Fade to White

Outside my window the wind is howling and the snow is swirling so thick that I can barely see the house across the street. Ordinarily, I love a good blizzard. But not when I'm expecting 25 people for a New Year's Eve bash that's been in the works for 2 months. Timing.

This is actually a perfect cap to a year of swirling craziness. Reflecting back, there were some great times. Skiing as a family in February and March. Cuttyhunk. Pete's promotion. Another prosperous year for Nuka. A great new nanny. Many new friends. But there was also a whole lot of churn and anxiety.

I've been struggling with the holiday blues, with the dark feelings that creep in, especially this time of year. I recognize that there is an element of choice to my moods - sulking is a choice, fear is a choice, anger is a choice. So my challenge to myself for the New Year is to make better choices about how to handle the inevitable stressors - to focus on the bright, shiny moments and let go of the dark, angry ones. Let the swirling snow pile up where it will, and appreciate that I am safe and warm. And most of all, remember that I already have everything I need to let in the light. It is simply a matter of choice.

Believe

I'm feeling particularly dull this holiday season.  I've gone through all the motions, but I can't quite get in touch with the joy.  I think this is fairly common, especially among over-achieving moms of young children who literally spend every spare moment from Thanksgiving to Dec 24th making lists, baking, shopping, decorating, hiding, wrapping, menu planning, shopping for things we forget, making new lists, wrapping some more, and constantly anxious that we've forgotten that one critical piece and that our oversight will ultimately send the entire house of holiday cards crashing down.

I sat through Sofia's adorable preschool holiday play totally dry-eyed.  Typically I am a weepy mess.  Ditto for flying santa, for the 12 days of christmas sing-a-long at the neighborhood holiday party.  Usually I am a sentimental wreck, but this year I feel like I'm in a bubble, watching the whole thing unfold through a dirty window.  

I'm not typically one to succumb to the holiday blues, but this year they've gripped me.  So, if you happen to run into Clarence the Angel or Buddy the Elf, or even Bad Santa...could you send them my way?  

Thanksgiving

Sofia is 72 hours out of the OR and climbing on furniture, shaking her booty to High School Musical, and eating turkey like a Pilgrim.

When we brought Sofia home from the hospital, she and her sister hugged so hard I lost my breath for a moment.

Tomorrow Pete will lug the 15 rubbermaid tubs full of Christmas flair out of the basement.

My wineglass is full and the DVR is loaded.

Game on.

I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

Perhaps I should elaborate, lest my 3 faithful readers suffer from concern that I am somehow on the wagon. Don't worry, Monica. I am doing my best to prove that liquor stores are recession-proof.

But honestly, the dread and fear won't go away, no matter how much I dull it with alcohol or sublimate it with loud music, exercise, caffeine, food. Nothing works.

Sofia's teacher came up to me this morning and asked that I keep her informed next week. Then she said that Sofia has seemed a little off this week, crying at weird times, kind of weepy. She talks about the surgery very matter-of-fact but I think she is picking up on our unease. Poor thing is trying to put a brave face on. She's my girl in so many ways.

From what I have heard, the surgery takes about 4 hours. I could sniff a lot of glue in 4 hours.

Perspective

I am totally losing my shit.

Less than a week now until my sweet baby goes under the knife and I am a wreck. I can't even talk about it without getting teary. And this is so unlike me - I am usually such a cool cucumber...rational and calm. Right? But not when it's my kid.

So tonight we dropped Emma at CCD and then headed to Target, the happiest place on earth. I needed paper towels (not a one left in the house, see my previous post about my domestic management challenges...) and we also needed to pick up some underwear for Sofia post-surgery. The incision is about where a C-section incision would be, and I spoke to another mom who's daughter had the ureter reimplantation surgery and she mentioned that she had to buy underwear several sizes larger so that it wouldn't irritate the scar. So that was our mission.

But of course, it's Target, you never go there just for the items on your list, so I told Fia that we were going to also pick up a treat for her for the hospital. And good sport that she is, she said "yeah mom, and you can give it to me in the hospital when I wake up."

Oh my sweet, precious child. Yesssss! Mommy will give you anything you like, anything in the world.

And then she says, "And mom? When people visit me in the hospital? They will bring me treats too, right?"

And I say "Of course they will, sweetie."

And she says, "Mom? Can you write a note for that? To make sure people know that they have to bring me treats?"

And I said, "How about this? Dear Friends and Family...If you come to visit Sofia in the hospital please remember to bring her a present."

"That's perfect, mom."

At least one of us is staying focused.

Unforgetable

One of the few constants in my life is my unyielding superiority in the field of parental blunders. I forget to pack water bottles in lunch boxes. I almost never host playdates. The nanny knows more of the kids' friends' parents than I do...in fact she does host playdates. We constantly run out of yogurt and I never buy the right kind of cereal. My pancakes are nowhere near as good as daddy's even though they come from the same damn box. I even missed Sofia's first birthday (just by a few hours, I was on an airplane...at least it was flying toward her and not away).

But yesterday I outdid myself. It was the 6th and final day of the living hell I like to call "The nanny goes to Mexico." When she brought up the idea of a vacation, I played it so cool. Of course she should take the week off. They are my children after all. I can handle a week of juggling bus stops, preschool, acting class, dance class, lunches, homework, laundry. I'll even take them for a flu shot. My full-time plus job? I'll squeeze it in there, no problem.

Last week started OK. They were off school Tuesday, so I took the day off and took them rock climbing, to a friend's house for lunch, to the flu shot clinic, and to the polls (they both voted for Brocco!) I even managed to meet an old friend for dinner that night. Easy peasy. Then I woke up the next morning half dead with what I assume was a reaction to the flu shot. So add to the work/kid juggling act a truckload of Zicam, kleenex & vitamin C. I got through the week in triage mode, and managed to hit the one deadline that I had no leeway on (all other projects got stuck in neutral). And then it was yesterday. My last day sans nanny. Piece of cake.

Typically, Mondays are hectic for me. I usually start with my favorite gym class of all time - cardio sport. It is hard to explain, does "ultimate death match for 30-something moms" make any sense? You just have to try it. So normal Mondays start with putting Emma on the bus, dropping Fia at preschool, hitting the gym for 90 minutes of sheer exhiliaration, then rushing home to prep for weekly staff meeting and all the other crap I do for a paycheck. Sofia has lunch bunch, and the nanny usually picks her up at 1, brings her home, and manages the kids while I work. Simple. So yesterday, I got it all right...right up until 1:15. Sanne walked into my office for our staff meeting at 1:30 just as the phone rang. I looked at the caller ID - Room 2 Grow. Hmmm....oh shit. I pick up the phone "Oh crap, Miss Carol, I totally forgot. On my way." I could hear the disdain in her voice. Miss Carol is in her mid-60s. Raised 4 kids. Has been running her own preschool for 20 years. I bet she never abandons anyone.

I rush to the school, blurting out to the teachers and Sofia "I am so sorry...can't believe I forgot my own child." Miss Denise shoots me a "you fucking moron" look and says in perfect preschool teacher happy voice, "It's Okaaay. You were stuck in traffic. Sofia wasn't worried." All the while shooting daggers at me. Poor pathetic mother. Doesn't even have the decency to cover up her stupidity with a nice white lie.

Next time, I'm going to Mexico with the nanny.

Caddyshack

A text from my brother this morning reads...

"I am officially board certified. You can finally stop asking if I am a REAL doctor."

Oh, little brother. How sweetly optimistic.

I will believe you are a REAL doctor only after you pioneer a surgical technique to reattach the hair you amputated from my Barbies' heads in 1977.

Or buy me a Mercedes.

Soccer Mom

Last night at 8pm, a time at which any reasonable 38-year old tired, working mom would be settling in with the remote control and a blanket...I was putting on shin guards.

Last year, for the first time since I was 11, I walked onto a soccer field. A co-ed, indoor soccer league. Last season I was mediocre at best, and our team was a little worse than mediocre. I had decided I wasn't going to put myself through it again - the time commitment, the bruised legs, the bruised ego. But then somehow there I was, lacing up my damn cleats with a bunch of other suckers. And despite my pleadings to move my tired legs back to defense, I was playing left forward again.

So we got absolutely killed last night, 7-0. We actually played OK in the first half, it sort of fell apart in the second half. I choked about 3 times with shots on goal that just didn't make it, but overall I think I played fairly well. The beauty of the sophomore season.

What really killed us last night was a complete lack of leadership. We had no clearly communicated strategy. There were several new players who hadn't been there last year and had no idea how to cover their position, about the pace of 6 on 6. There were 8 people on the sideline at any given time, all shouting out different directions to a field team that just never found its groove.

This strikes me as a timely metaphor for an extremely frustrating project I'm involved with. I have spent the last two months on an extremely fast-paced, challenging and interesting policy issue, with a looming deadline set by the legislature. A project chock-full of operational and technical challenges, which we have systematically faced down. I have put together an amazing team with just the right skill sets, and we've done some great work. The problem is, the client. The individual who has the last word on this project is completely and utterly lacking in the ability to make a decision. She is paranoid and controlling, but also ambivalent and second-guessing. Unlike my soccer team, we have had game plans. But they are continually shifting, and the shifts are not always well communicated to the players on the field. There's only one coach on the sideline, but she's whispering to herself. As a consultant, I can advise but I cannot decide, and so I am left constantly reacting and trying to translate this tenuous and tentative directive into actual work. I finally make a shot on goal, only to find the client has somehow moved the goalposts. Or the game has shifted to hockey, and now I need to learn how to skate.

Oh well, bring it on. I may be running in circles, but at the end of the day, it's all billable time.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

I have nothing against change, but I loathe transition.

So autumn typically leaves me somewhat conflicted. I love the clear, crisp air and the vibrant colors. But I find myself grumbling when it comes to digging through the old rubbermaids in the attic to try to find a pair of gloves, a warm hat. Transitioning out the girls wardrobes, trying to find that one box with all of the tights and sweaters in it. Fighting with Sofia every morning because she still wants to wear a tank top and flip flops. And then struggling to dress to kids for a day where the temperature gains and loses almost as much as the Dow.

I love the fall, but it is the ultimate in-between, and I find it so hard to stay in the present when all of a sudden we are booking the calendar for the holidays and looking for pre-season deals on ski gear.

I think the in-betweens are exacerbated this year by the impending election. Only two more weeks of living in limbo, afraid to even believe that it is possible that the 8-year winter could finally turn to spring. (mixing seasons, mixing metaphors...I told you, the change of seasons throws me off). Emma's school is participating in Kids Vote this year, which means she can come to the polls with me in 2 weeks, and cast a ballot herself. Curiously, she had settled on a candidate before either Pete or I could get to her. She likes "Arrocco Bama" because "he wants to let new people into this country and John McCain wants to keep everybody out." Her words, her interpretation of the teacher's explanation of immigration policy. When she asked me why I was voting for Arocco, I chose an issue that I know she understands and cares about - the environment. We talk a lot about endangered species and about global warming, so I told her that Mr. 'Bama had a better plan to reduce carbon emissions and combat global warning. She loved that. And then I sealed the deal by mentioning that Sarah Palin likes to shoot wolves from helicopters.

So only 3 more election cycles (2020!) until Emma can cast a real vote. Hopefully, she survives the many transitions to come with her left-leaning ideals intact. Then we will finally be a "blue" house, instead of Pete & I splitting our vote, stuck in between.

Reunited

It turns out that 20 years is exactly the right amount of time. You are in your late 30's, which at age 18 seemed dreadfully old but now that you're here, you realize that you are actually so much better than you were in your late teens. Wiser, more focused, more streamlined. The faint smile lines are enough to add character, without emphasizing age. The life experience adds shading. The high tech undergarments suck it all in, invisibly, under the outfit you chose, maybe, because it conveys something about your life since high school - I am more classy, more successful. I am more intellectual, I am thinner, I am richer. I am totally unconcerned with my appearance. I am more successful. I am more cultured. I am more confident.

We can legally consume alcohol now, and we do it in force. The memories have faded enough that we can color them in a way that makes us feel better about ourselves. Even the people you full out hated, the ones who never made eye contact, not once in 4 years. Even they are tolerable, if not any more likeable. Because they no longer have any bearing on your day-to-day life.

You see a face you haven't seen in 20 years and the name flashes across your mind-screen, a name you may not have pronounced or thought about in 2 decades. Others, you have to cheat and look at the nametag, which has a copy of the senior yearbook picture next to the name. If you are really good, you can do this undetected. I am not really good.

After 4 or 5 glasses of wine and the initial round of small talk, you can settle into real conversations with the people who hold your interest. In my case, there were a few surprises - people I went to school with for 4 or 6 or even 12 years but never really knew. Others, people I knew casually & liked at 18, I found I liked even more at 38. And then there were the no-eye-contact girls. They still suck but it matters so little. Not at all.

I know that reunions are not for everyone, and after a full weekend of Pete's CGA reunion last week, followed by last night's event which I have been involved in planning for about 8 months, well...I'm reunioned out. But I thoroughly enjoyed spending an evening reconnecting with people who knew me as a child, an adolescent, a teen. In most of our day-to-day lives, we spend very little time thinking about our younger selves. Being among a large crowd who all knew each other in that context, I think it keeps you honest. If not about who you are now, then at least about how you got here.

Free lunch

There is no place on earth that I enjoy less than a chemotherapy treatment room.

And yet I willingly entered one on Monday, and spent about a half hour with an IV in my hand, receiving an infusion of an osteoporosis drug that may prevent cancer recurrence.

Oncology nurses are amazing when it comes to inserting IVs, and even though my left arm veins are all very tired and worn, she found one in between my ring finger and pinky, and deftly inserted the skinniest little needle with barely a pinch. The infusion was a breeze, nothing like the first time. It didn't make me puke and it didn't make my hair fall out, and I didn't have to chase it with massive doses of steroids. Chemo ultra-light. Piece of cake.

The whole thing took no time at all, and I spent most of it noticing the differences between the chemo room at Beth Israel, where I sat now, and the chemo room at Bethesda Naval Medical Center, where I was systematically poisoned 3 years ago. BI wins hands-down. Newer, brighter. Actual windows. Curtains in between chairs for privacy (at Bethesda you could practically hold hands with the half-dead patient next to you). BI even has individual TVs you can watch. And just when you're thinking - wow, this place is AWESOME - the aide comes around with a cart full of complimentary sandwiches, chips, juice, and fruit. All it cost me was my breasts.

Zoom zoom

I drove a $120,000 car this week.

The Massachusetts Affiliate of Susan G. Komen invited me to participate as a "local hero" in the BMW Ultimate Drive Event. I was a little sketchy on the details, except that they needed a head shot of me (which precipitated a very humorous 3-day photo shoot where I first had Sofia try to get a picture of me, then I tried the timer on the camera, and finally ended up with Pete taking the shot at 11pm in our kitchen. I can only imagine what they neighbors thought with all those flashes going off.)

I had my entourage in tow (Pete & my mom) and got there early enough to take a quick spin in a 7-series. I wish I could say I enjoyed driving a car that costs more money than most people make in a year, but I was totally confounded by the seat massager (I prefer that my butt cheeks remain stationary while driving) and terrified that someone would crash into me. The fridge in the backseat was a nice touch, though. I wish I had an opportunity to open her up, but I don't think I topped 60 mph.

BMW donates $1 for every mile test driven in their fleet of pink ribbon vehicles. It's a nice, easy way to raise funds for an organization that is tireless in its mission to end breast cancer. If you do check it out at the BMW dealer near you, look for my picture on the left rear passenger door.

And if you figure out how to turn off the seat massager, will you let me know?

Don't take my damn towels!!

So here I am ensconced in a hotel room in Portland, ME trying to juggle a seminar on oil & ice with a work list that's 3 pages long, and growing every time my phone rings.

And yet I still have time to blog about how flat out wrong it is for hotels to put the little card in the bathroom with the picture of a snowy owl and a globe wrapped in shiny script that reads "conserving for tomorrow," explaining that if I choose to re-use my towels, I should simply hang them up and I will save all those gallons of water and bleach. So I did my part, despite the fact that I take a secret and strong delight in trashing hotel rooms rock star-style, because as we established downwind of the coal pile, I give a shit about the planet.

I came back to my room at lunch to brush my teeth & write a few emails, and guess what? My towels which were hung exactly as specified on the owl sheet have been carted away to the hotel laundry & I have to brand new towels all folded nicely with the washcloth shaped into a min-fan.

To quote my friend Monica's awesomely cool phrase, which is quickly gaining internet steam, WTBC???? (translation for the tragically un-hip: "what the bull crap"???) This is a brilliant and edgy alternative to the altogether overused WTF. But you must send Monica a dollar every time you use it.

And the worst part is, I cannot think of a single way in which I can effectively complain about this without looking like a complete lunatic. Maybe I'll find my inspiration at the bottom of a pint at Gritty McDuffs. Don't wait up...

Cheers if you miss daddy!

Pete has been gone for a week, but it feels like a year. When we were first married, he would deploy for 2 months at a time and somehow the time would go by. But this past week has been just brutal.

The day Pete flew out I sat in a meeting with the state & said "sure, I can organize & facilitate an industry workshop where we address a highly contentious and extremely technical issue. I'll facilitate it myself. Next Wednesday? You bet.

So today was next Wednesday, and there were over 40 professional mariners in the room and I think I held my own. But of course I drove home & replayed a million missed opportunities to say the right thing, stun them with my brilliance. I did get one really good laugh, but also a lot of stunned silence. On the plus side, I now know more about tugboat operations, and horsepower, and bollard pull, and crew rotations, and firefighting capabilities than I ever imagined, in my wildest dreams. And you just never know when that kind of information could come in handy.

Like tonight at Emma's Open House. I marched in, head held high, ready to exchange pleasantries with the Principal Who Hates Me Because I Coerced Her Into Switching Emma From The Lame Teacher To the Good One. I actually tried to make eye contact with her, and she ignored me with such purpose, for a minute I thought I was back in high school and she was a popular girl in the cafeteria willing me not to sit at her table. And at first I felt slighted. But then I thought...could it be that the 60-year old woman who runs Emma's school is afraid of me? Or are her people skills just that bad? Neither scenario is particularly comforting. But listening to Emma's teacher tonight was brilliantly comforting, she is just fantastic - so far ahead of the power curve, an inspiring example of all that is good about public education. Switching her was worth making the principal cry.

So Open House was a perfectly complicated ending to a perfectly crazy week. We managed to squeeze in dinner at Friendly's beforehand, and as we sat in the booth waiting for our food, Sofia raised her cup of chocolate milk & said "Cheers if you miss Daddy!" And it was so on point that for just the briefest of moments, I forgot how disappointed I was that there was no rum in my diet coke.

Canary in a coal mine

Last week I participated in a boom deployment drill at a nearby power plant. I don't spend a whole lot of time in industrial settings but I like to think that I fit right in, with my hard hat and life vest. Pay no attention to that "visitor" badge...

This particular power plant is known in some circles as being part of the "dirty dozen" - because it is of the environmentally unfriendly coal-fired variety, which still feed our national power grid in certain parts of the country because the EPA is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BP. And we all know Sarah Palin eats coal for breakfast (the perfect compliment to moose stew!).

But in all fairness, if you can look past the black coal smoke belching out from the smokestacks and the bjillions of gallons of bay water that are sucked into the plant each day for cooling, you will find that at this plant, as in many of this country's pollution-belching industrial complexes, the people who work in the safety and environmental branches come to work every day and do their best to comply with regulations and prevent human injuries.

I was at the power plant with a group of state regulators who had been invited by the plant's environmental compliance staff to observe a boom deployment drill as part of an exercise that simulated how the plant would close off their water intake if there were an oil spill near the plant. And they did a bang-up job. From the safety briefing to the demobilization, I watched well-trained, competent professionals work well under less than ideal conditions (there was a big squall bearing down on us, 30+knot wind gusts, not the ideal conditions for towing boom or operating small boats.)

So the exercise was a success. Except for one minor inconvenience. The deployment site was directly downwind from the giant pile of coal. You would think they'd keep the coal in a silo or something, but no - just an enormous, black pile. Have you ever stood downwind of a giant coal pile during a windstorm? Every surface of my body was coated with black grit. I sped home and raced to the shower, and scrubbed black gritty dust out of all the nooks and crannies. I was horrified, and yet I'd spent all of an hour there, with my visitor badge and clipboard. What about the hard-working folks who are there every day, who have worked in that environment for years?

As much as I would like to throw it all back on Sarah Palin, or George Bush, or the EPA, I know I'm part of the problem. There's no better primer on the ugliness of fossil fuel combustion than a light coating of coal dust. So I now believe that every American who has ever flipped a light switch should be required to stand downwind of the coal pile for an hour or so. Because, even after you've lingered under a hot shower and washed away the last little specks of coal grit, you have to admit...you still feel a little dirty, don't you?

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

Albert Einstein

Why I love my family

Dinner at Bertucci's tonight, on the eve of Pete leaving for a prolonged trip. The girls often fight about who gets to sit with which parent, but tonight was smooth sailing - Emma wanted Pete & Fia wanted me. We had a great family meal where we talked with our kids, and laughed, and told stupid knock-knock jokes. We talked about school, and work, and Pete & I went back and forth quite a bit about our respective, ridiculous workloads. Emma did her best to track the conversation & chimed in with a note of solidarity, pointing out how Sofia still hasn't started school, while Emma is back full time & Pete and I continue to work like dogs.

Emma:
"While THREE of us are busy WORKING all day, ONE of us stays HOME and just PARTIES!"

Sofia:
"Yeah, and it's an I DON'T MISS YOU party!!"

Extra Sunday

I think this is an idea that could really take off.

Having already chronicled the peaks & valleys of my last week (did I really go political?), I will just note that this weekend was intense but exhausting. I just really could have used an extra Sunday.

My actual Sunday began when I rolled over & looked at the clock - 6:31am - and realized that I was 1 minute late for meeting my Race Team and that if I didn't rocket out of bed & leave my house in the next 97 seconds I would miss the Race altogether. And leave my team of 41 runners & walkers in the dust with no leader. So I went warp speed...running skirt, sports bra, t-shirt, ponytail...and there was still time to stop at Dunkin' on my way to the 7:00am train. (Oh yeah, I'm THAT low maintenance.)

Met up with about half my team to ride the commuter rail into Boston, and used the train ride to liberally distribute all kinds of pink bling purchased at iParty the day before. I saved the 2 pink hula skirts for myself and Nyla, because she worked her ass off the night before at the carbo load, and in the weeks leading up to the race. (I should have bought a 3rd for Sanne because she is the unsung hero of many of the subplots in my life at this point, including the Komen race...Sanne, I owe you a hula skirt, unless you'd prefer a coconut bra?)

Trying to coordinate 41 bodies at a road race on not enough sleep or coffee is a challenge. But with the help of a whole lot of people, we somehow pulled it off. My time was crap but what do you expect from a short, undercaffeinated, out-of-shape momma who was trying to rally the troops while running in 85 degree heat in a hula skirt & non-breathable cotton t-shirt. Here were some highlights of the day for me:

• Our 23-year old teammate Kate finished 4th. Overall, out of all the women in the race. What does that feel like? If I were that fast...oh, don't get me started.


• My 2 sister-in-laws couldn't make it so we gave their race #s & timing chips to Nyla's two aunties. I found out later that they pulled a Rosie Ruiz. Pam & Patti, you girls are F-A-S-T!!
  
• We had a 7-year old on our team & she almost beat me.


• Nyla puked about 8 seconds after we crossed the finish line, right next to some toddler in a stroller. I felt bad for her but not so bad that I didn't totally relish the poor kids' father's expression of sheer disgust & confusion.
  
• I met a bunch of cool people, and got to know others who had been casual gym friends for months. I saw some Komen aquaintances there & felt, for the first time, like I was driving the bus, not like a passenger being whipped around in the back seat.

The local paper published a brief article about our team at http://www.patriotledger.com/news/x690583508/South-Shore-walkers-runners-to-compete-in-Komen-Race-for-a-Cure I was kind of disappointed because I gave the reporter all these great quotes but she whiffed & basically just deferred to the press release.

So that brings me back to the feeling of incredible release & exhaustion when I got home yesterday afternoon, which continued into this morning & still persists. I needed, still need, rest, but it's not in the schedule. I wish I could find that extra Sunday because I'm diving into another long, full, complicated week. But at least I don't have to run anywhere in a hula skirt for awhile.

Highs and Lows

What a week.



High: First day of school
Low: Concerned about Emma's teacher & classroom


High: Amazing success with Komen Race Team including 2 local paper articles, $7k in funds, great karma.
Low: Sarah Palin

High: Rally myself to confront the school on the classroom placement.
Low: Principal is condescending, insecure, and unprofessional.

High: Push forward with teacher placement concerns.
Low: Principal attacks me like Sarah Palin hunting wolves from an airplane.

High: Emma gets reassigned to a new classroom, the classroom we thought would fit her best.
Low: Principal throws a major tantrum to convince me that she is right and I am wrong, despite the fact that her argument is 100% personal and 0% substantive. I, the parent, am simply wrong. And she is simply right. Because she said so. Holy crap, does Sarah Palin have a twin? Has there been a "content optional" revolution that nobody told me about?

Low: Pete lost a close friend and classmate, the Coast Guard lost a top-notch pilot, and a family lost a father and husband.

And suddenly, all the other crap seems so ephemeral.

Except the Sarah Palin stuff. I mean, seriously. A redneck Creationist who likes snowmobiling, high school hockey, and indiscriminate procreation? Who is unapologetically unqualified, who doesn't understand the difference between rhetoric and policy, who thinks people who write books or aspire to Ivy League education are somehow universally disingenuous and elitist? Sarah, I am sure you don't stray far from GodToldUsToInvadeIraq.com, but should you stumble across this blog I apologize if you need a thesaurus. It's the dusty tome on the shelf next to the unread "101 Classy Baby Names" book.

Never get into a battle of wits with a Sicilian when death is on the line!

Why is it that some people are just amazingly awesome and other people just totally suck?

I just penned a letter to Emma's principal, on the 3rd day of school, requesting that she be transferred to a different classroom. This followed a relatively pleasant interchange between myself and the administration yesterday, and a very ugly phone call with a clearly annoyed principal today. I think she thought I had rolled over. Yeah, right...

How do you make water?

Today was Emma's first day of second grade. She put a lot of thought into her first day outfit, and was thrilled to wear her new (blue not pink because pink is sooooo first grade) backpack.

I woke both girls at 7:30am so we'd have a large margin for the 8:30 bus time, and we ended up ready by 7:34 because Emma was in hyperdrive with anticipation. I wasn't quite sure why Sofia moved so quickly, but her motivation soon became clear.

These are the first 2 pictures I took of my 2nd grader this morning. I honestly don't know where this expression came from. There is a fine line between being anxious for the first day of school and being a victim of waterboarding, and I'll let you be the judge of where in that continuum her expression falls...

I finally gave her a shot of scotch and she managed to relax her facial muscles into something that might pass for a smile, although I think it still looks vaguely prison camp-ish.

By the time we headed down the hill to the bus stop Emma had calmed her nerves and seemed to be more resigned than terrified. Sofia by then had broken into a full-out sprint, in anticipation of sending older sister away and having ALL THOSE TOYS to herself for the next 7 hours.

The bus stop was a reunion of sorts, all the kids in the neighborhood lined up and ready to go. The parents all agreed that the summer had gone far too quickly, and yet the school year had come just in time.

Then, with a hasty kiss goodbye my first baby boarded the bus to second grade.

And before I could even contemplate a moment of sentimentality, Sofia began to yank my arm from its socket and then sprinted up the hill to the house, where poor Emma's Polly Pocket collection awaited.

You can see clearly in this photo how she is humoring me to TAKE THE DAMN PICTURE so she can get back to playing with her sister's toys.



Emma came home thrilled to death that I had homework while she did not. My homework was to fill out the same medical authorization & emergency contact forms I've filled out for the past 3 years, IN DUPLICATE, because evidently the Plymouth Public School system believes that databases are just a fad.

My favorite part of the whole day, though, was the one piece of 2nd grade work that Emma brought home. It was a stunningly slow-pitch worksheet with questions like "my teacher's name is..." and "my favorite part of today was..." The final question was "One thing I want to know is..." and Emma's response ---

How do you make water?

Island in the Sun

Picture yourself sitting on a soft sand beach in the late summer sun, cold beer in hand, kids playing in the sand, dog sleeping in the shade behind your beach chair. The water is clear and crisp, and the breeze is constant. On a clear day you can see Fall River from one side of the island, Martha's Vineyard from the other. Yet you are a world away from all of it. No hotels, no restaurants, no shopping, no nightlife. The preferred mode of transportation is your own two feet (or if you're lazy like my children, a golf cart). You spend your days at the beach reading and relaxing. At twilight you might dip your fishing pole in the surf. When the sun sets, you light spectacular bonfires on the beach and settle in to watch the moon rise and the stars twinkle. You are in Cuttyhunk.

The ferry ride from New Bedford takes all of an hour. If it is foggy, you can quickly lose your bearings but on a clear day you are able to watch the progression of the Elizabeth Islands as you travel south. Naushon, Pasque, and Nashawena are largely undeveloped, and privately owned. Sometimes you can see the herd of cows grazing on Nashawena. As you get closer to Cuttyhunk, there are gray seals splashing and sunning themselves on a rocky shoal. You see tiny Penikese Island, once a leper colony and now the site of a bad boys school. Entering the channel to Cuttyhunk Harbor, a few dozen houses are visible on the small hillside.

Disembarking from the ferry, you take a deep breath and count your blesssings to have access to such a rare, magical place. Unpacking a weeks worth of provisions goes much smoother since this is year #2, and within an hour or so of arriving, you are on the beach with a book and a cocktail and the promise of a full week of peace and solitude.

And then your two sister-in-laws arrive with six children in tow, and your kids make a friend on the ferry and before you know it there are 9 children under the age of 12 crammed into the golf cart, chugging along to the beach.

This is where the big shovel come in. If you ever find yourself trying to amuse a group of kids at the beach, I have three words of advice. Dig a hole. (By which, of course, I mean you watch as your husband digs a hole).

Cuttyhunk is a good place to be a kid, and a great place to be a kid with a bunch of aunts, uncles, grandparents, and rowdy cousins to play with. Favorite activities include...

Bunny chasing. (Note: pants optional).

Playing catch with random dogs on the beach.

Feasting on lobsters courtesy of the Cuttyhunk Shellfish Company. (Happy 65, Dad!!)

Like all good things, your stay on Cuttyhunk will eventually come to an end (unless you are one of the 20-odd people who live here year-round).

As the ferry pulls away, you experience the Cuttyhunk Farewell.

Then you start counting the days till next year's visit.

Got teeth?

The tooth fairy will be cashing in an IRA today to compensate Miss Emma Rae for 6 extractions. The bottom teeth were especially nasty, long roots. She is a trooper (and fully exploiting the unlimited ice cream policy).

What's in a Name?

If you are a Flight of the Conchords fan, then you are no doubt familiar with the genesis of my blog name.

My oncologist's name is Dr. Come. He did not treat me, I was transferred to his care when we moved up north two years ago. I did some research, and he is pretty much the shit in terms of breast cancer doctors in the Boston area who accept our ridiculous federal government lowest-bidder insurance, so I called to make the initial appointment. I asked his secretary whether Dr. Comb was accepting new patients and she cheerfully informed me that indeed, Dr. Come (just like the verb), he was.

Despite his unfortunate moniker, he's a peach. All of 5 foot 3, white hair, smart as a whip and completely literal, total funny-bone-ectomy. But that's OK, because I'm not paying him to make me laugh.

I visit Dr. Come every four months at the oncology clinic, where I sit in a room full of mostly old, mostly sick people. Sometimes the palliative care aid wanders by and offers me coffee or crackers, and I stifle the urge to defend my presence. I know I look all young and healthy, but I used to be bald, too. I watched it fall out in clumps. I vacuumed it up off the floor. I carefully tied it back in a skinny pony tail then sprayed the crap out of it, there is a football sized hole in the ozone layer but I was able to make it through Emma's dance recital dress rehearsal with my last few strands peeking out from the ballcap. Then I was shorn like a sheep on the back deck in the Maryland suburbs and I watched my 4-year old daughter play with the hair balls.

Follow-up cancer visits, mine at least, are alarmingly low-tech. They ask me a lot of questions, first the resident, then the nurse practitioner, then Doc Come himself, and then I get felt up like a teenager at prom. Very old school.

One of the things I appreciate about Dr. C is that he talks to me like an equal, he doesn't dumb it down. He is ridiculously thorough, which is a desirable trait in a cancer doc. So this latest visit he presented me with a potential additional treatment, involving a twice-a-year infusion of bisphosphonates, which are the osteoporosis drugs like the one Sally Fields pitches in that commercial where she looks like she's still Gidget. I have a lot of follow up questions, but the fact that my doctor is still actively considering additional treatment for me 3 years out...it takes me back to that uneasiness that sets in right about the time that your hair starts growing back, and your scars fade from red to pink, and the fruit baskets stop coming and your oncologist visits get further and further apart. You are on your own to try to puzzle it all back together, to figure out how to live a full color life in a world of gray.

Which gets me back to my modeling gig. Back in May I was invited to participate in a New Balance fashion show to benefit the Massachusetts Affiliate of Susan G. Komen. I walked through the New Balance store outfitted head to toe in the New Balance pink ribbon line while someone read my bio. The other models were also survivors, one story more compelling than the next. It was a giant step for me in terms of integrating the pink ribbon into my new world of gray. I left there invigorated, wearing my awesome new Lace Up For the Cure duds, and called everyone I knew. My brother's immediate response was "wow, you're a part time model." He may be the only doctor on the planet who survived medical school with his funny bone intact.

Teeny tiny tight black shorts

Last weekend, Pete rode his bike 111 miles to raise money for cancer research. They started in Sturbridge and ended in Bourne. There were 5,000 riders and nearly 3,000 volunteers, and all told raise a mind-blowing $34 million for Dana Farber.

Pete pulled the whole thing off in his typical style, with minimal fanfare. He was more stressed about the fundraising commitment (which he eaily met) than the ride itself. And of course he used the opportunity to purchase every piece of cycling gear imaginable.

When I first got to Bourne to watch Pete finish, he was still about an hour out, so I stood along the race route, about 1/2 mile out from the finish line, awkwardly clapping and shouting out the best words of encouragement I could muster..."Great job." "Good ride." "You did it." "Does your butt hurt?" "There's beer at the finish line."

I've complete enough road races to know how great it feels to hear encouraging words. And the more I stood there, the louder I clapped and cheered, and pretty soon there were tears streaming down my face because I was just overwhelmed that there could be so much positive energy and effort in the world and yet we still can't cure cancer. I saw people with goofy team costumes (team Kermit was my favorite), tongue-tangling mottos for cancers I'd never even heard of, pictures and names of loved ones lost, tributes to survivors. I felt proud and vulnerable, hopeful and scared.

When Pete rounded the corner on his bike in his teeny tiny black shorts I was jumping up & down, screaming like a lunatic, and bawling. I realized that just as I struggle to integrate cancer survivor into my day-to-day life and identity, he has similar, separate struggles. For one awful year of our lives, he watched and waited through surgery after surgery, chemo, hair loss, unfathomable fear and uncertainty. Now that we are back to "normal" life, the challenges are more subtle - hormone therapy side effects, recurrence scares, survival percentages, and the ever-present, nagging fear that our daughters will have to fight the same ugly disease.

So after three years of standing on his shoulders, it was just an amazing privelege to be the one on the sideline, cheering on my #1 fan.

Cable News is a gateway drug

Yesterday on the treadmill, I noticed on one of the TVs a big splashy headline: "Silent Epidemic!" I had my ipod blaring so I didn't have the audio, and now I'll never know which epidemic they're talking about. Childhood obesity? Corporate greed? Crappy customer service? Toe hair?

You know, if I were an epidemic, I would barrel into town in full body paint, sceraming obscenities, toe hair flying free. What's the point of an epidemic you can't hear?

He puts a chemical in his chicken that makes you crave it fortnightly

Congratulations, Pete. So far I have come up with a lot of fun nicknames...

Captain Crunch (peanutty goodness)

Captain Courageous (boring!)

Captain Caveman (awsome!!)

Captain Kangaroo (does this make me Mr. Green Jeans?)

Captain & Tenille (if love can't keep us together, maybe the pay raise will)

I only wish you were in the Army so that we could spend the next 4 years speaking in a Mike Meyers Scottish brogue...Ah the Colonel, with his wee, beady eyes...

Semper Paratus

August 4 is a big deal in our house, because for the last 3 years, Pete's unit has celebrated Coast Guard Day at the greatest family amusement park in all of Southeastern New Hampshire.

Canobie Lake Park is over 100 years old, has a real wooden rollercoaster, a plethora of kiddie rides, and Harpoon IPA on tap.

This was our 3rd annual pilgrimage to Canobie (which means we've lived in the same place for 3 summers, a cause for celebration in its own right.) Every year the girls get just a LITTLE BIT braver and this year, it only took 2 hours for them to warm to the idea of the kiddie coaster. We had a big, rowdy group this year, Pete's 3 sisters and all but one of their kids, so there were nearly 20 of us, and plenty of older cousins to take the little ones on the pukey round-and-round rides.

The day was sunny & warm, perfect for the Boston Tea Party, which is the ultimate flume ride, if you like to be soaked to the bone. If you prefer to stay dry, there is a strategically placed pub just adjacent to the splash zone where you can watch your kid-at-heart husband ride it 47 times in a row while you enjoy dry panties and a nice cool IPA.

At some point during the Tea Party marathon (which Pete tried to convince Sofia to ride - she got all the way to the front of the line before she realized there were no teddy bears in tutus or ceramic tea kettles involved, and high tailed it out of there - smart girl!) the kids became engaged in some kind of fishing game where they kept winning these lame Garfield flower prizes but they all really wanted to win the dog prize (next one up), then Sofia DID win the dog but Emma just kept accumulating those stupid Garfield flowers.

Meanwhile their 3-year old cousin Joseph won the REALLY BIG prize (freaky stuffed garden gnome) but the girl running the game refused to give it to him because she contended that his mom (my sister in-law) had cheated & told him which fish to catch (you could see the S,M,L for small, medium, large prize in the fish if you were tall enough, which she is. ) So then ensued an all-out melee that required two levels of management before we finally settled on the compromise of giving Joe the medium prize, the dog, which we had easily paid for 15 times over since our kids had dumped about $200 already.

Emma by this time was sobbing, nearly hyperventilating, because she still didn't have a dog. So they gave her one more try, and of course she won a flower. I tried to use the opportunity to enforce the "can't win them all" lesson and the fact that nobody is entitled to win the big prize, no matter how bad you want it, in a game of chance it's all luck. That went over like a lead balloon until we walked by the gift shop where they happened to SELL stuffed dogs that were even cooler than the one Sofia had won, so another $10 later everyone was whole again.

We stayed at the park till 10pm, when it closed. Hit horrible traffic on the way home, and didn't walk into our kitchen till 12 Which provided me with the perfect opportunity to point out to Emma - who has been begging me to let her stay up till midnight - that she had made it, and was it really all that special? Yes, she said. And she was right.

Salt and Pepper

Today I went to camp with my kids. It was a field trip day. And the field trip was a whale watch.

I was on the fence about going, right up until bedtime last night where I casually mentioned to Emma that I was possibly thinking about coming along on the field trip and would she want me there. She really, really, really did and I know she really, really, really won't for much longer so I went. And who doesn't love whales?

The day started out quite foggy, and when we got to Stellwagen, visibility wasn't more than 500 yards. There was a naturalist/interpreter on board, a miserable old grump who hated children, and he droned on about whales, an uninteresting person ruining perfectly interesting information. Since we couldn't look for waterspouts, we spent the next 20 minutes or so crawling along, "listening" for whales. If you've ever wondered how long it takes the typical 4-year old to get tired of listening for whales, the answer is 14.2 seconds. The listening quickly devolves into talking, then running around, then screeching & chasing their friends, and before you know it they are sneaking into roped-off areas and throwing goldfish crackers at the seagulls. The old guy kept interrupting his memorized whale fact sheet to scold the kids, and the parents.


But the old grump did find us some whales. Sort of. He actually found another whale-watching boat that had found a whale. But we got to see a whale, a humpback whale, a 20-25 ton "teenage" male humpback, and man did he give us a show. He flapped his crusty whitish flippers (humpbacks have the longest front appendages - in their case, fins - of any mammal, in proportion to their overall length. Longer than giraffe legs.) He would slap the water and he would also slap his big humpback belly, which has these crazy grooves that run along it, giving it a striped appearance. He hung out, seeming to perform for us, slapping and blowing, doing the back stroke, & occasionally diving down below, disappearing into the green-grey water.

After hanging around with the first whale for awhile, we moved on. The tour operators were visibly relieved that they would not have to refund our ticket price, and the fog started to lift. The old guy was still grumpy but he came through again, this time finding Salt and her calf. Salt is an adult female weighing closer to 35 tons (female humpbacks are larger than males). She was first sighted on Stellwagen in 1976, and was believed to be a full grown adult already at that point. So she's probably at least in her late 30s, like me. She's still reproductively active, as she was hanging out with her calf, her TWELFTH one. Can you imagine 12 pregnancies? Although I guess if you only had to raise them to age 2, it might make the thought of 12 kids more appealing. On second thought, not really. Humpbacks reproduce every 2-3 years, birthing their calves in their warmer southern habitat, then trekking on up to Stellwagen to get fat on the teeny tiny fish that like to hang out in this nutrient-rich upwelling zone.

Salt & her calf (who had a name I can't remember, but it wasn't Pepper) showed some different behaviors than the single young dude whale had. They didn't do much slapping and rolling, but they seemed almost to be snuggling together, if it's possible to snuggle while swimming. It was sweet and made me want to snuggle my own calfs. They were both making these squeaky, cooing noises, which they claimed was "humpback language." I wish I could freeze them at this age when they are still so certain of their own magic.

It was difficult to photograph the first two sightings because it was still fairly foggy, and by the time the fog lifted I was sick of pushing the button only to have the delay cause me to capture a perfect picture of the surface of the water. I did get a few good ones. I also shot an mpeg that is poor quality but captures the first whale's fin-slapping behavior. (The predominant kid voice you hear is Emma's friend Kaitlyn, waxing poeting about how the whale is saying hello to us, which I actually think he might have been.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ROUdVlvtu4

I was born and raised in New England and have lived here for more than half of my life, but I've never been on a whale watch. And while I still have qualms about whether it is good or fair that boatfulls of sunburned toursists steam through Stellwagen Bank, cameras at the ready, to gawk at 30-ton cetaceans...I admit I was awestruck. It almost made me feel like a calf again.

Don't Cry for me Argentina

Last night I watched a young man whose diapers I changed 20-odd years ago light up the stage in a local summer stock production of Evita. Truth be told, the show was so-so, it suffered from a lack of staging, in my completely unqualified opinion. But Jon was fantastic in his ensemble role, and was an absolute riot during the cabaret performance afterward. Pure entertainment.

Jonathan, you're a superstar! I apologize in advance for selling your baby pictures to Us magazine.

Rockin' the Suburbs

Last night we officially atoned for the last several weeks' worth of tag-team parenting and Nickelodeon marathons by staging a good old-fashioned backyard camping trip, complete with sleeping bags, flashlights and s'mores. Pete somehow located the rubbermaid storage bin with the dusty old camping supplies and made the happy discovery that the 4-man tent we bought on the cheap back in 1996 still works.

I think the last time we slept in the tent was twelve years ago, in an old growth forest in northern California or southern Oregon, en route to Kodiak. I remember there were these banana-like tree slugs and crusty, craggy tree stumps big enough to hide in. It felt like an enchanted forest, filled with ancient, secret magic. At least until about 3am when some kind of mystical forest creature started scuffling around outside our tent. Pete said it was a deer but it sounded more like one of those half-man, half-goat things. We all know they eat banana slugs.

So last night, there she sat in her blue-and-gray nylon splendor on the recently shorn lawn, a few feet from the deck. Since the backyard is fully fenced in, and Bella slept on the deck all night to keep watch, we felt pretty confident that we could protect the girls from any errant man-goats or ill-tempered unicorns. But there was a moment of tension when we realized that we forgot to turn the sprinklers off.

By the way, I did some quick camping math & have concluded that a 4-man tent purchased 12 years ago for $14 is really not big enough for 4 people, not even when 2 of them are under 8.

Why you should have kids when you are still in your 20s

Overheard, 43-year-old dad to 7-year old daughter...

"Emma, you have a way of cuddling that exhausts me."