Curly Whirly Girlie

Random Extras on Extended Breastfeeding

My mother couldn't get over the fact that my kid was nursing and could talk - and could, therefore, ask for it. She wasn't horrified, she was amused. Although, come to think of it, she was mildly horrified when I nursed Miss M. on an airplane when the three of us were on the way home from California, about a month before the final final. I was just trying (unsuccessfully) to encourage a nap. But my mother had nursed her kids for 10 months/8 months/6 months - back in the day when not a lot of people nursed at all - and none of those little people were talking when my mom was nursing.

Doctor Mama had a great post a while ago about nursing her the two and two-thirds year old (he's since weaned himself). She mentioned that eventually people stop asking if you're doing that. I think I only lied about doing that once. The Berkeley Parents network has a nice joke about extended nursing in Berkeley:

When my son turned two, I told a friend, "Well, I guess I'm going to have to start lying now when people ask me if he's weaned." "Oh," she said, "in Berkeley, you don't have to start doing that until they're four." "You don't have to start weaning until they're four?" "No, you don't have to start LYING about it."

And if you need reasons for breastfeeding at all, Electric Boogaloo had some good ones, like #8: "Researchers have not been able to show that breastfeeding doesn't give you magical powers".

Labor Day Weekend

Oh wait, it was Memorial Day. Well, we labored. Nothing like having 5 yards of mulch delivered to the driveway to motivate one to move it. I moved about 40% of it on Saturday, another 40% on Sunday, and W. helped me with the remainder on Monday. I was happy to have the help, but the competitive side of me sort of wanted to tackle the entire 5 yards by myself, just to say I'd done it.

While I was hauling mulch, W. was prepping and painting the downstairs bathroom, which isn't quite done, but is a lovely shade of pale pale lavendar called "Nosegay" - so pale that it looks white until you see it next to the white trim and white fixtures. I know he thought it was going to be a disaster, like the time I wanted the bathroom in the apartment a rich deep red and we ended up with bubble-gum instead. That got painted over very quickly. But this is nice.

In the midst of all the dirt moving, I made a batch of divine barbecue sauce from an Ina Garten recipe that I found at Smitten Kitchen. W. slathered it on some pork ribs and cooked them slowly in the oven. Wonderful.

And the child? Fell asleep at 5:00 on Saturday, and 6:00 on Sunday - both times down for the night. I guess she was worn out. Not that she was moving any mulch.

Butter Slicker

My mother used to eat butter right out of the butter dish. So does her grandchild. Miss M. came into the room with me, looking guilty and holding her mouth all funny, and confessed to having eaten some butter. I went into the kitchen to move the butter dish out of reach, and discovered that she'd been gnawing on it, with teeth. I couldn't believe it. At least my mother used a knife.

Speaking of my mother, she would like me to issue a clarification: she does not watch day-time TV! She thought that I implied that she watched TV while at chemo. She does not - if she is without a companion during her infusion, she catches up on back issues of the New Yorker. Got that?

Extended Breastfeeding

Yesterday, Miss M. said to me: "I drank from your deese* when I was two". Yeah, two and 364 days. She last nursed the night before she turned three.

I never expected to have an extended nurser. I thought, maybe six months, maybe a year. Never thought it would be three years. Especially with the way things started. But I wanted to feed breastmilk to my child, and I got into the habit of pumping, and so I was able to give her predominantly breast milk for her whole first year. And somewhere in there, she figured out how to nurse, and that it was nice. And she'd nurse before bed, and in the middle of the night, and first thing in the morning, and when she fell down and needed comfort. And so, when I stopped pumping, and she stopped getting milk in bottles, she kept nursing. And I thought, we'll stop after her surgery**. And then I thought, we'll stop after she starts daycare***. Then there was some other reason. And another. And gradually she was down to just the nursing at bedtime.

We started talking about her impending third birthday, and I gradually introduced the idea that three year olds don't nurse. And she said, "yes, when I'm three, no more deese." And we talked about it every night. And the night before her third birthday was the last time. She did keep asking for awhile. And did say "I don't want to be three". But it's now six months later, and it's now something she did when she was two. Yes, I'm a little wistful sometimes. But I'm also happy that we did nurse for so long.






* I can't explain "deese". I think that's how it's spelled. It's what Miss M. called it - both the act of nursing, and the breasts themselves. Go figure.

**She had two hemangiomas removed when she was 17 months old.

*** She started in daycare when she was 22 months old.

Word of the Day: Stoloniferous

Nice word, huh? Very…mellifluous.

Yesterday, Miss M. and I were poking around in the garden. W. had recently patched some bare spots in the so-called lawn with grass seed, and I showed her how the new grass was coming up. She asked “how do we make grass?” It’s a common type of question of hers, and is always phrased that way:

• “How do we make cows?”
• “How do we make Jeeps?”
• “How do we make eggs?”
• “How do we make airplanes?”
• “How do we make ants?”
• “How do we make frogs?”

I like that she thinks all of those things are made by us humans. Anyway, in the strange way my mind works, I got from grass and grass seed to stoloniferous grasses and stoloniferous weeds. I have an evil weed in the garden, a stoloniferous evil weed called goutweed or bishop's weed. I get down on my hands and knees and start pulling it out, carefully so as not to break it off and leave the roots in the ground, following the root along to get as much as possible, muttering to myself “stoloniferous weeds, stoloniferous weeds…” It is the kind of weeding that is like eating peanuts; once you start, you can't stop.

Review the Reviewer

The New York Times, my paper of record, of choice, of metropolitan area, has a new dance critic, one Alastair Macaulay. He started in April, and has been ramping up to speed. It’s been fascinating to read his pieces, and watch as they reveal his likes, dislikes, knowledge, interests. His first review of the new City Ballet Romeo & Juliet was decidedly lukewarm, but he came round in a piece several days later in which he compared and contrasted the four principal casts. It was almost as though he’d been reached; that someone at City Ballet said “hey, that wasn’t nice, what about all these other folks?” and Macaulay responded with a much more favorable review.

Last week, American Ballet Theatre opened their spring season with a hodge-podge gala, which Macaulay started off by comparing to “pig slurry”. It went on, and in a thrill of schadenfreude I chortled on the train at phrases like: “soon trite”, “unpromising in more ways than one”, “almost, but not actually, interesting”, “a tempo so funereal that it would have put the watching Prince to sleep too”, “bland delivery”, “much labored intensity”. To his, and their, credit he did like more of what happened after intermission, and ABT’s marketing department will have some stuff to use in press kits and marketing materials: “exceptional freshness”, “a marvel”, “a heart-catching alternation of capriciousness and surrender”, “true ballerina decisiveness in her timing and phrasing”, “the corps de ballet proved poetic”, “stylishness and skill”. A lot of the review was pretty harsh, but it was balanced with some praise, and so my initial schadenfreude was tempered. [However, Macaulay’s comment about the guest appearance by star pianist Lang Lang was devastating – though he’s a dance critic, not a music critic, so you have to take it with a grain of salt: “The pianist, Lang Lang, then remained onstage to dispel whatever tender atmosphere the Chopin had established by playing an account of Liszt’s best-known Hungarian Rhapsody with a vulgarity to engender long-term Lisztophobia.” Ouch.]

The next day, Macaulay gave the single most eviscerating review that I think I have ever seen from a dance critic. Painful. Sad. Horrific. Not a single kind word in the piece. His concluding sentence?: “Not one moment here is fresh.” If I were Doug Varone, I’d want to cry. Hell, I wanted to cry and I’m not Doug Varone. If I were a choreographer, I might want to cancel my next season.

On the other hand, his reviews of both Sara Rudner (last week) and Mark Morris (today) had nothing but sheer praise - not a harsh word in either review.

It will be interesting to watch this continue to unfold. He’s certainly a more pointedly opinionated critic than the Times has had, dance-wise anyway, in quite some time. And he knows his dance history, so he can’t be written off as a know-nothing.

Full Time Patient

You know why they’re called patients? Because they need a lot of patience.

I spent the other day accompanying my mother to the hospital. She was diagnosed with inoperable Stage IV lung cancer more than two years ago. She had a course of radiation early on, and she’s been in chemotherapy for the past two years – now on her third regime. One of the reasons I went with her was because she was worried about the visit. She’d had scans a week prior to check the status of her several lumps, the first set of scans since she’d started chemo regime #3, and was due to get the scan results.

We arrived at the hospital at about 10:45 for an 11:00 appointment. First order of business is always a finger stick to get a drop or two of blood to check her blood counts. That took forever - she thinks they forgot about her because she was put in the farthest cubicle. Honestly, I could have pricked her finger. Hell, she could have done it herself!

Then we waited. And got called into the exam room to wait some more. Eventually, the oncologist showed up, and remembered that she’d left the scan results in her office, so she disappeared again. The scans were good – at best an improvement, at worst no change – so there will be no change to the chemo regime. The oncologist tends to seem distracted and overworked, and she's humorless, but she spent a lot of time with us. My mother said it was the most time she's spent with her in quite awhile; I think it was likely because I was there kibitzing and asking questions.

After we left the oncologist, we trotted down the hall to sign in for chemo, and then headed to the next building for a quick chest x-ray. When she signed in for chemo, she was told that there was a 45-minute wait; in fact it was more like an hour and a half. In other words, we were back from the chest x-ray long before they called her for chemo.

Her chemo treatment didn’t take all that long, maybe an hour, so we were out of there at 4:00pm. Yes, five hours for a finger stick, a half hour with the doctor, a chest x-ray and an hour long infusion. It’s a full time job. And there are signs all over the place that cell phones are prohibited, and of course there’s no WiFi access, so all you can do is watch daytime television. If chemo didn’t give you chemo brain, the daytime TV would rot your brain. So if you had an actual full time job, you couldn't use the infusion time to get any work done.

Besides her cancer monitoring and treatment, she has been having dental issues (a cracked tooth needs to be pulled), and needs medical attention for some side effects of the chemotherapy. The most pressing of those is clogged tear ducts. Here’s an irony – the chemo drug is called Taxotere – and it taxes the tear ducts. Good name, huh? Sometime soon, she's going to have stents put in her tear ducts to solve that problem. But that's surgery with general anesthesia, so she has to get checked out by her pulmonologist first...

All told, my mother's become a full time patient what with one thing or another. It's exhausting, exacerbated by the chemo-induced exhaustion.

I think it's time to take up cross-stitch.

If you've read this far, give her a shout out in the comments, because she's a lurker. We call her Moky.

Deirdre Imus

Someone gave me a copy of Deirdre Imus's book "Green This! Greening Your Cleaning". I flipped through it and decided she was a crackpot when she said that the steam vapor produced when you take a shower is toxic:

Even if you have an overhead ventilation fan or a chlorine filter on your showerhead...you and your kids will inevitably end up inhaling the vapors of chlorinated gases. You know how your bathroom mirror fogs up after you shower? Most of that steam is toxic - a mixture of the chlorine bleach and other chlorine-based chemicals like chloroform that have been added to our water system. An open window will prevent these and other toxins, like carbon dioxide, from building up. As a general rule, the more outdoor air that circulates in a room, the safer that room is.

Yes, fresh air is good. But let's not go overboard and suggest that taking a hot shower is dangerous.

Another choice suggestion is to clean your copper with ketchup. Um, okay, then why did she also suggest cleaning copper with salt and lemon juice? Why would you ever think it was smart to use ketchup as a cleanser? It's a foodstuff, people, a foodstuff that is heavily industrially processed and trafficked. So, if you subscribe to the Michael Pollan/Marion Nestle school of "eat local unprocessed foods as much as possible", why would you choose ketchup as a cleaning product? Hell, I barely eat the stuff.

Oh, I know! Someone gave her a book contract because she's married to Don Imus and she had to fill 224 pages. Eyeroll.

We're Back!

And here's our brand spanking new telephone pole! Yeah! It's nice to have lights. And a washing machine. And phone service. And a glass of red wine.

No power, no phone, no cable, no internet

And so, we are rediscovering the lost art of conversation.

The lines have been down since about 3:30 on Wednesday afternoon. Thursday night, a crew came and got rid of the tree that took everything out (but not the defunct telephone pole, even though it used to be a tree). Con Ed arrived on Friday, to watch. Yes, a guy in a car sat there making sure no one crossed the yellow hazard tape. Finally, this morning (it's now Saturday), the Con Ed work crews arrived. The new telephone pole has been erected. With luck, we'll have power later. Lord knows when the copper phone lines, the fiber optic phone/data lines, and the cable lines will be back up.

The state of emergency has provided some moments of sweetness and joy. Like the other night when a mess of little neighborhood kids were running around with flashlights like enormous lightning bugs. And Miss M. dubbing her headlamp a "flash hat". And lighting the house with candles.

W. ran out and got a generator on Thursday morning, so the refrigerators are running, and we have one extra outlet. The spare has been used for: a lamp, cell phone chargers, the coffee grinder, the coffee maker, and the toaster. Hot breakfast! Our old (non-modern) hot water heater has a standing pilot light, so we have hot water. Really, the whole thing could be worse.

But it'll be nice to get back to the 21st century sooner than later.

Why Women Avoid Mammograms

Because trees fall down, go boom.

I tried to have a mammogram in December. After changing into a lovely gown, I was ushered into the room with the big machine, where the technician proceeded to ask me a few questions. What, you stopped nursing six weeks ago? Come back when it's been six months.

So I made another appointment. For yesterday. And then winds rushed and rain poured on Wednesday. And the power went out. And the phone went out. Despite detours due to trees lying across roads, I made it to the doctor's office promptly at 8:00 am on Thursday. And the power was out there too.

And yesterday's Times had a handful of letters to the editor, headed "Why Women Avoid Mammograms", regarding an editorial earlier in the week about the fact that that fewer women are getting mammograms. Should I tell them it's because toddlers want to nurse forever and trees fall down?

Oh, and the picture above? That's the now defunct tree at the top of our street that took out our power and phone. Which has now been out for about 48 hours. And in some beautiful karmic event, yesterday's mail brought a flyer from Con Ed, entitled "Power Problems? Let Us Know!" I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.

More Gorey

No drawings this time, but Slouching Mom had a comment on my recent Gorey post which reminds me that my mother called him "Sneakers" for the longest time.

I don't know where in the theater Gorey sat for the ballet - probably first ring, maybe orchestra. But he always held court at intermission on the house left side of the promenade. And he was there A LOT. And, like some characters in his drawings, he was always wearing fur coats, and sneakers, and rings. For years, my mother would come home and tell us that Sneakers was there again. And then one day, there was an article in one of the New York papers about Gorey, with a photo. Lo and behold: Sneakers.

I am...tagged

S. tagged me.

I am 46.
I am a Feinschmecker.
I am a reader.
I am an atheist.
I am a collector of offbeat Christmas music.
I am curious.
I am disinterested in television.
I am easily amused.
I am fond of getting my hands dirty in the garden.
I am married.
I am not fertile, yet no longer infertile.
I am partial to Sancerre.
I am shy.
I am also outgoing.
I am someone’s mother.
I am the product of a liberal arts education.
I am the queen of tarts.
I am wearing jeans.
I am complicated.

I am tagging Pinky, Irish Goddess, Isis, Aurelia and Mayberry Mom!

An Enterprising New Yorker

This morning I saw a guy, who might have been homeless, though maybe not, carrying a sign that said "Notary Public Service Right Here". Enterprising, huh? A mobile notary.

Gorey at the Ballet

My mother used to take us to the ballet a lot, and to the Nutcracker regularly. We were also great fans of Edward Gorey, who was a perennial audience member at the New York City Ballet for a long time. From time to time, he drew for them. This was ripped out of a Nutcracker program, taped together, and pinned to the bulletin board in my room for the longest time. It's almost impossible to see now, but he had been in the audience, and I'd gotten him to sign it. He crossed out his printed name, and signed above it, apparently in disappearing ink.

Pickles

Once upon a time, at the wake in connection with W’s grandmother’s funeral, his aunt arrived with a mason jar of homemade bread & butter pickles. They were well made and tasty, but dyed KELLY GREEN. With food coloring. It was a shocking sight to behold. I recalled this whilst reading the Times the other day, wherein John T. Edge revealed that people in the South, in the Mississippi Delta, take standard issue dill pickles and steep them in Kool-Aid. They emerge an unearthly shade of, well, not pickle colored.

Poetry Friday: The Ballad of Magpie Musing

The ballad, I; I shun the world, Its bustle and its noise, Its busy hasty rushing crowds And bright consumer toys. Indeed, I sometimes like the old Because it's not the new; And if you think that's strange or wrong, I might not much like you. What Poetry Form Are You?

Thanks to Niobe, who's an unpronounceable Welsh poem form...

Gendered Ice Pops

After dinner last night, Miss M. and W. were eating popsicles for dessert. Well, maybe not. Miss M. announced that the girl team was eating popsicles, and the boy team was eating momsicles.

The Five Second Rule Has Been Revised

Leave it to Harold McGee. Well, actually some researchers from Clemson University. They decided to test the rule that food that lands on the floor is okay if it’s in contact with the floor for no more than five seconds. Surprise: it’s not! It gathers bacteria! But Harold, sensibly, doesn’t say “don’t eat it” – he says

If you drop a piece of food, pick it up quickly, take five seconds to recall that just a few bacteria can make you sick, then take a few more to think about where you dropped it and whether or not it’s worth eating.

So, that means it’s okay that I let my poor child finish the slice of pizza she dropped at Grand Central Terminal last week when she somehow fell out of her chair? Of course. I couldn’t have taken it away; she was too sad from landing on the floor. And five days later, she's still alive.