring to this little girl from England. I'm ashamed to admit that when the news hit I was pierced with envy. I want a genius baby too, dammit. Isn't that disgusting? Yesterday I found myself drilling Flea on her colors just a little too strenuously, stacatto-clapping and barking, "Look alive!" Okay, it was a joke, but still: someone needs to grab me by the shoulders and shake me.

When I shared the news with my daughter's "teachers" (that's what they're called at her child development lab school, and I don't put it in quotes because they're underqualified but because, come on, teachers? for infants?), they scoffed at it, eyes rolling, and agreed, "Luca could do all that," which redoubled my insecurity. Why did they say Luca and not Flea? Of course, their observations are accurate; Luca is this insanely verbal kid who was pointing to me and saying "Fia mama" at the age of 12 months. And he's bilingual. But still, why not my kid? Don't you people know how special she is?

This whole obsession is, obviously, a product of raging insecurity about my own basic value as a human being. The only thing I've had on my side my entire life is intelligence. I'm strange-looking (not ugly, but far from beautiful, at least by my own aesthetic standards); I don't come from wealthy or educated stock; I'm socially anxious; and I'm about as cuddly as a lizard. In short, I am not inherently lovable, the way a kitten or a pug is, or the way Michael Jackson used to be.

So I've found that I can be of value to people, pragmatically if not emotionally, by offering them the fruits of my mind. Not that I'm a genius (I would never take an IQ test because my whole self-concept would be riding on the outcome, which is way too much to risk), but I'm smart enough to come across as smart, which I cling to like an octopus with separation anxiety, to quote my pal Amy.

So here I am hoping that my daughter will exceed my intelligence so that, if she doesn't have the beauty or poise or talent or social contacts or charm that magically open doors, she can figure out a way to jimmy them open with her superior engineering skills.

That's not too much pressure for a toddler, is it? Is it? Seriously, somebody shake me. Before I start enrolling her in pageants.

Girly Girl?

2007-06-18T19:07:00.000-05:00

On June 21st Flea will be 16 months old, which is just about the age at which toddlers develop strong attachments to teddy bears and blankets and other "loveys." Flea's favorite lovey is a stuffed rendition of the blue-striped bunny from the classic children's book Goodnight Moon. She knows how to make a "buh" sound (as in "baby") but for some reason chooses to call the rabbit "Money" instead of "Bunny." I hope we're not getting a glimpse of her future values. Her other lovey is Elmer, the patchwork elephant. She's learning her colors and likes to practice on Elmer. Yesterday I was reading her the Elmer book and asked which color was her favorite. Without hesitation she pointed to pink and said, "ping." I thought it might be a fluke, but today I showed her the stuffed elephant and asked again. She pointed to a pink square and said, "ping." I guess it's official, then: her favorite color is pink. I swear I didn't teach her that. She doesn't have Barbies or lots of pink clothes, and I rarely wear pink. So where does she get it? Is it somehow programmed into the second X chromosome? And--horrors--does it condemn me to 5 years of princess mania?

(And, while I'm throwing out questions, why am I so embarrassed to admit that pink is my favorite color too?)

Modern Problems

2007-06-03T15:18:00.000-05:00

My oldest brother (T), who is gay, told me recently that the sperm he donated to a bank was picked up (eww) by a lesbian couple, who are now pregnant with a son. This means that my daughter will have a first cousin.

T claims that both he and the couple have agreed that they can contact him, when and if they wish. But the donor can't make first contact, for obvious reasons. Ordinarily this is the sort of thing I'd hear about and, true to my liberal/libertarian soul, proclaim, "Right on, great system, power to the people, yay to same-sex parenting, and of course they should have the right to maintain their privacy even if it is my brother's seed," blah blah blah. But now that I have a child, there's a side of me that wonders if my daughter has a right to contact her cousin, when and if she should choose to do so. It's another one of those ethical issues whose appropriate resolution seems crystal clear only to those who've never gazed at life on the other side of the fence.

I have no intention of trying to contact people who don't want to be contacted, but I did beg my brother to tell the couple that their son-to-be has a cousin whom they are welcome, no, urged, to contact at any time, and to give them my address, phone, and email. He said he would, hiccuped, and hung up. T, you see, has a long history of alcohol abuse and compulsive lying. He has a heart of gold and I really love him, but at the same time I can't always trust what he says. I'm not 100% certain that he even donated sperm, or that a lesbian couple used it and got pregnant. This cousin-to-be could be entirely fictitious--which makes it all the more difficult for me to know how to proceed. My daughter could have a first cousin, or not. And I'm powerless to do the detective work necessary to find out.

So for now I have to sit back, and wait, and hope that someday, I get that phone call.

Cool resource: ever wanted to know the difference between 1st, 2nd, 3rd cousins once, twice, 3 times removed, etc? This site helps you figure it out.

I am not making this up

2007-05-23T13:01:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I had the sublime good fortune of driving home directly behind a pickup truck outfitted with fake police flashers, a "peeing Calvin" decal, and truck nuts. Red, to match the truck.

It had a vanity plate too, reading (brace yourself) YEHAW.

God bless America.

Stuck in the Middle with You

2007-05-16T16:03:00.000-05:00

It's so hard to talk about having children without fear of upsetting, offending, or annoying someone.

I just learned that my colleague has been privately grappling with infertility for something like three years. She's never mentioned it to me (I heard it through that infamous grapevine that is female-on-female office gossip), so I don't feel comfortable approaching her about it. Apparently her heart is broken. And I think of all the times I brought my daughter by her office to wave hello. No wonder she never left her desk to come to the door.

So, as a new parent you learn to be really upbeat and broadcast your good fortune for having had children, because nothing's more irritating to someone struggling with infertility than hearing a parent kvetch. But your Pollyanna persona takes you right into nonparent-by-choice territory, where the natives are waiting for you and your maternal merriment to hurry up and leave so they can complain about how every damn parent wants to recruit more, and isn't it pathetic to have The Wiggles in your car CD player, and can't people choose not to be parents and not be viewed as heartless Scrooges for doing so?

Of course, both sides are right. It's a nightmare for people who desperately want children to learn, slowly and excruciatingly, that they can't do it biologically. And it's frustrating for people who choose not to have kids to have their choice (which was almost my choice, incidentally, and I would have been fine with it) and the capacity of their hearts doubted by everyone around them.

In the middle are those of us who decided to have kids, then had them, and really, really, desperately want to be allowed to bitch about the hard parts and sing about the good parts, without worry of hurting someone else. This, I think, is why parents end up hanging out with other parents: not just because of the obvious (we're on the same military schedule), but because we can express our true feelings without fear of hitting a very raw nerve. Er, that is, until the subject of discipline (or feeding, or potty-training, or school choice, or sex education, or or or) comes up. Hmm.

Anyway, today I'm leaning toward grateful <grin>, for my little Flea, and of course my big G:

Just the Three of Us

2007-05-09T22:45:00.000-05:00

My daughter is almost 15 months old, and until this picture was taken at a Kentucky Derby party we attended this past weekend, we had in our sizable collection NOT A SINGLE picture of the three of us together. Isn't that crazy? All we had were pictures of her, with the occasional snapshot of one of us with her, taken of course by the other one. But NEVER the three of us at once. Amazing. It makes me think, dang, when she grows up, will she think of herself as the Girl in the Bubble, living all alone with no loving grownups? For some reason I just thought of that Seinfeld episode where Moors is misspelled 'Moops' on the Trivial Pursuit card, and the boy in the bubble wants to strangle George over it. Anyway, it's clear we need to get crack-a-lackin' on the group pics. This omission is just one more verse in the I'm-a-bad-parent litany (sigh). (While I'm confessing: I don't have a baby book. This, and my daughter's blog, is it. Please, blogger, when you are outmoded by some future technology, don't suddenly purge our memories without giving us an option to save them first.)

Workin' at the...

2007-05-07T12:59:00.000-05:00

I CANNOT pass a Dress Barn without humming the tune to Spinal Tap's "Sex Farm."

Working on a sex farm
Trying to raise some hard love
Getting out my pitch fork
And poking your hay

Scratching in your henhouse
Sniffing at your feedbag
Slipping out your back door
Leaving my spray

Sex farm woman
I'm gonna mow you down
Sex farm woman
I'll rake and hoe you down
Sex farm woman
Don't you see my silo rising high, high high high?

Working on a sex farm
Hosing down your barn door
Bothering your livestock
They know what I need

Working up a hot sweat
Crouching in your pea patch
Plowing through your beanfield
Planting my seed

Sex farm woman
I'll be your hired hand
Sex farm woman
I'll let my offer stand
Sex farm woman
Don't you hear my tractor rumbling by, by by by?

Working on a sex farm
Trying to raise some hard love
Getting out my pitch fork
And poking your hay

Passing a Dress Barn Woman, the chain's plus-size outlet, is even worse, as its name echoes the song's chorus: "Sex farm woman... I'm gonna mow you down..."

Needless to say, I saw one yesterday. Damn song's going to be in my head for the next week.

I just flew in from Alaska

2007-04-30T16:28:00.000-05:00

...and boy, are my arms----sorry, I'll stop. In all seriousness, the trip was wonderful, as were my generous, attentive hosts. I ate fantastic batter-fried halibut and drank the best India pale ale I've ever had at a local microbrewery (tragically, they don't ship). It had a clean, bright, hoppy taste, with a scent like homemade strawberry jam. Later I had an exemplary lager made with chamomile, which imparted a honeyed leather flavor. Simply amazing. Oh, and the scenery? Fabulous. In the posted photo, there's a log to the bottom right. That marks high tide, which rises 25+ feet above low tide. It's the bay with the second most extreme tides in the world, after the Bay of Fundy. The weather was great, in the mid-50s during the day and still above freezing at night. I was completely thrown by the fact that it got dark at midnight and light again at 4am. One night we started dinner festivities at my hosts' home at 5:30, and at 10:00 the sun was still shining slantwise through their windows. They told me about how, as Chicago natives, they'd had to get used to the fact that they will never again take a walk in the dark on a summer night (because when it's warm enough to walk outside in shorts, it never gets dark); how there's no point in lighting fireworks over the 4th of July (but the locals do it anyway); and how they miss fireflies (why waste the energy glowing when it's light around the clock?). It's truly a different universe up there. Now I find myself sitting here at my computer, gazing out the windows at the Illinois prairie, trying to pretend that the clouds on the horizon are mountains.

It's a Beauty Way to Go

2007-04-26T14:02:00.000-05:00

Takin' off. *brrrrr*

See you next week!

Many thanks to Alec Baldwin

2007-04-25T07:51:00.000-05:00

...for supplying us with a wonderful example of emotional abuse.

His voicework is so moving, isn't it?

As the mom of a baby girl...

2007-04-19T19:19:00.000-05:00

...who is just learning to talk, this made my day.

(Thanks, Robin.)

Calling All Children of the '80s

2007-04-12T13:40:00.000-05:00

I need your help. I'm teaching my class on children and the media this fall, and I'm finally having to face the facts: My students and I are from different generations. When I started teaching, I was only a few years older than most of my students, so we had a lot of memories in common. Somehow more than a decade slipped by, and now, when I mention media artifacts from my childhood--Kids Are People Too, anyone?--my students (even grad students!) look at me blankly. The only thing we have in common is Sesame Street, and I can't build a whole class around one show. Please, if you know anyone born in the '80s, send them here to share their childhood media memories. I'm talking favorite TV shows, movies, music, books, toys, fashions, media-related pastimes (e.g., video games), anything and everything. Lay it on me! I will be forever grateful.

*mwah*

Untitled, to minimize embarrassment

2007-04-05T13:09:00.000-05:00

I attended a conference in Boston last week, at which a Canadian colleague whose research I greatly admire told me he'd done a google search of a psychological construct he publishes about, and found it referenced in a blog he assumed belonged to one of my grad students. I blushed furiously, debated (internally) the merits of lying, then decided on the truth, not because I'm ethical but because I'm too lazy to do the work necessary to maintain a lie. I admitted the blog was mine. At that point we shared a nervous laugh and changed the subject.

Hence, it's with some trepidation that I post about my experience with my new potential best friend, the DivaCup. Now that he knows my blog address, I fear sending my colleague into hysterics with this post. Alternatively, maybe my boss will find this one, although if she's googling "DivaCup" she's hardly in a position to cast stones.

Anyway, in one of the funniest blog posts and threads of comments (93 at last count!) I've ever read about female reproduction (about anything, really), my hilarious and honest and totally unpretentious friend Jonna proclaimed her fear of and, later, love of the type of cup-like intravaginal (god, what an ugly word) device that's designed to replace tampons, called, variously, the DivaCup, the Keeper, or the Moon Cup (not to be confused with the Moon Pie, which is useful during the menstrual cycle for completely different reasons). No early adopter of innovative technology, I had never tried such a product, but the posters on Jonna's site were such fans and offered such convincing arguments that I decided to order my own DivaCup. Model 2, of course, for women over 30 or who have had a child (even a c-section -- WTF?). Following Jonna's model of fearlessness and self-deprecation, here's my report, consisting of random observations of the pros and cons of the device. Men (and that means you, Don), click away now.

* The DivaCup comes with a lapel pin. It's an enamel flower adjoining the word Diva. It is far too precious to throw away. I'm waiting for the right person to send it to, preferably at Christmas, accompanied by an inedible fruitcake.

* Installation is both easier and harder than I'd expected. First, may I suggest that you rinse the thing with water the first time you use it. It's easier that way to, uh, put it where it's supposed to be. The diameter of the opened cup is about 1.5 inches, which, folded into fourths, isn't as small as you'd think. It's about the size of 3 tampon heads compacted together, so "gentle glide" is not an apt description. Once it's in, though, the thing snaps open like a golf umbrella in an elevator, and it becomes pretty clear that it's not going to leak.

* It doesn't leak. The manufacturer recommends emptying and cleaning it every 12 hours. On the first day I wore it for 13.5 hours, with white underwear, daring it to disappoint me. It did not.

* You can't feel it. Really. The "stem" is pretty close to the entrance to Hoo-ville, but you can't feel it, even when you sit down.

* HOWEVER: If you have an aversion to blood, stick with tampons. Even 1/2 ounce of blood is a lot. Don't believe me? Fill a shotglass halfway full of water, then spill it on a plate. Now imagine it's blood. I was okay with this because blood doesn't freak me out, but I know people who faint at the sight of a few drops. I had no idea how much blood is absorbed by a tampon until I used the DivaCup, which of course just contains it. So--lots of blood. Can I say blood again? Blood blood blood. Lots of blood--but nowhere near enough to fill the cup. So when you remove it, don't worry about the overspill. But for the love of all that is holy, squeeze the cup to break the seal before pulling it out. You'll see. (Oh my god, it just occurred to me that DivaCups could be used as shotglasses. By a group of a women. At a sleepover. Just before the mass disrobing and pillow fight.)

* The feeling of liberation from tampons is amazing. On Jonna's blog everyone mentioned "no more strings" and avoiding the "pendulum whack" and so forth, all of which is true, but you know what I'll miss the least? Trying, in a public restroom, to minimize the volume of the wrapper rustle that broadcasts "I'M INSERTING A TAMPON" as loudly as a 3-year-old stomping on bubble wrap. Now, I'm not going to suggest that cleaning out the DivaCup in a public restroom is a comparatively discrete affair, but I don't intend to use a public restroom for this purpose. Since you only have to change it before bed and again upon awakening, you can do it in the privacy of your own home (or hotel room or, god help you, tent).

* No more strings. No more fucking strings. Once I got a massage from a man, and he went up pretty high on my thigh, and all I could think was, what if his ring catches the string? Needless to say, the massage did not relax me. No more accidentally (and publicly) pulling a tampon out of my bag when I am searching for a pen. No more worry about changing 'pons in the middle of the day. No more worry about leaking at night. No more worry about toxic shock syndrome. No more worry about clogging up the pipes with undegraded cotton. And it's good for the environment! (Okay, I don't really give a shit about this. I'm sorry, but that furniture set you bought last year when you upgraded to a 3000-square-foot house exceeds the volume of all the tampons you will use in your reproductive life, and probably degrades more slowly. So let's challenge our thinking about what's "good for the environment." But I digress.)

* No more tampons? Not so fast. See the tent comment, above. If I am ever camping, which is unlikely because I loathe it, but you never know--if I am ever camping, and water is scarce, I'll be packing the 'pons. You need water--clean, running water--to use the DivaCup. Trust me.

Decaf Achiever

2007-03-25T11:00:00.000-05:00

Do you remember that 1980s ad campaign that pressured TV viewers to "Be a Coffee Achiever?" It seems like each decade has its signature excesses, and the pendulum swings from stimulants to sedatives and back. To wit: the postwar nicotine and amphetamine craze of the 50s, followed by the giant pot party that was the 60s and 70s, followed by the caffeine/cocaine frenzy of the 80s, followed by "heroin chic" in the 90s, and so on.

Aside: these drug trends seem to map onto U.S. political trends, with stimulants being popular during conservative/Republican times and sedatives being popular during progressive/Democratic times. Gives new meaning to the signature colors of the Republican and Democratic parties, no? From the blues to the mean reds and back again.

Anyway, back to drugs: It seems meth, cocaine, and even caffeine have made a mass comeback in the 00s. Being a user of neither sedatives nor stimulants (unless you count thyroid hormone), I live a boringly mid-range life. It's not that I think drugs are evil, it's that my bandwidth of acceptable excitatory levels is frustratingly narrow. Marijuana makes me wish I were simply asleep, yet stimulants of any kind drive me frantic. A can of Red Bull will keep me up all night. I can't even handle the caffeine in a cup of coffee, which my husband, a devoted drinker of fully-leaded java, thinks is really pathetic. Hence, this commentary etched on the cap of my weekly carafe of decaf:

This shouldn't have surprised me. People who abuse stimulants frequently have behavioral problems.

I'm Not a Boy! ....Am I?

2007-03-15T19:24:00.000-05:00

Okay, let's face it: my little girl looks like a boy. It doesn't help that I dress her in clothes bedecked with cars and trucks, but even when she's in gender-neutral clothes people think she's a boy. Heck, even when she's wearing a dress they think she's a boy, like it's the 1800s or something. The only time she's identified as unambiguously female is when she's wearing pink. Here's the weird thing: I'm pretty outspoken, so you'd think I'd be quick to correct people when they say, "He's so cute!" But I don't. It doesn't bother me at all. I think the sentiment is sweet, and why punish someone for a compliment with a reprimand, however gentle? My husband feels the same way. When she's older we might have to speak up to avoid giving her a complex, but for now, who cares? So we go out to breakfast every Sunday at the same place, where they make this fabulous thing called Cha-Cha Charritos (whole wheat tortilla stuffed with scrambled egg whites and black bean burger, covered with queso fresco and tomatillo salsa, doused with Cholula and dolloped with sour cream, good god my mouth is watering just describing it), and smile at people who comment on our darling little son. It's kind of fun to have a son sometimes, especially a sweet one who doesn't torture the dog.

Karma

2007-03-13T10:59:00.000-05:00

My mother was ideologically Buddhist but raised her kids Catholic, so my understanding of this term has always reflected a monotheistic approach to reaping what you sow: send negativity out into the universe, and the universe (a.k.a. God) will send it right back at you. Send positivity, get positivity.

I believe in karma, but I've recently rethought the mechanism behind it thanks to research on brain functioning and emotion. My friend Maria (a beautiful soul who has her own set of experiences with karma) gave me a book describing this research. It seems that the brain creates pathways that it wants to travel again and again, so a childhood full of abusive relationships becomes an adulthood full of abusive relationships. This is why the long-term therapy relationship is so valuable; it's training ground for cutting new pathways in the brain and traversing them until they become well worn and reflexive.

By complete coincidence, I've been reading a book on Buddhism in motherhood in which the author describes karma in just these terms. Positivity and negativity aren't vibes the universe sends back to you as reward or punishment, they are simply habits that become entrenched in the brain by way of practice. To work karma to your benefit, practice positivity (mindfulness, loving kindness, compassion, expansiveness) regularly to keep your brain working in a loving way.

I am embarrassed to admit (but you already knew it, didn't you?) that I have some very deep, well worn negativity paths. In my family of origin, whoever could deliver the most clever, cutting insult was most admired. Group discussions focused on shared antipathies. Sarcasm was praised. Backstabbing ran rampant. Apologies signalled weakness. No one ever said "I love you." Anyone who complained was contemptuously labeled "too sensitive." I know exactly where this came from (my dad's parents were cold as hell and my mother's, profoundly abusive), so I know I am at risk for passing it on to my daughter. And there's no fucking way I'm going to do that. (Ahh, that felt good. I was going to give up swearing for Lent... so glad I didn't.)

So, time to start practicing positivity. I promise not to cite platitudes about cultivating an "attitude of gratitude" or "putting on a happy face" or anything fatuous like that. Just trying to get into the habit of connecting with the beauty in the world while I can still experience it, and while my daughter is creating those pathways in her own brain. Let the mirth begin!

I would comment on Ann Coulter...

2007-03-04T08:08:00.000-06:00

...but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the words "emaciated soulless sea hag."

link

Self-Expression

2007-02-26T20:05:00.000-06:00

I recently found out that my first-year college roommate (20 years ago -- gaak!) is something of a celebrity. She published this book a few years ago. I read a few pages and couldn't help welling up with pride. That's Liza alright. Her sense of ethics hasn't changed a bit. She's the sweetest, kindest, most brilliant socialist I've ever met.

That got me thinking about a childhood friend who was equally brilliant. I googled her and discovered that Katrina published this book of poetry.

My friends' words say so much about who they are and what they believe in.

And my words? Here's a footnote from a forthcoming research article on boys' exposure to gaming magazines and their drive for muscularity:

Because some of these (questionnaire) items are attitudinal and some are behavioral, an exploratory principal components factor analysis was performed on the Wave 2 drive for muscularity scale to determine whether the appearance of multiple factors would justify the division of the scale into subscales. Three factors with eigenvalues greater than 1.00 emerged in the unrotated factor solution, accounting for 31.61, 16.06, and 10.88 percent of variance respectively. According to McCroskey and Young (1979), the unrotated factor solution should be used to determine whether individual items load divergently enough onto different factors to justify splitting the scale into subscales. In our factor solution, all of the items loaded positively onto the first factor, with no loading lower than .45. Following Reinard’s (2006) “60/40” rule (any individual item truly belongs to only one factor if the absolute value of its loading on that factor is greater than .60 and its loading on the other factors is less than .40), it was clear that no single item loaded onto factors 2 or 3 without simultaneously loading, equally if not more strongly, onto factor 1. The same analysis was repeated with the drive for muscularity scale measured at Wave 1, with identical results. Thus, there appears to be no compelling reason to divide the drive for muscularity scale into subscales.

Moves ya, doesn't it?

Sigh. I suppose this is why I keep a blog. Not that what I write here moves ya (globber.com? Come on), but at least it's a forum for self-expression. Scientific research standards and practices are so oriented toward masking the researcher's presence (note the passive voice in my passage), that writing sometimes feels like an exercise in invisibility. I've got something to say but I'm not really saying it! It's just sort of vibrating out of thin air! Don't touch the curtain--there's no man behind that curtain!

It's good to have someplace to say I I I and Me Me Me and not be slammed for it by blind reviewers.

www.globber.com

2007-02-25T07:52:00.000-06:00

Am I the only one who routinely mistypes "blogger" when logging on to submit a new post?

Happy Birthday, Flea

2007-02-21T10:25:00.000-06:00

Will you stay in our lovers' story?

If you stay, you won't be sorry

'Cause we believe in you

Soon you'll grow

So take a chance

With a couple of kooks

Hung up on romancing

We bought a lot of clothes to keep you warm and dry

And a funny old crib on which the paint won't dry

I bought you a pair of shoes

A trumpet you can blow

And a book of rules

Of what to say to people when they pick on you

'Cause if you stay with us you're gonna be pretty kooky too

Will you stay in our lovers' story?
If you stay, you won't be sorry
'Cause we believe in you
Soon you'll grow
So take a chance
With a couple of kooks
Hung up on romancing

And if you ever have to go to school

Remember how they messed up this old fool

Don't pick fights with the bullies or the cads

'Cause I'm not much cop at punching other people's dads

And if the homework brings you down

Then we'll throw it on the fire and take the car downtown

Will you stay in our lovers' story?
If you stay, you won't be sorry
'Cause we believe in you
Soon you'll grow
So take a chance
With a couple of kooks
Hung up on romancing

Kooks by David Bowie (Hunky Dory)

Bi-curious George

2007-02-18T15:07:00.000-06:00

Yesterday we hosted Fia's first birthday party. Her birthday isn't until the 21st, but Mimi and Grandpa Ray didn't want to miss it, so Saturday the 17th it was.

Naturally, since I am food obsessed, I will start with the cake. A heavy brown-sugar-oatmeal concoction with toasted coconut speckling the layers, it was made by a talented local baker who covered it in buttercream and white chocolate "mosaic tiles" and put candied violets here and there. The blossoms looked like they were growing out of the earth between paver stones. Fia liquidated her portion with the slow, methodical detachment of a high priest, so even though she never squealed or smiled or smeared cake on herself, I think she liked it.

The party theme was "best loved books," so we ended up with some treasures. Fi loves nothing more than a warm lap and a pile of books, so we were thrilled to add to her collection. One guest gave her a bunch of Curious George books and a stuffed George, which after being loved and cuddled by my daughter somehow ended up in a compromising position atop her stuffed baboon, Maurice. I blame one of the adult male guests.

Other than that, the event was G-rated and actually quite moving, not just because it was my daughter's first birthday (a significant event for her), but because it gave me a chance to look around at all the people who have helped G and me throughout a very challenging year. I am indeed blessed.

Ooh, ooh--speaking of blessed, I was playing with old perfume samples last week and rediscovered Norma Kamali's Beach. A lot of perfume descriptions boast of mimicking the scent of sunwarmed skin, but this one really delivers. I usually shun tropical scents and actively loathe the scent of coconut (unless I'm eating it--see above), but these notes are blended so expertly in Beach that it smells less like suntan lotion and more like a suntan than any other beach-themed scent I've tried. Like any true American, I bought twice as much as I needed for only slightly more than I could afford at www.barxv.com.

An Open Letter to the University of Illinois

2007-02-16T12:17:00.000-06:00

Dear University of Illinois,

Welcome to the 21st century! It's wonderful to have you here!

Back when your talented faculty created HAL, the supercomputer who shot to fame in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, the world assumed your halls were populated by hyper-evolved eggheads.

Until, that is, the world caught one of your basketball games on TV and watched, gape-jawed, as you sent a (European American) student out dressed in Native American Indian spiritual regalia to dance around the basketball court while other (European American) students stood around in a circle, arms folded, faces stern and sober, like that crying-Indian guy on the anti-pollution public service announcement, yeah, that's the one.

You argued that Chief Illiniwek honored Native Americans. You were wrong. You announced today that you've decided to put that hurtful parody to rest.

Thanks for finally doing the right thing. And welcome to modernity! It's nice here.

Small World

2007-02-09T11:45:00.000-06:00

I've been in Chicago for the past three days for a grantwriting workshop. Each afternoon, when we adjourn, I'm so eager to escape the canned air and flourescent lights of Northwestern University's Chicago campus that it doesn't even matter that the outside air is cold enough to turn my nosehairs crispy on contact.

Yesterday I even took my post-workshop flight as far as Barney's. I was rewarded twice: first, I got the chance to test the forthcoming Serge Lutens fragrance, Rousse. Verdict: winner. Smells like a cinnamon-orange pomander. Perfect for late fall, which of course is why it's due to arrive in April, right? *eyeroll* The Serge Lutens SA at Barney's, Erica, is a sweetheart who reminds me of Zooey Deschanel. She got excited when I promised to bring her samples of my Serge Lutens exclusives (Bois et Fruits, Rose de Nuit, and Iris Silver Mist) when I come back up in a few weeks.

My second reward was a chance meeting with Ina from aromascope, over by the l'Artisan section. We've "known" each other for years through makeupalley, but had never met in person. We started chatting about our mutual obsession for scent, then eyed each other suspiciously: are you one of us? I had a glimpse of what it's like for gay strangers to connect (although I don't think perfume freaks get beaten up if the stranger they're chatting up turns out to be uninterested in scent). Finally I barked out: "ARE YOU INA??" It was a wonderful moment. We chatted about various lines, I bought a bottle of Drole de Rose (can't handle its brasher Frederic Malle analog, Lipstick Rose, these days), and we headed out to Trader Joes, where I allowed Ina, with her superior acculturation and taste, to point me in the direction of TJ's best delicacies: turnip chips, thick Greek yogurt with honey, and blue-cheese stuffed olives. I added chocolate-covered peanut-butter-stuffed pretzels to my basket, because, you know, they sounded healthy. It was one of the best hotel-room dinners I've ever had.

Today I'm back under the flourescent lights. He's talking about writing a budget justification, and I'm typing a blog entry. This is going to bite me in the ass when my proposal is rejected, but hey, I got to try Rousse and meet Ina. On balance, a wholly successful trip!

Bellodgia!

2007-01-29T09:17:00.000-06:00

How did I miss this beauty before? I used to wear CdG's in-your-face carnation but stopped because it was a little too caustic, like Starbuck's (a.k.a. Charbuck's) without half-n-half. Enter Caron Bellodgia, all creamy-pink and comforting. Every February I begin to crave springlike florals, and this is the one that snagged me this year. Thank you Saks for carrying the EDP (last bottle in stock!).

It was the high point of a weekend spent shopping in the city with Fia. She handled it beautifully, with only one meltdown, in the Oilily shop across the street from our hotel. The low point was a set of interactions I had with an SA at Nordstrom. Chicago's Nordstrom has this great little nook of classic and collectible perfumes, arranged in a little arc on the back wall of the fragrance section. When I approached I saw a locked display of four fragrances in colored bottles adorned with bronze statues. Two years ago I'd tested one of them ("Julia") and really liked it. I was certain it contained immortelle, that maple note I love so much in AG Sables. It was priced at $400 then, which stopped me in my tracks. But I'd thought about it a great deal since, and was hoping to meet it again someday. That day was Saturday.

K: Do you happen to have the key to this display? I tested this one a few years ago and would love to try it again before investing.

SA: Ooooh... you don't want these. *waves hands* These are, like, three or four thousand dollars apiece. They're for serious collectors.

K: Wha?? Naw, I priced them a few years ago at $400.

SA: I don't think so. Well, we don't have a tester and I can't let you try the ones in the display anyway.

K: I'm not asking to spray one, just to smell it at the atomizer to see if it's as I remembered.

SA: I don't know where the key is. Really, these are for collectors.

K: I've owned almost 400 perfumes. I currently have over 200. I'm a collector.

SA: *looks me up and down* Tell you what, why don't you give me your number and I'll call you when someone comes in with the key. Will you be here over the weekend?

K: Yes, we're leaving tomorrow, but I'll try back at 11 when you open.

Fast-forward to 11 o'clock the next day.

SA: *sees me, walks over excitedly* Well, well, well, it seems you knew what you were talking about! Yes, these retail for $400. I've got all the info you need.

K: Really, you know the maker and the sculptor and the notes in the fragrances?

SA: I've got EVERYTHING.

Fast-forward 20 minutes. She had no information I didn't already have. And she still kept telling me she couldn't let me spray them, and I still kept telling her I didn't WANT to spray them, I merely wanted to sniff the atomizer, for crying out loud. At one point our exchange went like this:

SA: No you see I can't spray them because air would get in the bottle and break the seal and that would be bad and you need to understand how perfume is made because every perfume has a year and a half before it goes bad once you break the seal and--

K: I. under. stand. I. don't. want. to. spray. them. That. would. be. stealing. perfume. from. whoever. buys. this. bottle. I. simply. want. to. SNIFF. THE. NOZZLE.

SA: Oh! Wait, we have testers of two of them. (WTF? Why didn't you say so? She pulls out testers, lets me spray. It's as I remembered, a good dose of immortelle. I am in love. The SA, in contrast, wrinkles her nose, and goes, "Ewww.")

At this point I started counting slowly to ten in my head to avoid losing my temper while she ran off to get me something. I relaxed when it turned out to be filled sample vials of both the women's scent ("Julia") and the men's ("Romeo"). So I get to try it on my skin and see if it's worth investing $400.

Nobody should EVER have to work that hard to see if a perfume is worth buying. You may wonder why I didn't read her the Poor Service riot act or just walk out. The reason is that I was no longer offended; it's hard to be offended when one is dealing with a person who is legitimately mentally/emotionally disturbed. I went into "kid gloves" mode with her. And I tried not to laugh when she gave me her card and assumed I'd buy it from her once I'd made up my mind.

I left Nordstrom none the wiser about the composition of the scent (I'm still certain it has immortelle), but Google informed me that 7500 of the bottles were made and that the sculpture is by Barry Shiraishi. Here's what the bottle looks like. It's much nicer to look at in person, and it's got a pleasing heft. In spite of the price, I might have bit the bullet and invested, except that I didn't want to reward the SA for poor behavior. I can get it cheaper on eBay anyway. We shall see.

What's this Expression?

2007-01-24T16:11:00.000-06:00

My daughter is 11 months old and already knows how to make mischief. She digs it too. Two favorites are putting her hand in the dog's water bowl and sweeping her hand over the food on her high chair tray so it flies all cattywampus.

The fascinating thing is not that she enjoys making mischief (all babies do), but the way she interacts with me while she's doing it. Is the sidelong glance with a raised eyebrow an inborn expression of impending naughtiness? Because that's exactly what she does: the moment she's about to go for the bowl or play "chaos" in her high chair, she looks at me out of the corner of her eye, pauses, and proceeds incrementally, to see how far she can go before I stop her. If I raise my eyebrows in return, she'll actually crinkle up her nose and eyes and give me a huge, impish grin. Like she's trying to charm me.

It always annoyed me when people would accuse babies of "flirting" (can we please wait a few years before assigning sexual motives?), but I can understand the temptation to assume that very adult dispositions underlie infant facial expressions, because some of these expressions look so adult. Hence movies like Look Who's Talking and, inexplicably, Look Who's Talking Too and Look Who's Talking Now.

The beauty of children is that, as soon as they can speak, they reveal our efforts to project our own thoughts and dispositions onto them to be not only misguided, but hilariously wrong. I look forward to the day when I see an expression on Fia's face like the one above and think, "She looks like she's trying to connect with me on a spiritual level," only to have her open her mouth, take a deep breath, and say: "POO POO."

I knew this day would come...

2007-01-15T10:36:00.000-06:00

...but I never thought it would come so soon. Sigh.

Her favorite bottle is Après l'Ondée. I would have expected something more colorful. Must be the texture or the way light glints off the little nubblies all over the bottle.

In any case, good choice.

Worse Than Death

2007-01-10T20:00:00.000-06:00

Several years ago my academic department employed a student to help the old technofarts like me manage our computers. Her name was Dani. She was a senior and smart as a whip. She was also extremely skinny. I'm not clairvoyant and don't possess x-ray vision, so I didn't "know" she had an eating disorder, but I sure as hell suspected it. We interacted quite a bit, always in a jovial way, so when she seemed less than jovial I'd stop her and ask if she was okay. I never said, "Gee, you look like you could be eating more," I just asked if she was okay. This happened two or three times. Each time she looked extremely uncomfortable and escaped from me as quickly as she could. She was well aware that I did research on disordered eating.

A month before she was due to graduate from college at the ripe old age of 21, she went on a trip with her boyfriend. The story I was told is that they were going deep-sea fishing and stopped at WalMart to get some fishing gear. She had her heart attack right there in the store. Good thing WalMart has defibrillators. (Please resist the totally understandable temptation to laugh at that sentence.) Fortunately, someone got her heart going again, but not soon enough. She was in a coma for a long time, and couldn't be transported from the West Coast back to the East Coast, where her family lives, for fear that she would not survive the trip.

Her parents were ready to pull the plug, but her uncle fought them, and eventually Dani woke up. She now lives with her uncle, who takes care of her as one would care for a child. Her brain damage was so great that she's basically starting over. Her family has been torn apart by the whole experience; it's hard to understand why she is with her uncle and not her parents. You can actually read about it at the website her uncle set up to publicize the situation. He hasn't posted for almost a year, though. It makes me wonder what's happened since early 2006.

When I went to the site I nearly cried when I read the post reporting Dani's last email to her uncle, four days before her heart attack. She was asking her uncle what she should do about her "crazy roommate" who was throwing up after every meal. And the pictures on the site: gone is the wry sparkle in her eye and the knowing smile. It's like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.*

The electrolyte imbalance caused by purging can make even normal-weight bulimics die from heart failure. And anorexia causes muscle wasting. Since the heart is a muscle, it shrinks too. Electrolyte imbalance plus a wasted heart is a recipe for disaster. Girls who refuse to eat think death is the only monster lurking on the horizon, but I know one far worse.

If you know someone who is purging or restricting, you might want to share Dani's story with them. And if you hear some fashion victim or Karl Lagerfeld fan bitching about recent initiatives to institute minimim age and BMI requirements for fashion models, send them to her website too.

*Even more chilling, to me, is a picture of Dani at Christmas, smiling and holding up a picture bible that her uncle gave to her. Prior to her accident, she was an atheist fascinated with Nietzsche. Now she's a smiling, unprotesting Christian. I'm not writing this to blast Christians; if she were a devoted Christian before and the picture featured her holding up the Atheist's Manifesto, I'd be just as chilled. It's the complete turnaround of identity and lack of memory that shake me to the core.

Bad Idea

2007-01-10T11:23:00.001-06:00

Tagged!

2007-01-02T16:01:00.001-06:00

PFG tagged me, the dirty minx.

Okay, then, here are my fours:

FOUR jobs I have had:
1. Subway sandwich "artist" (fired for talking back to customer)
2. On-air "talent" at a community access television station (left after graduation)
3. Ride operator at a Renaissance fair(e) (job ended when the fair[e] was over)
4. Personal assistant to a megalomaniacal organizational communication consultant (quit)

FOUR movies I could watch over and over:
1. The Shining
2. Harold and Maude
3. Dog Day Afternoon
4. Koyaanisqatsi

FOUR places I have lived apart from where I live now:
1. Detroit, MI
2. Grosse Ile, MI (an island at the mouth of Lake Erie, 'tween the U.S. and Canada)
3. Ann Arbor, MI
4. Madison, WI

FOUR TV shows that I love:
1. America's Next Top Model (like crack, and I'm not embarrassed to say so)
2. Twilight Zone reruns
3. The Star Hustler (now called Star Gazer to keep web-surfing kids from hitting the wrong sites)
4. Unwrapped

FOUR places I have been on holiday:
1. Paris
2. London
3. St. John, USVI
4. New Orleans

FOUR websites I visit daily:
1. Go Fug Yourself
2. Now Smell This
3. Marlys Magazine
4. New York Times

FOUR favorite foods:
1. Japanese (all kinds)
2. Cheese (all kinds)
3. Mediterranean/Middle Eastern (all kinds)
4. A brownie (NO NUTS) with vanilla ice cream

FOUR places I would rather be right now:
1. In bed asleep
2. In bed asleep
3. In bed asleep
4. In bed asleep (I have a 10-month-old)

FOUR people I am tagging:
1. B
2. K
3. J
4. J

A Baby's First Xmas: A Photo Essay

2006-12-29T21:26:00.000-06:00

Of course it was meaningless to her--as, well, frankly, it still is to me, bar the presents--but it was fun nonetheless to break out the digital Leica and capture the following moments:

We had just arrived at Fia's grandmother's house, fresh from a 6.5 hour drive. Someone was bowled over by the sight of a tree in the house.

Fia got to play with her equally weirdly named cousin, Siri (short for Sigrid). They were born 13 days apart. You could almost say they're identical cousins. Fia's the polite one with the faux Irish brogue.

Siri's the boisterous one who looks like she's on her third drink.

There were plenty of presents but none held the enchantment of seeing a cat for the first time.

Or of--okay, I was trying to come up with something funny but I couldn't think of anything that wouldn't sound syrupy in conjunction with this picture. I just wanted to post it because I like it. It's totally cheesy madonna-child imagery crap but--I like it. Anyway, I hope you and yours had a good Xmas-slash-Hanukkah-slash-Solstice-slash-whatever you celebrated (even if it was only a few days off work).

Integrity

2006-12-21T12:57:00.000-06:00

We all have a personal life journey. Mine seems to be a continual struggle toward integrity. I don't mean integrity in the casual sense of respectability or righteousness; I mean it in the literal sense of being integrated, not fragmented into different personae for different audiences. Genuine integrity requires authenticity, the willingness to be honest about one's feelings or one's position on a particular issue. Don't get me wrong; I'm not celebrating the willingness to convey one's moment-to-moment state of mind with no effort to rein in its expression--in other words, I don't advocate smashing dishes (or people) to "authentically" convey one's anger. I support the use of situationally appropriate words and actions to convey inner states that may be much more intense than the words and actions let on. But to use words and actions that are the opposite of what one is feeling--well, that's the path to pathology. Smiling brightly and saying with a brittle voice, "Oh, nothing, honey, nothing at all!" when asked what's wrong is not a display of integrity. To say, "I'm upset, but not ready to talk about it yet," or "Yes, I'm angry about ____," or "I'm feeling a mix of things and need to sort them out," or even, "Yes, dammit, I'm angry!" is far preferable, integrity-wise.

Now, I realize this all seems like a condemnation of people who are not willing to be honest about their feelings. I don't mean it to be. Some people grow up thinking they cannot be honest because it's not safe. Honesty has gotten them into hot water. I learned this lesson early, hence my adult trek toward integrity. As a child I was not allowed to convey anger, indeed, to feel anger. It was unseemly, unfeminine, and worst of all, it was hurtful. My anger was actually interpreted as an assault, even if I did nothing with it. It's taken years and several therapists to convince me that feelings are neither good nor bad, they just are. It's what you do with them that counts. My mother, with whom I've experienced much conflict over many years, had it even worse than I did. She was profoundly abused and grew up with the crazymaking notion that she had to put on a different face for different people, and even different faces for the same person, just to survive. She brought that lesson to my childhood, and now I'm trying to find a way to override it.

Which is what brings me to the biggest emotional challenge I've experienced so far: keeping up what I call my Mommy Game Face. If an adult wakes me up four times in the night, I can express my anger and frustration in an appropriate way. But what do I do with a baby who's just being a baby? The desire to provide my daughter with a loving environment has led me to adopt this perpetually upbeat, validating game face that departs quite markedly (and frequently) from what I'm actually feeling. Moreover, I think this is the way it should be. I believe that parenting a very small child is one of the few life tasks that require occasional (okay, constant) inauthenticity, for the sake of the child. Nothing creepy and malicious like saying "You woke me up again, didn't you, Shithead?" with a syrupy voice and a big grin, just sighing and saying, "It's okay, everything's alright," when everything is most certainly not alright. Every kid knows how terrifying it is to see a parent sobbing or petrified with fear; it's like the whole world is falling apart. We need to believe that our parents are able to tap into a bottomless well of optimism and courage, especially when we're very little, and sad, and afraid. So I'm trying to create the impression that I have such a well, when the reality is, I don't. And let me tell you, even this minor league inauthenticity grows tiresome. It's like there's a tradeoff between my own neurosis and my daughter's: to preserve my sanity, I need to be authentic; to preserve hers, I need to be inauthentic. I feel as if I'm backsliding some days, like all this progress toward integrity is being undone by the requirement that I put on my Comedy mask when the Tragedy mask seems to fit much better.

As parents, when do we get to be ourselves again? When they're 10? 20? 30? And how do we model integrity for our children if we have to hide so much of who we are from them?

No Place Like (Away from) Home for the Holidays

2006-12-18T09:45:00.000-06:00

I wanted to write something funny and uplifting in the 5 minutes I have until my daughter wakes up from her morning nap, but I just don't have it in me.

Too tired. Too sad. Too torn.

Remember those report cards that had a picture of a tree on the front with the words, "As the twig is bent...?" So the tree is formed. One tiny deviation early on becomes a huge malformation years later.

My family is such a mess I don't even know how to process it. The roots of our collective pathology were there when my brothers and I were kids, crying as our mom (let's call her M) packed her bags and announced triumphantly, "I'm leaving this family!"--only to return 2 days later and do it all again in a month while our dad (let's call him D) watched impotently. My big brothers J and T fought constantly. T was bigger so J would take his humiliation out on me. I did well in school because school was safer than home.

Fast forward many years. J and T are in their 40s and still relying on M and D's support. T is addicted to booze and cocaine. He brags about being 5'10" and 135 lbs. He claims his trust-fund boyfriend has so much money that they have 250 boxes (not a typo) of baby clothes in their basement. They bought it all for the son-to-be of a friend, but tragically she miscarried, so he doesn't know what to do with the clothes. I suggested he donate them. He said, "WHAT?! Ralph Lauren clothes donated to some SHELTER? I don't think so." This is the narcissistic Uncle T who has yet to see his own niece and hasn't sent a thing, not even a card. Sadder still, when he told me all this, he seemed perfectly oblivious to that fact. J, on the other hand, calls me at 6am, drunk, to lament whatever drama occurred the preceding night. He's addicted to food, booze, and whatever else he can get his hands on. J's ex-girlfriend worked for my mom and stole $60,000 from her business, then attempted suicide in J's house. (This is the charmer who posted on my blog, causing me to change the site so M and her cronies could no longer oversee my posts.) Anyway, back to J -- the other night some guy pulled a knife on him; luckily he had his .45 (thanks to my home state's decision to repeal their concealed weapons law, and D's ridiculously unwise decision to support J's application for a firearm by signing a form saying, falsely, that J had never received treatment for a mental disorder). J is 6'5" and 400 lbs. He just found out that his liver is failing. His words to me yesterday morning: "I welcome death like it's my birthday."

M disowned me 5 years ago and derives great satisfaction from defamation. The extended family won't talk to me. I committed the worst possible crime: I set boundaries. I literally said, "If you say/do XXX again, I will hang up the phone or leave the room." I also moved away from them in an attempt to save my sanity, my marriage, and to preserve the safety of any children I might have.

So--I've got a child now. And I haven't taken her back home because I don't feel safe there. How can I take her where I don't feel safe? I talk to D frequently; he's the sanest one of the bunch. But he's at the center of the drama and can't see things from a distance. They use him like a pack mule. He's 65, and an old 65 at that.

Every single day I have to remind myself not to relax my standards. There's too much at stake. But D pleads with me on the phone to "fix" things with M, even though he knows I can't do it without her consent. And the hard thing to admit is, I almost don't want to, because I don't trust her and know I never can. And I've already mourned her departure from my life. Do I need to do it again? D is telling me that M is spinning out of control, and his only recourse may be divorce. I suppose that was supposed to motivate me to contact her, but instead I'm thinking, Be my guest.

It's so f***ing lonely being the "healthy" one. The tension is unbearable. Every day I ask myself, whose funeral will I attend first?

Sorry to be such a downer. I don't tell people about this blog because I couldn't care less how many people know it exists, but the people who DO know it exists have demonstrated themselves to be humane and thoughtful. Thus I feel a bit guilty loading them (you) up with this crap. I just had to vent. I've been living with this for years and keeping pretty much silent about it. But it's just so hard watching people self-destruct and knowing there's nothing you can do about it but try to protect yourself from the shrapnel. The sickness is so extensive I don't even know how to describe it; the above is only a glimpse. Watch Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Mommie Dearest, Crumb, and Capturing the Friedmans back-to-back and you'll be touching the surface of it. I do know this: I'm not going to let my daughter be sucked down into it. Regardless of what happens, I'm going to keep her safe.

My Most Requested Recipe

2006-12-09T10:54:00.000-06:00

'Tis the season for get-togethers and gifts. Need to bring something more interesting than a poinsettia or a bottle of wine? Here's a ridiculously delicious cookie. Don't tell people what the flavor is; it's fun to hear them guess.

I adapted it from a Nigella Lawson recipe. The addition of whole-wheat flour ups the wholesome-rustic factor without compromising texture. Don't substitute regular flour for the self-rising; the cookie will be a stodgy flop (I know from experience). If all you have is dark brown sugar, mix it half-and-half with white sugar. And do I need to tell you that maple syrup is not a suitable substitute for maple extract? And that margarine is never a suitable substitute for butter?

Maple Shortbread

2 sticks (1/2 lb) unsalted butter
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon maple extract
1 1/2 cups self-rising flour
1/2 cup whole-wheat flour

Preheat the oven to 325 F. Cream the softened butter and sugar until there are no sugar lumps. Blend in the maple extract. Add the flours a bit at a time until you have a stiff dough. Roll into walnut-sized balls and flatten a bit with your hands. Dredge in white sugar to give them a nice sandy texture. Bake for 15 minutes on 2 cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. Makes 30-40, just enough to pack into one of those holiday tins and bring to a friend's house.

People go nuts for these, which just goes to show you that the basic human diet is butter, flour, and sugar. That's why I've made these cookies so healthy: No trans fats! Whole-wheat flour! If that isn't healthy enough for you, take a multivitamin.

Enjoy the holidays!

Report Card

2006-12-04T15:03:00.000-06:00

We had our first parent-teacher conference today. Isn't that a hoot? Fi goes to the early child development lab school at the university where I work, and they have parent-teacher conferences even in the infant program.

She has three teachers so G and I sat in her classroom facing all three of them while her primary caregiver (my favorite of the three) led us through her evaluation.

There's not much you can say about a 9-month-old academically, so they were stuck rattling off observations about her motor and emotional development.

Highlights: She loves playing with the crackly laminating paper and pulling velcroed things apart. She likes exploring textures (e.g., cornmeal, the other infants' hair and nostrils -- not such a good idea) and shapes. One day when the other babies were using markers to scribble on a huge sheet of paper, Fi spent the entire time exploring the details and textures of the hollow end of the marker where the cap is usually jammed. (It was a visual arts exercise but she preferred to do performance art, you see.) If you try to feed her baby food with a spoon, she'll clamp her lips and deflect the spoon with her forearms, ninja-style; she prefers finger foods, and feeding herself. She can get absorbed in a single activity for quite some time. She sleeps for exactly 1/2 hour every afternoon. She's very serious and sensitive and has a low pain tolerance (just how do they test that?).

Basically, she's just like I was as a baby. The teachers were surprised when I revealed this because they thought G and I were jovial, lighthearted people and figured Fi would be too. I wanted to say, "It's all a performance. I smile on the outside but I'm crying inside," but I feared they wouldn't catch the sarcasm.

As challenging as it's been to have a daughter who's more Strindberg than Helium, in a strange way I'm proud. Still waters run deep, and all that. We live in a culture that idealizes extroversion, so I know that Fi is going to run into many of the same challenges I've experienced as a natural introvert. But I think the world needs our special gifts. While the extroverts are scribbling all over the paper, we're quietly figuring out how to design a better pen.

My Beautiful Girl

2006-12-01T21:47:00.000-06:00

Sometimes you just gotta say thanks for what life has blessed you with. Yes, I know I just ended a sentence with a preposition. I don't care. I tend to focus so much on the ways I'm falling short of perfection (hence the semi-apologetic observation of imperfect grammar) that I fail to take note of the miracles in my life. I know so many people who've gone through hell trying to have a child. What did I do to deserve this? Nothing. That's why I'm grateful.

Herself the Elf

2006-11-25T19:00:00.000-06:00

Two days after Thanksgiving and our neighbors already have Xmas stuff up. Lights, wreaths, the whole shebang. One house even had a giant 4' snow globe on the lawn, but it deflated by sunrise.

I wonder if that was the doing of a grinch with property values on his mind.

Anyway, I don't ordinarily get all into decorating for Xmas, but I realized this afternoon that I'd dressed my child as an elf today.

I suppose tiny lights around her borders are next.

I've Been Plagiarized!

2006-11-19T23:17:00.000-06:00

I just got home from back-to-back research trips to New York and San Antonio. On the flight from San Antonio I began reading a book I'd promised a journal editor I'd review for the journal's next issue. The book concerns research on mass media, body image, and eating disorders, the central topic of my research. About 70 pages into the book, I hit a paragraph that struck me as eerily familiar. Once home, I was able to confirm that the authors of the book I was reviewing, which was published in 2005, had copied, word for word, a paragraph I'd written in a journal article published in 1997. Twelve lines, no changes -- er, except I used the % sign and they wrote out "per cent."

I'm seething. Researchers publishing in journals don't get paid for their work, but book authors do. These people literally stole from me. And I strongly suspect that they've plagiarized other authors. Neither of the book's authors make their living researching this topic. The first author is a criminologist; the second, a media violence researcher. They fail to cite a single body-relevant media effects study published after 2000, which initially struck me as odd because probably half of the corpus of original research studies demonstrating an effect of media exposure on body image were published post-2000. Then I realized that the cited work is most likely outdated because, well, when you filch other people's writing, you end up citing whatever they cited when they initially published their work.

I've already contacted the book review editor of this journal to tell him there's no way I can provide a balanced book review. Now I get to contact the book's publisher.

Wish me luck.

The Racist Next Door

2006-11-03T13:43:00.000-06:00

As a white non-Jewish American I get to spend most of my time not thinking about my race or ethnicity (although my gender is another thing entirely). Not constantly having to define oneself by race is the privilege of being white in America. That is precisely why, in a class I teach called Media and the Human Body, we read and discuss original research relevant to the way people of color are portrayed in the mass media. My hope is to urge my students, many of whom are white kids from homogenous communities in the Midwest, to interrogate their assumptions about race.

Most of my students are open-minded enough to thoughtfully consider the findings of the research in light of their own, limited life experience -- or perhaps vice versa. My goal isn't to turn them into budding liberals, just to get them thinking about whether the dynamics they've always assumed to be true because their parents told them they were true really hold up when tested in a scientific manner.

Every few years I encounter a student who is deeply resistant to learning anything new about race. This year it was a young white woman (we'll call her Holly) whose sweet demeanor led me to expect this from just about anyone in the class but her.

I require students to submit questions about each reading. Most students ask about the theoretical assumptions or the research methods or the statistical analyses. Here were Holly's three latest questions. (Keep in mind that students know I will choose some of their questions to read out loud to the class, so she wrote these with full awareness that they could be made public.)

(1) Her first question was written in response to an experiment showing that when a black man's face was pictured in a mock news story about a violent crime, research participants using criminal suspect identification software reconstructed his face using more Afrocentric features (e.g., fuller lips, broader nose, and darker skin) than when the same man's face was pictured in a news story unrelated to crime:

"While I don't want to sound racist, I agree that when I think of scary criminals, I think of African Americans. A recent experience just solidified my opinion about them last weekend. My friends and I went to Chicago and were lost for an hour in the 'ghetto,' and I've never been so scared in my life. It was really late, and there were floods of black people everywhere, just walking the streets and blasting loud music. And they wonder why people stereotype them. I'm not saying that white people are perfect by any means, but you definitely don't see tons of them all over the streets making drug deals and living in projects. It interested me to see in the video on Tuesday that African Americans feel the need to act like bad asses to show they are not inferior. Why is it that African Americans wonder why they are discriminated against, when many of them act like animals? I hate to admit it, but I feel as though the media portrays (sic) them in pretty realistic situations, and many times try to glamorize their existence to try to break these stereotypes."

(2) She wrote this comment in response to a content analysis showing that black men are overrepresented as criminals on TV news (e.g., 37% of violent criminal suspects on the news were black, versus 21% in the same region according to actual arrest statistics):

"It was found in this survey that blacks are overrepresented on news programs. This goes back to my question/thoughts from the last article. I don't think that news programs try to find crime stories based on race. Again, I don't want to sound racist by any means, but blacks are probably overrepresented in the news because they are the ones committing the most crimes! The media should not at all lessen the amount of news stories dealing with blacks because they are afraid it may cause more racism or stereotyping. If the blacks want the media to stop overrepresenting them in bad ways, maybe they should stop being involved in these ridiculous crimes!"

(3) Her third question was in response to a content analysis showing that black women are portrayed as more dominant than white women in magazine advertisements:

"It is stated that the image of submissive sex objects applies specifically to white women. This makes me wonder why the media tends (sic) to stay away from portraying black women in this way. I'm not saying portraying any women as sex objects is right in any way, but it's crazy to me that many people fail to notice these little things that people and the media do to protect African Americans from being stereotyped even more."

I'm not sure what to do about this. I thought about calling Holly into my office and asking her to probe the source of her anger, but I don't want to come across as pushy. She has a right to her opinions, after all. And I suppose I should be flattered that she felt safe enough with me to share them in the first place.

More than anything, Holly's questions sadden me. Her resistance to the notion of walking in someone else's shoes, even for a few hours, even only symbolically, speaks to an ideological rigidity that strikes me as a disability, not of the body but of the soul. What's to be gained by adhering so vehemently to one's narrow worldview? Why do some people experience knowledge acquisition as liberating while others see it as the ultimate threat? Just what has she got to lose by acknowledging that racism exists in her country?

If I do end up talking to her, I'll let you know how it went.

Oops

2006-10-31T15:02:00.000-06:00

Happy Halloween everyone! I celebrated by wearing a fake, bloody, embedded-looking hatchet strapped to my forehead. That alone wasn't particularly remarkable, but the fact that I opted to wear it into a childcare facility was. Or so they told me, mouths downturned and faces aflush. (The adults, not the kids. None of the kids saw me. Well, the infants did, but any infant who knows what a hatchet and blood are and can recognize their symbolic representation in rubber and plastic has got bigger problems than what I'm wearing on my head. Right?)

Anyway, now I'm all worried about wearing the thing tonight. I wanted to let G take F around the neighborhood in her Wonder Woman costume while I answer the door and dole out candy wearing my hatchet. Now I'm afraid I'll get sued for scaring someone's kid.

Halloween used to be so much more fun when all we worried about were needles buried in popcorn balls.

Today's scent: Etro Messe de Minuit, of course.

Eight Months

2006-10-26T06:26:00.000-05:00

Kneesocks, harmonica, jodhpur boots, sweater
Oats, avocados, and grated sharp cheddar
Squat pointy objects with bright plastic rings
These are a few of my favorite things

My Male Brain

2006-10-09T16:05:00.000-05:00

(Image of my high 4th-to-2nd digit ratio, to be uploaded as soon as $@!# Blogger lets me.)

Some of the course material I cover in one of the classes I teach deals with testosterone and its role in social dynamics. I have become obsessed with testosterone because I am convinced that I have more than the average woman's share of it.

To wit:
1. One outwardly observable sign of greater exposure to androgens during gestation is a markedly longer ring finger than index finger. Unlike most women, whose ring and index fingers are about the same length, my ring finger could KO my index finger in a single round.

2. I have two older brothers. Recent research suggests that the mother's body "remembers" carrying male fetuses and that this somehow results in greater exposure to androgens in later pregnancies. Homosexuality, which has been associated in research with androgenic action during gestation, is significantly more prevalent among boys with older brothers than first-born boys. I'm not sure if the same association appears for girls, but the pattern fits so I'm sticking to it.

3. One of my older brothers is a textbook case of Asperger's syndrome. Musical genius with a hyperlexic talent for punning and poetry, he can't maintain eye contact for the life of him and misinterprets people's intentions as fluently as other people breathe. Consequently, he's a total social outcast and can't hold down a job. The "systematizing" (as opposed to empathizing) aspect of autistic-spectrum disorders like Asperger's is likened to "extreme male brain." One of the researchers advancing this theory is Simon Baron Cohen. His cousin is comedic actor Sascha Baron Cohen. Neat, huh? Anyway, autistic-spectrum disorders appear to be hereditary.

4. I'm by no means autistic or Asperger-y myself, but I have always found female social dynamics a mystery. I'm forever missing some subtle cue that, I'm told, I "should have" automatically picked up on at the moment. This has pissed my mom off countless times and resulted in an obsession with two reality shows, the defunct Sorority Life and the very much funct America's Next Top Model, because they're all about female social dynamics. I'm not saying they represent all women, just that they allow me to observe the way some groups of women interact without actually having to put myself in harm's way. Need I mention that I wasn't in a sorority myself? I prefer to view the animals from the safety of the zoo.

5. My right, or spatial, brain craves activity. After my high school calculus grade went from an A to a D (due to a rift with my teacher over nasty comments he made about my oldest brother and his homosexuality), I figured I'd never take math again. When I went to grad school it was with much trepidation that I enrolled in the first of eight required statistics courses. It was revolutionary, like someone was finally speaking to me in my native tongue.

6. Greater-than-usual exposure to androgens during gestation is also associated with left-handedness (I'm ambidextrous).

7. I have no boobs. I realize this doesn't prove anything, especially given how many men I see with boobs these days, but it too fits the pattern so I'm sticking to it.

8. I love--LOVE--trains. And football season. (But not the Three Stooges. I didn't say I WAS a guy.)

Here's the thing: There is NO overlap, barring serious clinical hormonal imbalance, in the amount of testosterone men have and the amount women have. None. Men have, like, 40 times as much testosterone as women. But the differences, emotionally and behaviorally, between high- and low-testosterone women and high- and low-testosterone men are quite similar.

Compared to most women I know, I feel like a guy in borrowed woman-skin (ah, soft, silky borrowed woman-skin). Like I'm "passing" in the world of women. Among them but not entirely of them. I've always chalked this up to being tall and having no boobs, but now that I know a little more about the biology behind sex hormones, I think it runs deeper than that.

It can get lonely here. But I take comfort in knowing that if I ever need to get out, I'll have excellent spatial skills to guide me, which is good because I won't be asking for directions.

Something about a '60s throwback shirt

2006-09-27T09:35:00.000-05:00

makes you want to play air guitar and defy authority.

Start of the Fourth Wave?

2006-09-22T13:16:00.000-05:00

How does a kid rebel against rebellious parents? Is she left with no option but to embrace the straight and narrow?

My biggest fear (aside from bodily harm of course) is that, in a frantic effort to individuate and distinguish herself from me, my daughter will grow up to be hopelessly constricted and traditional in her beliefs. Mom's a pantheist? I'll become a fundamentalist fill-in-your-religion. Mom didn't change her name upon marriage? I'll change mine upon engagement! Mom got a PhD? I'll resist even going to college. Mom waited until her career was established before having me so she could maintain her professional identity? The moment I see that little blue line I'll quit my job and call myself My Kid's Mom, a la Dr. Laura. Mom calls herself a feminist? Eww, I don't use the f-word.

What will I do? When I was a kid in the '70s I didn't think it was possible that Progress could be KO'd by Regress, but here we are. There's a very real possibility that my daughter will come of age during a time that's even more *gasp* retrograde than what we're seeing now.

Clearly, this calls for action.

Let the inoculation begin.

Three new discoveries...

2006-09-13T19:15:00.000-05:00

...in the last 24 hours:

(1) waving bye-bye
(2) drawing with crayons (style: abstract)
(3) my genitals!

All in all, a grinner of a day.

Where were you when...?

2006-09-11T06:55:00.000-05:00

It was the day after my father's 60th birthday. I woke up, went for a walk (beautiful morning), showered, and put on a pair of dark blue bias-cut jeans and a black short-sleeve shirt. Then I turned on the TV to catch the weather.

It's amazing what you remember 5 years later, isn't it?

Turning Verbs into Adjectives

2006-09-06T19:58:00.000-05:00

It's a risky business.

I've been observing these pregnancy/breastfeeding/parenting web boards for over a year now. I know they're not good for me but I keep coming back. It's a sick fascination.

I've become intrigued by the dynamics of these boards -- in particular, the way board members choose to represent themselves.

One of the boards I visit allows members to post avatars, tickers, and other words and images to signal Who They Are. Every time someone posts a comment, her signature automatically appears below her words. A signature is like a collection of virtual bumper stickers, and usually just as political.

Here's a typical signature: "Baby-wearing, 'sposie-using, breastfeeding, Jesus-loving, co-sleeping Proud Mommy." Translation: "I am a female parent. I worship in the Judeo-Christian tradition. I wear my baby in a sling and let her sleep in my bed. I feed her with my breasts, not a bottle. When it's time to change her I use disposable diapers. I am proud of this."

I have to wonder how much of the individual angst and collective bullying I've witnessed on these boards has to do with this tendency to turn verbs into adjectives. If you have difficulties that necessitate the cessation of one of these habits -- say, if the need to take a certain class of antidepressants disqualifies you from breastfeeding -- then the resulting change in behavior becomes a change in identity. Those are some very high stakes.

I bought into this ideology soon after my daughter's birth. When I had to supplement with formula, I became One of Those Women Who Supplement with Formula. It all seems so ridiculous now, but at the time it really felt like a threat to my identity, a threat to the person I wanted to be. It wasn't even about my daughter's health. It was about me.

I have to wonder how many of the people who breastfeed until their child can ride a bike are clinging to an identity they're not ready to give up. The party line is always "It's about what's best for the baby." But really, is it?

As for bumper stickers, I have one on my car: "I love Key West and its chickens." Because, I mean, who doesn't?

Next time you're playing a gig...

2006-09-01T18:32:00.000-05:00

...try not to get drunk. A good buzz feels great while playing, but it messes with your performance, rendering you slow and off-target.

Frustration from missing beat after beat...

...gives way to debilitating nausea.

Best to stay sober during the performances that matter and save the boozing for karaoke.

Can't Wait for Halloween!

2006-08-29T20:02:00.000-05:00

Halloween is by far my favorite holiday. Chalk it up to a lifetime of candy worship. Now that I have a daughter I am all atremble with anticipation. I spent the past week pondering costume options, and finally settled on this:

Yes, Wonder Woman. (Are you listening, Atreau?) The kid in the picture isn't mine, by the way; she's the model whose photo was paired with the etailer's description of the costume, which I found completely irresistible:

"Wonder Woman has her origins as Diana, daughter of Queen Hippolyta of the Amazons. The Amazons are a group of immortal warrior women. They live on the hidden island named Paradise Island. Wonder Woman entered a personal combat contest and won. The prize she was awarded was to be an Ambassador to the outside world and become a Super Hero. Now you can be a Super Hero too in your Wonder Woman Costume!"

*squeal!*

At 28 inches long, Fia is at the 99th percentile for height, which I think makes her an honorary descendant of the Amazons. Add to that the fact that her mommy is an outspoken feminist and her daddy flies a plane (albeit a visible one), and you'll see with perfect clarity, just as I did, that Wonder Woman is the ONLY Halloween costume for my girl.

Finally, an Answer

2006-08-28T14:30:00.000-05:00

Those of you who read my former blog had to cringe through several posts lamenting my breastfeeding struggles, in particular the fact that it seemed I wasn't able to make enough for little Fi.

This past weekend, I finally learned why.

Okay, background: I have Graves' Disease, an autoimmune metabolic disorder. To treat it, I had radiation therapy to destroy my thyroid gland, so I no longer make my own thyroid hormone. To keep my metabolism at the right level I have to take synthetic thyroid hormone every day, just as a diabetic has to take insulin. When I was pregnant, my physicians had to increase the amount I was taking because my body's metabolic needs increased dramatically.

The week after Fi was born, I had myself tested and it seemed everything was fine. But within days of that test I started feeling really anxious and shaky. I would wake up at night -- when I could sleep, that is -- drenched in sweat. All of my pregnancy weight was gone within 12 days of the birth. I should have recognized the symptoms as hyperthyroidism because I've experienced them before, but all of my books said that sweating, weight loss, and anxiety are normal for the postpartum period.

So, I lived with it and had my thyroid tested 6 weeks later, as recommended. The test confirmed that I was hyperthyroid, and pretty severely so. My endocrinologist dropped my thyroxine dose a level and told me to get tested again 6 weeks later. Fast forward: the repeat test revealed that I was still hyperthyroid, even MORE so than before (!), so my doc dropped me all the way back down to my prepregnancy level. Within a few weeks the sweating had subsided and I could actually sleep again. I was "normal" once more. Throughout the whole thing, I was pumping like a madwoman and berating myself for not being able to provide enough milk for Fi. I felt crushed when, at the age of 11 weeks, she said TO HELL WITH IT and went on a permanent nursing strike, opting for the bottle instead.

Only now, 6 months after Fi was born, have I learned that excessive thyroid hormone impedes the release of oxytocin, which is essential for milk letdown. I was making enough milk, it's just that Fi couldn't get it OUT. I'd do these before-after weighings at the breastfeeding clinic and want to cry upon learning that, after 40 minutes of feeding, she got a grand total of 1.5 ounces. I read all the books that said THERE'S NO REASON YOU CAN'T MAKE ENOUGH MILK and actually believed them. I was so, SO hard on myself and felt like a loser for supplementing with formula.

The irony is that the only mention those books make of thyroid issues and breastfeeding is that being hypothyroid can prevent you from making enough milk. Not one mentions that being HYPERthyroid can prevent the milk you make from effectively transferring into your child's body. So I was obsessed with avoiding hypothyroidism and begged my endocrinologist to lower my supplemental thyroid dose only one notch at a time. When he lowered me multiple dosage levels after the second 6-week test, I was terrified that I would lose the capacity to make any milk at all. Instead, my supply went up enough that I was able to pump more than twice as much as before. By that time, though, Fi was firmly attached to the bottle, and who could blame her? Mom's taps were sources of frustration, not comfort.

Here I am, 6 months out and still pumping, and I can't express how much of a relief it was to learn the real reason for my difficulties. It's not just because I found out that IT WASN'T MY FAULT (which is always a relief regardless of the trauma, let's be honest), but because now I feel empowered to deal with it in the future if I have another child. I can ask my endo to lower my supplemental thyroxine dose soon after delivery rather than making me wait 6 weeks, then another 6 weeks, et cetera. And if I have another episode of hyperthyroidism in spite of my endo's and my best efforts, I'll supplement with formula without a second thought because, after all, my job is to FEED MY CHILD. Now that I look back on those months, I'm so glad I made that choice, in spite of all the warnings that formula would be the beginning of the end of my nursing relationship with my daughter. What did those people know of MY body and its needs? And when they claimed that knowledge, why on earth did I believe them??

Oh well, that's water under the bridge now. At her 6 month well-baby appointment, Fi was 16 lbs 10 oz and 28" long. That's up from 8-15 and 22" at birth.

I fed my child. *beams*

Change of Venue

2006-08-21T16:26:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone! I apologize for the inconvenience associated with my blog address change.

The old address was no longer suitable for two reasons. First, I was protecting my speech way too much to continue pretending that my blog was "uncensored." It had become UBERcensored. Second, the reason for the ubercensorship: my mom had found my site.

Some of you figured this out from the anonymous comment in response to my WTF? post. According to one of my brothers, it wasn't my mom who posted that, it was one of her employees. My mother tells everyone who will listen about what a vile person her daughter is (the term she always used with me was subhuman), so it's only natural that her pals wish to see me harmed too. The irony is that this particular pal was embezzling from my mom the whole time she (the pal) was professing her loyalty. Twelve thousand dollars. Spent, of course, with no chance for reclamation. According to my dad, when my mom found out, Embezzler pulled a parasuicide (that's like a halfhearted suicide attempt designed to elicit pity). Did I mention that Embezzler is my other brother's girlfriend? And that her parasuicide took place in the house she shares with my brother, who had the pleasure of finding her? And that my mom had pre-signed her checks and left Embezzler in charge of the books? My mom's no fool. But when you've decided that Victim is your identity, you have to find subtle ways to keep setting yourself up to be victimized.

Sound outrageous? It is. It's why I moved to another state, and why I moved my blog address. I'm sorry that my dad, a perfectly decent person, no longer has access to my blog, but I can send him the baby pics by email.

For more information, view Mommie Dearest or check out this site on borderline personality disorder.

About the blog, unfortunately I lost a lot of my settings, including my profile and favorite blogger links, when I changed templates. I promise to rebuild (better, stronger, faster) when I get a chance. This week is tough because I go back to work full time. Thanks for your patience.

New Orleans One Year Later, Part Deux

2006-08-15T12:11:00.000-05:00

Ah, blogger finally let me upload pics again. Please see the post below for background.

Where were we? Oh yes, the Ninth Ward. The first image below shows the top floor of a house fallen down upon the bottom floor. The second gives the overall flavor of the ward.

Of course, other areas of the city also continue to show the ill effects not only of water and wind damage but of human neglect. Ever wonder what a golf course would look like if it got the irrigation treatment of a lifetime and then went untended for a year? Here you go, straight out of Logan's Run:

Times like these show you how important human maintenance is. But a golf-course-grown-wild isn't dangerous to anybody. I found the lack of attention to certain really important elements of the city's infrastructure, such as traffic control, much more disconcerting:

Perhaps whoever wins that lottery will consider donating some back to the city.

I do want to end on a positive note. In spite of the wreckage, the hale and hardy citizens of New Orleans haven't lost their sense of humor -- or their desire to make lemonade (money) out of lemons (disaster):

New Orleans One Year Later

2006-08-11T20:12:00.000-05:00

I spent a few days this week in New Orleans for the American Psychological Association's yearly conference. It was a momentous occasion for two reasons. One, it was my first trip away from Butterskin. (Ever touch a baby's skin? Like buttah.) Happy to say we both survived. Two, it was my first time in New Orleans since The Storm, as the residents call Hurricane Katrina. I'm sorry to say a lot of the city's residents didn't survive. Fortunately my friends Mike and Sally did.

Mike and Sally are artists who live in the city. I spent a day with them talking about their experiences following the storm. They began by taking me on the "destruction tour." The first thing that struck me was how the water line is visible on all surfaces somebody hasn't yet paid to have cleaned, which basically means all walls and buildings in the poor areas and the areas where people haven't yet moved back. This church sign, for instance. The water line is visible as a faint horizontal stain about 6 feet off the ground. At its maximum depth the sign must have read simply THE LORD, raising questions about what exactly He was going to do once the water went down.

If THE LORD will indeed guide this neighborhood's denizens home, it hasn't happened yet. The houses are a wreck and every single one for miles around is uninhabited.

And there's garbage everywhere. Mike said FEMA has all these crazy rules about what they'll pick up and what the city has to pick up, and since the city isn't holding up its end of the bargain because its sanitation workers pretty much all reside in Texas now, every neighborhood is pockmarked by piles of garbage no one will touch.

The neighborhood in the above pics looked positively posh compared to the decimated Ninth Ward, adjacent to a levee breach. There, the water simply picked houses up off their slabs and deposited them randomly: on roadsides, atop cars, atop other houses. Most of the houses in the ward were simply demolished, hence a great deal of green space one year later.

Dang. For some reason I cannot comprehend, blogger won't let me upload any more pics.

I had some good ones too. Will try to add them, plus descriptions, at a future date. In the meantime, suffice it to say I made it back just fine, albeit sans eye drops or lip gloss in my bag, which meant I arrived dry-eyed and dry-lipped in time to kiss Butterskin before bed.

Prime property where I live

2006-08-02T19:58:00.000-05:00

Feeling jealous yet?

Thought so.

Heaven help me...

2006-07-28T17:30:00.000-05:00

...the first time she gives me this look on purpose.

Ode to Peg

2006-07-24T17:15:00.000-05:00

I've owned three cars in my life. The first was Molly, a two-tone 1982 blue Ford Escort wagon with a broken speedometer and no heat blower. I had to scrape Michigan ice off the outside and inside every time I drove it, except in the summer, when the absence of air conditioning became my chief concern.

My current car is a yellow Ford Escape called, affectionately, The Short Bus. Please don't flame me; I didn't come up with the name. (For the uninformed, some genius in the U.S. public school system thought it would be fun to further stigmatize special-education kids by making them ride a bus half the length of a regular schoolbus. As a bonus, it made the rounds later than the regular buses so when it finally arrived at school everyone could look out and see exactly who "rode the short bus.")

In between Molly and The Short Bus was Peg, my white Ford Festiva. (See a pattern here? Dad worked as an automotive engineer for Guess What Company! Fortunately he wasn't one of those "boo-ya-Ford-RULES!" fist-pumping dads, like those weirdos who sport cartoons of Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes peeing on the logo of a competing car company; I just stuck with Fords because the "A Plan" gave me a cut-rate deal on cars without having to haggle at a dealership. *shudder*)

I acquired Peg in a most unorthodox way. It was 1991. Molly was on the outs and it was time for a new (used, a.k.a. pre-owned) car. Dad and I set aside a day to look at vehicles he'd spotted in the Tradin' Times. I hopped in his car and he handed me the classifieds so I could see which ads he'd circled. As we rolled down the driveway, I could feel my face fall. Oh no. What's this? A Renault Le Car? You've got to be kidding. Further down: an El Camino? No way. A Brat?? What the hell... a Pinto?! Oh my god. Dad, I know you're stingy er cheap er budget-minded, but don't Pintos explode when tapped from the rear? Isn't that why you got rid of your own Pinto?

Suddenly he hit the brakes. "Forgot something." He rolled up the driveway in reverse and commanded me to jump out and grab his thing-a-ma-jiggy from the garage. I opened the garage door and there, in all its gorgeous, glossy glory, was a brand new white Festiva. The rest of my family was standing around it, laughing and pointing at me for actually thinking I was doomed to El Caminodom. (I'm alarmingly gullible for someone who is otherwise pretty smart. Either that or my family lies really, really well.)

I was completely thrilled. It didn't matter that the car had no tape or CD player, no air conditioning, no power anything. It was clean, it was new, it worked, and it was mine. My parents had actually bought me a car. Isn't that every kid's fantasy? I had just graduated from college so I was no kid, but even working three part-time jobs at once didn't give me enough $$ for a new car. Dad told me it cost something like $6600. New. This was the '90s, not 1978.

The best part: the top speed on the speedometer was 85 mph. 85.

My friend Julie named my new car Peg for its practical, zippy personality. If Peg could speak she'd have an accent like Marge Gunderson in Fargo. Yah, sure, alrighty then. I fell in love with Peg and drove her everywhere. I took her to grad school, then back to Michigan after I finished my degree and got my first faculty job there. I finally gave her up in 2002 at the urging of none other than Dad, who admitted that he'd set me up with the auto-safety equivalent of a McDonald's ashtray and thought it would be wise for me to upgrade. I don't think he counted on me driving Peg for 11 years when he first picked her out. He probably thought it a little unbecoming for a professional woman to drive an 11-year-old Festiva.

But I'm not alone in my fondness for what I always thought of as an enormous Chiclet on wheels. I recently learned that there are Festiva clubs populated by people who have souped up their "Festies" and "'Stivas." One guy put a 240 hp motor in his. A bunch of Canadians hold yearly Festy races. How does anyone win if they're all topping out at 85 mph? Easy, just make 'em drive on ice.

Ahhhh, such a fun car. But I'm sure I'll be saying that about The Short Bus in another 7 years.

Dreams

2006-07-21T10:54:00.000-05:00

I do my most creative work at night. I've composed songs, written screenplays, and invented new extreme sports, all in my dreams.

The other night I dreamt that I was opening a knitting store in New York. This would be my logo:
If I ever do open a knitting store -- doubtful because all I can knit are scarves -- it had better be in New York. Otherwise it's back to the drawing board.

The best toys don't need batteries...

2006-07-07T19:51:00.000-05:00

...but some demand the death of a bird.