The Kind of Superhero I Want to Be

I had fantasies of being a Superhero today. Mostly because some chick started yelling inexplicably at me at a gas station, other people left carts in the middle of the aisle at Target, and then I stepped in dog poop on the grass at the library.

So if I were a Superhero, I guess I'd have to fly, because I'd want to swoop in and correct all those little stupid annoying things we do to each other. I'd swoop into the gas station and make sure everyone was calm, took turns and waited in line. I'd have people say, "No, you were here first, go ahead - here, let me move out of the way for you."

I'd (gently) teach people how to move their carts to the side of the aisle when they stop to look at something. I'd jump in front of their carts before they barreled around corners and say, "Now, don't you want to check first to make sure someone isn't coming and the coast is clear?"

And I'd definitely swoop in and hand people plastic (biodegradable, of course) bags to pick up their dog's poop. "I know you want to pick up your dog's crap, don't you? Here, let me give you this to use."

I'd stop people on sidewalks and firmly suggest they pick up the fast food bags they just threw in the gutter.

I'd show up in people's cars (guess I'd have to add transporting to my list of powers) and say, "Now, you want to use your turn signal right about now, don't you?"

Oh, and an important one - I'd prowl parking lots and discuss bad parking with people as they got out of their cars. "Now, I'm sure you don't realize this, but your car is over the line on the other side. That's going to make it awfully hard for the people in that car to get in, don't you think? How 'bout you just jump back inside and repark within the lines?"

I'd arrive when people are talking loudly on their cell phones in inappropriate places and either bodily transport them outside, or hold up my power shield and cut off their signal.

Any I'm forgetting?

Today

Today's Complaint: Kid's DVDs that don't let you skip over the commercial previews to get to the menu. What's up wit dat? That annoys the crap out of me. Today's was Jay-Jay the Creepy Jet Plane.

Today's Obsession: GoodReads. Just found it via Laid-Off Dad, and come to find out some of my friends are already on it. Love it - helps me keep track of what I want to read AND has a widget. Add me as a friend if you're on it too. I need to change something, though, because it looks like all I read are books by Maeve Binchy. Those are just the most recent ones I added, I swear.

Today's Challenge: Run a full-frontal assault on the ants taking over my kitchen. The boys are making a game of hopping over the floor trying to avoid them, and having lots of fun calling them "stupid" since I said that ants were the one thing it was OK to call stupid.

Oh, and maybe get some exercise.

Today's Weather: Rain. Rain, more rain. The hills better be bright emerald green after this or I'll be pissed.

Today's Goal: Organize and label all the family room toys.

Today's Goal for Ben: Poop. We're on Day 6 of the Poop Watch and getting a little nervous. I am, anyway. Ben seems fine with it. I have become that mother - the one consumed by the lack of regularity in her child's bowel movements.

Today's Pleasure: Bought myself a hair straightener AND a label-maker. I've wanted both for a long time, and today I threw caution to the wind at Target and got the cheapest versions of each! Who knows what crazy thing I'll do next?!

No way could I post every day for a year. But I can do several posts in one day. Maybe I could do 365 posts in 365 days, but not necessarily once a day. Oooooh. I think I may need to make a banner for that. (My Own Banner! Not Stolen From Anyone!)

So I got this off of My Whim is Law (which is a great title, btw), who got it off Not World Famous. You're supposed to pick your birth month and then bold and discuss the qualities that apply to you.


OCTOBER:

• Loves to chat. Once I get started, with people I know, sure, but I hate the telephone and I hate parties where I don't know anyone.
• Loves those who loves them. Who's gonna say no to that? "I hate people who love me! They suck!"
  
• Loves to take things at the center. An Oreo should always be eaten middle first.
• Inner and physical beauty. So everybody born in October is beautiful? OK. And my CT scans were quite pretty, with all the colors and whatnot (re: inner beauty. Try to keep up).
  
• Lies but doesn't pretend. - Eh, I think it's the other way around.
• Gets angry often. Define often. NOW!
• Treats friends importantly. I don't suppose they'd be friends very long otherwise, would they?
• Always making friends. I'm not ALWAYS making friends, but I have kept friends from every significant phase of my life. I can almost always find someone to get along with.
  
• Easily hurt but recovers easily. Eh, I used to be easily hurt. Now it's not that easy, but when it happens I don't recover easily.
• Daydreamer. I'm sorry...what?
• Opinionated. Who ever says they're NOT opinionated?
  
• Does not care of what others think. I don't know...what do you think?
• Emotional.
• Decisive. Yes. Definitely.
• Strong clairvoyance. I have good intuition about people, but I don't see dead people.
  
• Loves to travel, the arts and literature. Sure.
  
• Touchy and easily jealous. Again, I think I used to be much more than I am now.
• Concerned. I'm concerned about any readers returning to my blog after this.
  
• Loves outdoors. Sure. Love my bed more, but yeah, trees are good.
• Just and fair. I like to think I'd make a good judge.
• Spendthrift. Hahahahahaha
• Easily influenced. Well, now, if I'm decisive and I don't care what others think, wouldn't that mean I'm not easily influenced? I guess it depends on what. Find some cute shoes or stationery, offer me a fruity drink, yeah, I'm easily influenced. Be a republican, and no, I'm not.
• Easily loses confidence. Yeah, this is probably true. I don't know! Auuugh! I know nothing!
  
• Loves children. Especially grilled with some lemon butter on the side.

So I got 73%. Not bad. But we don't know if that means anything unless I go and do all the other months too.

Here are the rest of the months. Knock yourselves out. Especially Beej - she rocks these things. And it's not Thursday, so she shouldn't be tied up. Hahahaha.

War Wounds

A friend of mine came over for dinner yesterday, and was telling me about seeing a woman at the swimming pool with scars on her belly. My friend said, "I started thinking about women's war wounds. And the stories our bodies tell..." The phrase "war wounds" stuck with me. Usually war is about defending life and taking life, but for women in childbirth, I guess it can be about giving life, too. I remember reading a theory a long time ago that men go to war because they can't give birth. I don't know if that's true, but I have a 7-inch gash on my lower belly that's as real as any received in combat. Granted, I was numb when they cut me open, but it also came after a 5-day induction and a 30-hour labor. I've got breasts saggy from feeding my baby with my body. I've got stretch marks that would rival any schrapnel scar. War wounds received in combat get medals and are often displayed proudly as a badge of honor. But women just go about their day, and if anyone notices the scar, says, "Oh yeah, I had a C-section." They complain about their saggy boobs because they don't fit the image of the perky ingenue anymore. I don't think we usually think of a C-section scar as a badge of honor, let alone boobs that point down. Is there any other time that a person can go through an intense physical endurance test, get cut open (or perhaps tear), and then feed the new life with her exhausted body? Thinking of a woman's body as a wondrous, life-growing thing is not new, but somehow the phrase "war wounds" really put it into perspective for me. Yeah, I am proud of the scar. I felt like I went through combat to give birth. And I'm so glad the result was this beautiful boy, not a full military cemetery.

The Secret Danger Every Contact Lens Wearer Should Know About...

I was reading one of those family/women's mags (Family Circle, Women's Day, who can tell the difference?) and I swear, every other page was some dire threat. "Protect Yourself from Schemes and Scams," "Are Your Kids Safe at Camp? What You Don't Know Could Hurt Them," and "Hidden Summer Spoilers" (ex. Watch out for that wired glass in public buildings! If your hand goes through that, it's worse than going through plain glass! Why that's a "summer" spoiler and not a year-round threat, I don't know). That's actually my gripe with Motherhood magazine too, crunchy as it is. I can't read it without being reminded of Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. Which, if you haven't seen, you should. It's all about our culture of fear.

OK, so back to the title of this post. I just returned from the stupidest urgent care visit ever (and I've had some stupid ones). I was walking down the street, minding my own business, when my eye itches. I had contacts in, so I skillfully rubbed the inner corner of my eye ever-so-slightly. I know about not rubbing your eyes - I've had contacts, and severe allergies, for over 20 years. OK, so for some reason my contact decided to take a holiday underneath my eyelid. Just at this moment, neighbor came out and wanted to give us some branches off her pelargonium. G. was very neighborly and pretended he was interested in them, I was trying to keep A. from running down the street while propping my eye open. I couldn't get the contact back into place, so I growled at G that I had to go inside and find the damn thing, and I got to a mirror. No sign of it. I was wearing sunglasses, so if it fell out (and I have never, ever, had a contact "fall" out - I'm much more likely to have to peel the stupid thing off my eyeball)I would've felt it on my cheek. I mean, soft contacts don't just FALL out.

OK, so I didn't see it anywhere under my eyelids. Usually I can see the faint blue edge and can drag it down and then peel it off (apologies to those of you with eye phobias), but nothing. I went outside and had G. peer under my eyelid, and he couldn't see it either. It feelt like someone had dumped a box of sand in my eye, and despite lots of flushing, it was nowhere to be found. My eye was red and swollen by this point, and A. kept looking worriedly at me. I smiled and waved, hoping he'd think I was just winking at him. A really long wink.

No luck, so I called the advice nurse. She suggested I open my eye under water by filling a bowl with water and dunking my head in it. Well, I did call for advice. I tried it, and you know what? It's really hard to just open up one eye under water. It's also impossible to do this and not get soaking wet. But no little contact floated up. So she said I had to go to urgent care and get a doctor to take it out. The first appt. was in 2 hours. Sheesh.

So we packed up A., I apologized for making my men go to the hospital with me for such a stupid reason, I paid my $25 co-pay and we waited. And, as you might imagine, waited. And waited some more. The NBA game was on, so that was OK. A. loved the elevators, so he was OK too. G. was worried that he'd have to go in with me and watch them pop my eyeball out. I told him he didn't have to go in with me. Then I started worrying that they were going to have to pop my eyeball out.

I got a doctor who was 22 if he was a day, and a klutz on top of it. He couldn't get the stool for me to sit on right, and he made it way too high. It was one of those round swivel stools in the exam rooms, and I had to sit on it on one side of the eye-examining-machine. Well, it's really hard to sit on one of those when it's too high and your feet don't touch the ground. In fact, I may go so far as to say it's impossible to even get on the damn thing. You can imagine how it rolls away from you on the slick floor as you try to jump on. He said, "Be careful, I've lost a few people that way." He also admitted he wassn't very good at flipping over eyelids, but he gamely tried it in every position imaginable. Arms through eye-exam-machine, arms around e-e-m, swiveled to the side, laying back, standing up. I started wondering if he was one of those people with an eye phobia, and if his skin was crawling at the thought of pulling on my eyelid and that's why he couldn't do it.

Anyway, he couldn't see it either, but unlike me, he thought that meant it wasn't in there. No, no, no - I just went through all this hooha - you are getting out a pair of tiny tweezers and you are pulling something out of my eye, damnit!

He called over Chipper Physician's Assistant and asked her if she sees anything. She's much better at flipping over eyelids. Way too good at it, in fact. It hurt. And she kept telling me "Look down down down down down to the left to the left to the left waaaaay down, waaay to the left, c'mon you're doing great, down down down down" like she's the "yeller" on Survivor and I'm the blindfolded teammate trying to get a puzzle piece into the right square. I yelled, "That's as far down as my eye goes!" and the doctor started to laugh. She replied, "I know - you're doing terrific!" Hey, I guess I can look down with the best of them. Then she wanted to flip over another corner of my eyelid and have me look to the right to the right to the right to the right, I know, you're doing a great job! to the right to the right etc. You know what I think? I think they whispered in the hall and he told her, "The chick in the eye room doesn't believe me that there's no contact lens in there, so go in there and torture her so she knows we really are looking." That's what I think.

So it turns out that I do have a scratch on my cornea, which was dispatched with a bottle of antibiotic eye drops. I'm just realizing now that he never told me how often to use them. He pulled them out of a drawer somewhere, so there's no prescription, which is a good thing, because if I had to shell out $10 more dollars for the contact lens that wasn't there, I'd be unhappy. G. was very nice about it all - "Well, it's good we had that checked." I probably should've told him they popped out my eyeball and looked behind it. At least my hand didn't go through wired glass. Which makes me wonder, if your hand goes through plain glass, do you think, hey, at least it isn't wired? No, I don't think so. I think you say, Damn, I'm bleeding anyway, wire or no wire.

(Sorry for all the cursing, kids, but it's been one of those days).

MIA

Yeah, I was MIA this week - Big Sister and Big Niece came and visited and a good time was had by all (especially them the second night when we fixed the hard-as-rock-futon problem).

The SWAN: What the hell was that? I realize I'm late on the bandwagon here, but with so many reality TV shows, sometimes I just watch the final episode. I'm a busy woman, people! So, these women have found new lives and new self-esteem through plastic surgery? They've overcome massive odds to succeed in their makeovers and they feel like new women? As Squeaky Weasel noted, they look like a bunch of drag queens. You know what I think? These women need to go work on a burn unit for a while. Then come back and cry about how awful you had it. I'm all about shallow TV, but this bugged me.

Cuteness: Our little neighbor boy (about 7) plays football with his parents in front of our house after dinner most nights. A. adores him so we go out with our soccer ball and kick it around next to them while I try to keep A. from running into the middle of their game. So A. and I are out there alone one afternoon, and all of a sudden A. grabs the ball, squats to the ground, and says, "Too! Fiiiv! Sik!", drops the ball and runs wildly in a big circle. It took me a couple rounds of this to figure out he was imitating the neighbors playing football. Oh, man, it was funny.

More cuteness: A. resisted baby sign language in the worst way possible. He clearly never got the memo that says babies are supposed to take to this stuff like ducks to water, and would only do the signs for "airplane" and "hot" for months. He absolutely refused to do the sign for nursing, and refused to say anything like "nurse." He preferred to pull on my shirt, and he'd sit up when he was done with one side and I'd say, "Other side?" and he'd say "Yep!" Fine, it got the point across, whatever. But now he's had a leap of little brain development and now says, "Shiiiide!" and "Udder shiide!" for nursing.

More Random Stuff

1. Saw 11 clients today. For you non-therapists, that's a lot. Exchange of the day:

Me: So you disagreed with your mother?
Client: It's not that, I just thought she was wrong.

2. G. took care of A. for 12 hours AND had dinner ready for me when I got home. My hubby - I think I'll keep him. (Anyone remember the old Geritol commercial? Which reminds me, see #5)

3. A. finally figured out the whole "Bye" thing. He'd say it if we prompted him, but I don't think he totally understood what it was about until now. Last night we were walking to bed, and he suddenly turned and said, "Bye, cahs!" and waved to the toy cars. I guess you'd have to be his mother, but it was really cute.

4. Haven't watched American Idol yet. Had to tape it because it was on at the same time as the West Wing finale. But I forgot to give my public service announcement: "STATE OF HAWAII, STEP AWAY FROM THE PHONES!"

5. I'm reading "Bitch in the House." Good collection of essays about marriage, motherhood and women's roles that is way overdue at the library because by the time I get to bed I'm exhausted and can only read 3 pages at a time. OK, so anyway, it's got me thinking that the first feminist I knew was my mother. She didn't work outside the house and as far as I know never had any ambition except being a wife and mother. But I know she was a feminist by the way she'd yell at the commercials on TV. Remember the old Wisk commercials where someone would notice the grimy collar on some dude and he'd glare at his wife and she'd look embarrassed by his "Ring Around the Collar?" My mom, while folding laundry, would yell at the TV: "Tell him to wash his goddamned neck!" She hated the Geritol commercial too, where the dude would say condescendingly, "My wife - I think I'll keep her!" (later immortalized in that great Mary Chapin Carpenter song). And she said once that she admired my sister's husband for pitching in and helping around the house (he still keeps a lovely house, I must say). The more I think abot it, the more I realize how trapped she felt and how unsatisfied she was with her role, and frankly, it explains a lot. Can't ask her about it because she died when I was 21, but I'm grateful for the message she sent about not just buying into the fantasy that women were supposed to be happy that they had a husband and children, and really couldn't expect anything more in life. Don't get me wrong, I love my husband and little leprechaun, but I'm glad I have more options. And because I have more options, I don't resent the role of wife and mother, because I really feel I've chosen them. I don't think my mother thought she had a choice.

Oooh, could it be? Almost a month since I've updated? Sheesh. That's what a walking toddler'll do for you. He's sick, by the way. He seems to be sick an awful lot for a breastfed kid not in daycare. Poor guy - but he's awfully cuddly today. When he's feeling fine, Papa's the best, but when he 's feeling sick, nothing will do but Mama.

Off to Seattle for the weekend! Yes! Big Sis Robin turns the big 5 - 0, and the girls (Sharon, Erin and me) are surprising her with a trip to Seattle. She's not supposed to know where we were going, and I had this big plan to take her to the wrong gate and let her think we were visiting North Dakota or something. But her silly hubbie let the cat out of the bag. Don't tell him your secrets. I'll have photos up on Webshots when we get back!

New fishies - Thursday and Friday II. I'll get a photo of them soon but their bowl needs tidying up first. So far so good (i.e. still alive). We went to AZ for Thanksgiving with my family. It was surprisingly cold, but my dad had turned the heater on the pool so high that it was like bathwater. Really warm. Aidan loved it. He cracked up when people would blow bubbles in the water, then he'd stick his face in like he was going to try it, too. But he ended up drinking the water, which I don't think tasted very good, given that it's a salt water pool. I also got a pedicure at Elizabeth Arden that still looks good! Too bad it's winter and I can't show it off. Met some on-line friends from my Aug 03 playgroup, and that's always fun. Aidan was sick, and then Greg and I got it too. I think we left it with most of my family, unfortunately. All of us are now on the upswing, fortunately. Photos from Thanksgiving are on my webshots site.

Here's our new family member (top pic). Still no name, so we're calling him Fishie. We're considering AaahhhDa since that's what Aidan says most often. Also took Aidan to a pumpkin patch to take some photos in his costume. Poor kid - it was like 90 degrees and I walked several blocks the wrong way before I found the darn patch (really a parking lot with pumpkins in the corner). He was less than happy about being plopped in the middle of some pumpkins with a fuzzy sleeper-like outfit on, not to mention the dreaded hood (why do kids hate things on their head?). He did OK, though, and I got him out of it as soon as these were taken.


Oh yeah, and it was my birthday yesterday. I worked all day and no one knew it was my birthday, but we went to SFMOMA to see the Chagall exhibit. Man, was it crowded - but a word to the wise - buy tickets in advance, and take a stroller. We got to use the staff elevator and go right into the exhibit instead of waiting in line for an hour and a half. Thank goodness, since Aidan was a pickle and fussed the whole time. So we went into each room, turned around and looked at the pretty pictures, then left. Lunch at Buca di Beppo was great. Someday I'm going to sit at the big round table with the pope bust in the middle.

The Pumpkin Festival was everything it promised to be. Pumpkins everywhere. We ate pumpkin pie, pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin rolls, and pumpkin pancakes. We also had yummy sauteed artichoke hearts from the Knights of Columbus (or, more accurately, their wives) and a wonderful dinner at Cetrella. I had Frito Misto (many fried things) and Greg had a Spanish seafood stew. See photos here.

Today Aidan's picking up the cell phone and holding it to his head and says something approximating, "hoh". Apparently it's not working and he's irritated.