Word of the Day: Omphaloskepsis

It means navel gazing. Try using it in conversation soon. "I'm going home to take a bath and indulge in a little omphaloskepsis."

Much blogging seems like omphaloskepsis, no?

Dental Secrets?

There was a woman on the train yesterday reading this here Dental Secrets book. I can't quite figure it out, but I find the title hysterical. I'm sure it's a useful book for a dental student, but secrets? What are they hiding from us patients?

Thirteen Ways That I'm a Bleeding Heart Liberal

I'm feeling cranky about the state of the country today, so for Thursday Thirteen, here are thirteen lefty-commie-pinko bleeding heart liberal things that I believe in:

1. Abortion rights (especially in light of last week's SCOTUS decision)
2. Gun control (especially in light of last week's shootings at Virginia Tech)
3. Higher taxes on capital gains
4. Universal pre-school
5. Universal single-payer health care
6. Higher gasoline taxes
7. Eating locally, and in season (no strawberries in January in NYC)
8. National Public Radio
9. Network neutrality
10. Rollback of copyright protection (yeah, let the mouse go into the public domain)
11. Recycling
12. Increasing the CAFE for cars AND trucks AND light trucks
    
13. Separation of church and state (starting with the removal of "In God We Trust" from our money, and the deletion of "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance)

Incidentally, I googled "bleeding heart liberal" out of curiousity. #4 on the list was this astonishing Best of Craig's list posting.

Misha's Toddler Appeal (or lack thereof)

I showed Miss M. this nice clip of Misha leaping about in Don Quixote. About half way through, she said "when are the ballerinas going to come out?"

Abortion and Breast Cancer are NOT LINKED

As reported in the Times, "there is no association between abortion and an increased risk for breast cancer". Here's the abstract from the Archives of Internal Medicine, and here's a post from The Blog That Ate Manhattan (written by a NYC gynecologist).

Got that?

Good.

Small Town Police Work

I hardly ever drive to the train station, but once in a while, it's necessary. Because I do it so seldom, I don't have a resident sticker for my car so I park at the meters. Once last year, I got a ticket when parked at a broken meter. I successfully fought the ticket, but it's a hassle going to court.

One day last week, I had to be somewhere at the end of the day, so I took the car. The first meter I tried was broken, so, good girl trying to avoid traffic court that I am, I moved the car. The second meter was broken. This time, I scrounged some paper out of my bag and left a note on the dashboard as well as a note taped to the meter with a Bandaid. Then, belt and suspenders, I called the police station when I got to my office.

When I got off the train at the end of the day, I found the note that had been stuck to the meter now amended and stuck under my windshield wiper. "All better now!" And, they'd set the meter so that there was still 3 hours left on the meter when I got there. Small town. Nice.

Spring! (Cheating)

Okay, it is spring finally, and some of the daffodils are blooming and so are the crocuses, and we spent all day today and yesterday raking and pruning and rearranging the plants.

But this here fritillaria? It was forced. Yes, it's now planted in my garden, and with luck it'll bloom again next year, but it didn't bloom here in situ.

The other day as I was walking through the greenmarket on the way to work, I spotted some forced fritillaria in full bloom. I idly thought about buying one, mostly because I've never seen them forced before. But I didn't. Sometime later, someone scurried past my desk with one yellow fritillaria muttering "I've got to get rid of this, it smells like marijuana." I scurried after her, and told her I'd take it home. I schlepped it home, on the subway, on the train. It does smell funky, but now it's outside, where it belongs!

Differently Invasive Gallbladder Surgery

"Doctors in New York have removed a woman's gallbladder with instruments passed through her vagina."

Having just had my gallbladder removed laparoscopically, I read this article in horrified fascination. On the one hand, I am repulsed - on the other, hey, maybe I would have felt better more quickly. But really? Eww. Going through the vagina to get to an organ up by the ribcage seems invasive, cumbersome, and somehow violating.

Always

I read the many paid obits for Kitty Carlisle Hart in today's Times - and was struck by the one from her boyfriend Roy Neuberger. At the end, he quotes from Always, the Irving Berlin song that she sang often. I had the great good luck of hearing her sing it about 10 years ago at a benefit for the organization I then worked for. She was an elegant, warm and witty woman, with a sweet, slightly quavery voice, and a passion for the arts. She did three songs that night, ending with Always, and getting the audience to sing along with her. As soon as I heard that she'd died the other day, Always popped into my head and became an earworm.

I'll be loving you always
with a love that's true, always
When the things that you planned need a helping hand
I will understand, always, always Days may not be fair always

That's when I'll be there, always
Not for just an hour
Not for just a day
Not for just a year, not for just a year I

'll be loving you always
with a love that's true, always
When the things that you planned need a helping hand
I will understand, always, always Days may not be fair always

That's when I'll be there, always
Not for just an hour
Not for just a day
Not for just a year, but always.

Silverware for Kidlets

I think about the most mundane things. I rather hate plastic, especially forks and spoons and plates and cups and bowls, although I see its utility in the care and feeding of the infant and toddler. And I love good silver – it feels so nice in the hand.

For baby presents, someone gave us the Elsa Peretti baby spoon from Tiffany, and someone else gave us a toddler spoon/fork set. The Peretti spoon was wonderful; long enough to get in the bottom of jars and yogurt containers and beautifully balanced. And Miss M. loves her “matching” fork and spoon. That’s what she calls them individually – the “matching” fork or the “matching” spoon. All three of those pieces were meant for little ones.

But there’s other silverware out there that works perfectly for little kids, and you can probably find it cheaply at a yard sale or antique shop or flea market.

Bouillon spoons are 5 or 6 inches long, with a round bowl – perfect for a little one to eat cereal with. And hardly anyone eats broth soups anymore, much less with specialized spoons, so they’re up for grabs.

Demitasse spoons are shorter – like 4 inches long – and look like tiny teaspoons, or short handled baby feeding spoons. And they work perfectly for a 3 and a half year old eating applesauce or jello.

And salad/dessert forks? Shorter than a full sized fork and perfect for a little kid.

Nursing, at the beginning

I had a terrible time getting started breastfeeding my daughter. It may well have had something to do with the terrible delivery that I had. In addition to not being able to hold Miss M. for so long immediately after her birth, she was jaundiced and had to spend about 30 hours under the lights in the nursery. And the nurses kept wanting to give her formula. And I wasn’t allowed out of bed until Wednesday (two days after the birth). And the hospital lactation consultant took forever to show up. Though when the LC did show up, she immediately sent for a hospital pump and got me set up pumping, one side only because sitting up was still too hard. And baby M. had a hard time transferring milk – she seemed to be latched on, but nothing was getting in. And my milk was late – so late that I left the hospital on Saturday (yup, five nights in the hospital) with a precious bottle containing two ounces of colostrum pumped that very morning.

The day we left the hospital, the pediatrician was wary – the baby had lost a lot of weight, down 13 ounces from her birth weight of 8#4oz. The pediatrician said that we had to supplement – to make sure that she got two ounces in a bottle, 8 times a day, using breastmilk as available and formula for the rest. And she only agreed to discharge us when we promised we'd take the baby into the pediatrician's office for a weight check the following day.

I know I didn’t pump enough in the hospital – I was trying to get my strength back and the incision hurt and I just didn’t get it. Once home, with a rented hospital grade Medela pump, I started pumping like a mad woman – both breasts, seven or eight times a day - and I continued to try and nurse Miss M.

When she was a week and a day, I had a lactation consultant come in. Yes, a house call! She spent a couple of hours with us, weighing the baby before and after feeding to see what she would take in, and watching the nursing session to check latch and position. She confirmed that the baby just wasn't getting any significant amounts of milk out. The LC set us up with a Haberman Feeder - to use to help the baby work harder at sucking to train her to nurse better, and with a homemade supplemental nursing system - a tiny tube and a big syringe.

Despite all of this effort, at a check-up when she was 10 days old, the pediatrician had us increase the supplementation to 3 ounces, 8 times a day - because she hadn't gained any weight in four days.

When Miss M. was two weeks old, we had another house call - this time from the breastfeeding angel: A Doctor. Who Makes House Calls. And Specializes in Breastfeeding. Only in New York. She was awesome. She checked me out, weighed the baby before and after nursing, watched the nursing, and put me on Domperidone.

I was dogged about the whole thing. I kept pumping, kept trying to nurse. And finally one day, when Miss M. was about two months old, I had tender painful engorged breasts. And Miss M. nursed and got the milk out and relieved the engorgement. It was the first time I really knew that she was getting it.

Back When Cheese Was King

Oh to be in in England. Today's Times has an article in the international fluff section about an English cheese maker who's set up a webcam in his cheese cave, so that you too can watch Cheddar ripening, aging, getting moldy.

I don't know why, but for some reason this reminds me of an old Roz Chast cartoon. It's captioned "Back When Cheese Was King", and shows a picture of a piece of Brie wearing a crown. And the cheese is saying "Après moi le café". It makes me laugh just thinking of it.

How to Stay Clean Whilst Painting

Wear a smock! And for a cheap and easy smock, use an old shirt - like an old button-down oxford cloth shirt that's otherwise ready for the rag basket. Put it on backwards (so the buttons go up the back), roll up the sleeves, and keep the kid's clothes clean.

Thanks, Moky, for the reminder.

Dirt, or, when will it ever be spring?

As Margaret Atwood once said, “In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” I am waiting for that day. Instead, we are watching it rain and rain and rain.

Quick Pasta

Gourmet used to have a column called Five Ingredients (or something like that), where the schtick was recipes with no more than five ingredients. My all-time favorite is a pasta with asparagus and lemon - using pasta, lemon zest, asparagus, olive oil and parmesan (and salt and pepper). It is delicious, but it is a little complicated, despite so few ingredients.

But I think I've found a new winner - hardly any ingredients AND almost no work AND fast! It's City Mama's pasta with tomato butter sauce - and it's great. I think it's going to be a new staple in the house, the stick of butter notwithstanding.

Seat Belts

I'm sorry that the Governor of New Jersey was seriously injured in a car accident yesterday, but why the hell wasn't he wearing his seat belt?

Crunchy

Once upon a time, when I was pregnant, my OB suggested that maybe a birth class was in order. Or maybe I asked her - I can't remember. I asked her about the classes offered by the hospital; she called them crunchy in a mildly pejorative way and gave me the names of two people who gave private classes. I thought crunchy sounded good, so I signed us up for the hospital class. And I suppose it was crunchy - there was a decidedly non-interventionist drug-free slant. Of course, I missed the last class, which was the one covering c-sections, and I had a supremely interventionist birth culminating in a trainwreck of a c-section, but I kind of liked the birth class.

But crunchy? When did crunchy become a quick way to paint something/someone as a lefty-commie-pinko earth mother eating granola in Birkenstocks?

I don't wear Birkenstocks (but I do wear Danskos). And the lefty-commie-pinko earth mother part of me likes to make granola. It's not as sweet as the stuff you buy, and it's incredibly easy to make. I like to eat it sprinkled on plain yogurt mixed with fresh fruit. Miss M. likes it sprinkled on her Crispix.

Crunchy Granola

4 cups rolled oats
1 cup wheat germ
6 T. sesame seeds
3 handfuls shredded coconut
5 T. brown sugar
2 t. salt
1/3 cup oil
1/3 cup honey

• Mix all the dry ingredients together.
• Add the oil and honey and mix well.
• Using a big roasting pan, bake at 350 for 10 minutes, and then broil, stirring frequently until toasted. Or bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes or so.

I usually only make a half batch. Sometimes, I use a mixed grain/seed blend in place of the sesame seeds (like one that had millet, flax, poppy, sesame, oat, wheat, rye and sunflower). I use either toasted or untoasted wheat germ - whatever's in the house. Sometimes I use sweetened coconut, sometimes unsweetened (which is sort of hard to find). Sometime I throw in a handful of chopped nuts. In other words, it takes well to variation.

Puff Went The Magic Dragon

Hiring and Human Decency

I just completed a search to fill a soon-to-be-vacant position in my office. Yesterday, I sent out a round of emails to the unsuccessful candidates (both the ones we interviewed and the ones that didn't even get a phone call). I think it's really important to do so; we're a non-profit and you just never know where your next donation is coming from. Every little communication with the outside world is an opportunity to show us in the best light possible. Besides, I think anyone who takes the time to apply for a job deserves the courtesy of a reply.

Shortly after I sent those thanks-but-we-hired-someone-else emails, I got this reply:

Dear Ms. Musing:
Thank you for bringing me up-to-date on your Development Director search, and informing me of your decision; it showed a gracious (and, unfortunately, increasingly rare) respect for the time and effort job seekers invest in their search for meaningful employment. I wish you good luck with your new Development Director, and continued success for [Organization that I work for].
Yours,
Candidate Who I didn't Even Interview

I find it really sad and disheartening that most places just don't bother to respond to their candidate applicants. I know that my little gesture is Sisyphian, but I have to do it anyway.

Just Post(s)

I submitted my Kristof Led Donations post to the roundup of March Just Posts, which has just been posted. Go check out some of the others.