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?