Tonight, on iChat:
Otto: where’s your post debate analysis? it’s been like an hour
Diane: Heh. Like I could watch it. Darin came home and taped it. I couldn’t be in the same room for a few seconds. I thought Kerry sounded much better, but why he didn’t hammer Bush on obvious stuff I have no idea.
Otto: i would listen to kerry, then i’d play w the baby loudly while bush was talking. cspan did a permanent split screen, so it was all reaction all the time. loved it. bush looked tired and lost, and kerry looked confident and also, a tiny bit, that if he was allowed by the debate rules to politely removed bush’s head with a machete, he would
Diane: and, as we all know, kerry actually knows how to do that.
Otto: yup. woulda made for GREAT tv
Diane: we should do a live blogging next debate on my blog. Not so much instant analysis as “instant snarkiness.” there’s enough analysis. there’s insufficient snarkiness. i mean, there’s only so much Jon Stewart to go around. And Mrs. Stewart and Baby Stewart really have first dibs. Well, them and Comedy Central.
Otto: never once seen his show, actually
Diane: !!! whoa.
Otto: also never tried coffee. i have a great list of these, but too many and i’d blow your mind
Diane: Well, on behalf of my people, Welcome to this planet.
So, what’d you think: instead of live debate blogging, live debate snarkiness blogging? And when is the next debate, anyhow?
Update: Aha! Found it:
- Oct. 5: Vice-Presidential debate (Not limited by topic)
- Oct. 8 (Not limited by topic)
- Oct. 13 (Economic and domestic policy)
Update 2:
Diane: I don’t even know how to find out when the next debates are.
Otto: i think it’s in the paper, on cnn, on cnn.com, and probably about 1,900 other news stories. they also said on the air, for those who watched, when the next episode is
Diane: well, there’s the whole “Diane DIDN’T WATCH IT” thing, but you just keep on. I have a copy of the Debate Agreement memo, and there it is.
Otto: you have the debate agreement memo, but didn’t watch the debate? what sort of freak are you?
At a birthday party a week or so ago (my interactions with other adults pretty much center around birthday parties), a friend of mine who’s the mom of one of Sophia’s best friends confided in me that she’s not happy with our preschool. Why? Because it’s not academic enough. Her daughter doesn’t know her letters yet, for example.
I confided in her that I’m not happy with the preschool because I think it’s too academic. I think the school spends an inordinate amount of time on letters. Sophia already knew her alphabet and numbers before going to preschool, you see. Her preschool in LA was (dare I say it) more perfect than I knew at the time. She’d come home covered in paint and dirt, having spent all day doing art projects and feeding the pet rabbit and listening to stories in circle time. At her current preschool her clothes are in perfect order every day.
Sophia’s big thing these days is writing. She can write her name and Simon’s name; she has to ask me to spell other names. For example, now when we write out a birthday card, Sophia insists on writing the name of her friend on the card and signing it herself. She isn’t reading (so far as I know), but she can write pretty well for a 4-year-old. (In my opinion, of course. What do I know of the handwriting skills of 4 year olds?)
At a birthday party this past weekend, I met a mom who turns out to live very close to me, whose son is going to the public school my kids would attend. As is my wont, I talked to her some about what the school’s like, and as usually happens I probably took something different away from her words than she intended. She liked the kindergarten teacher, but is not so thrilled with her son’s 1st grade teacher this year. (The school year is what, a month old? And already she’s not thrilled?) The constant fundraising appeals (on top of the gigantic property taxes we’re all paying in this area). The way parents are continuously on call to help out with teaching art or science, or arranging parties, or coordinating field trips.
My thought as she was saying all this was, “If I have to do all that, I might as well just keep ‘em home.”
Which is a really frightening idea to me still.
I’m not much worried about Sophia’s socialization—when she wants to play with other kids, she’s the belle of the playground and directs all the action. When she doesn’t, she sits by herself and refuses all interactions. And while I’m not too certain of Simon’s style of interaction (he’s still at an age where kids play near one another and not so much with one another), I know so far that he’s a pretty sunny kid who’s very bright, both personality-wise and intelligence-wise.
No, I’m going to be out-and-out selfish here and admit that the Number One reason I wouldn’t homeschool is I am afraid I would not have any time to myself during the day, and I really, really need time to myself. One of the early indicators to me that Darin and I were well-suited was that I could stand to be around him for more than three or four hours straight.
But then I read something Sarah’s essay on why she homeschools, and I’m like, Yeah, I’m down with that. Not that I was ever “warehoused” in my schooling, the way I’ve read so many other people were. But I definitely disliked the social aspects of school (the really bright kids, especially when they’re over a year younger than everyone else in the class? not very popular). I got into the habit of making myself appear stupider than I really was. I remember one time I was in a discussion with a couple of people on some topic and I said, “Gosh, I don’t know,” when I clearly did. And after everyone else left, my friend Fritz said to me, “I know you knew what they were talking about.” Of course, he’d acted stupid about it too.
Mind you, we were at Stanford at the time.
If you have to act stupid at Stanford, there’s a problem.
I’d really like my kids to have the experience of enjoying being intelligent and being able to read as much as they want to whenever they want to. That was certainly the best part of any day for me.
But I’m worried too that I would not be able to make time for myself. Maybe it’s easier to do when they get older, I don’t know. But I’m still thinking about it.
My Mom is really doing a job on her three-story-plus-basement house in San Francisco. Forty years plus of accumulated stuff from a marriage, some of it dragged cross-country when we moved to California. My parents kept everything. My Mom’s doing a pretty good job of tossing a lot of the stuff she no longer needs.
One of the things she kept was all the letters and cards I sent home over time. Most of which I’ve taken back to my own house (since I haven’t managed to declutter my own house, might as well just add to the clutter, eh?). The kids have been doing their part, going into my office despite strict orders not to, digging into the boxes, and redistributing the wealth all over the place.
One of the cards they found strikes me as utterly hilarious. It’s from October 1987. I had just started working at Apple and was on a business trip to a trade fair at Disneyland (which, strangely, I remember not at all). My sister was working at Merrill Lynch. The stock market had just crashed on Black Monday.
The picture side of the card is from Dumbo: Dumbo is on the cliff, Timothy J. Mouse on his back with the magic feather, a train of black crows pushing from behind. And I wrote:
Bought this card thinking of Deirdre. Dumbo = Wall Street, the birds = investors, the mouse = US Economy. Only this time the pachyderm doesn’t fly and the mouse buys it.
Had a great time at the Magic Kingdom/computer trade show. Disneyland is like Apple, except with no Macs but more insanity.
No, seriously: that was my whole card.
I can’t believe I thought of writing that, nor that my mother saved it. I’m kinda glad she did though. It’s nice having some proof that I have a wacky sense of humor, especially on days when I’m not at all sure I do.
Okay, phew! Things seem to be back to normal around here. I hadn’t saved my self-built templates for the left column and right column, but then I remembered I’d mailed them to someone a while back—turned out to be almost 2 years ago, but who’s counting?—and with a little tweaking they seem to be their good old selves. Yay. And everything seems to work fine.
§
Simon is fine. Or, to be more exact, Simon is the same little boy as ever: he’s smiley, flirty, and trying out new words all the time. (Still refuses to say “Simon.” Go figure.) We went to see the neurologist on Monday, and he observed Simon, gave him reflex tests, looked at the charts, and said, basically, “Huh. No idea.” Well, okay, not quite no idea: the leading contenders are 1) a seizure of some kind and 2) a reaction to medication, and the only medication we’ve been giving him of late is Amoxicillin for his toe.
He’s taking an EEG test in a few weeks. This consists of making him stay up real late, then making him get up real early in the morning. I have no idea why we’d want to do this, but that’s what they said.
I’ve been cooking of late. I’m still quite the neophyte at it: not only do I have to look at recipes for everything I cook, I still don’t know the simple stuff like “Don’t put baking dishes directly on a burner, no matter what the fucking recipe says.”
Last Thursday I was attempting to make Toad In The Hole from Comfort Foods, an inexpensive cookbook I picked up at Borders. Turns out to be an inexpensive cookbook from Australia that talks about Gas 4 (took me a while to parse that one) and jaffles (that’s “pressed sandwiches”). I’ve made a couple of things from it, all tasty, and so I was making Toad in the Hole, which states that you need to heat up oil in a baking dish, either in the oven or on the stove.
Mistake 1: I chose the stove. Mistake 2: I used a Pyrex dish.
I’ll spare you the suspense: the oil bubbled fast, and when I poured the batter in I got nervous, and when I started to put the sausages in on top of that the Pyrex dish blew.
I mean: blew.
Glass everywhere. Hot oil everywhere. Very frightened Mommy somehow turned off the stove (how? no fuckin’ clue. But thank God we had an electric stove, eh?). Simon was standing near the refrigerator, right near a pile of the shards, and Mommy said in a very no-nonsense voice, “Don’t move.”
Two years old, scared out of his wits, but he doesn’t move.
I picked him up, carried him to the living room, told both kids to stay right there. I went to get my shoes so I could begin cleaning up.
During the few seconds of getting some shoes from the hall closet, Simon went back into the kitchen to look for me. My first clue that he hadn’t stayed put was the loud shriek.
Yes, he’d managed to step on a piece of glass, a big ol’ piece. His toes were covered with blood, and he was just standing there, crying.
Sights you never want to see: your child bleeding.
I couldn’t find my keys. I couldn’t think of where my keys might be. Not that someone as clearly hysterical as I was at that moment should be driving anyhow. I picked up the phone and called 911. I am extremely proud of the fact that I remembered my address and phone number. Of course, I had to repeat them: the 911 operator asked me to calm down a little.
I couldn’t stop crying. Simon was being completely calm and motionless in my arms, but I kept shaking.
(While talking to 911, I was sitting on the stairs by the kitchen with Simon on my lap. Blood kept dripping off his foot and on to the peach carpeting that covers most of the floors in this house. I already despise this carpeting—I much prefer hardwood floors, and peach?—and now this little collection of blood stains just serves to remind me that it’s time to go into debt and get a home equity loan and get some fucking hardwood floors already.)
The paramedics arrived, cleaned up his toes, figured out he had one giant gash across his right big toe, bound it up with some bandages, and said that he needed to go to the ER, because he might need stitches, but it wasn’t critical, he didn’t need to be there in the next fifteen minutes or anything. Did I want an ambulance or did I want to drive him? I decided to drive him. The paramedic asked me to call my husband to coordinate with him.
Darin tells the story this way: I started okay, telling him he had to come home. But then my iron-clad resolve to tell the story in the right order, perhaps starting with, “Simon is okay, but we need to go to the ER,” fell apart, and the first three words Darin remembers hearing were, “Explosion, paramedic, Simon.” He screamed, “WHAT?” and the paramedic took the phone away from me. He explained the situation to Darin, who understood it a lot better and said he’d be home soon to take Simon to the ER.
The cops came too, probably to see whether it was an accident or child abuse. One cop went into the house to see Sophia, who refused to come anywhere near me or Simon (although she’d vowed to stay out of the kitchen). She started out quiet and refusing to talk, but after a few minutes was talking the policeman’s ear off, had gotten not one but two police car pins out of him, and probably had his wallet as well. That’s my girl.
During all of this Simon was completely calm, almost to the point of affectlessness. I kept trying to get him to say something to the paramedics, or even to me. It wasn’t until the paramedics were leaving (after cleaning up some of the major glass and blood in the kitchen) that he said, “Bye! Bye!” Which made me calm down immensely.
Darin took Simon to the ER, where they stayed for three and a half hours. Simon got an X-Ray (the nurses evidently kept saying that Simon was the best behaved two year old ever) and kept asking when he could go home. When they got home Simon came running straight for me to give me a big hug. He fell asleep about fifteen seconds later. It had been a full day.
§
This morning the hilarity continued: I came back from my run with Rob and Simon asked me for chocolate toast. Since I had to get the kids fed and out the door, I said, sure. He sat down at the kitchen table, happy as, well, a kid with Nutella toast can be, and chomped away at three quarters. When he got to the fourth quarter he said, “It hurts, Mama.” And he put his hands up for me to hold him.
So, I put him on my lap to get him dressed for school and I noticed he was becoming progressively more floppy. He sort of transmogrified into a wet noodle in my arms, lay his head back, and his eyes closed like he was going to sleep. This didn’t happen at all once, or I would have been terrified—it happened much more slowly, like he’d just decided he was tired and wanted to nap a bit before school.
Then I noticed his lips were sort of whitish-blue. Both of my kids have very pale skin, like Mommy, and very full red lips, like Daddy. For Simon to have colorless lips was disturbing, to say the least.
I raced upstairs to Darin, who shouted at Simon to wake up—and Simon didn’t bat a single very-long eyelash. Darin said, “Take him to the emergency room, now.”
We went to the Emergency Room at Good Samaritan and I have to agree with Darin: Best. Emergency. Room. Ever. Free valet parking right by the door (damn near didn’t even take the ticket from the valet), very clean and bright waiting untroubled by very many actual patients. Or, I noticed, by a triage nurse. I filled out the admittal form as best I could, holding Simon (whose eyes were still closed). The lady who’d checked in before me pointed out a phone that patients were supposed to use to get a hold of someone. I picked it up and when someone finally picked up I said, “Where are you? There’s no one out here.” They assured me they’d be out in a second, which they were.
(The woman who checked in before me said, “Excuse me, I was here first. I’m pregnant and I’m in labor.” The nurse blandly asked, “What are your contractions?” And I realized in that second that the show ER can never truly dramatize what life in an ER is like, because you’d have to show how unbelievably nonchalant these workers are about emergencies, which would really be a turnoff for viewers.)
They showed Simon and me to a room. Simon opened his eyes, but he had little to no affect: limp noodle baby. They took his temperature, stuck him with needles to draw blood, shined bright lights in his eyes, and he might as well have been floating in a salt water tank for all the involvement he showed. They asked me how his behavior was different than usual, and I wondered where to begin. No energy, no animation, no talking. They gave him a CAT scan and kept telling me, “He can’t move under any circumstances, okay?” In case they hadn’t noticed, he was barely moving as it was. He was bundled into the CAT machine and hardly took notice.
In fact, it wasn’t until I turned on the TV and we watched “Elmo’s World” that Simon seemed to see anything around him. He pointed at the TV and said, “Elmo.” It wasn’t until noontime that he seemed to become his old self. He decided to announce this by repeating informing me, “I want to go home.” Me too, honey (I hadn’t eaten or taken a shower after the run) but we needed to wait to give more blood, to talk to the doctor, to get the final okay to go. They had no idea what it was, of course: might have been a small seizure, might not. We’re supposed to go see a neurologist soon.
Six hours in the ER was a little much. I’m going to be very stern and hold the line: no more emergency room visits. Ever.
§
I’ve started being interested in my dreams again, because for a while there I was having extremely long and complex ones, so I was inspired to start writing them down again. Of course, the second I decide to start writing my dreams down they become oh-so-hard to even remember. Why is that?
And a million or so years ago, I got in the habit of writing my dreams in a different color in my journal: purple or green or pink. These days, small hands find my purple pens and make off with them. No matter what I say, I cannot get through to the kids that they shouldn’t write with Mommy’s pen or in Mommy’s book. Sigh.
§
A house down the street just came on the market and sold within two weeks. It’s a cute little house, Victorian-esque (given our neighborhood, it might be an actual Victorian), recently remodeled interior. It’s smaller than our house by a couple hundred square feet, and the lot size is definitely smaller.
Don’t know what it sold for. But the asking price was $600,000 over what we paid for our house, slightly over a year ago. And I don’t think that house has a garage either.
This housing market is insane. I keep thinking it’s got to end somewhere, but apparently the tech bubble bursting and interest rates rising haven’t been enough to do it. I don’t know where the upper bound is.
I do know that if we ever sell this place we’re either leaving California or have just come into a buttload of extra money, because no way can we ever afford anything else.
Not sure what this is but just stumbled upon it and assumed that it was some kind of forum for...