The Po Show

Gobble Gobble

No, it's not an early Thanksgiving, or a running of the turkeys outside, or something...

It's ME wanting to gobble up everything within reach. My current food obsession is trail mix, at what, 2500 calories a bag? Yes, it's sort of healthy, and better than Oreos I guess, and I don't eat the kind that has chocolate chips or other candies in it, but still, fattening when you eat it constantly for a week.

My shorts are telling me about those calories now, the shorts that I put on a couple of weeks ago and was so stoked because they were LOOSE. Now, kinda tight :p. I mentioned to Ross that I've been eating trail mix obsessively for the past week and he commented on the calories.

I said, "Yeah, so I've been gaining weight back."

"Yeah, I know," he replied.

Silence. "Oh, so you've noticed?"

"I have too," he answered, but I thought that he said, "I have to," like, he has to notice that I've gained weight because it's just SOOO apparent.

So, PMS, me? Ya THINK??

Oy

So last night Matthew (after asking first) got himself a few cookies. They were same cookies he always eats, Pepperidge Farm rolled wafers, the kind that come in a cylindrical aluminum tin. I noticed the tin sitting on the counter afterwards and said, "Matthew, don't just leave the cookie tin on the counter."

"There were only a couple pieces left, so I finished them," he replied.

"That's fine," I said, "but put the tin in the recycling."

"Okay," he said, as I walked out of the kitchen.

I just opened the cupboard and saw that the empty cookie tin was in there, right in the place where those cookies go.

Is he just a MAN IN TRAINING or what????

(Actually, that's an unfair statement (question), since his dad never ever does things like that. I usually refrain from "why can't men do for themselves?"-type hyperbole, since I actually have one who does. But still.)

Memorial Day

I feel like singing "Memory" from Cats or Barbara Streisand's "The Way We Were" (you know, "Memories, like the corners of my miiiiiind"). I know every word to both, which is kind of sad.

Memorial Day is cemetery day for my family. Time not for honoring soldiers of distant wars, but for good old-fashioned Asian ancestor worship. We make little bouquets of flowers, one for each of the ever-increasing numbers of our personal dead at Forest Lawn in the Hollywood Hills. When I was a child, we would go to sit through a memorial service, and then visit the graves of my mother's aunt and uncle, who died long before I was born. Now my dad is there, next to a Marine named Claude Thompson, under his crepe myrtle tree that gets bigger every year. My aunt and uncle are there, down the row. My grandparents are there, further down the hill, overlooking the Disney Imagineering Studios. My cousin Henry is there, in a little alcove where the urn drawers are stacked four high. When we go to visit, we bring them each a little bouquet, fill their built-in vases with water, and leave our flowery offerings when we say goodbye.

I can't be there today, of course, so I make the rounds in my mind. The grass is green and well-manicured and the headstones are all flat against the earth. I say hi to them all, especially my dad.

In three days, my niece will give birth to a new baby girl via scheduled c-section. May 29 was my dad's birthday, so when it was clear that she had to have a repeat section, and could choose what day to have the baby around her June 1 due date, that is the day they chose.

Talk about a nice memorial.

Daddy's Home Early!

Okay, so I'm the only one who still calls him Daddy, but there was such general excitement that Ross came home at 4:30 today. It's such a rarity to have him here during daylight, weekday hours.

The kids have a super long weekend, since we didn't use two snow days. In fact, we didn't have ANY snow days, though we did have two ice days. So we have Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, which is a long time, considering Ross and I are both sort of out of commission. I'm feeling a little better, so I took the kids to the library and the mall this afternoon. Ross' knee is getting better slowly (though I've still had to get up at 6AM every morning this week to drive him to the station).

Anyway, I feel like the long weekend really got started when Ross came home, and the kids could attack him and start in on "Dad, watch this!" (Matthew, playing a video game) and "Dad, today I............" (Tessa, insert a 15 minute non-stop monologue chronicling various projects she worked on today at home).

I love it when Daddy comes home early.

Lighting the Fires

You would think this wouldn't come as a surprise to me anymore, after all we've been through, but it still does. It still surprises me how much bitching and hand-holding and nagging it takes to get people to do what they are supposed to do.

So our CSE meeting was 20 days ago. We were told it would take about a week to 10 days to get Matthew's IEP finalized, and then packets would be sent out to the schools we're considering for his placement next year.

May 9, I ask if his IEP has been finalized yet. Not yet.

May 14, I ask the school psychologist and find out his IEP has been finalized and that the packets will be put together for the schools.

May 19-20, I ask various people at the district office if the packets have been sent out, nobody knows, no response from the person who is in charge of sending them out.

May 21, I finally ask our school psychologist if she can find out if the packets have gone out. I've been trying not to bother her too much since she is SWAMPED with end of the year meetings, and I tried to get information from the district directly.

This morning, May 22, I get an email from her that the packets were sent out yesterday.

Coincidence? I don't think so :p.

Mystery Malady

Ever wonder why "malady" looks and sounds so much like "milady" or "my lady?" Or have I just been watching way too much "Tudors?"

Anyway, something is wrong with me (yeah, I know, start a list). But I really don't know what it is. On Saturday I woke up feeling sort of dizzy, so Ross had to take Tessa to soccer despite his gimpy leg. It persisted, this dizzy, sort of out of it feeling. Nothing too major, just sort of vague and off. No fever, no congestion, no headache.

Sunday it continued, and Ross took the kids out himself. I stayed in my pajamas all day, which is very uncharacteristic. Again, I didn't feel horrible, but I felt sort of crappy and dizzy. I read a 474 page book (Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan, which I received for Mother's Day), so obviously I was okay as long as I was sitting down. But being up and walking about was a Bad Idea.

Monday morning rolled around and I had to get up at 6AM to drive Ross to the train station, since he is still gimpy. I got the kids ready for school and we drove off, and then something happened that made it very apparent to me that I was NOT RIGHT. I pulled up into the driveway for drop off, hopped out of the car to hand Tessa her backpack, and realized that the car was still moving forward. I had not put it in "park," and it was rolling toward the car in front of us. I lunged back in, tried repeatedly to reach over and put it in park, and leaned on the horn three times as I was fumbling with the gear shift. The people all around were staring at me like, "What the fuck?????" It felt like it took forever, but I managed to get the car to stop before I hit the car in front of us.

I handed Tessa her backpack, did my usual cheery "Have a nice day!!," and drove off, spouting a random streak of curse words like I had Tourette's.

And decided I probably better stay home all day, which I did. Today I'm still dizzy, out of it, feeling like someone stuck a spigot in my head and drained out all the thinking juice. What the HELL is wrong with me?

What a Drag It is Getting Old

Ain't THAT the truth? (Totally OT, have you seen the ads for Louis Vuitton, featuring...****Keith Richards****? How odd is that? I guess nothing says "luxury goods" this spring like grinning cadavers. But I digress.)

I'm talking about my own geezer, who was walking to the train station yesterday morning when he heard (and felt) his knee go "POP!" Yes, he hurt himself walking ("Pretty lame," he commented.) A woman saw him hobbling along the road and gave him a ride to the station, then he managed to hobble from Grand Central to work, and then he called me. He said he was putting an ice pack on it, and it was pretty swollen.

"Um, don't you think you should see a doctor?," I asked.

He ended up deciding that he'd work for most of the day, then come home early so I could drive him to Urgent Care. Exam, X-ray, nothing broken. Rest for a few days and if it still hurts a lot, call an orthopedic surgeon. He's wearing a brace now and it's feeling better. He actually stayed home from work today (though of course he spent the morning working) and we had a nice day together.

It's the chickens coming home to roost, knee-wise. All those years of playing basketball, abusing his knees, running bleachers. The time he twisted his whole leg and sprained his foot playing basketball in grad school (I was 36 weeks pregnant with Matthew, went to the hospital because I was having contractions, tried to call him 500 times, while he was at UCLA Medical Center in the ER himself. He went to our last Lamaze class on crutches). Not to mention all the times Tessa has jumped up and down on his legs, like earlier this week.

I'm feeling a sense of foreboding, that this is just the beginning of physical deterioration for me and the Ro. Nothing major, little issues here and there, little injuries that never completely heal, just an ongoing series of minor things that are a pain in the ass. I went to the dentist recently and saw that I've got the beginnings of bone loss in my roots, meaning I've got implants in my future (and not the fun, now-I-can-wear-halter-tops kind!).

In the meantime, poor Ross gimps along on his bad knee like an old guy. Though not as old as Keith Richards.

Truth

There's a benefit going on ebay for a woman who lost her husband recently. She's a custom clothing designer, and several other designers and other specialty service people on ebay are raising money for her family. She put in an auction herself, as part of the benefit, to say thank you, and she included this passage. It made me cry.

Life is too short to wake up with regrets. So love the people who treat
you right. Forget about the one's who don't. Believe everything happens
for a reason. If you get a second chance, grab it with both hands. If
it changes your life, let it. Nobody said life would be easy, they just
promised it would be worth it. Friends are like balloons; once you let
them go, you can't get them back. So I'm gonna tie you to my heart so I
never lose you.

A search for WELOVEMUD will come up with the benefit auctions.

Remembering Dr. J

My former boss, Murray E. Jarvik, M.D., Ph.D., died yesterday. He would have been 85 on June 1, which was pretty remarkable considering all of the health problems he had throughout his life. He was the most brilliant person I have ever met, and he had a generosity of spirit that is seldom seen.

We called him Dr. J (though I always addressed him as Dr. Jarvik), which was very funny since physically, he was about as far from Julius Irving as a human being could be. He was about five foot four, rail-thin, with big glasses and a slight overbite, looking the stereotype of a nice elderly Jewish man. He wore old polyester slacks way up past his waist, drove an old Honda, spoke with a New York accent, and was a millionaire.

I met him late in his career, which spanned decades, and was incredibly lauded and awarded and internationally recognized. People always mention that he was the inventor of the nicotine patch, but I don't think he really considered that the primary achievement of his career. It came as an accident, as he and a couple of his research associates were pondering nicotine exposure through the skin. In typical Dr. J-fashion, he had the research associate pour liquid nicotine on his arm, slapped an adhesive patch on it, and waited to see what would happen. The guy's heart rate shot up, he felt like shit, and the rest is history. Dr. J actually didn't make much money off the patch, since it was held up in patent litigation (they eventually lost) for years, but he'd already made a fortune in real estate.

I think he was the thriftiest person I've ever met (it's not nice to say cheap), which you could tell stemmed from growing up during the Depression. He was literally a starving student in college, who lived exclusively on peanut butter sandwiches. Tales of his thriftiness are legendary, like the time a drug rep showed up at the lab for a meeting with him. It turns out he had called her to come over to give him some samples of sleeping pills, since he was going on a conference trip and was afraid he wasn't going to be able to fall asleep at the hotel. Another time he called around to a bunch of stores in the area, trying to find one that was selling a special promotional pack of batteries that had four extra batteries than the usual pack.

We used to call him a magician, because he could make papers on his desk disappear on a regular basis. He was always forgetting people's names, even people who had worked for him for years. This was ironic, since his wife was a leading Alzheimer's researcher. But I was told that he'd been forgetful even when he was young, so it wasn't a matter of age. He loved gadgets (he held a patent for a portable escalator) and was fascinated by technological advances. He was an early adopter of email and loved what computers could do, though he used to drive his assistant who helped him with computer matters batty by opening up WordPerfect again every time he started a new document.

I mentioned that he'd had a large number of health problems throughout his life, and that is no understatement. He had heart problems from when he was very young, and had a pig's valve inserted into his heart. It was only supposed to last for about 5 years, and ended up being in there for over 20. He had lung cancer, despite that fact that he had not smoked a day in his life, which was incredibly ironic considering he became a nicotine and smoking researcher. He contracted polio in his early 40s, which partially paralyzed his vocal chords, so his voice was always sort of rough and scratchy. In 1997, at the age of 74, he suffered massive heart failure, and required a multiple-bypass, and he recovered. He was in a serious car accident at age 81, and recovered. Yes, he was a tough, tough dude.

He didn't start out studying nicotine or smoking, though he ended up being a pioneer in the field. His early focus was on experimental and physiological psychology, with special emphasis on memory (ironic, yes!) and he was a researcher at UC Berkeley in the very early 50s. As far as anyone can tell, there he was the very first human to take LSD. It was a sub-threshold dose, though, so he didn't trip.

One of my very favorite Dr. J stories is how one day, he came back to the lab and announced, "I've just been to Timothy Leary's deathbed." He paused and said matter-of-factly, "There were a lot of people smoking marijuana there." It was incredible to think that he and Leary were contemporaries, and had started out doing some of the same work, though of course their careers took very different paths. When he left he heard someone ask Leary who he was. "That's Murray Jarvik," Leary replied, "and he's someone you should know."

Dr. J was not a gift-giver by nature, but I'll always remember how one year, he gave me a book for Christmas (he was Jewish by culture, but a staunch atheist). I was newly pregnant with Matthew, and it was a pregnancy week by week book. Dr. J had his massive heart attack while I was on maternity leave, but I went to see him in the hospital after he was out of ICU. I showed him a picture of Matthew and he faintly smiled and said, "What a beautiful baby."

He was constantly making us laugh, unintentionally, and he was always good-humored about it. He'd suddenly say things out loud that he was thinking, like the time we were in a meeting and people were talking about the wife of one of the researchers and Dr. J abruptly said, "Mad cow." He was thinking about how that researcher and his wife had recently gone to Great Britain, and his mind wandered from there. He didn't tell a lot of jokes, but he was pleased with himself when he thought of one. There was a researcher in the lab named Rich, and one day someone asked Dr. J something about him. "Well, I'm not Rich," he replied, then he grinned a little and said, "Well, I guess I am."

He taught me so much, from the ground up, since I knew nothing about psychopharmacology or smoking or medical research when I came to the lab. He'd hired me thinking I was going to be an administrative assistant, and I ended up doing so much more than that, because he wanted me to contribute. When I left the lab, I told him, "It's been a privilege," and he replied, "Oh, for us too."

Truly it was a privilege and an honor to know you, Dr. Jarvik, and I will forever remember you with great fondness and appreciation.

Pollen Hell

We have peak levels of tree pollen around here. Also known as The Time of the Suffering, and the reason for hating the season. It's such a shame, because spring is SO beautiful here, with all the flowers on the trees and bushes and, um, flowers.

Yesterday Matthew had to stay home from school, because he was up coughing and rubbing his eyes from 4:00AM on. He looked HORRIBLE in he morning (his whole face puffy and swollen) and he couldn't even walk down the hall in anything resembling a straight line. He went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror and said, "Now I know why you said I look terrible. I look like an old man!"

Generic claritin and Singulair were not cutting it. I started him on Zyrtec, and it seems to be working better. I also found these great eye drops called Zaditor, which just went OTC.

I was standing in Target yesterday, holding various boxes of eye drops, trying to figure out what to buy. This lovely woman with really raw, red eyes walked up and picked up a box. She looked at me and said, "Allergy eyes?"

"Yes," I said, "my son is miserable."

She held up her box of Zaditor. "THIS is what you want. It used to be prescription, and I used to pay $75 for it, even with insurance, and it's the only thing that works. I ran out yesterday and I've been dying."

I'm embarrassed to say that I hadn't even considered it, since it was the most expensive type of drops there, but $12.59 is a small price to pay for relief. Which Matthew finally got, and he actually slept last night for the first time in 4 nights. So I did too, rather than staying up all night listening to him moan and rub his eyes.

It's really pretty, but man do I hate spring.

Off to Nap

I feel like I ran a marathon (this is the purest of metaphors, since I have no IDEA what it's like to run a marathon, or a half-marathon, or really even around the block).

So I have a lot to do still, further investigation of all the potential schools for Matthew (I'm stubbornly sure that nothing is going to be as perfect for him as the gifted special ed. program, but must not put all of one's eggs in one basket), various mindless but neglected errands, various stuff around the house. I've already been to the post office this morning to ship a huge box of stuff to a buyer in Israel.

Tessa has a field trip to the Hudson River today, where they will release back into the wild some fish that they seined last fall. Happily the fish did not all die over the winter, which happened to Matthew's class' fish when he was in first grade. She was surprised and disappointed that I did not sign up to chaperone the trip, since I've gone on most of her field trips this year. But a couple of weeks ago, all I could see was Matthew's program review coming up, and I knew I'd be totally wiped out by this point in time.

Which I am, so I am going to get OFF the freaking computer and go back to bed. The next set of battles can wait.

She Shoots, She Scores!

Yay yay yay, we get our way! Madame Chairperson of the CSE totally caved and gave us Matthew's out of district referral.

I'm being totally facetious; she was very kind and thoughtful about everyone's concerns and she was just following the procedural guidelines that she has no choice but to follow. But it was a fairly grueling hour-plus as we sat there and everyone talked and I didn't know what was going to happen once we got to the recommendations phase.

I think our conversation on Tuesday really did show her that we wanted this transfer, and more importantly, I think she saw how compelling my arguments were. I think she realized that this was going to happen, either now or later, and I really think that she saw that it was the appropriate placement for Matthew. Maybe I'm still living in Happy Loony Land, but I still believe that these people are all truly acting in the best interests of my child to the best of their ability.

But if it sounds in my title to this post like I'm taking credit for this outcome, well, I am. :D His teachers were all great in their advocacy, his therapist was awesome in describing how much work has been done behaviorally and what she feels he needs now, and best of all, the school psych. was just amazing, just perfect in her report of all the work that she's done with him. Ross was great too, and really complemented my comments and observations. Plus he really needs to get his props for working his ass off so that I have the opportunity to spend all the hours advocating for Matthew that I do.

But this wouldn't have happened if I hadn't pushed, if I hadn't gone out and found the right program for him, if I hadn't found a way to counter every potential argument in a logical fashion. It's SO uncharacteristic of me to toot my own horn, to say that I deserve commendation (even when I feel I truly do :)).

But I did good on this one. Clutch shot, when it counted.