Warning: Dangerous Product

I was in the grocery store a week or two ago and saw this product on the shelf:




My mouth dropped open. The only other time I have ever been so offended by the mere existence of a product was the time I saw a tee shirt that said, in really big letters, "Shut Up, Bitch."

I was by myself but I asked, out loud, "Don't they know how fat we already are in this country?"

I like how they show it being put in a crust in this little ad, and wonder how much of what has been sold has actually ever made contact with a crust. I would probably just open it in the car on the way home from the store and start scooping it into my mouth with my fingers. Which is why I'm not going to buy any.

This stuff is in the deli section of the supermarket and comes in something similar to a Cool Whip container, only larger. If you do not want to also become larger, I highly recommend avoiding it.

Random Blogging

I've been neglecting this space again -- maybe that's just how it's going to go. I'd like to write more and am hoping to do so. Anyway, here is some stuff that is happening or going through my head recently:

- I did not finish NaNoWriMo this year, but by design. I am still working on my novel and have every intention of finishing it it -- in fact, I am very happy with it. It's the first time since I was in my mid-20s that I have written about a character my age, and the first time ever that my main character is a mother, and it really pleases me to have really enjoyed writing a story about a mom in her 30s where the romantic storyline feels just as magical as anything I've written about teens or college-aged characters.

I am at about 45,000 words, and probably could have hit 50,000 by November 30 if I had wanted to, but here's what I realized about the whole NaNo experience: it's become a crutch for me. I came up with the idea for this novel last June and was excited about it. I wrote some of it and then allowed every other thing in the world to get in the way of getting any of it done till NaNo was in swing and I could work toward the goal of completing 50,000 words along with all the other NaNo participants. Well, I've done NaNo before -- four times, in fact -- and I know I can do that.

What I haven't been able to do so far is maintain any sort of momentum in my writing in any other month of the year, and that is my new goal. I will finish the project and then set it aside and get to work on another project that I started a few years ago and have wanted to return to. When I feel myself reaching the end of that one, I'll start brainstorming and hopefully start coming up with a new idea for the next project. Maybe I can even rescue/rewrite/finish the novel I wrote about half of in November 2006. In any case, the goal for now is to write consistently in any other month of the year but November. Wish me luck.

- I am glad to hear that health care is supposed to be a big issue in the presidential election next year. I feel my family is very fortunate in this particular area, but it’s an issue I’ve been very interested in since I did a project about health coverage for a political science class back in college. And this week, something arrived in the mail that really brought the current state of things into focus for me.

I don’t think I blogged about my daughter’s health crisis this summer. In a nutshell, during the last week of July, Mermaid started having abdominal pains and was nauseated for several days, and eventually she underwent emergency surgery to remove an ovarian cyst the size of a cantaloupe. Both the cyst and the shriveled little ovary attached to it were necrotic and could have caused her to become septic if they’d stayed inside her much longer. It was a very scary couple of days, but fortunately it all went well and she has made a full recovery.

This week we received her hospital bill. Let me first say that we have good insurance through Reasonable Man’s work, and our portion of the bill is just $600 – not a small amount of money, but probably not enough to bankrupt most people either. The bill is not itemized, but I assume it covers the 7-8 hours Mermaid spent in the ER the first day, the CT scan done of her abdomen, the time she spent in the OR and recovery, and the two days she spent in a private room after that. The total is $36,463.50.

Here’s the thing: if this could happen to Mermaid, it could happen to anyone. Unlike many autistic children, Mermaid has been blessed with optimal physical health. She is truly one of the hardiest children I have ever known. She went through all the usual colds and such when she was in preschool, but by the time she hit elementary, her amazing immune system was fully formed. She had perfect attendance in kindergarten and missed one day in first grade, only because I had her take a mental health day. Each winter during cold season, she may have a few stuffy-nosed days, and only if Reasonable Man, Enthusio and I are first felled by some particularly nasty germ does she usually suffer anything that would cause her to actually miss a day of school. Yet she, of all of us, suffered a health crisis resulting in a hospital bill equal to the price of a nice car or a year of study at a private university.

That number -- $36,463.50 – would amount to a financial crisis for the average family in this country. Reasonable Man and I could take out a mortgage on our home to cover it, and I certainly hope that most hospitals know that a person without insurance also doesn’t have $36,000 squirreled away for a rainy day and will arrange some kind of a payment plan. Still, that amount is staggering, and it’s no wonder to me that health crises have the power to bankrupt people without insurance, or with insurance that refuses to pay. Something has to change here.


- As you can see, our Christmas tree is in the kitchen this year, because that's where it fits!

I am surviving the holiday season. I am one of the many who grew up loving Christmas but as an adult developed so many expectations for myself that each December became a slog. Every year I try to work on making preparations a little simpler. This year I was excited about decorating our new house for Christmas, but of course I built it up in my mind to a point where I felt paralyzed once I actually got started. But I was able to pull back a bit and get it done, and then I spent about a week with some things still sitting out, ready to be put up, before I faced the fact that some of them just needed to be put back in the garage. Now the house is all decorated, the cards are printed, much of the shopping and some of the wrapping is done, and with two weeks to go, I think I’m doing just fine.

- School is under control for the kids. Mermaid is plugging along in her classes, and we have come to a place of agreement (I think, I hope!) with her social studies teacher. Enthusio continues to have a great year, and this past week one of his two teachers told me they are giving him some very challenging math. He struggles a bit emotionally, but she said they are pushing him because they know he can do it. I trust these two teachers, who both just adore him, to handle the situation sensitively, and I know he feels confident in math, which makes me very proud. He has also been reading some books – the Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing series and The Mouse and the Motorcycle – that I loved as a kid, and that’s great.

That’s about it here. Happy Holidays!

I'm A Cheater

I'm doing National Novel Writing Month again this year, for the sixth year running, and hopefully "winning" for the fifth time. But I'm cheating. If you are at all familiar with NaNoWriMo, you know that it entails not only writing 50,000 words in the month of November, starting no earlier than November 1 and ending no later than November 30, but also that you shouldn't have written any part of the novel before, even a part you aren't going to count in your word total. Well, I actually started writing my NaNo novel back in June, and wrote a little more sometime over the summer, and then there it sat: 5,000 or so lonely words. And I often told myself I should keep writing, but did I do so? Noooooooooo.

In the meantime, November approached, and I thought about NaNo and felt quite snotty about it, partly because I flamed out and didn't finish last year, and partly because I didn't have any good ideas for a novel to write and didn't feel like putting the into figuring one out in October, when I had a lot of other crap to do. Of course, being a grown-up, I knew that having not finished NaNo last year was a really crappy reason to not participate this year, but such was my attitude, and so I didn't really give it a whole lot of thought up until the first several days of the month had passed and I realized wait, wait, this is November, and I love NaNoWriMo, and if I don't even try I'm going to be really upset!

And so I picked up the novel I'd already started. I had 5,000 words already written, but on the other hand, five novel-writing days had already passed, and if I'd started a novel on November 1, I'd have had far more than 5K under my belt by November 5. Well, that's always been the case in the past. So I gave myself a pass, on the basis that:
1) I've completed the challenge of starting fresh on November 1 four times before, so yes, I know I can do it following the words, but after all,
2) The point is to get writing, and to get 'er done, as they say (Well somebody says that. I think It might be Larry the Cable Guy, but I'm not sure.)
3) Also that thing I already said above, about how if I started on time I would have had more words than I had when I took up this crazy thing a couple of weeks ago.

And so, sixteen days later, I have added another 27,000 or so words to what I had originally, and am indeed on my way toward getting 'er done. For good or for ill. And I think I am obeying the spirit, if not the the letter, of the law, and that the NaNo gods will, in the end, smile upon me.

And if no, screw 'em.

I Hate Junior High

Probably not as much as I hated it when I actually attended myself, but I still hate it.

Mermaid had a B in Social Studies, which has always been her most difficult subject, at progress report time. So I was dismayed to learn on Tuesday she will have a D in Social Studies on her first-quarter report card. Her teacher sent home a sheet with a handy breakdown of the grades she earned on every assignment, test, etc for the quarter. It showed that three in-class assignments had not been turned in, that she had received a zero on a pop quiz, and that she got 2 of 14 possible points in "Class Participation."

1) She's not good at keeping track of her work. It very well may be that this is true of almost all 7th graders. Be that as it may, she has a support person in class with her who should be, at the very least, making sure she does and turns in assignments done right there in class, and this happened not once but three times. Not okay.

2) She didn't just fail the pop quiz -- she got a zero. This tells me it wasn't modified for her in any way. If regular tests need to be modified for her, so do pop quizes -- especially those that amount of 3% of her grade.

3) Class participation? Hello? She is autistic. She can barely participate in dinner-time discussions with her family -- she is not going to be able to contribute to things on the subject of ancient civiliations in a class of 30 kids without serious facilitation.

I don't know for sure what the situation is, but all the issues we've had so far this year have related to her Social Studies class, and my guess is that unless the Inclusion Specialist specifically goes into the classroom and discusses modifications for Mermaid (as has been the case for tests and projects), this teacher simply holds her to the same standard he would with a typical student. I would love it if Mermaid were capable of performing to his expectations, but she's not.

Frustration doesn't fully cover my feelings on this subject.

Wii Tennis

Enthusio turned 9 and we got him a Wii, because he is spoiled. Yesterday when I was alone in the house, I played Wii tennis every chance I got. It was too much. Here are all the things that were painful today:

Waking up, having slept on my left side
Hooking my bra
Putting on my seatbelt
Putting on my sweatshirt
Carrying a full basket of laundry
Taking out the trash
Thinking about playing more Wii tennis

Last weekend it worked very well to sit down of a Saturday morning and post in my blog. So I'm going to try to be the opposite of other sites that are only updated during the week and write the blog that's only updated on the weekend.

This month is difficult. Yesterday, my grandfather passed away. He had been having lots of major health problems for the last several months, and it's been quite a roller coaster for the family. He was a very dignified man, and he didn't like needing physical care, not being able to live in their own home as he and my grandmother (Nanny) had done until this summer, or any of the other indignities an elderly and very ill person is forced to endure. Of course it's sad that he's gone, but it was also very sad to hear how unhappy he was about what his life had become. When my mom called to tell me the news yesterday, she said he'd really kind of given up lately. So I can't help but be glad he didn't have to live that way for very long.

I also take comfort in the fact that my family and I visited my grandparents this past December, and it was one of the very few times that I really sat and talked to my grandfather. He was a funny guy, and Reasonable Man and I really enjoyed spending that evening and the next morning sitting and enjoying his sense of humor and the way he and Nanny interacted and helped each other along. At one point Nanny interrupted him and he told her "I'm talking to my granddaughter" and it made me feel special. He had seven children, thirteen grandchildren, and 4 great-grandchildren, and when we all get together, it's a crowd that he would often retreat from. But that night it was just Nanny, Grandpa, and my little family, and it was a treat.

Another time that stands out in my memory is when my parents brought the two of them up to Davis when I was in college. Reasonable Man and I were dating but not yet engaged, and I think it was the first time they met him. We had a picnic on campus, and it seemed like they had barely arrived when it was already time for them to leave. I complained, and my grandfather said, "Remember, Tracie -- short visits make long friends." I doubt he made that up, but it was funny and I will always remember it as something he said.

Rest in peace, Grandpa. We will miss you.

Sunday Morning Sloth

I just sat here looking at crap on the internet long enough to almost run out the battery on my laptop. The battery on this thing is truly pathetic, but still, that's a lot of time wasted this morning looking at the following sites:
passive aggressive notes.com
Found Magazine
The Office Sign Project
Apostrophe Abuse"
The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks

These things delight me, if only because they prove that there are others out there with senses of humor as cruel and snarky as mine. Here people are, innocently writing notes or making signs to express the deepest feelings in their hearts, to make their homes or offices nicer places to live or work, or to promote the wares they have to sell -- and then smartass elitist internet types post them just to make fun of them, for the amusement of others. On the one hand, there seems something very wrong in that. On the other, it's finding a second use for things, isn't it? And who among us doesn't support recycling?

I love the idea of having a whole blog filled with examples of the grammar or punctuation error one finds most egregious, but mine would never work, because it's the use of "less" instead of "fewer," and the entire contents of such a blog would be endless pictures of signs reading "10 (or 8 or 15 or whatever) items or less" from grocery stores around the country, the example of girls singing about how they "want to be one less" in the commercial for the HPV vaccine Gardasil, and a shout-out to our local supermarket chain Nugget, which, in addition to being one of Fortune Magazine's 100 Best Companies to Work For and a lovely place to shop, features signs for its express lanes reading "8 items or fewer."

It was not my plan to sit here for so long this morning. At one time I probably thought I might go to the gym, and today I really must give the inside of the spa a scrub so it's ready to be filled tomorrow when the electrician comes to hook up the outlet for it, and perhaps even set up the trampoline (!). But I keep not eating any breakfast (brunch? lunch?) or getting dressed, so here I sit. I guess it's probably time to get going.

Out in the World

You know, this is the stuff I really like to talk about. I guess I always feel like I need to update on what's going on in my own actual life before I turn to all the pop culture items that are the real focus of my brain a good deal of the time. I think the title of my blog lends itself to that, and the fact is that I do like to talk about my kids sometimes. So I guess this blog (when I actually write in it) will continue to be a mish mash of stuff about my life and also what I think about stuff that's going on out there in entertainment-land.

First off, let's get it over with: Britney Spears.

1. Upon reading that MTV had readied a more figure-flattering corset-style outfit for her and she had rejected it, I was reminded of something someone once said about the infamous Tonya Harding back in the mid-90s: "She didn't have any class, and she wouldn't let anybody give her any." Not that a corset-style outfit MTV picked out for Britney would probably be the definition of class, but you know what I mean.

2. Maybe that outfit wasn't the most flattering thing she could have worn, but I'd still trade bodies with her without a second thought.

3. To the industry folks who want this comeback because Britney used to make them buttloads of money and they'd like some more: she's just not that into you.

Here's something I've been thinking about her for a while: she makes a good case for the argument that we all have a destiny that is preordained for us. The tragedy here is not so much that, in a few short years, she's gone from being a very pretty, fresh-faced, seemingly happy girl to a dead-eyed single mother of two -- that all clearly would have happened even without the fame and fortune. The real tragedy is that she has the money to flame out in such a spectacular fashion and the noteriety for it to have occurred with the whole world watching. I feel bad for her, frankly.

The Presidential Race:

I don't have a favorite candidate. I can't believe we're so deep into it with over a year to go, but I already know that I will vote for whoever the Democratic party nominates and I am just hoping with all my heart that it's someone electable. There seems to be a lot of certainty that we will not elect another Republican in 2008, but let's face it: the unthinkable has happened in the last two elections. "Cautiously optimistic" is as confident as I'm ever going to feel until a winner is named. Notice I didn't say "until the votes are counted" -- I don't have a whole lot of confidence in that process either.

Happier things:

Only 12 days till the season premiere of the The Office! I've been gearing up by watching my season 3 DVDs (which took FOREVER to get here from Amazon -- I pre-ordered, of course) and catching up on episodes of The Office Alliance podcast. Yes, I'm a total geek.

Reasonable Man and I will be going to see "Superbad" this afternoon. He's been talking about this movie since he first heard about it, so I hope it lives up to his expectations. BLB and the Bride said they liked it but that parts of it are "so wrong," so I figure I have been warned. It will be nice to go to the movies -- I saw three in one week and that was it for the whole summer.

I went running and it felt pretty good. It was just a little 10-minute run down to the gym, where I did some weight-lifting and then another 10 minutes home, but since I haven't done it in a year, I thought that was fine. I don't want to overdo it, and in the fall there's always a chance that the weather will turn hot and I won't go again for a while. No matter what happens, I will never be one of those people who runs in hot weather. I don't really like to run in cold weather either. Frankly, it's a wonder that I ever managed to start running in the first place, considering what a wimp I am about the conditions. But now it's fall and I may be able to do it for a while before I start wussing out again.

School is now in session...

A few weeks ago, I made the Blogger sign-in page my home page in hopes of guilting myself into writing in my blog when I opened a browser window and there it was. Well, you've seen how well that worked. So I'm going to try dedication to the craft of writing again. That probably won't work either, but it's worth a try.

So the kiddos are back in school, with mixed results thus far. Enthusio is off to a great start in third grade, with teachers who think he's fantastic and a smile on his face every day. He is in the top groups for math, reading, and spelling too. Sorry to brag, but I've never gotten to do that before :-) Mermaid has started 7th grade, and we are surviving. I am still pretty much in panic mode about that, as evidenced by the multitude of emails I have sent to her full-inclusion teacher and other teachers so far. I think the fact that I've been having school dreams about falling hopelessly behind for the last decard are playing into how I'm dealing with this new chapter in our lives. In any case, Mermaid is coping with all of it better than I am. She seems to have made a complete physical recovery from her surgery this summer, other than the fact that she continues to pick at a couple of little spots on her incision. Kids are amazingly adaptable!

I need to go back to Weight Watchers. I've been working out very consistently and that's good, but haven't been controlling my eating at all, and I'm pretty sure I've gained back a good portion of the ten pounds I lost. But the weather is cooling off and I want to start running again, so maybe I can get things back on track.

The new house is great, and is slowly coming together. I did a burst of painting in early August and will probably do more soon. Last weekend I put knobs and handles on the kitchen cabinets. Audio books on the iPod are a great companion to working around the house or yard, as are podcasts. I've gotten a little discouraged in the last few weeks, looking around the house, thinking about all the stuff I want to do around here, and remembering how much of it was already done in the old place. It feels insurmountable. But I just have to keep remembering that we were there more than seven years, that a lot of the stuff I did there I had to learn as I went along, and that virtually everything that needs to be done here is cosmetic. In this new house, I'm not having thing about ways to create more storage all the time. And of course, it doesn't have to get done all at once.

So that's it -- that's what's going on in my life right now. As always, life is pretty good, and after a summer punctuated by some stressful events, I am looking forward to a cool and pleasant fall.

In Loving Memory

EMMA MINT BEZERRA

1992-2007

Harry Potter 7 (No Spoilers!)

I just want to say I've finished it already. Reasonable Man, Enthusio and I actually attended the downtown HP7 brouhaha Friday night, where you could reserve (fork over the 38 bucks) your copy at an independent book store and pick it up starting at midnight. A city block was closed off in the early evening for festivities that included booths with wizarding activities like wand-making for kids, a showing of "Goblet of Fire" on a great big screen, and a snitch drop. At 12:01, the first triumphant family received their book to a chorus of screams and cheers, and within five minutes, we had our copy and were heading for the car. Fifteen minutes after that, I was ready for bed and reading the first chapter.

I'd been telling people this past week that I wash hoping to read it slowly and savor it, since it was the last one. I even told Reasonable Man that he could have the book most of the weekend because I would have time to read it this week. Reasonable Man, who earns his pseudonym, recognized these statements for what they were: lies so insidious that I myself actually believed them to be true. He patiently surrendered the book to me yesterday and nodded knowingly when I admitted sometime in the evening that I planned to stay up and read the entire thing overnight. (Why I thought I wouldn't race through this book, I don't know. I've gobbled down every other HP offering, including the first one, which I read in a single afternoon when I was sick with a terrible cold in December 1999, possibly without leaving the couch a single time.) I read non-stop from approximately 7:30 pm to 1:45 am, when I could no longer keep my eyes open and then went to sleep on the couch till a little after 4, when I resumed reading, finishing a little after 6 am.

I don't even want to say whether I liked it or not for fear of spoiling it in some small way for the handful of people who might actually read this post. Here is what I will say: I'm not sad it's over. The Harry Potter phenomenon has been an amazing thing, and Reasonable Man and I have enjoyed it in terms of entertainment value for ourselves and watching Enthusio get into it as well (he's currently attempting to read HP6). It's been interesting to watch as a cultural event as well. On the one hand, I shake my head over those people who have analyzed it all so thoroughly and seem to get so emotional over it all. On the other hand, I admit that I myself have anticipated the release of the both of the last two books with equal parts excitment and anxiety, just because of the turns the story had taken and with the knowledge that Troubled Times Were Ahead, that Harry Faced Evermore Daunting Challenges.

One of the biggest triumphs of the series, in my view, was that the author wrote a protagonist who began as a likeable and engaging child and transformed believably into a brave and complex young adult who had been shaped not just by all the trials he'd faced, but also the full understanding of his responsibility for the future of all wizarding kind. Even when other characters didn't fare as well, Harry was a hero worthy all the adulation the series has received. But as it progressed, it grew harder and harder to watch him face uncertainty, danger, and hopelessness as he carried that burden. And so I'm grateful for resolution, for Harry's sake. I don't know how much more peril I could have watched him go through.

Some quibbles: I don't think Ron and Hermione matured as believably as Harry did, and their romance, for which the stage was set way back in book 1 and which finally came to fruition on book 6, never worked for me. I've also detected a not-so-subtle theme of sexism running through the series, from Fleur Delacour, the only female Tri-Wizard Champion, being such a pathetic competitor; to the portrayals of Rita Skeeter and Dolores Umbridge as playing up their femininity in villainous ways; to Hermione's tendency to constantly burst into tears in the later books. That surprised me, coming from a female author, unconsciously done though it was. But those are small things, and I only mention them because I'm resisting any urge to say much about this newest book. I will probably write more in a few weeks when I'm sure most die-hard fans will have had chance to digest this grand finale.

People are saying that this will never happen again. I'm not so sure. Who would have ever thought it would happen once? What I do know is that no one can make it happen. There are copycats and series mentioned as worthy successors to the throne, but I think if we ever see this kind of thing again, it will come from somewhere unexpected and unlikely. I'm just glad it's not my job to spot it early on, like the people at all those publishers who passed on Harry Potter's world before Scholastic took a gamble.

Our Family - June 2007

Our New House

We are in escrow and the green house is on the market, hopefully to sell very soon. This new house is about a mile away from where we currently live -- it's a great location near friends and in a nice neighborhood, and the house is pretty much exactly what we want. The backyard is a bit smaller than what we have now, but the house is one-story with 4 bedrooms, a nice-sized kitchen and great room, dining room, and a beautiful master suite. I've posted a number of pictures below -- just pretend the current owners' stuff (and dogs) isn't there!

Great Room

Kitchen/Great Room

Kitchen

Hall Bathroom

Backyard