The Po Show

Yum!!

OMG, I just had the most amazing lunch! Before you start thinking "Okay, she's gone over to the dark side; she's starting blogging about such mundane minutiae as what she just ate!," I'm sorry, but this was notable. Please remember that this is from a *hospital cafeteria* too. I had the plumpest, most delicious crabcake I've ever had in my life. It was crispy on the outside and moist on the inside, with bits of red bell pepper, perfectly seasoned. Served with a heavenly homemade remoulade and a pile of homeade coleslaw. Folks, I despise coleslaw. I really hate it. But this was to die for.

And it was all FOUR DOLLARS with my employee discount. I sure as hell am not going to miss much at this job (aside from my G5 Mac), but I am really going to miss these lunches.

Hooking Up

I got some great news from Ross yesterday. He talked to a friend of ours who lives in NYC, to tell him that we were going to be moving. This is our friend Eric, best man at our wedding, a friend of almost 20 years now. He told Ross that he is welcome to stay there anytime, as his second bedroom is now vacant. Because his girlfriend is moving in!!

I was so thrilled to hear this! (Actually, I yelled "Oh my fucking god!," then had to clap my hand over my mouth because Matthew was in the next room playing on the computer. Bad mommy!) Eric is a wonderful, wonderful person who sort of blips in and out of our lives. His parents still live in L.A., so we would see him at least once a year. He's funny and sweet and smart.

And perpetually single. He's really only had one serious girlfriend in all the time we've known him. So I'm so happy to hear that he's found someone, a significant someone.

I've felt this way many times over the years. Ross and I have always been The Couple, and for many many years we were the only married couple in our circle of friends. As time went on, many of our friends hooked up, and some got married, and a few even had kids. This is how life works. But there were always those single friends that seemed unable to find their mate. It seemed sad to me, since these were fantastic, special people. I mean, don't get me wrong. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong in being single, if that is what you want to be. But to be looking for someone to love, and not able to find anyone, well, that's a different story.

Now we're closing in on 40, and the singles are hooking up. Our friend Scott, one of the nicest guys I've ever met in my life, is getting married next month. Our dear friend Preston, who is a couple years older than us and was the perennial bachelor (he called himself "the monk"), got married over a year ago.

This makes me happy. The world is a hard enough place to live, and it makes me happy that my friends are finding someone to help keep out the cold.

The 10:30 Stop

I instituted a new ritual in my household last night: I call it the 10:30 Stop.

You see, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart was ruining our weekday sex life. Ross and I absolutely love the show, and watch it every night (except for the nights that Tessa is refusing to go to sleep at that time). However, this means that by the time the show is over, we brush our teeth, do other sundry going-to-bed activities, and actually hit the sheets, it's midnight. Yawn... And sometimes, the sex that seemed a good idea earlier in the evening just seems too out of physical reach.

I was starting to get annoyed by the dearth of sex Monday through Thursday. So I came up with a plan. Every night, at 10:30, we stop what we're doing (usually Ross sitting with his laptop on the couch looking at all his economist blogs, and me either staring at some random TV show I'm not really interested in, or checking my ebay auctions for the upteemth time that evening), ask ourselves if we feel like having sex, and then go on with life.

It worked great last night. We were all done by 10:58, happy as clams. I think I'm going to like the 10:30 Stop!

Dreams

It is astonishing to me how dreams still affect me so strongly, considering how rarely I get to sleep deeply enough to dream, these days. I used to have amazingly intricate and cinematic dreams (ask me sometime about the extremely complex dream I once had in which I was a prostitute for the angels, teaching them about sex before they were born on earth), but for years now I have been so REM sleep deprived that it doesn't happen very often. I am still probably dreaming, but they are fleeting and I don't remember them.

The other night I had a dream that was so emotionally earthshaking that it woke me up, and the feeling it left me with has lingered for two days now. A very depressing, soul-siphoning feeling. In it, I ran into someone I had loved very very much in the past, who had hurt me in the most damaging way imaginable. It was awkward, and it was awful. In the dream, I asked him if he knew where I could get a gun. That was how hurtful the encounter was.

I keep telling myself it was only a dream, that there was no such experience, that I'm safe. But I can't shake the horrible feeling that the dream left me with.

I sometimes think it's a good thing that while technology may be giving us ways in which to look inside our brains, we can't fully look inside our minds. Just the glimpse that dreams provide is scary enough...

It was a brief, fleeting dream...

Okay, I realize I'm being a little melodramatic about this (and I also just realized that I begin postings with "okay" way way too often). It can't help that I'm in my prime PMS period (no pun intended). But last night Ross told me that upon reflection, he didn't think there was any way we could buy a house this year. We had to get rid of our credit card debt (developed during the year in Davis when we went into SERIOUS deficit spending, hard not to do when your household income suddenly drops by almost two-thirds), and it wasn't very realistic to hope for a loan when he was just starting his new job. He said we should stick to the original plan, to rent a place and then look around areas to see where we wanted to try to buy.

This upset me, but all I said was, "Okay, but we have to rent where we're going to buy."

He sort of snapped, "I know you don't want to move again, but you can't get obsessive about this. That can be the goal, but it may not work out."

Obsessive. So it's all about me being obsessive? That struck me as very dismissive.

"It's not me being obsessive. I do not want Matthew to have to change schools again!"

He repeated, "That can be the goal. But it may not be possible."

Then I was pissed the whole evening. I was mad and sad that I had gotten all excited about the possibility (and I did realize that it was still just a possibility) of getting to buy a house, only to get my hopes dashed in less than 48 hours. I was also extremely ticked off about the "obsessive" line.

I can't fully describe how I feel. In recent years Ross has been throwing "obsessive" at me like an oath. Well damn it, I've always been obsessive. He knows and has known that. I feel like now it's some kind of code for "you're acting unacceptably."

I am just very angry and sad. I want a house. And I want my husband to accept me the way I am.

Presents

Ross' mom finally was able to send the kids their Christmas presents. Boxes from Amazon arrived on our doorstep yesterday, to resounding excitement.

Matthew practically bounded off the walls when he saw that he had gotten a Gameboy Player (so that he can play Gameboy games on the TV screen) and a Scooby Doo Gamecube game. We told him that he would have to send a thank you note to Grandma Sharon.

"I'll send her a huge thank you for these GREAT PRESENTS!!," he shouted, bouncing up and down.

"Where's MY great presents?," snorted Tessa. I pointed out all the packages we had started opening for her: an Asian Baby Chou Chou (which honestly didn't look all that Asian), a wooden puzzle, TWO LeapPad books and cartridges, and a Strawberry Shortcake computer game. None of which were fully opened, because she kept picking each one up, grumbling "I can't open it!" and shoving it into my hands to open.

I was surprised about the computer game, since I thought I had put a Strawberry Shortcake DVD on her wish list. Tessa just recently started wanting to play computer games herself, but since she can't use the mouse very well, it always ends up with me having to play for her. Anyway, she was very interested in getting that box open, but she kept grabbing it back out of my hands to look at it, so I was having trouble managing to actually open it.

It is called The Amazing Cookie Adventure, or something like that. As I struggled to get the box opened, I told Tessa "It's a Strawberry Shortcake computer game!"

"It's NOT a computer game!," she cried, outraged. She grabbed the box back again.

Looking at her suddenly downturned face, I asked softly, "What did you think it was?"

She looked at the box, and in the most bereft little voice imaginable she answered, "Cookies."

A Place to Hang Your Hat

Okay, so I don't wear hats. But a place to hang one if I did.

What I'm talking about is a house. As in, one of our own. As in, owned.

So we had sort of assumed that we were going to figure out where we would be living, then find a house to rent for awhile while we looked for one to buy. But just yesterday we started running some numbers and realized that considering how high rents are in the places we are considering for the move, it sort of makes sense to buy a house instead. Of course there are all the questions of us qualifying for a loan when Ross will just be starting his job full time in July. Oh, and the whole matter of us not having any money for a significant down payment. And it's one thing to come into an overinflated real estate market when you've just sold a house at an overinflated price, but when you're coming in as a first time buyer, well, ick. My sister did that back in '88 and it took forever for their house to gain back its value.

But these are all the financial considerations. There is a large emotional component to buying a house. Anyone who's known me for any length of time has no doubt heard me rant about how I never thought I'd be in my 30s and not own a house (and now I'm almost in my 40s!). I never thought I'd have KIDS and not own a house! Of course, we remained in a transitory state for a long time, which I also never anticipated. But damn it, now we are supposedly settling down! I WANT MY HOUSE!!!!

I want to paint things the color I want them to be. I want to plant a garden, one I know I won't have to leave in a year. I want to choose the drawer pulls, the tile, the shelf paper. Damn it, I want to actually buy those light bulbs at Costco that last for three years (we never do, because we always figure that we'll be gone long before they burn out).

I want to stop having to tell Matthew we can't get this or can't get that, since we're going to be moving next year. I want my kids to finally have a pet. I want to buy a nice playset for the backyard.

I want to go home.

I Stand Corrected

Matthew can read, after all.

Here I've been going on and on about how Matthew isn't reading yet, and how I'm okay with it. Well, the joke's on me, because it turns out he sight reads quite well. He was given a reading test at school, and his teacher said that he did very well. She said he clearly sight reads, because he never stopped to try to sound out a word. If he didn't automatically know it, he would just guess based on the first letter. And he often left off endings (reading "looked" as "look").

I was quite surprised. He absolutely will not read for me at home. I really should have known better than to assume that that meant he couldn't read, just because he chose not to. He still isn't that enamored with reading at school, apparently, and isn't nearly as enthusiastic about reading activities as he is about math and science.

But it's nice to know he's on the right track! There was something about the thought of my child not wanting to read that struck me as so unbelievable. I was such a reader as a child (to my physical detriment, really, as I spent all my time inside the house hunched over a book rather than playing outside or doing anything physical). Matthew has been read to practically every day of his life. I read Dr. Suess books and The Tao of Pooh to him as he sat in his swing when he was three months old. He is surrounded by books. He likes being read to before bed.

We think that his reluctance to read himself is part of his reluctance to do ANYTHING before he has mastered it. Just like he refused to build anything himself with Lincoln Logs for three months, and then he suddenly made a perfect little barn and corral. I have a lot of these perfectionist tendencies myself (as my friend used to say, I'm so competitive that I won't compete in anything I don't think I can win). I'm hoping now that Matthew has developed a basic set of reading skills, he'll feel more free to try to read words he doesn't already know. We'll see.

Fertile Myrtle--NOT

Okay, I couldn't think of a better title right off the top of my head. I didn't even know I was going to write about this till just this second. I was just looking at the ads at the top of my blog, courtesy of BlogSpot (gotta hand it to them that there are never more than two ads at a time, and they're very unobtrusive). One was for saliva fertility tests. I did not click on the link, but marvelled at this new development in the Getting Pregnant Game.

And it did feel like a game, for the four long years we went through it. Like a crap shoot, like the lottery. For all they (whoever they are) tell you in high school that if you have sex, you'll get pregnant, I found that it's not always that easy. At least, it's not for many of us. Apparently some women get pregnant if a man just rolls over them once. But really, as I did more research and subsequently got more and more obsessed and depressed, it seemed a marvel to me that egg and sperm ever met up and did the mating mambo.

So, there are Things You Can Do to assist you in trying to conceive. They are collectively known as Artificial Reproductive Technologies (or Therapies), or ART (haha). And we went through a lot of them. We had a lot of tests done. Ross masturbated into a lot of cups, for which I will forever give him a ton of credit (this was Kaiser, after all, with no cushy private rooms with porn videos and choice of lube. Ross was forced to do the deed in public restrooms, with a stapled together amalgamation of porn mags). I had nineteen interuterine inseminations, which I really feel must be some kind of record. I was on oral fertility meds, then injected fertility meds. Ross had to learn to inject said injectable drugs into my butt using a syringe with a two inch needle.

We spent about $10,000 on copayments and drugs. Those drugs were expensive: regular price was $100 a vial. We had a 50% copayment from Kaiser, so they would have charged us $50 a vial. Since we needed between 2 and 4 vials a day for between four and seven days a month, we were forced to seek out alternative sources. I literally engaged in underground drug deals, buying vials off of women who had gotten pregnant or had given up trying. I drove to apartments, handed over cash. Ross and I actually drove to Tijuana and bought several hundreds dollars worth of drug because they were only $12 a vial.

I used a million ovulation predictor kits, at $5 a pop. I drove to the valley every morning for between three and five days a month in order to get blood drawn and have an ultrasound to monitor my ovulation. Ross had surgery to remove a varicocele that was potentially interfering with his sperm motility. And every one of those interuterine inseminations I had was pure torture, since I have a weird cervix that doesn't like being catheterized.

The worst part, of course, was the crushing disappointment every month when my blood pregnancy test would come back negative and my period would soon follow. I thought it would kill me. Finally, one morning as I rushed back from the hospital to work, I cried and realized that I couldn't do this anymore. In my heart, I had given up. I got into work and started investigating international adoption. After a few weeks I had found an agency that dealt with Korean adoptions, and I had an application all set to turn in after the new year. I joined an email list of people seeking Korean adoptions. We decided not to go the in vitro fertilization route, since that would be another $10,000, for a single try, with much less guarantee of having a baby at the end than adoption.

But in November, we decided to give it one more shot. Kaiser gave us special permission to do one more cycle, since the last one we had done, despite large amounts of drug, had only yielded one good ripe follicle (shit, I can do that on my own!). We still had some drug left, though I had to buy some more to complete the cycle. What the hell, I thought. But I didn't really have high hopes for success.

On December 9, 1996, I was at work and made the perfunctory call to the hospital to get the results of my blood pregnancy test. My hCG level was 1.98, the nurse told me. I thought this odd, since I'd never been given anything but whole numbers for my results. "What does that mean?," I asked. "Well, you should probably take another test in a couple of days," she replied. Again, that didn't make a lot of sense, since I knew from experience that anything under 5 definitely meant a negative result.

So that was that, I thought. The end of the line. And I was okay with it, focussed on the thought of the adoption process.

Right before I was going to leave work, the infertility coordinator called me. "What did they tell you earlier?," she asked.

"She said my level was 1.98, which I took to mean as negative," I replied.

"No, no, no!," she said, excitedly. "It's *a hundred and ninety-eight*! YOU'RE PREGNANT!!" It was heady, one of the defining moments of my life.

I whooped as I got off the phone, my work friends came in and cried with me and hugged me. Then I rushed out, wanting to get home to tell Ross. I didn't want to tell him on the phone; I wanted to be there with him in person. It was raining, which in L.A. means slow traffic, but I hurried home as quickly as I could.

I got there, and found that Ross' dad had just arrived to have dinner with us. Damn! I didn't want to tell with him there. It was supposed to be my moment with Ross. So I actually held my tongue for over an hour, till Ross' dad went to the bathroom, then blurted it out to Ross in the kitchen. He was dazzled, and hugged me.

So that is the story of how Matthew was conceived. Sometimes I wonder if we'll ever tell him, or when. Kind of odd to tell him "Well, babies are usually made THIS way, but you were made THIS way. Usually the daddy puts his penis into the mommy and gives her his sperm, but Daddy was in the waiting room when they put his sperm into me from a test tube." I don't know.

So now they have new drugs, new fertility tests that use saliva instead of urine, new procedures to try and coax those gametes together. I'm just thankful beyond words that I am no longer on that roller coaster. That as much as I complain about my often difficult and attitudinal children, I am beyond fortunate to have them. They are my greatest treasures.

Umm, Spring has Sprung??

Tomorrow is the first day of spring, at least according to my calendar. I look outside, however, and there is a FOOT of snow on the ground! It covers the rooftops, it graces the tree limbs, it has to be scraped from the car windows (luckily Ross takes care of that!).

Snow is pretty, no doubt about it. But snow was always something that you DROVE to, played in, then drove away from, back to the warm dry California flatlands. It wasn't trampled into the house, to melt in front of the radiator. It wasn't piled up against the curbs, to block the car doors. It wasn't left to turn dirty and grey and depressing on the sides of the road.

And it's cold, when you put your hands into it for any length of time. That's what Tessa has discovered. But that girl adores the snow, loves to lick it off railings and bushes, and the road if I'd let her. Matthew is my California boy, and he hates to be cold, so he's not too wild about playing out in the snow for more than a few minutes at a time. But it's so fun to watch my little bundles shovel icy scoops of whiteness, flinging them up into the air, making snowballs, stomping through clear, unsullied patches.

So, like most things, I'm ambivalent about the snow. I'll be glad when spring really does come, and the green things return (that damn groundhog!), but I will miss the wonder of this first snowy winter.

There's Something Seriously Wrong With Me

And I don't just mean the virus that still has me hobbling around like an 80 year old woman with severe arthritis. I mean my absolute inability to deal with conflict of ANY kind, no matter how minor. This is so stupid I can't even believe I'm blogging it, but for some reason I feel the need to share a glaring example of how incredibly insane I am.

We have an absolutely amazing cafeteria here at the hospital. Without a doubt it is the best cafeteria food I have ever had; these entrees would not be out of place at a nice restaurant, and the prices are really reasonable. Recently, the chef (and they actually do call him Chef William) has set up a sautee station for himself, with a daily special. He puts together wonderful stir fries and sauteed dishes (KICKBUTT chicken marsala!). And he's always so pleased to see me, as I always order his special.

A few weeks ago, however, he saw me standing in line for a different entree (I pick up lunch for the chief administrator, who's disabled), and he got all pouty.

"Oh no," I assured him, "this is for someone else. I'm coming to you next!"

"Oh good!," he said, seemingly dead serious. "I couldn't handle the rejection."

This is a lot of pressure on me, just over lunch.

Today, I'm still not feeling that great. I just got my appetite back yesterday, after not eating much at all for four days (and you KNOW I'm sick if I can't eat!). Today's sautee special was tortellini in a creamy, spicy sauce. Ugh, heavy, and spicy, which I'd normally love, but not today. There was also baked salmon being served, which is light and just to die for. I wanted the salmon.

But Chef William greeted me so merrily when I walked into the room, and he immediately got his pan ready for my lunch. What could I do? I told him I'd try the tortellini.

So here I am with a lunch I don't feel like eating, when there was something else I wanted instead. All because I didn't want to disappoint someone who's practically a stranger? And do I know that he'd really be all that disappointed anyway?

What is WRONG with me?

Quickie Follow-Up

Just a quick follow-up to yesterday's post: Matthew did nicely apologize to Victor again yesterday when they got to school. Ross managed to get a few more details from Matthew, that he had hit Victor with an open hand, more of a push really, rather than a closed hand. And Matthew's teacher heard from Victor's mother that Victor gets nosebleeds really easily, sometimes for no reason at all.

All of which makes me feel marginally better about the incident, but it still shows me that no matter how much "better" Matthew seems to get (at his conference yesterday his teacher raved about how wonderfully he's been doing, the day before's event notwithstanding), he still has these impulse control problems. It makes me feel like I'm never going to allowed off my guard, that he'll always need to be watched closely when he's around other kids, that I'm always going to be the mom of the kid who hits.

He's a sweet, lovable boy. But he's still going to be known as the kid who hits. Where does that put him in the world??

No Rest for the Weary

Yeah, I know the quote is "no rest for the wicked," and that applies too :). So I never did get my nice long nap yesterday. Soon after I went into my muscle relaxant induced coma, my cell phone rang and it was the principal of Matthew's school. Matthew had hit a kid in his class in the face and gave him a nosebleed. He was currently in the principal's office and she thought he should be picked up, to let him know that this type of behavior was unacceptable. I muttered something to the effect that I would call Ross to come pick him up (I couldn't even see straight and Ross had the car anyway). Ross was pissed that he was going to have to blow off yet another seminar, but agreed to leave ASAP.

Sigh. Then I lay there, in a stupor, but of course I couldn't sleep. Matthew has been doing so great. He hasn't had an "incident" at school in so long that his teacher couldn't even remember the last time. Ironically, I believe it was back in November, the day before his parent-teacher conference. This is ironic because his spring parent-teacher conference is today.

I hauled myself out of bed and wove over to the livingroom when I heard them come in. I told Ross to go ahead and go to his seminar, which he could just make at that point. Ross left, telling Matthew that he had to talk to me about what had happened at school. Matthew set his jaw and said, "I don't want to talk about it!" I propped myself up on the couch and watched my beautiful first-born eat his lunch, which he had missed since he was in the principal's office. He was in a great mood, obviously happy to have been brought home instead of having to go to afterschool care. He looked through the library book he had gotten out that morning and chattered as he ate his cheese and crackers. Finally, after he had eaten, I asked him what had happened.

"It was funny. I don't understand it really," he said. I asked what he didn't understand.

"He came up to me while I was trying to play with the magnets and told me to hit him, so I did." I asked who the kid was that he had hit.

"Victor. He told me to hit him on the hand, but I was TIRED and wanted to play with the magnets again, so I hit him in the face."

"Isn't Victor one of your favorite friends at school?," I asked sadly. I had gotten from his teacher that Matthew often paired up with Victor during projects.

"Well, I don't play with him very much." I asked what Victor did after Matthew had hit him.

"He cried, " said Matthew, straightforwardly. I asked how that had made him feel.

"Sorry," he answered. I asked if he had told Victor that he was sorry.

"Yes, but his nose only bled a little bit." I told him that I was sure that it had hurt a lot, that it hurts a lot when someone hits you in the face, even if your nose only bleeds a little bit. I told him that he needed to tell Victor he was sorry again, and it would be nice if he wrote him a note or drew him a picture to tell him how sorry he was.

"No, thank you," Matthew said distractedly, as he looked through his library book again.

It was not a good time. After all these years, I am still at a loss (especially when in a drug laden state!) as to how to convey to Matthew that other people feel, other people hurt, other people need to be considered. He gets it more, but not enough.

"Who are your best friends at school now?," I asked.

"I mostly play by myself," he answered. It's been his answer for a long time now.

This morning I told him again that when he got to school he needed to apologize to Victor, and he should ask him if he is all right.

"He should be all right by now, since his nose only bled a little," he replied.

Sigh...

Virality

I've been sick for the last three days with some suckass virus. Killer body aches, nausea, dizziness, terrible fatigue. Blech. Ross was great all weekend, trying to get the kids to leave me alone so I could stay in bed, but much of my time was spent listening to Tessa yell "Where's Mom??" Matthew kept popping his head in and saying "Are you still resting?" Actually he was so sweet yesterday, kept asking me "Do you need anything? Would you like some water?" Of course, interspersed with his usual requests for me to get him things every five minutes, but still. I just took a cyclobenzoprene, so hopefully I can get some sleep now. I'm staying home from work, the house is empty, and I have a nice toasty heating pad. Yay...

Ah Right, I Lied

So sue me: I lied yesterday. I did not have an identity when I worked at my old job. In fact, it was a seven year long identity crisis.

I was working at this job, that I did very well and for which people profusely praised me, but I didn't belong there. I am not a science person! I am a historian! I am a liberal arts person! I don't do math (hi, Bambi!)!! I totally stumbled upon this job, which was advertised in the Daily Bruin, not knowing a thing about medical research, not knowing a thing about smoking and nicotine. My boss was afraid that I'd leave after three months. I figured I'd stay for awhile and then look for something else. But I never did.

What happened was that I was obsessively trying to get pregnant, and it ended up taking four years. And during that time, I really couldn't afford to go off and look for another job, since the one I had had good medical benefits and a lot of time flexibility, so I could run off to my myriad blood draws and ultrasounds and interuterine inseminations. So I stayed. Then I had my baby, and I again enjoyed an incredible amount of time flexibility to care for the baby. So I stayed. Then I wanted to get pregnant again, and did, and again I couldn't give up that freedom to come and go pretty much as I pleased. So I stayed.

Yet it never felt right. It was a job. Wasn't I supposed to have a career? All of my life, since teenagerhood, I had expected to have some sparkling career that I loved. Not necessarily glamorous, but terribly interesting. And of course I'd be brilliant at it. Instead I ended up slogging through a bunch of administrative bullshit and nagging others to get their work done. I did it brilliantly :), but still. This wasn't what I was meant to do.

I was supposed to be a researcher and curator at the Japanese American National Museum downtown. Except they didn't have any money to hire me. I was supposed to be a writer. Except that I couldn't finish anything, not even short stories. I was waiting for Ross to finish his Ph.D. and get a real job, so I could do what I wanted to do. Except now that he has, I don't know what I want to do.

I only know what I DON'T want to do. I don't want to start at the bottom somewhere, even in something I find interesting. I don't want my boss to be a 22 year old. I don't want to do an unpaid internship. I don't want to work for $10 an hour. Blech.

The only thing I ever really knew that I wanted to do was be a mom, and I am one, and I'm endlessly grateful for that. I think sometimes about the people that were on my infertility list back in the bad old days when I was trying to get pregnant with Matthew, and I imagine that many of them never did get to have children, and I feel lucky beyond words for my beautiful, miraculous children. And I think I'm a fairly good mom, at least some of the time. But this wasn't all I expected of myself.

When do I get to decide what I want to be when I grow up?

Memory Lane

One of the women I work with went to the annual conference of the nicotine research organization I used to belong to, and she brought in the program from the conference. It was so odd, and discomforting, to look through the abstracts and program listings, and the attendee directory. I saw all the names of researchers in the field, so familiar to me, and it reminded me strongly of my old life, my old job back in L.A.

Those seven and a half years seem sort of dreamlike now. But seven and a half years! It was such a significant chunk of my adult life. It's strange when you're in the same job and same environment for so long; it becomes a part of your identity. And now that's two years in the past. The problem is that I never really replaced it with another entrenched place and mental space, so I've been sort of free floating for the past year (with all the accompanying identity crisis. Wow, my first parenthetical comment of this post! That's so not me!).

I hope I find myself again, now that we're moving and hypothetically settling down.

Stop, Children, What's that Sound?

Why, it's the Sounds of Silence! Okay, enough old musical references. I want to talk about NEW music. Which I don't listen to, except in the car when I'm driving by myself.

I just don't listen to music anymore. We never listen to CDs at home (inappropriate lyrics for the kids, usually, plus one kid or the other generally wants a video or On Demand, with accompanying audio). As I said, I listen to the radio in the car, and have actually found a really good alternative rock station here, but exactly how often am I driving by myself?

How did this happen? I used to listen to music incessantly. I used to sing all the time. I still do, but it's usually Old McDonald with Tessa or something like that (her version includes such farm exotics as the hippopatamus, the dinosaur, and the fish. Exactly what sound does a fish make??).

And I actually could listen to music at work a lot of the time, and I even have a radio/CD player in my office. But I don't. Why? Because given the opportunity, the QUIET wins out. How often do I enjoy (let alone whole hours of) quiet in my home life? Umm, never?

Yet this strikes me as so...old person. Choosing silence over some kick ass rockin' tunes? Or just nice music I can sing to? When did this happen?

I Love the '80s

Yikes, I was watching I Love the 80s Strikes Back on VH1 last night (there is NOTHING on at 9:30 after my kids go to bed on Monday nights). There were doing 1981 and there was Rick James, being Super Freaky. How often in the last 20 years have I actually written those words out, and there they were, the title of my blog entry yesterday!!

Ah, the '80s. All in all, a crappy decade to come of age. Big hair, corporate greed exalted, and arms for hostages. The music was fun though. And OH MAN, John Cusack in The Sure Thing, which I just saw the other night!! I could eat him with a spoon...

Super Freaky

It's snowing this morning, relatively hard. Yeah, I know it's New England, and early spring in N.E. means "wintery mix" (I find that term funny for some reason. "I'm in the wintery mix" sounds like I'm going out clubbing in Dec. or something). But it was 62 degrees last week! This just seems unfair, like the weather is being a tease. I think snow is pretty, and it's not that cold (only about 31 degrees! Damn, how I've changed), but still, we were walking around outside this weekend looking at new shoots coming out of the soil. Insects were coming back. It's amazing how for a couple of months there, there were no bugs! I've never experienced that. And now it's snowing again. It's very freaky. Yow.

Speaking of super freaks :), Tessa WROTE HER NAME this weekend. She just sat down with a piece of paper and a crayon pencil and said, "I'm going to write my name." And then she did. I still haven't recovered. She also drew this amazing picture of a person (I haven't posted this one to MyFamily), with a perfect round body, perfect arms and legs, perfectly proportioned eyes and a perfectly positioned mouth.

Though still intensely charming (her big new phrase these days is "Hey, I've got a really great idea!"), she is throwing serious attitude. She's really started to pick up all of Matthew's defiant phrases and is using them even more than he does. "I don't care!!!," she yells, slamming her arms down at her sides, when we tell her why she shouldn't do something. "No fair!!," she cried, big lower lip pouting, when we told her it was time to put away her Playdoh last night. "No, I don't have to do that!!," she insists. Two years old with a large vocabulary: scary combo.

Caffeine Nation

Oh, it's a slippery slope. Of course it's the same as any addictive substance, yet somehow I still find myself surprised at how bad things have gotten. I crossed over from "abuse" to "dependence" a long time ago (there are definite problems with working in the substance abuse research field; you start to think in these terms all the time), and it keeps on getting worse. Okay, so there's no DSM-IV listing for being a caffeine-head, but that don't make it any less sad.

I used to enjoy a cup of coffee after a really nice dinner out. So what, maybe once every couple of months? Then came the Coffee Bean Iced Blended Vanilla. I'd have one every couple of weeks after lunch. Then maybe once a week; then a couple of times a week. Then we got an espresso machine at home so we could have a cap' in the morning. And still with the Ice Blendeds a couple of times a week.

I gave it up for the most part during the latter part of my intensive attempt to get pregnant with Matthew. Then I actually gave it up all together during my pregnancy (settling for the occasional decaf Ice Blended, which later turned into the very occasional decaf, sugar-free Ice Blended. "Give me a Vanilla Ice Blended, and take all the fun out of it" was how my friend ordered for me one day). I stayed off the stuff for Matthew's first six months or so of life, and didn't get back into coffee again regularly till he was over a year.

By then the adrenaline rush had run its course, and I needed assistance. It was back to everyday morning coffee, and the occasional Ice Blended after lunch. My friend at work started making coffee in the afternoon to get through the sleepy hours, so I started partaking. Still, it was never more than two caffeine fixes a day. I drank water at lunch and at home.

By the time I had Tessa, I had given up the pretense of going caffeine-free, and was having a cap' at home every morning and often afternoon coffee as well. I did go decaf while actually pregnant with her, but went half-caf soon after she was born. This evolved into full-caf (she didn't sleep anyway), just as a matter of survival.

I went up to double caps' in the morning, then double caps' in the late afternoon as well. When I started at my present job, I added a diet soda (I LOVE the new Diet Coke with Lime! Greatest soda additive ever!) every day with lunch. And in the last couple of months I've been having tea in the morning to get me jump-started enough to begin making calls. This only about two hours after having that first double cappucino.

This is a shitload of caffeine.

Yet hurray! I have a new rationalization! There's some new evidence that caffeine consumption may offer some protection from the development of Type 2 diabetes, for which I am at definite risk!

Okay, they probably didn't mean the level of caffeine consumption I imbibe.

But I loves my coffee, and you'll have to pry my cappucino out of my cold, dead fingers.

Woohoo, we have 100!

I just noticed that I have 100 hits on my blog! Okay, so many of them were me, checking to see if I had gotten any comments on my posts :). But most were from others, so let me say

THANK YOU FOR READING MY BLOG!!

It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy that people are interested enough in my mundane little life to read my lame, random thoughts.

THANKS GUYS!!!! Love, Po

Need a tune-up

Or something, for my poor old rickety body. I've had low-to-moderate level aches and pains for as long as I can remember. I was going to a chiropractor at 13, who said, "Paula, somewhere there's an 80 year old woman walking around with your back, and you got hers." Today I was thinking about it, how I live with all these annoying, and sometimes more than annoying, aches and pains. Compared to many people, it's insultingly minor, and so I don't talk about it much. I should be grateful for my mobility, and I am.

And it's mostly my own damn fault. My initial problems started because of my poor posture and the fact that I spent most of my waking free time hunched over books, sitting ill-positioned on the couch. I still have awful posture and I don't do anything about it. I've tried yoga, but except for the period of time that I was pregnant with Tessa, I've never stuck with it. Ross bought me a Pilates DVD and book at my request for Christmas, and the DVD is still in its plastic.

The truth is, I am a lazy person. I HATE to exercise. There is only one form of physical exertion I enjoy :), and it's really not all that good for my back. I don't even want to go for walks, not that the weather here has been very conducive to being out for more than the time it takes to run to the car and back anyway. The truth is, what I'd really like is a personal masseuse to rub away the aches and pains everyday. I love massage. I'm a massage whore. I'd let anyone rub my shoulders.

I really do need to exercise more now, since I am still gaining weight. Again, I know that I really can't complain, having been blessed with good metabolism, but it certainly isn't as good as it used to be. I weigh much more now than I ever have when I wasn't pregnant. I was about six months pregnant with Tessa when I weighed this much!! None of my clothes fit, and in the words of Seinfeld, I've just given up (meaning I live in sweat pants most of the time. I even have "nice" sweat pants that I wear to work). I know it's the Paxil, coupled with the fact that I have atrocious eating habits. But I know that if I'd just get off my ever-expanding butt and do a little excercise, I'd slim down again.

But just the thought of it makes me tired...

Slackers

My default page on my browser here at work is a Netscape page that shows CNN headlines, which often offers me a window into what they're putting up as mainstream culture these days. There's a couple of "big news" headlines, then little teaser links to things like "How to know if she's cheating" and "Celebrity hotties" and crap like that. Yesterday it was some teaser about slackers, and I was intrigued (read: looking for distraction) enough to click on it.

Apparently a "disturbing" number of American employees are slackers, and waste time at work. Like 80% or something. Well, that's sure news, ain't it? Imagine all those people out there wasting time at work! Why, I've never personally seen a single person in any work situation sit around and waste time. Mercy me.

The reason the whole issue struck a chord with me, though, is that I waste a lot of time at work currently. I'm sitting here at work now blogging, for goodness' sake! And while I do still have enough work ethic in me to feel guilty about it, I sure as hell don't feel badly enough to stop doing it.

I spend enormous amounts of time here reading email, checking my ebay auctions, surfing the web, looking for deals. I don't post to the Aug. list, because I can't do it from my work email addy, but if I could I'd probably clog the list with 40 messages a day.

The reason I feel most guilty is not because I'm getting paid here, but because much of the time Ross is home with the kids when they need to be home, and consequently he doesn't get as much work done as he wants/needs to. Here I am frittering away time that he could be in his office being constructive. The problem is that for the sake of appearences, which is what this whole damn center operates on, I have to be physically here, 9-5, M-F.

And I am often very busy, but too often it's with utter bullshit. It sounds conceited as hell, but my talents are almost completely wasted here. I do so many things that I used to assign to undergrad lab assistants, and it's hard to get worked up about doing that kind of work. I particularly despise doing telephone subject recruitment, as it's so time-consuming and usually fruitless. I have gotten about 150 calls in the past week, and called about 120 of those people, and only 5 have been qualified enough for the study that they are actually worth scheduling for a screening appointment. So the other 115 have just been a big waste of time. Plus, there's that little matter of my phone phobia. I hate being on the phone for long periods of time. My ears start to hurt and my forearms go numb. I start to hope that when I call someone, they won't be there, or they'll be disqualified right off the bat so I don't have to go through the whole questionnaire with them. And that's just plain pathetic.

Even the most "interesting" (put into quotes because it's still paralyzingly boring) work I do is still so simple and relatively brain-numbing. The funny thing is that the bosses that be have heaped praise on me for these little tasks, saying what a great job I'm doing. I feel like saying "Hey, it was nothing, seriously. I used to write whole protocols and consent forms from scratch, so your little two line addendum wasn't much of a feat." But of course I don't.

What the hell is the whole point of this? I guess I'm wondering if *I'm* this unfulfilled in my job, and slack as much as I do, what does that say about the rest of the workforce, the vast majority of whom have REALLY boring, unfulfilling jobs? Is this what life is all about???

Asian American Me

I had a whole other topic to write about today, about circumstances shaping your life, etc., but that's all pushed aside. I was checking out Natalieville, and she had a link to a McDonald's announcement of a big giveaway they're having this weekend (pursuant to a lawsuit, apparently. What the hell did they do to have to give away $15 million in a sweepstakes???) and there was this sidebar link on the site that said "I am asian." Huh???

I clicked, and was blown away. It was this little streaming vid with these hip young AAs (that's Asian Americans to you) doing hip things and eating McDonald's food. What was this all about? Why was this on the McD website? Asian American Heritage Month isn't until May!

The pix were sort of bizarre. Young friends in a mall, a typical Asian geek guy mixing down, two sets of feet sticking out of a convertible VW Beetle (I wasn't sure if this was supposed to imply AA sex in a car or what. No wait, the feet were pointed in opposite directions, so that would have been logistically impossible), a sort of heavy set guy playing a guitar with a goofy look on his face. And then the REALLY weird image, of a young female AA eating a McD salad, with a little pug dog at her feet. Then it shows a closeup of the dog, WHO IS WEARING A T-SHIRT THAT SAYS "I AM ASIAN." WTF???????? So the DOG is Asian? Is this supposed to represent diversity?

There were links on the side, to lists of "The Most Influential Asian Americans of All Time" and stuff like that. Is this supposed to be educational, to enlighten the mainstream American public (whatever that is) that AAs have made these contributions to American culture/politics/sports/science, etc.?

Why is McDonald's doing this? The only thing I personally can think of is that they have a new TV campaign going on, with AAs, and I'm just not seeing it because I live in Boston. If I was still in L.A., or in NY, maybe I'd have seen some ads. But that STILL doesn't explain why they are doing it now. Why the sudden "introduction" of AAs into the most mainstream of mainstream advertising?

You know, we've been here all the time. We've been here for about two centuries. Despite the most restrictive immigration policies EVER introduced into American legislation, we've been here. My grandfather had to be adopted by his uncle so that he could come to this country in 1918, because immigration from Asia was illegal. So they often had to find loopholes, but they came, and we've been here.

When I was a kid, the only AAs on TV were Arnold on Happy Days (Pat Morita! I met him once and he was a hoot) and the nanny on The Courtship of Eddie Father (what was her name? Mrs. Livingston?). Oh, and Hop Sing on Bonanza of course. All with those stereotypical accents.

I wanted to be an actress so much. I wanted to be an actress from the time I knew what being an actress was. I had all the leads in all the plays in elementary school, junior high, high school. I sang, I danced. I did community theatre for five years (I played Liat in South Pacific not once, but twice, to rave reviews). But I looked on the TV, and I looked at the movies, and I saw that there were just no parts out there, not enough to make a living. Sure, there was theatre, and the East West Players downtown, but that's pretty limited. I knew it was hard enough to try and make a living as an actor when you could play a wide variety of ethnicities and could fill many types of roles. I knew I wasn't cut out for the struggle. So I went to college and studied poli sci instead (since that's such a lucrative field :p).

And sure, you see more AAs on commercials now, like they've somehow acknowledged that we are here, are part of the American landscape. You occasionally see AAs on TV shows in regular parts (Lucy Liu did well for herself, and Ming Na Wen has been on ER for awhile). Margaret Cho, whom I admire so much, was so screwed over on the terrible sitcom they gave her a couple of years ago. That whole debacle probably ensured that there will be no AA-led shows for a very long time.

But hey, there's a McDonald's campaign specifically geared toward AAs, so that's progress, right?

I'm being sarcastic here, but a part of me wonders, is it?

The Drop-Off

Yet another major example of how different my children are. This morning Tessa was NOT happy to be getting ready for school. She was home almost all of last week with a double ear infection (NO ONE can convince me that these ear infections are not the result of the cold wet weather here in New England!), so it was hard to get back into the routine. We dropped off Matthew at school, then headed to the hospital. She was slightly clingy when we walked into the door of the daycare, where her class was already outside playing (it being *45* degrees and all, already at 9AM!! Please let this really be spring!!!). She quickly settled into playing in the sand box and I said goodbye. I stopped though, to tell the director that we would like to switch Tessa back to part time starting next month, since Ross got his job in NY. Tessa came up to me, expectantly, like "Well, if you're still here, why aren't you playing with me??" I thought, "OH NO! She's going to get clingy, and I won't be able to leave now!" But no, we said goodbye again, and the director led her willingly by the hand back to the sandbox. Then when I went to my car, I realized that she could see me, but all she did was wave.

What a difference a kid makes... Matthew was still crying at drop off frequently at this age, though he started daycare at 20 months and Tessa started three months ago. Even at age 4 he often got upset when dropped off. We would go in with him, try to get him settled into an activity, often spending 15 minutes or more doing so. Then when we'd try to say goodbye, he'd protest profusely: "BUT I LOVE YOU!" Ouch...

I really don't want to make this all about how much easier Tessa is on the whole (but she really is). I guess that's good, since two kids like Matthew would have me institutionalized by now. Not that Tessa is easy, she has an attitude as big as the great outdoors and can tantrum like nobody's business, but in relative terms, she just takes the world so much more in stride than Matthew. Ross and I often talk about how Tessa will probably end up being the "protector" sibling, making sure Matthew is okay.

For now, he does try to take care of her sometimes. He tries to cheer her up when she's in a bad mood (though she often just gets more pissed off). There was one time awhile ago when we were scolding her for some inappropriate behavior or other and Matthew tried to take her by the hand and lead her away. "I don't want Tessa to get in trouble!," he said. I thought that was so sweet.

He loves her so much. He tickles her cheeks and says "Tessa is such a cutie..." I swear, having a baby sister has been such a good thing for him. To actually think about another living being on a regular basis, it's major for Matthew. Most of the time he's still absorbed in his own world and his own desires, but he does come out to see her, think about her, love her.

It's one of the best things in my life...