Dearth Minus R Equals Death

For me, as for many people, the impulse to post ebbs and flows. There are weeks when the posts just pour out of me, so much so that I've got them scheduled into the future and then I have to shuffle them because something comes up that's more timely. Then there are times like right this very minute when, despite a sheaf of clippings in my bag along with a dozen draft posts, I have nothing. Maybe it's because I just can't top the Popsicornian.

Those draft posts and scraps of paper are gnawing at me, though. I'm going to work through them, or toss them. I could use the room in my bag.

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A year before my mother died, she entered hospice care. At the time, I didn't think she was going to last out the month; she'd become so very weak. Because death seemed so imminent, death was much on my mind, so much so that I dropped two "clippings" from the New York Times into Google docs.

The first was a heartbreaking story about a Chinese earthquake, one that claimed the lives of many children when their school collapsed.

The bodies are everywhere. Some are zipped inside white vinyl bags and strewn on the floor. Others have been covered in a favorite blanket or dressed in new clothes. There are so many bodies that undertakers want to cremate them in groups. They are all children...But the awful scene at this local morgue is a sad reminder that too many of the dead are children in a country where most families are allowed to have only one.

The other was a quote that appeared in an editorial "Appreciation" of Nuala O’Faolain, an Irish writer then unfamiliar to me, who'd just died.

"I know loads and loads of songs, and what’s the point of it all?" she said. "So much has happened, and it seems such a waste of creation, that with each death all that knowledge dies."

Why? Why do we live? Why do we die? In 100 years, will anyone remember me? Will my daughter remember my mother? My mother was never really the fun granny; she was diagnosed with cancer when my child was about 15 months old. Sure, the three of us went to California together, and she spent plenty of time at Granny's house, but recently we walked along the brick walkway at her old daycare, and when we came to the brick marked MOKY, she said "who's Moky?" And I died a little inside. Right now, she remembers Granny, but not Moky, and Granny's going to evaporate.

Obviously, it's a rhetorical question, but why? What's it all about, Alfie?

Wardrobe Wednesday: New Popsicornian

Top to bottom:

• New pink fire hat from the pancake breakfast at the fire house. This is the first time they've had pink hats, alongside the standard issue red ones. Honestly, does anyone actually need a pink plastic hat? Oy.
• New onion goggles, so we don't cry when we're cutting up onions, thanks to Nintendo, who sent them along with an apron and a cutting board and a stockpot and an interactive DS version of America's Test Kitchen, with which we have not yet interacted.
• New lavender bike shorts from eBay, because wearing shorts under a skirt means no one can taunt "I see your underpants". Of course, wearing them on your head means that your underpants might still show.
• New hippie shirt from Target, because a girl can't have too many heart-shaped peace signs.

Oh, and when asked? She told me she was a Popsicornian.

Rebirth

On Easter Sunday, faced with a beautiful day and nothing to do, the six year old and I put on our sneakers and headed to the high school track. It was my version of rebirth – the kick-off to my Couch to 5K - which, you may recall, is on my list of things to do before I turn fifty.

I didn’t really want to take the girl, but she really wanted to come, and as soon as we got there, she took off, iPod and all (she has a hand-me-down Shuffle, the tiny one, which I populated with songs of my choosing, as it is my prerogative to shape her musical education). Meanwhile, I cued up my C25K app, and set off at a brisk walk, half an oval behind the girl. To her credit, she went around and around - frontwards, backwards, dancing, skipping, singing – for the first 25 minutes of my 30 minute workout. And then she climbed up the bleachers to watch the tennis players doing their thwomp, thwomp, thwomp.

I walked and jogged and walked and jogged and danced a little while walking and jogged and made it through Week 1 Day 1 without falling over. And I did it again Tuesday, and Saturday, and again yesterday. With luck, I’ll be running that whole five kilometers sometime in June.

Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

I've never been to that Texas city pronounced "hugh-stun", the one that's spelled the same way as a street in my city pronounced "how-stun". The other day, I was confused when a lady asked me if the subway was going to "ho-stun". It wasn't until she showed me her hand-drawn map with a penciled "Houston" that I was able to tell her "no, you want the downtown train". I'd never imagined a third way to pronounce the word.

Shoe Friday Filch

I have a hard time finding and buying some kinds of things. It took me years to find a wallet I liked, and then, when it wore out, took me years to find another. I mostly like the one I have now, but it’s infuriating in that it’s backwards, or left-handed, and even though I open it almost every day, I almost always open it with the cash pocket facing down. Somewhere out there, the perfect wallet exists, but I still haven’t found it.

It's the same thing with my travel coffee mug. Though I usually drink my morning coffee at home, about once a week, I want that extra cup on the way to the train. I don’t want a big cup, but I do want it to be well sealed, because when I’m done, I’m going to have to drop it in my bag and I don’t want those last few drops of coffee dribbling out into my imperfect wallet. And I don’t want a screw off top, because what do you do with the top while you’re drinking the coffee? Yeah, I’m picky. One day, wandering around in Barnes & Noble of all places, I found a great travel cup, but it’s meant for kids to drink cold beverages out of. I contacted the company and asked if hot beverages were okay; they wrote back with lawyer-vetted language about risks of burns, but did assure me that the plastic wouldn’t melt or leach nasty chemicals. So I use it anyway, even though it’s uninsulated and the middle does get hot, because it holds the perfect amount (9 ounces) and it’s completely leak-proof. It does beg the question: why aren't there any smaller, leak-proof travel mugs out there? And believe me, I've looked. Every time I'm in a store that sells any kind of travel cups, I examine each and every one of them with great attention to detail.

With all that said, why oh why did it take me two years to replace my Danskos? I had a pair of Dansko clogs for years and years and I wore them all the time until I wore them out, like completely worn out at the heel and toes poking through the front. I put the dead ones in the compost heap as an homage to my mother (who buried EVERYTHING in the name of the berm, and if anyone ever excavates the perimeters of her property, they’ll be flabbergasted), and I never got around to buying new ones. Finally, I piddled around on the internet, trying to find the perfect combination of price + shipping + rebate + tax, until I gave up and went to a local shoe store which was having a spring break sale where everything was 20% off. Win! And I put those shoes on and it was like coming home and I felt stupid for not having replaced them sooner and I will never be without a pair of Danskos ever again.

The moral of the story is that there are perfect things out there in the world, and when you find them, you should never ever turn your back on them.

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"Shoe Friday" filched from Jodifur.

Fun With Science for Susan

Every once in a while, the kid gets out of bed and says "let's do science experiments"! What she means by this is "let's mix baking soda and vinegar and see what happens", like we don't already know, but hey! Science!

Sometimes we carefully stand up a pill vial of baking soda in a ziploc, pour some vinegar in the bottom of the bag, zip the bag shut, and dump the baking soda into the vinegar. Ta da! The bag blows up like a balloon. I keep hoping one will really explode, with a bang and a mess, but so far no dice.

One day, I set out three glasses - water, pickle juice, white vinegar. I made her taste all three; peculiarly she decreed the vinegar to taste sweet. (Then again, this is a child who likes salt and vinegar potato chips.) She took notes on taste, color, smell - recording her observations, because if you're going to do science experiments, you need to act like a scientist. Then she dumped a tablespoon of baking soda in each one and we watched how differently they reacted.

Sometimes, she wants to make a volcano, using an erlenmeyer flask - the flask shape pumps the foam up nicely (and doesn't everyone have an erlenmeyer flask in the kitchen cabinets? I used to have a 250ml beaker, too, but it got broken. It was an integral part of beer croquet, along with the kangaroo foot bottle opener and a bamboo tray, but I digress).

Today, as an homage to WhyMommy, a female rocket scientist, we - me and my girl - made a volcano, but I added an experimental fillip: three drops of dish detergent mixed into the white vinegar.

Whoa baby! We made the best volcano ever! The only thing that would have made that volcano better was if it had pointed to a cure for cancer. We'll have to keep experimenting.

In the meantime, and because WhyMommy suggested it in her post about preparing for the surgery that she's having today, because her cancer came back, I joined the Army of Women. I'll be notified when a researcher is looking for people like me - women who are willing to participate, in person or online, with and without cancer, so that scientists can study what causes, and what cures, cancer.

Join the army. Teach your kids to experiment. And fuck cancer.

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Also, go check out all of the other Team WhyMommy Virtual Science Fair posts that Stimey instigated.

Thirteen Sights in Two Days

Remember when we went to Boston last summer, and played intense tourist for two days? We did it again, this time closer to home. My sister-in-law had given us a gift certificate for two nights at the Algonquin, and it was about to expire and the girl had spring break, and so we sprung.

We took the train to the city on Sunday, and walked the two blocks over to the hotel. Along the way, we learned that “there are three pigeons in New York and their names are Susie, John and Marissa”, in case you were wondering. The Algonquin is fabulous and antique and totally my idea of a hotel – it has character coming out of its ears. There are Dorothy Parker quotes on the doors to all the rooms, there’s a cat in the lobby, and the gloriously deep bathtub looks like it’s the 1902 original. The wallpaper in the halls is a pastiche of New Yorker cartoons, so you can say "No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?" while you wait for the elevator. I even liked the airshaft view out our back window, and the front window was good for peeping into some random offices across the way.

After a pause, we scarpered over to 42nd Street, which doesn’t look like 42nd Street anymore, it looks like a mall, but whatever. We had tickets to a fine little show – four Australians doing "46 Circus Acts in 45 Minutes" which was as madcap and charming as you can imagine; the girl was rapt throughout. Incidentally, if you’re in NY with children, you should take them to almost anything at the New Victory – it’s a little jewelbox of a theater "for kids and families", and you don’t even have ask for a booster seat – the ushers just know that six year olds need them. We had dinner at Bond 45 – a completely serviceable Italian restaurant between the theater and the hotel, where they treated the girl right: six cherries in her Shirley Temple, and a package of freshly baked chocolate cookies to go.

Monday, we got up and wore ourselves out:

• Ate breakfast in the fabulously Victorian round table room
• Rode the ferris wheel at the Times Square Toys R Us (because we’d accidently walked by it the night before and there was no way out)
• Successfully bought nothing at the afore-mentioned Toys R Us
• Took the subway up to the Museum of Natural History, where we saw live butterflies, dead rodents, American Indians, and the big whale
• Successfully avoided every last gift shop at the afore-mentioned museum
• Took the subway back down to Chinatown for a dumpling lunch
• Agreed to purchase pink! silk! pajamas! at Pearl River Trading (though they’re really rayon)
• Took the subway further downtown, and rode the Staten Island Ferry back and forth. Free! It’s free! We’d thought about going to the Statue of Liberty but rode the ferry instead. Did I mention that it’s free?
• Headed uptown to Macy*s to see the flower show
• Gave into demand that we buy something at Macy*s for the child, and got her a shirt and a denim dress, a/k/a useful souvenirs
• Walked back to the hotel and crashed for a moment
• Went out to dinner at a most excellent pizza place called Co, by the "no-knead bread" guy
• Came back to the hotel, where I took a bath in peace and quiet

Tuesday, I went to work and the girl and her father traipsed around some more in the POURING rain. I think I might have gotten the better end of that stick, though she came home with bathroom fixtures for her dollhouse and a chocolate bunny.

And that, friends, is how to see New York. Bang zoom. Theater, museum, ferry, subway, restaurants, shops, hotel. Two days. Though you might need a vacation from your vacation. Luckily, it's still spring break.

A Year

I was on the train home yesterday, when the Neville Brothers shuffled into position on my iPod:

I was standing by my window
On a cold and cloudy day
When I saw that hearse wheel rolling
It was taking my mother away

Undertaker, undertaker
Won't you please drive real slow?
That's my mother, my dear old mother
I sure hate to see her go

My heart stopped a little. I remember watching the hearse take my mother away, a year ago today.

And then, when I got to my house, there was a little white stone sitting in the gutter, right at the top of my driveway, about the size of a lima bean. It's not a piece of gravel, it's not a native rock. It's like the rocks my mother loved to pick up on the beach at Fire Island - perfect little surf tumbled stones, pure white shot through with tiny grey veins, flat and smooth in the hand.

She hasn't a headstone, she wasn't buried, so I can't mark my visits by putting pebbles on her tombstone. Instead, it's like she came to me, in the form of that little rock sitting in front of my house.

I can't believe it's been a year. It feels like just yesterday.

Wordless Wednesday: Learning to Read

The child climbed into my bed with a book and asked "Could you read me this book about karaoke indians"?

Ooh, A Giveaway!

Do you want to rock the socks off of your nearest 11 year old? Easy. But you'll have to jump over to my review site, Magpie Housekeeping, to see how. And you might want to check out that link even if you don't have an 11 year old 'cause it's that cool.

Eleven Into Fifty Minus Two Equals NINE

Oh, the failings of me. I can only report on three of the ten things left on my list of things to do before I turn fifty.

1. Every week or so, I read another few pages of Gödel, Escher, Bach - at this rate, I am never going to finish it. Note to self: Stop reading everything else.

4. I bought sneakers! And then I got pneumonia! So I've accomplished nothing! Unless the sneakers count. They count, right? Note to self: get off your ass.

11. The first quarterly potluck party was at the beginning of the month, and it was a whole lot of fun. In some miracle, no brownies were ground into the carpet! However, the various children in attendance ate every last piece of the gooey butter cake. I'm thinking the next one is going to be a potluck 15th wedding anniversary. Note to self: set the date.

And onwards.

Let's Review: Crest Neat Squeeze

It's harder than it should be to buy toothpaste for the kid; she's very picky about the flavors. Mint? No. Cinnamon? Hell no. Watermelon? No. Orange-Mango? No. The only flavor she accepts is blue bubblegum, thanks to a free sample of Crest "Sparkle Fun" that came home from the dentist one day (ah, insidious marketing).

Figuring that brushing teeth is better than not brushing teeth, I caved and bought a full-sized "tube" of the Crest. It comes in a new-fangled container, not the usual tube that you squeeze and roll and squeeze and roll. Nope, this is the "Neat Squeeze" container, for fastidious types that don't care to have their toothpaste tubes squeezed in the middle by careless six year olds. Note, if you will, the flat bottom, rendering the container more like a bottle than a tube. I supposed that appeals to the tidy people who abhor their tubes lying down. Because it is new-fangled, it has informative copy on the back of the container:



In case you can't read that fine print, it says:

The Neat Squeeze dispenser has a unique inner bag that empties itself as you squeeze in the middle. When the package gets lighter and is harder to squeeze, it’s time to buy more Crest.

Yeah, right.

The toothpaste stopped coming out of the tube. I squeezed the hell out of it, I banged it on the sink, I stood it upside down, all because I knew there was a lot of toothpaste in there. Finally, I got a pair of scissors, and carefully cut off the bottom of the tube, revealing the silver plastic bag within.

Can I tell you how annoying it was to find that there was at least a third of the product still in there, no longer willing to be squeezed out by itself? And Crest wanted me to throw that tube out and buy more? You can just imagine the people at Proctor & Gamble sitting around inventing a dispenser that contains six ounces, but only spits out four. "Ha, ha", they think, "we'll sell more units that way".

Feh. I think I'd rather her teeth rot that buy that stuff again.

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Disclosure: In case you're wondering, I bought this toothpaste with my own money and no one paid me for this review.

Once upon A Time

All good stories start with "once upon a time", right?

Once upon a time, there was a girl. She was kind of a tomboy, given to jeans and polo shirts on the weekends, and dowdy skirt suits for work, but when it came time for her wedding, she went all out.

Because she was very attached to her grandparents, she elected to honor them by getting married on their wedding anniversary. Alas, that year, their wedding anniversary fell on the Friday before Labor Day – not a time when anyone wants to be traveling, but no matter, she was the bride and it was her decision.

The wedding was scheduled for six o’clock on that late summer afternoon. In order to get there in time, guests had to take all or part of the day off, traveling alongside all of the merry folk heading for end-of-summer beach weekends.

The church service – a Catholic mass – went off without incident, though it was an hour and a half long, in a un-air-conditioned church, the air heavy with incense. The bride wore a gown, beaded, seeded and encrusted with lace. Her hair, usually hanging limply at her shoulders, was swept into an up-do, and her face had so much pancake make-up that you could have scratched lines in its thickness, revealing the skin below. In short, she was transformed into a “Bride”, wearing a costume unrevealing of her ordinary self.

After the ceremony, the guests left the church for the reception hall, and the wedding party decamped by limousine to who knows where to have their pictures taken. And taken. And taken. The guests ate all of the hors d'œuvres, and drank to abandon, wondering where oh where the bride and groom had gotten to.

At last the happy couple made their appearance. The guests were ushered into the dining room, at 10:30 pm. Appetizers were served. Appetizers were eaten. The band played hoky wedding staples, and the DJ narrated the entrance of every last member of the wedding, “and here’s the lovely sister of the bride”. The main course finally arrived. The Chicken Dance was danced. At least one guest passed out in her plate, felled by a combination of the late hour and the copious amounts of alcohol. Sometime after midnight, the cake was cut, and the couple squished it into one another’s faces, and all the guests were released from the hell of the worst wedding that I have ever been to.

Is it any surprise that they aren’t married anymore?

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If you're wondering why I felt compelled to tell you this excruciating tale, it's because Mayberry Mom asked "What’s the story you end up telling and retelling about your wedding, or one you attended?" and it was too long for a comment. And no, it was a stranger at our table who passed out in her plate.

Wordless Wednesday: Kid with Kid

We signed the girl up for a most excellent after-school program at a local farm - where, in the first three weeks, they've tapped trees and made maple syrup, made and eaten goat's milk fudge, milked a goat, collected eggs from under chickens, dug in the garden, made waffles, and eaten goat's milk yogurt smoothies.

I'm only sorry she didn't get to bring home any goat's milk fudge for me.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Is this a freckle? A friend told me it was a pingle.

Thinking about Health Insurance, as one does when one is SICK

Howdy. I'm still sick.

Those expensive antibiotics? I'm halfway through the seven day script, and I dunno, they haven't kicked in the way I thought they were going to.

I should clarify something about their cost. If I'd walked into the drugstore and bought the seven pills without any insurance, they would have cost me $233.99 - or $33.43 each. I do have insurance, but since this was the first non-generic prescription I'd filled this year, I hadn't yet met my deductible. So, I had to pay $100 deductible PLUS the $30 co-pay that I'll have to pay on any future scripts, for an outlay of $130 for the seven pills.

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One of the things that the scare-mongers use in lobbying against nationalized single payer health care is that it would limit choice, that you won't be able to see the doctor that you want to see. Well, in point of fact, that's already happened. Managed care, with networks of doctors, has pretty much limited one's doctor choice to a doctor who is in your network - unless one has the resources to pay out of pocket for care.

And there's a problem with that.

A couple of years ago, I had some growthy thing on my forehead. I went to the in-network dermatologist THREE times, it came back THREE times. I gave up and went to the fancy Fifth Avenue no-insurance-at-all doctor and he fixed it - it's never come back and the scar is invisible. And you know? That kind of pisses me off, because - in that case anyway - the fancy expensive doctor actually WAS better than the insurance paid hack.

A friend, a new real-life friend who happens to have a blog, who I met last month at the birthday party of a very old friend (who also happens to have a blog), recently had a health issue that wouldn't go away. She called it "the itis", and it hung around for five months. She finally found another doctor, out-of-network this time, and guess what? Cured! Again, the out-of-network turned out to be a better doctor.

My sister-in-law asked me for a recommendation for a doctor because she's got terrible bunions. As it happens, I know who the foot doctor is - three different people that I know have had him operate on their feet - he's the best, period, end of story. She called up - yes, ma'am, a consult will be $450 and we don't take any insurance.

I don't know what the moral of these stories is. But they're just indicative of another way that the system is broken. I hope it gets fixed.

Murder, Syphilis, Piggostat

So, after lying around listlessly since Saturday afternoon, I decided to go to the doctor, where I learned all sorts of interesting things.

I have no idea whether my doctor is actually any good, but he makes me laugh - and there's something to be said for that. And he chats. A few years ago, it came up in conversation that his wife was a reproductive endocrinologist and had worked at RMA in New Jersey. This was shortly after the murder scandal where an RMA nurse had her husband cut up and tossed in the Chesapeake so she could run away with her lover, an RMA doctor. So, you know me, on the way out I asked him if his wife knew them. He looked at me wide-eyed, closed the door, and proceeded to tell me that his wife had joined the practice after the doctor left with his tail between his legs, so no, she didn't know them, BUT, that she was thoroughly skeeved out to learn that the doctor had been having it on with the nurse on what was now her desk.

Today, he felt the lymph nodes in my neck and then in my elbows. Elbows! I've never had anyone feel my elbows before. He said that enlarged lymph nodes in the elbows could be a sign of untreated syphilis and launched into a possibly apocryphal story he'd learned in med school about a doctor who always shook his daughter's boyfriends hands with his left hand on the boy's right elbow.

Then he listened to my lungs, decreed them "junky" and sent me downstairs for an x-ray.

Have you ever noticed those 19th-century-looking restraining devices that they use to immobilize little kids who need x-rays? There's always one parked in the hall at our doctor's office, and I wonder at them every time. Well, this time, I was in luck - there was a photocopied sign taped to the wall in the x-ray room - it's a PIGGOSTAT. Can you believe that? What a wonderful word.

I told my doctor about the Piggostat when I went back upstairs for the verdict. He was non-plussed, and didn't quite understand why I was so tickled about the Piggostat. Oh and the verdict? PNEUMONIA. Can you believe that? I can't, though I feel less guilty for being out of work for the third day in a row, and maybe tomorrow too.

I'm on antibiotics for a week (which "cost" $234 for seven pills), and I have to go back in a month for another x-ray. On my way out, my doctor told me that he'd tell them to use the Piggostat on me for the repeat x-ray. I told him that the thing was only for kids under 3 1/2; he said "you read that sign?"

Hey. I always read the signs. If I hadn't read the sign, I wouldn't have learned anything about the Piggostat.

2009 Just Posts

The Just Posts is a monthly roundtable of posts that "lift up our planet and all that inhabit it" begun by the inimitable Jen and Mad , and later handed over to Holly and Alejna. The latter two took it upon themselves to re-read all of the 2009 Just Posts, culled it down to a bunch of semi-finalists with the help of volunteer readers, and then put together a list of finalists in twelve different categories.

I'm thrilled to have been chosen as a finalist in the "SOCIAL JUSTICE as advocacy/service : Posts related to INFORMATION AND ADVOCACY" category, and of course, I hope you'll go vote for me. But even better would be for you to go over to either Holly's post or Alejna's and read through some or all of the great posts. They are moving, and shocking, and funny, and informative.

The News From My Bed

What's in my bed right now:

• Two books that I'm reading (Naming Day in Eden and Absolute Beginners).
• The New Yorker that came today.
• A box of Kleenex.
• The arts section of the Times, in case I want to do the crossword puzzle.
• A pen.
• My cell phone and the house phone.
• A rather large stuffed dolphin (or porpoise - I supposed I should know the difference?).
• A new game for the Wii, called Endless Ocean (which came with the dolphin/porpoise).
• A microwavable heat wrap, now cold.
• Me.

What's on the floor right now:

• Three books I read to the girl last night.
• Two books I finished yesterday (One D.O.A., One on the Way and Juliet, Naked)
• My bathrobe.
• The rest of the Times.
• A drift of used Kleenex (because I'm too lazy to go find a wastebasket).
• Gödel, Escher, Bach.

What's downstairs right now:

• The Robitussin.
• The jello.
• The aspirin.
• The Sudafed.
• The hot lemonade.

Yeah. I'm sick.

[Post title adapted from that catchy little Bishop Allen tune.]

Undercover Photography

I'm generally not a lawbreaker - I don't swim in the reservoirs, I signal when changing lanes - and I don't generally hang out with bankers, but I got invited to a party on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and you better believe I went, because in all my born days, I'd never been there.

The invitation said "photo opportunity", so I packed my camera, picked up my walker and headed downtown. We had a ball, me and my snarky friend. Open bar, passed hors d'œuvres, and the chance to wonder at the vast yet intimate space - a collision of old (marble stairs, coffered ceilings) and new (screen after screen after screen). We talked to a woman with great glasses, an art dealer, a lady of a certain age - all of them said the same thing: "I've never been here before".

On the way in, there were several big NO PHOTOS signs. It turned out that the "photo op" was actually a chance to have someone else take your picture up on the balcony where the bell gets rung. We did, everyone did, and got a souvenir to take home, but I really wanted some pictures of the floor. I wanted the odd little details, like the Purell dispensers and the 1940s vinyl fold-down chairs and the newspaper clipping collage and the empty soda bottle suspended gaily in the middle of one of the pods. It's so clearly a workplace, not a museum, and despite all the high-tech, there's a distinctly human quality about it.

So I played spy-girl and took vague photos from the hip while holding my scotch in the other hand, but they're all terrible because I was trying too hard to be discreet. Oh well. I wasn't supposed to be taking pictures anyway.

The Sexist Olympics

I know, I know. The Olympics are over. But there was a really interesting article in the New Yorker this week, about skiing - and moguls and freestyle and and cross country and aerials and ski jumping. I've gone skiing a dozen times, as an adult, and I hung up my poles when I broke my thumb one day. And the only ski jumping I've done is on the Wii, and honestly, how many people do you know that have ever ski jumped, like for real?

Anyway, I wasn't reading it because of my deep love and understanding of skiing, but because it was one of those echt New Yorker articles - the kind that you read with fascination despite not really caring about the subject, like when John McPhee writes about plate tectonics or shad fishing. I was carrying along merrily, until I sat bolt upright on the train and dog-eared the page: ski jumping is the ONLY male-only sport in the winter Olympics. That in and of itself is bad enough, but there's a theory advanced by a German professor that the reason is that ski jumping is ideally suited to the small and lean - a theory supported by a New York Times article about anorexia in ski jumpers. In other words, women ought to be winning - and by banning women from it, it protects the "virile self-image" of the men who do jump.

Sputter, sputter, sputter.

That Awkward Conversation

My parenting style is fairly laissez faire. I don’t own many how-to books, although Ferber and Weissbluth live under my bed, talismatically, as magical thinking tells me that bedtime will be shot to hell if I get rid of either one.

But the other day, I had one of those bath-time conversations with the kid that I really wasn’t prepared for: “Mommy, I can feel my vagina!”. It went on from there, and though I’ll spare you the details, it wasn’t her vagina she was talking about. At that moment, I felt a need for reinforcement, and I was damned glad that I had a glass of wine in the bathroom with me.

As one does these days, I put out a plea for help on Twitter/Facebook. I got a mess of good responses, and so armed, I headed off to the library.

The book I came home with was perfect. It’s straight-forward, and not at all cloying, with a bird and a bee acting as a sort of Greek chorus. It works for boys and for girls, it’s got all stripes of families, it offers IVF and c-section and bottle-feeding as alternatives to the old-fashioned less technological processes, and it points out the similarities between the sexes, as well as their differences.

It’s called It’s NOT the Stork! and I’d recommend it if you’re looking to impart some dispassionate information to a six year old on what it’s all about.

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Because I’m all about sharing, here’s the complete list from the Twitterati and Friends – in case you too are looking for resources. No guarantees - I've only read the first one.

• It’s Not the Stork!
• It's So Amazing (for older kids, from the same author/illustrator as It's NOT the Stork!)
• Charlie Brown's Super Book of Questions and Answers About All Kinds of Animals
• The Care and Keeping of You (for girls)
• What's the Big Secret?
• Where did I come from?
• See Inside Your Body
• Boys, Girls and Body Science
• A Child is Born

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Oh, and in case the FTC is reading over your shoulder? No one paid me to chatter about any of these books, and no one gave them to me either. In fact, you could say that I bought It's NOT the Stork indirectly via my library taxes, thank you very much.

Four Deaths

Last week, in the issue dated today, and I wish they would just date the issue with the date it appears, but I digress, there was a little front-of-the-book piece in the New Yorker, about MoMA's acquisition of a bunch of Wiseman films.

"A startled secretary looks on."

Just that little sentence, and bang – I was thinking about the several people in my office building who’ve died since I started working here.

That secretary? I knew her. I’ve seen the Wiseman documentary, too, and I tell you, she wasn’t startled. Waiting to get a word in edgewise, and rolling her eyes, but not startled - she'd seen it all. She was a tiny little thing, warm and feisty, with outrageously decorated fingernails, and she’d been around forever, serving a revolving cast of Executive Directors – until she died of uterine cancer, caused by the Tamoxifen that successfully treated her breast cancer.

The elevator operator was one of the crustiest guys I’ve ever known. The story ‘round the building was that the happiest anyone had ever seen him was was when his union was on strike and he got to hang out in front of the building, picketing and kibbutzing and not running the elevator. He’d had a congenital heart defect, repaired once, and then again, and he used to show his open heart surgery scars to anyone who'd ask. One day the repair failed, and he lingered in the hospital for months – a young man – and crusty as he was, we all missed him when he was gone.

The security guard was a tall, elegant, graceful man – with a girlfriend here and a kid there and maybe another girlfriend somewhere else. He was soft spoken, and wore his well-cut black suit beautifully, and one day he didn’t show up. It turned out that he’d been murdered in Brooklyn. Murdered and stuffed into a black plastic garbage bag and left on a curb. Shocking, and sad, and perplexing too – what kind of a life was he leading outside of our security desk that he could have been murdered in cold blood like that? As far as I know, his murder was never solved.

And the hat man. He made hats the old fashioned way, by hand. His studio was lined with shelves and shelves of wooden hat blocks, and he listened to jazz all day long, shaping, sewing, blocking, inventing. But he smoked like a chimney, and even though he quit finally, it got him, lung cancer. He was in and out of the hospital for about a year, and, knowing that he was often alone, no immediate family, I’d go visit and bring him a slice of pizza – it’s what he always requested when I asked if I could get him anything – anything other than hospital food. Around the time that my daughter was born, he moved into hospice, and I never did get to see him again.

"A startled secretary looks on."

So few words, so many memories.

Dragon

My sister's kid had a birthday recently, and because they live a good two hours away, the girlie and I spent the night. Some bed sharing and shuffling meant that the girlie slept with her cousin, and I got a night to myself - in a single bed, but alone, and no one woke me up. It was kind of heavenly.

While I was lying there in the morning, I was thinking about the curtains in the room. My mother made them back when my sister was pregnant with her first child - pale yellow plaid (harvested from a set of sheets), with a border trim of multicolored 1" patchwork squares. After we moved into our house, my mother made curtains for my daughter's room - white with tiny blue polka dots (Ruth Bogen's sheets), trimmed with a 1" strip of blue flowered calico.

I realized that I was kind of writing a blog post in my head - the curtains, my mother, the babies - and I remembered that David Pogue had written about an iPhone dictation app. So I downloaded Dragon then and there, and tried it out, rambling on about the curtains.

Oh yeah.

Online at Macy's we can relate to this history test I created his industry can usually tell trophies the floor focused on the couldn't make it

That's what I said about the curtains, sure.

I think I was speaking in some uncaffeinated, throaty morning voice, because I've tried Dragon again and had it work stunningly well. But that first try? Wow.

Depression

In one of those moments of synchronicity, there were two fascinating articles about depression within a week in the two publications I read regularly - one, called "Depression's Upside" in the New York Times Magazine, and the other a sort of book review in the New Yorker.

They left me perplexed, for what I came away with was: my 50mg of Zoloft every day is a placebo, and depression is "a sane response to a crazy world".

From The New Yorker:

There is "little agreement about what causes depression and no consensus about what cures it". The "drug companies and the psychiatric establishment...have...invented a disease so that they could sell the cure". "Is psychopharmacology evil, or is it useless?"

From the Times Magazine:

"Depression has a secret purpose and our medical interventions are making a bad situation even worse." "If depression didn't exist - if we didn't react to stress and trauma with endless ruminations - then we would be less likely to solve our predicaments." "Depressed affect made people think better."

It's a paradox, one that I'm not equipped to untangle. But it makes me wonder about that 50mg of Zoloft. I've been on it, on and off, for a long time - maybe 10 years. Persistent weepiness and ineffable sadness landed me in a shrink's office, and on Zoloft. Biology? External stressors? I don't know. It wasn't, isn't, the kind of major depression that Andrew Solomon or William Styron have written well about, but more of a chronic low-level dysthymia - which occasionally seems endemic in my cohort. After all, it sometimes seems like everyone I know is on one SSRI or another.

Feeling better, I've gone off several times, but eventually the friability creeps back and I start taking it again. It's a low dose, I know that, but still, taking it makes me less weepy, less fragile. But is that merely a placebo effect? Would I be better off learning to cope without my little crutch? Would I think more clearly, more easily sort out complexity? I don't know. Do I want to find out? I don't know.

Did you read one or both of those articles? Were you as unsettled as I am?

Dissecting

My mother, she floats around in my head. I found myself sorting a drawer of thread yesterday, arranging it by color, because I'd gone looking for a spool of white thread and thought there wasn't any, because the five spools of white thread had disappeared in the hodgepodge. My mother had her thread organized by color. Why do I have so much brown thread? I hate brown.

She was clever and thrifty, my mother. When I was cleaning out my closet last month, I came across a straight blue dress that I'd loved and worn well. I remembered that its back slit had once torn at the seam, as they are wont to do. I checked to see if the seam had been repaired, and found that my mother had fixed it, using a bit of ribbon from a box of fancy chocolates in lieu of ordinary, purchased, twill tape.



I put the dress back in my closet. How could I not?

Moky had a basement full of stuff. Tools and oddments and broken telephones and a plethora of picture frames and fourteen kinds of glue. What you needed could always be found down there in the cellar. She had several old dissecting pins - a straight pin with a wooden handle, in case you missed the joys of a fetal pig in high school biology - because they were excellent for those times when you need to put the tiniest drop of Elmer's glue in a little hole. At some point after she was limited to the first floor of the house and no longer gluing things back together, I rummaged up a dissecting pin, needing it for something. She told me I could borrow it - but that I had to bring it back. I never did. In fact, even then, I knew I never would, because she was past dissecting pins and I need them now.

Vulpine Entertainment

I don’t go to the movies much. I just, well, I’d rather read a book. But occasionally something comes along that I really do want to see, for some eccentric reason or another. Usually, because of the hassle and expense of actually going to the movies and sitting there in sprung seats with your feet sticking to the floor, we wait for the home release. But a couple of months ago, after Fantastic Mr. Fox came out, my husband and child went to a matinee while I was at work and I was seriously bent out of shape – because (READ MORE and you want to because there's a giveaway...)

Eleven Into Fifty Minus One Equals TEN

Of course, there's no 29th of February (this year), so my first "Eleven Into Fifty" update has to be today, the 28th.

1. I started Gödel, Escher, Bach. I didn't get much past the introduction, but I started it. I also edited my Library Thing widget so that it's the only book listed, and the cover is huge, so that it haunts me every time I look at my own blog.

3. I haven't tried the croissants yet, but I did find a recipe for chocolate croissants in "small steps over the course of a few days", which I will attempt sooner than later.

5. I can play a scale on the ukulele, if I'm looking at the instructions and chewing on my bottom lip.

8. Mission accomplished! Over the course of a couple of weekends, I went through pretty much every article of clothing that I own, save socks and underwear. There were things in there that hadn't been worn in so long that they needed to be dusted. The thrift shop got several large boxes of clothes, I got rid of every single wire hanger, and I can find things in my closet again.

11. The first of the quarterly potluck dinners is next weekend - if you're around, tell me and I'll invite you.

Branchwater

If I were Ilina, and if it were Friday, I'd invite you in for a cocktail.

As you may recall, one of the activities the child engaged in yesterday was the harvesting of icicles, which were duly stored in the freezer. When it came time, at day's end, for a cocktail, I stuck a couple of them in my scotch. Johnny-Walker-Black-on-the-icicles.

Now, the definition of "branch water" doesn't include icicles - but shouldn't it? After all, the icicle is somewhat branch-like in appearance.

Snow Day!

It's beautiful out, and there's no school, and I didn't try to slog my way into the city, and the kid had a playdate here this morning, and is over at the other kid's house now, (because we've discovered the joys of playdates with the other only child first grader who lives around the corner), and I had tomato soup for lunch, and the power hasn't gone out, and there's no place we need to be. Oh, and there are harvested icicles in my freezer.

The only foreseeable flaws are that we are short on wine and firewood, which will be tragic if the power does go out.

Wordless Wednesday: On The River

Actually, on the pier at Piermont, with her badass shades and her new-from-eBay winter jacket and some phragmites (with three syllables, not two, just in case you'd been wondering).

Dear Mr. President

Several months ago, I had a mammogram, at the very civilized hour of in the evening after dinner. (Really. I have a full time job. Scheduling mammograms during the day is a pain in the ass. Besides, the group practice we use has the machinery - they might as well get more hours a day out of it. And the technician likes it too - she works from 12 to 8 and avoids traffic. And I don't have to wait at all. Win win win.) When I got home, the child asked if I’d gotten a lollipop - because of course you get a lollipop after going to the doctor. I told her she might should write a letter to the President, offering up her suggestion. Periodically, it comes up again. Yesterday, she wrote her letter.



I'm not sure that her letter is going to add anything to the health care debate underway in Washington, but I do think it is important to encourage one's child to participate in our democracy.

Monkey Doll, Redux

Last week was school break in these parts. Sometime during the week, the girlie started asking if she could come to work with me, so I brought her in on Friday.

We had a lovely day - lunch out at a restaurant, movies on the office DVD player, ice cream on the train home, and in between, a trip to the mecca downstairs that is the costume shop. We went down to show them the fringe become doll hair, but then one thing led to another and she left with a bag full of ribbons and bits of trim and a tassel and two yards of pink silk damask and beads and baubles and "diamonds" and fabric flowers. And while we were wandering around collecting all of this joy, one of the stitchers whipped up a green tutu for the doll - just like that. Back upstairs, she spread everything out and proceeded to sew red bands on an arm and a leg, and a diagonal sash of pink flowers. She cracks me up.

Now we've got everything stashed away in a plastic tackle box, "my own sewing kit, Mama". Time to teach her to sew on buttons, methinks.

Happiness

The lovely Mayberry Mom says I make her happy. Lots of small things make me happy:

• That first cup of coffee in the morning
• The sun shining in the brilliant blue sky
• Shuffle on my iPod
• This charming M - for me and for Mayberry. [You can find your own decorative initial(s) here.]
• Sheepskin slippers
• Gorgonzola
• The girlie reading books to me
• Clean sheets
• Slitting open the package of Peeps so they ripen in time for Easter
• Dinner every night with my husband and child

Tag, you're it!

Monkey Girl

I made the girlie a monkey. Well, it was supposed to be a monkey, like the ones that Kelly made, but the girlie didn't want a tail, or ears, or hair. I finished it - the doll - one night, while listening to Slouchy read aloud her poem about her grandmother, which ends with the apt line "I watch your busy hands. They fly." Poking stuffing into the legs and stitching them up, while my friend remembered her grandmother's handiwork, was some kind of lovely synchronicity.

Slouchy's grandmother might well have appreciated the monkey's provenance. The bit of pink for the body was leftover from a skirt I had in high school. The white of the arms and legs and head was salvaged from a worn out bedsheet. The beige of the face came from the cut off leg of a pair of pants - either my husband's or my father's - and the vintage green calico is the mystery. (The Palm Beach chintz on the hand-me-down sofa is a thorn in my side; I need to get that couch reupholstered and soon!)

The next morning, the girlie found the doll in her bed and came climbing in with me to tell me "Mama, make a list, she needs hair, and a hat and shoes and a skirt, make a list, Mama". Got that? Hair.

Luckily, there's a costume shop in my building, so I went down and begged for 18" of glittery fringe - which my boss saw draped on my desk and wondered aloud if I was planning to make it into pasties. I think not. Monkeys don't wear pasties. And it'll make perfect hair when I get a chance to hand-sew it to the doll's head.

Chicken And Potatoes

Ever since we started buying a huge amount of beef at once, chicken has become an infrequent luxury in these parts. The mere thought of a roast chicken, sizzling in the oven, filling the house with that ineffable scent - oh, it makes me weak at the knees. And hungry.

The other day, after an outing to see eagles - live eagles, a bald eagle and a golden eagle, but in a tent, not on the wing - we decided we needed to stop by and get a (dead) chicken born and raised in our NYC suburban county. I don't think that there's any connection between seeing the eagles flapping around (and that golden eagle was BIG) and wanting to eat poultry for dinner, but there you have it.

Later that day, I went upstairs to take a nap. About five minutes after I fell asleep, my husband started bellowing from the kitchen that he needed me. I stumbled downstairs, without my glasses, and found him waving the chicken around by its neck. Which was attached to its head. And its feet were dangling around down at the other end. It was quite a sight, and a distinct reminder that this was no Frank Perdue bird, no sir. Unfortunately, it turned out to be kind of a tough bird, the kind that probably would have been better off braised, not roasted. Its carcass became a lovely stock, enriched by the afore-mentioned feet.

Alongside the chicken, we had potatoes, (twice) cooked my new favorite way. Take some medium sized potatoes with thin skins. Wash them, but don't peel them. Pile them in a bowl, cover them with plastic wrap, and microwave them until you can stick a fork in them. (Or boil them, though this is one of the few things I countenance using the microwave for. That and making tea in the ingenious teapot.) Drain the potatoes and, working on a cutting board, gently smash them with the flat side of a big knife. You want to squish them down to about 1/2" thick. And the reason you left the skins on is because it helps hold them together. Smear some olive oil on a sheet pan, and carefully transfer the potatoes over. Drizzle olive oil on the top sides, and sprinkle with a little kosher salt. Bake them for about 20 minutes at 400°F - flipping them once if you're so inclined. They come out like the love child of potato pancakes, mashed potatoes, hash browns and baked potatoes - crispy and molten and earthy and wonderful. They needed nothing on them, though the child dipped hers in ketchup because she dips everything in ketchup.

Existential crisis

I put the girlie to bed and settled in to watch some of the Olympics, as one does these days. A little while later, she crept downstairs; I walked her back up again. As I tucked her in for the second time, she began wailing:

I don’t want to grow up. I want to be six forever and ever. I don’t care if my friends grow up. I don't want to die. Granny died. I want to stay six. I don’t want to grow up.

How can’t I grow up?

I don’t want to grow up. I don’t I don’t I don’t.

How don’t I grow up?

Deep sobs, many tears, much snot.  Me, snuggled up next to her, feeling at a complete loss. Everyone grows up, everyone dies. How do you assuage the fears of the six year old, when no one wants to grow up, no one wants to grow old, no one wants to die?

Two Answers, A Questions, A Request, and An Apology

Lord knows I am no kind of blogging guru. I know enough to get around, meaning, I only mess with HTML if I have to.

But I figured out two things about Blogger recently that I thought were worth sharing.

Answer 1) Like lots of people, I am periodically plagued with comment spam. Word verification helps, but it's so annoying that I usually leave it off. Recently, the comment spam has all been landing on old posts - which, happily, is easy to remedy. Find your Blogger Dashboard and then go to Settings > Comments > Comment moderation - and enable comment moderation on older posts. Blogger's default is 14 days, but you can set the time frame to longer or shorter. Then, if a spammer tries to comment on an old post, it won't appear, and you can easily delete it from your Blogger dashboard.

Answer 2) I finally got sick of the blogroll that ate my sidebar, a blogroll that was pulling from Bloglines even though I stopped using Bloglines as a reader. It was out of date and out of control. But I'd been reluctant to use the Google Reader widget because it was, to me anyway, ugly and I didn't know how to make it match my template. I figured it out! I started by selecting a handful of feeds and tagging them "Blogs You Should Read" - tagging them let me select a subset of the whole damned list of feeds, and creates a folder with the tag name. Then, in Reader, click on Settings > Reader Settings (towards the upper right of the window). From Settings, click onto Folders and Tags.


Make sure that the folder is marked "Public", and then click the link that says "Add a blogroll to your site". That'll take you to a pop-up window where you can configure the sidebar widget. Leave the title box EMPTY and set the color scheme to NONE. Copy the generated HTML and go back to your Blogger Layout page. Add an HTML widget and paste in the HTML that you just copied out of Reader. If you want a title, add one here. That way, the title and list in your new blogroll widget will pick up the styling that applies to the rest of your blog. Matchy matchy joy!

Question) Sitemeter lets me see a lot of information on a per visit basis - like Domain Name, IP Address, Country, City, Time of Visit, Visit Length, Page Views, Referring URL, Visit Entry Page, etc. Is there a way to get that kind of detail out of Google Analytics? Because if there is, I can't figure it out.

Request) Please enable your email in your Blogger profile. Click on your profile and make sure it's linked to your blog and your email. You can have a separate email exclusively for blog stuff, if you'd like. If you don't have a real blog, you can set up a "blog" without any content so that you have a profile with an email. This also goes for people with other than Blogger blogs - you can have a Blogger profile that links to your Wordpress/SquareSpace/TypePad blog - or even to your Etsy shop. But the email is key - it's what lets me reply to your comment, which I dearly love to do.

Apology) Blogger seems to be comment challenged of late. I can't comment most of the time, at least from the (cough) PC in the (cough) office. So, I may well have been reading and not commenting, but the not commenting isn't my fault. And I still love you.

This is why they invented cellphone cameras

Perhaps "constipation" would be a better word choice than "inconvenience", because if you were looking for the Senokot, you might be more than inconvenienced by its unavailability. And no, I wasn't buying Senokot - I was merely picking up a prescription, for something unrelated to my gastrointestinal tract, if you must know.

Wordless Wednesday: Snow Day

Is there anything better than a snow day on a Wednesday? I think not. We got the valentines done (the secret ones and a pile for the first grade class), I made a pot of chili (with hidden sweet potatoes), I put the laundry away (that had been sitting around since Sunday), we went for a walk, and the kid went over to a friend's house for an impromptu playdate.  The mail came, though nothing but bills, and the UPS man delivered some new underpants. (Is there anything weirder than ordering underwear on Amazon?) I even shoveled a path up the driveway, but not the whole thing, because, why?

The only flaw in this lovely day is that the newspaper never got delivered - although it could be buried out there.  I'll probably find it in April.

Duct Tape

We have a kind of half-assed set of blocks and chutes with which to build marble runs. I call it half-assed because it's nearly impossible to actually get it to work - the pieces are all too clumsy, and the marbles tend to blow the whole thing apart, and the pieces aren't graduated enough to let you get just the right amount of incline.

So here's my question. Is it allowable to use duct tape and popsicle sticks to make the thing work right, or is that unsporting?

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[What I really want is a Cuboro set, but they are so damned expensive.]

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

I was standing on line, waiting for my lunch, eavesdropping on the people in front of me. At one point, she said to him "oh, yeah, and they want it ay-sap" – which got me thinking. When you say ASAP out loud, do you say "ay-sap" or "ay-ess-ay-pee"? Or do you just say "as soon as possible", which, to me anyway, rolls off the tongue more easily? What about when you see it on paper and read it to yourself?

How about WTF? Do you say "double-you–tee–eff" or "what the fuck"? "What the fuck" has 40% fewer syllables than saying each letter individually, and you get to speak that magically strong multi-purpose word. Fuck.

According to that bastion of definition, Urban Dictionary, "roffle" is a verb derived from pronouncing ROFL as a word. Have you ever actually said "roffle"?

Wikipedia has a staggeringly long and quite fascinating article on Acronyms and Initialisms - which discusses none of these three.

I think, though, my favorite conglomeration of initials is Initials:

LBJ took the IRT
Down to 4th Street USA
When he got there
What did he see?
The youth of America on LSD

LBJ IRT
USA LSD

LSD LBJ
FBI CIA

FBI CIA
LSD LBJ

Luckily the girlie hasn't yet asked me to explain this or any of the other songs from Hair.

Firsts

Her first backpack has fallen by the wayside, a year and a half into her elementary school career. It's developed holes, and terminal grunge, and lining flakiness. I assumed it would last longer - somewhere I still have a backpack that I used in high school, and it looks nearly new. I tell you, things just aren't made like they used to. Planned obsolescence?  I thought about returning it to Lands' End and invoking their unconditional guarantee, but guilt got the better of me, as it has been exceedingly well used. I did buy a replacement in a more dirt friendly pattern.

She sent me her first text message the other day, using her grandmother's phone. Grandma stood by offering instruction, but the girl did all the writing and typing. She dearly wants a cell phone, and claims that other first graders have them, which I find hard to believe. She also wants a DS which other first graders do have. In fact, she came home from a playdate with two games for it that the other kid didn't want any more. This caused a serious rift, because she knows I have a DS, and "why can't I use yours, Mommy?", but I really think a six year old needs to be doing something more constructive. We've compromised for the moment - five minutes a night on not-school nights (yes, 10 minutes a week, I am the mean mommy). And threatening to take time away is proving a good inducement to better behavior. It's slippery, this navigating through the intersection of parenting and technology.

The first grade play was yesterday - a sort of musical revue adaptation of "Where the Wild Things Are", with songs written by the school's music teacher (who, incidentally, I've known since fifth grade, and no, I don't live in the town I grew up in). All the first graders participated, singing songs en masse interspersed with Sendak's lines, each one recited by a different kid. The girlie got to be the emcee - opening the show alone in front of the curtain, speaking right into the microphone, memorized lines and all - and yes, those are snow boots she's wearing with capri length leggings under a skirt.



A week of firsts.

Shiny Pretty Hearts and Things

Pretty things attract the eye of the magpie from time to time.

Like valentines, insanely cute, with no branded characters, and free for the printing. Alpha Mom rounded up a whole mess of them last year, and added more this year. I printed out these whimsical vibrant cards for the first grader to hand out; I'll bet you a nickel that no one else in her class will have the same valentines.

And Japanese masking tape in a gazillion colors and patterns. I want it all, though I haven't any idea what to do with it. Decorate packages? Make collages? Create handmade greeting cards? I could live in my cellar all day long, puttering around and acting crafty.

Or printable graph paper, variously variable, for doodles or what have you. What's so appealing about graph paper? Well, kind of the same thing that makes a Moleskine notebook jump into your hands - the contained possibility.

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Are you still thinking about Haiti every day? I am. Want another way to help? Lovely SweetSalty Kate has put together an online auction of art, photography, paper crafts, clothing, and creative goods. The proceeds will go directly to the St. Joseph's Family of homes for children in Haiti. Buy something. I've already been outbid once. You've got until Monday.

Do You Wait In Line or On Line?

So, I know it’s partially my own damned fault, for waiting until the first of the month to buy my monthly train ticket. But, honestly, should it have taken waiting on line for thirty-five minutes, while I missed two trains home?

Yesterday morning, the lines were so long that I’d have been late to work. In the evening, I arrived 21 minutes before my desired train, thinking – wrongly – that 21 minutes would be enough time. I couldn’t buy the ticket last week, because my office participates in the TransitChek program, and I didn’t have my TransitChek Visa card until the end of last week – and Friday night in GCT is as crazy busy as the first and last of the month. I couldn’t buy the ticket at my train station, because they closed the ticket office at my train station in the middle of January. I couldn’t use the ticket machines at my train station or in Grand Central; the ticket machines can only take one form of payment and because my $230 TransitChek Visa is less than the cost of my monthly ticket, I have to pay the balance some other way.

So I was stuck, waiting on line, watching the trains disappear from the Big Board, and thinking evil thoughts about the antiquated system by which MetroNorth has you line up to buy your tickets – there’s a single line for each ticket window. So, if you pick the slowpoke line, you’re screwed. A better system would have a single line feeding all of the ticket windows – you can’t pick the wrong window that way. The Whole Foods near my office has an ingenious queuing system, and it works almost flawlessly. But the powers that be at GCT probably don’t want to mar the august glory of the great space with something so pedestrian as queuing ropes.

When I finally got up to the window, I gave the slowpoke rookie clerk my TransitChek Visa and my other credit card – only to be told that I couldn’t put the balance on a second credit card, I had to pay by cash or check. That in itself is insanity – but luckily I’d been to the cash machine at lunch time so I actually had the cash on me – I’d left the house in the morning with about 89 cents in change in my wallet, and I almost never carry my check book.

In concept, TransitChek is a good thing – it encourages and rewards public transit users by giving us a tax break. But you could cut out a whole level of bureaucracy by letting people have a tax deduction of up to that $230 a month, properly documented of course, and eliminate the silly TransitChek Visas and vouchers and hassle.

By the time I finally got on the train, I was hopping irritated, not to mention damned glad I hadn’t waited on line in the morning what with the no cash in the wallet and all.

Did you have a nice day yesterday?