The Po Show

Sacrifice

I love Thanksgiving. I love the traditional food so much (and we really don't deviate from the traditional menu, though I make green beans with butter and pepper rather than THE green bean casserole). I used to order the turkey dinner at Koo Koo Roo all the time because it had all the traditional Thanksgiving dishes.

This year, my turkey was absolutely freaking perfect. The moistest, juiciest, most delicious turkey I have ever eaten. And *I* made it! It took an hour longer to cook than I had anticipated, but it was worth the wait. My gravy, made with the copious drippings of said turkey, was absolutely top-notch too. Ross had wanted to just have the Trader Joe's gravy I'd bought for later in the left-overs cycle, but I am so glad I made my own.

Though the food was delicious, our meal itself was far from Norman Rockwell. Matthew got incredibly agitated as we sat down to eat, despite numerous reminders that he didn't have to eat anything he didn't want to eat. He said he wanted to try some turkey (having said all day how good it smelled as it roasted), but got very upset when a small piece was put on his plate. We told him again that he didn't have to eat it. He could have bread (plain french bread that he loves) or green beans (which he used to love, but has recently gone off of, having eaten them every single day for several months). He could wait till later to have his pizza (it was only 4:30, and he'd had lunch at the usual time, so he wasn't starving). We told him repeatedly that he didn't have to eat anything he didn't want, that the main point of the meal was that we were all together and thankful that we had each other. He spent the whole time sitting backwards in his chair making angry noises, tapping the back of his chair, refusing to talk to anyone. He was overwhelmed, not sure about why he was so upset, unsure of whether he wanted to try any food or not, and pissed off beyond belief that we were asking him to stay at the table with the rest of us.

I alternated between trying to coax him out of his funk and trying to ignore him, but neither really worked. It all seemed really unfair to Tessa, who tried EVERYTHING, ate a mountain of sweet potatoes, a huge bowl of green beans, and two servings of turkey. I walked the fine line of praising her for trying everything and thanking her for her compliments about the food, and not making too big a deal of it because I knew it would further upset Matthew. As soon as he was excused from the table, he went into his room and closed the door and didn't come out for hours, saying he wasn't hungry and didn't want to eat.

There was a front page article in the New York Times the other day that really annoyed me. The headline was something like, "To Buy Children's Gifts, Mothers Do Without." The mother featured in the opening anecdote was buying the toys her four year old wanted for Christmas. Due to harder economic times, to do so she had to forego ****buying the new season designer jeans she has been coveting***. Are you freaking KIDDING me??? Mothers all over the world go without EATING so that their children can eat. That's sacrifice. The article continued to talk about how women's apparel sales have been down, as a result of mothers cutting back on their own clothing in order to buy holiday gifts for their kids.

I have always done this. My clothes are almost exclusively from church sales or from the 70% off past season stuff at Lands' End. I don't have a shirt that cost more than $10; most were around $5. And I do NOT consider that a sacrifice. Certainly not a front page news-worthy sacrifice. It's just life.

But having to choke down my food, food that I spent all day preparing and that I wait all year to eat, because my son is ruining Thanksgiving dinner (and I can't actually *say* "Stop it, you're ruining Thanksgiving dinner!"), and having to remain calm and supportive about it because he is just not capable of dealing with his feelings, that is a sacrifice. I'm usually sanguine about having to work around all of my kids' issues, letting go of what I want because of what they need, but this just made me so angry and sad.

Well, That's a New One

I've had parts of my body called all kinds of things over the years. Today my OB/GYN was doing my annual exam and said that she wanted me to have an ultrasound, because my uterus was "a little bulky." :p I guess I'm packing away the pounds in all kinds of places. (Actually she wants to check for uterine polyps.)

My uterus was once called "irritable" when I was pregnant with Matthew and was having contractions every single day for 4 weeks. I said you'd be irritable too if someone put you through an experience like that.

Oh, and can I just say how much I LOOOOVE our new medical group? I got through my annual exam visit, went downstairs to schedule my ultrasound and a mammogram, and had my blood drawn at the lab to check my FSH and LH and some other hormone-related something, ALL in less than 45 minutes! All the staff is just really top-notch too. It's like having all the services of a big hospital in a little compact two-story building. Coolio.

Taking the Fifth

Last night Tessa called out to me from the bathtub: "There're red spots on my legs!" Sighing inwardly, I went over to look. This is the girl who can get dramatic about a tiny, not-seen-with-the-naked-eye bump on her skin, so I figured it wasn't anything, or just one of the many itchy little bumps that spring up on her body due to her variety of allergies.

In fact, her whole torso, both arms, both legs, and back were covered with a bright red and white, splotchy rash. She got out of the tub, and the rash appeared just slightly raised. It didn't itch, though, so I decided to wait and see how it looked after the heat of the bath wore off. In a couple of hours, it was still there, but much lighter, so I thought we should wait till morning. She doesn't do well with benadryl, and otherwise seemed to be fine, though I did have "Should I take her to the ER for a shot of prednisone?" running through my head.

And then I promptly forgot about it :(. This morning we all got up as usual (well, I was up from 5:00AM on) and it wasn't till she was getting dressed, after having been sitting right next to a space heater, that I noticed that the rash was BRIGHT red on her legs now, all the way down to her feet. Then it hit me, "That looks like Fifth's Disease!" Neither of my kids has ever had it, and I don't even think I've ever seen it in person, and she didn't have that classic slapped-cheek look (she's as fair as Snow White and always sitting next to heaters these days, so she always has rosy-red cheeks), but I just immediately knew that's what it was. I got online and looked up pics of Fifth's, and they looked exactly like what Tessa had.

So, no school, quick call to the ped to get her seen, and he confirmed that it was Fifth's. Of course now she's not contagious, so she then went to school. I called Ross to make sure that no one in his office is pregnant. And that was that.

Except for one thing that was kind of funny. I went to Tessa's class again this afternoon to observe math and computer lab time (so fun!) and I saw a stack of notices on the teacher's desk. You know, the notice you hate getting, that says, "Your child may have been exposed to a contagious condition" and has several conditions listed. The one that flips me out is the notice about lice. It was just weird to think that this notice going out to all the families in class was about MY child, the bearer of contagion. Oh well, I guess if you have to be the bearer of contagion, Fifth's is a pretty mild thing to bear.

Second Grade Morning

It's National Education Week again, which means parents are invited to visit their kids' classrooms at our public school. This morning I went to Tessa's class during ELA time, and it was so much fun.

As I walked in, the class was finding words using the letters of the word "PRESIDENT," which cracked me up after all the Pathwords I've been playing on Facebook lately :D. They found 58 three- and four-letter words (the teacher wouldn't let them simply put an "s" after three-letter words in order to make a four-letter word :)), which I found very impressive. There wasn't time to move on to five-letter words, so the kids got to stand up and stretch for a minute. Mrs. Shulman led them in making circles with their arms and bending side to side, as she told them to "Get out all the shpilkas" :D :D. (Yes, TC, I do know what that means!)

They were then given a packet on Barack Obama, and Mrs. Shulman pointed out on the world map all of the places associated with Obama in his life. Then the class took turns reading aloud about Obama's life story, and Mrs. Shulman asked questions like, "If Barack Obama was born in 1961, how old is he now?" and "What are some of the qualifications for becoming president of the United States?" I thought these were pretty advanced questions for second grade, and the kids answered them all.

I hadn't really had much contact with Mrs. Shulman yet this year. Ross went to Parent's Night, and when the class went on a walking field trip to the firehouse, Mrs. Shulman could not come along (she fractured her pelvis in three places when she tripped and fell during a field trip to the White Plains Hospital last June, and she can't walk very quickly still). This was my first time to see her "in action" so to speak, and she is just wonderful. She's kind of an old school teacher (no pun intended), but SOOO warm and effusive and patient. I think it's the highest calling on earth, being an elementary school teacher who REALLY teaches, who constantly looks for ways inject more information, more insight, more items of interest, into the lessons printed on the worksheets, all in an engaging way that keeps the kids (LITTLE kids, still) listening and WANTING to learn what she has to offer.

We are fortunate beyond words that we have such teachers.

The Definitive Response

The little table next to my side of the bed has been missing a couple of bolts for quite awhile now. It still stood okay, but the legs were pretty wobbly. Today we went to Home Depot and Ross got some new bolts for it. We came home and he put them in.

I was in the kitchen, and he came in and said, "That table is now sturdier than it has been for four and a half years." Then he said, deadpan, "You can't lean on it during sex, though. It's not that strong."

To which there was really only one thing I could say:

"Are you saying I'm FAT???"

Sign of the Times

Matthew and Tessa were discussing the age-old question of what came first, the chicken or the egg. It remains such an interesting debate :).

Then Tessa said, "Well, we could just GOOGLE IT!"

I loved that, the conviction that all knowledge is available on the web, that all would be revealed thanks to Google. These kids don't remember a time when answers of all kinds were not at your fingertips, literally. Information does not have to be actively sought out, but comes to you via a three word query.

Of course, they don't realize how the programming of search engines determines the responses to those queries, nor do they likely care. That's a sign that's hidden from view, behind the bright colorful letters. (Not that I'm trying to make Google sound ominous. I love Google, if only for giving me the gift of Gmail.)

Stand Up

I love having a funny husband. The great thing too is that we switch off on feeding each other lines, intentionally or unintentionally, and we love it when the other is the comic as well as the straight man (insert joke here).

Yesterday Ross went to the orthopedist, to have his knee looked at. It still hurts, 6 months after it went **POP** while he was walking to the train station. He's going to call today to be scheduled for an MRI. The good news is that the ortho didn't think it was necessarily the ligament, as Ross had feared, which would have to be fixed with full-on replacement surgery. Ross is not relishing the thought of them opening up his knee, and having to harvest a ligament from somewhere else in his body.

"Someday they'll be able to make artificial ones," I said, "but yeah, they can't just pull them out of the air."

"No," he said, "they pull them OUT OF YOUR ASS." Bu-dum-CHEE!! The audience laughs appreciatively and applauds.

(It's funny because it's true--the best ligaments come from your ass, because they're much stronger.)

It's also fun to live with someone who shares all of your inside jokes, 23 years worth of them. I've often thought that no matter what, even if John Cusack came knocking on my door (the real one or the metaphorical one :D), I would have to stay with Ross, you know, for the jokes.

Phone Whore

When Ross and I were living in HI (in our second place, not the apartment that was across the street from where Barack Obama lived as a child!), we had a roommate who talked on the phone incessantly. He was referred to, by the other three of us who lived in the house, as the "phone whore."

I've spent the afternoon on the phone with my mother, Matthew's old school psychologist, and my sister. My *ears* hurt. I guess you have to get in shape to talk on the phone, and I am not properly conditioned for such activity. I guess there are speaker phones, but I hate having people sound like they're in a tunnel underground.

I guess I'll just never be a phone whore.

Welcome to My (Everyday) World

One thing that I'll really miss about the online board I left is having a place to talk about my mundane life. It was so easy to post, and people were always talking about the little things they had going on in their lives. It was the place I talked about stuff I'd bought that day, or the kids' field trips, or stuff that was on my mind. I stopped talking about that stuff on the August list a long time ago, and this blog has always served as the place I really *write* about things of at least some significance.

Didn't someone write a book about blogging, called No One Cares What You Had for Lunch, or something like that? That's how I've tried to treat my own blog, which is why I often don't post for several days. I often have strings of days in which, well, nothing really happens. I get the kids off to school, I run errands, I go shopping, I hang out on the computer. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Well, I've decided that sometimes it's okay to talk about stuff like that here, even if no one really cares :).

Today I went on Tessa's walking field trip to the firehouse downtown. She had a dentist appointment at 11:15, which meant I had to drive her to school, come home to put Matthew on his bus, go back to her school to make arrangements for her to leave with me from the firehouse, drive to the firehouse and park, then walk back toward school till I met up with the group. The firehouse tour was much as you'd expect, though we did have the thrill of getting to see the truck and engine drive away when the firefighters got a call. Of course, then the tour was somewhat shortened, because with the truck and engine gone there wasn't much else to see. They'd already shown a lot of the equipment on those vehicles, though, so it was okay. The kids were all vastly amused that the firefighters, as they got into their gear, left their shoes on the floor where they took them off and just hopped onto the trucks.

Not too earth-shattering, but it's what happened today.

My Little Circle Shrinks Further

As I've said many times before, I really don't have any face-to-face, IRL, seen-on-a-regular-basis friends these days, to my continued bewilderment. No one that I meet for lunch, or shopping, or talk to on the phone (well, the fact that I'm phone-phobic may be the reason for that, but you know what I mean!). But I do have many online friends whom I love dearly, and "see" on a very regular basis.

I "saw" many of them on a daily basis via an online board I've been a member of, for almost three years now. It was the spawn of another board that was the spin-off of an earlier board that came about as an off-shoot of a forum that originally started about four years ago (don't you just love the internet?). The original forum was composed of a group of women who were all obsessed with Gymboree clothing. I joined it more or less as research, to figure out which items were popular, when sales were coming up, and what coupons were floating around. That forum got really huge, and as always there were some serious crazies posting there, so there were various new private membership boards formed to try and get away from the crazies. Still more problems ensued with all these smaller groups, and during the eventual shake out I ended up with a very small, intimate, very nice group of women.

I've logged on there at least a couple of times a day for almost three years. Most of those women don't even buy Gymboree anymore, but they stay for the friendships. I've spent an enormous amount of time and energy posting peppy, supportive posts, researching problems for people, maintaining a birthday list and wishing each member and her children a happy birthday, and generally hanging out with these women.

In the way of internet friendships, I knew that I really didn't have all that much in common with most of these women, and I would never have become friends with them IRL. But it was nice to chat and see pictures of their sweet children. Lots of times, people posted things that made me sort of go "ick" inside, but I let it go. I didn't swear overtly, I didn't spout lefty politics, I feel that I went out of my way to be respectful and considerate of others' sensibilities.

Yesterday I logged on in the morning and found a long diatribe by one of the women on the board, saying it was "a very sad day for America." She then went on to slam Barack Obama, saying he had no character or commitment to the country and that he was morally unfit and completely unqualified to serve as president. She said she was sure that his election would worsen the moral decay that is ruining the country.

Shaken, I fired off a response, saying that I had personally been traumatized in 2004, but I would NEVER post to the group that I thought Bush's re-election was an unimaginable disaster, when I knew that there were people reading it who supported him. I said that I thought that the board was supposed to be a place where everyone considered the feelings of others, and posting a diatribe attacking Obama like that directly impugned the judgment of those who supported him. A flurry of responses followed, with several people saying that everyone was entitled to her opinion, and should be allowed to express those opinions without "outbursts," in the words of one person (I assume that was leveled at me). The woman who originally posted the thread responded by saying that she was tired of being held back from saying what she thought "just because I'm a white Christian." OMG.

I responded again, saying that I apologized if my post was taken as an attempt to stifle anyone's opinion, but that I felt there was a fundamental difference between stating your preference for a candidate, and saying that his opponent was morally unfit to serve as president. I also said that I failed to understand why she thought she had to censure her comments as a white Christian, since the majority of women on the board are conservative white Christians. I said that I was not, but I had always tempered my comments out of respect for those who were.

And then I decided to get the hell out of there. There was no way that I was going to go out of my way to try and be supportive and respectful of people who think that Sarah Palin is just wonderful, if I can't expect the same from them.

But I'm sad, because there really are several people on that board whom I really love, and I'll miss sitting down every morning, logging on, and seeing what they're up to for the day.

Slam Dunk

So glad that my extremely cautious optimism yesterday did NOT jinx Obama's win :).

I spent the day so nervous. Tessa had the day off from school, and Matthew stayed home because his leg still really hurt from the charley horse and I thought it would help a lot for him to keep it extended with a heat pad under it. So other than going out to vote, I was home all day, without the distraction of errands or shopping. I watched a LOT of CNN, which I never ever do, as I usually avoid the news networks like the plague. So I got to watch a whole lot of talking heads trying to fill the hours till there were actually results to report. It was a long day. I also watched "I Am Legend" on cable by myself in the bedroom, which has the best final line: "Light up the darkness." Yes, please.

Results trickled in exceedingly slowly (CNN made a huge deal about exit poll results coming up at 6:00 or so, and all that was offered was that 62% of people polled said that the economy was their most important issue in voting :p. Wow, REALLY??), Ross was late coming home from work, and I was snappish and irritable from being home all day. We finally got the kids to bed and settled in to watch further returns.

Throughout the day, I had been thinking about 1992, the most memorable election of my lifetime. I will never forget the elation I felt, sitting with Ross and our friend Scott in our apartment in Honolulu, watching the returns come in, thinking that MAYBE this really was going to happen, that Bill Clinton really was going to win. Oh, the thought of a Democrat back in the White House, especially such a brilliant thinker, was absolutely stunning. It was sheer euphoria.

I'm a lot more beaten down by life now (and how in the HELL did it get to be SIXTEEN YEARS later??), and a lot less prone to euphoria. We watched the returns come in, the projections made, and it all looked good, very good. But I didn't feel elated, just a pit of nervousness in my stomach. 2004 had really traumatized me, and I never completely recovered, so I wasn't ready to let myself celebrate.

We switched over to Comedy Central and a welcome diversion in The Daily Show/Colbert Report. Ross kept the laptop and CNN going, and continued to monitor coverage. State by state, wins were called, electoral votes were assigned, the numbers kept climbing.

At 11:00 EST, it was Jon Stewart who announced to us that Barack Obama was the President-Elect of the United States. I wouldn't have had the news given to me in any other way. And still instead of elation, I felt just gut-wrenching relief, a tidal wave of thankfulness that it was over, the long national nightmare of the Bush years was over.

I sobbed and sobbed, soaking a tissue. Then I wadded it up and chucked it across the room at the trash can, and **the sucker spun straight in**. I've been throwing tissues at that trash can for four years now, and I've never once made one in. Ross was STUNNED, and instantly proclaimed that *THAT* was the fucking miracle of the night, completely overshadowing Obama taking Virginia.

I say it was all part of the same miracle, channeled through the television, across the airwaves, across the country, through us all. Swish.

Landslide

When I picked up Tessa at school yesterday, she was sporting an "I Voted" sticker on her dress. She said they had had an election at school, so I asked her for whom she had voted.

"Barack Obama," she said, with something of a "Duh!" tone in her voice.

"That's my girl!," I said joyously.

"Barack Obama won by a LOT," she went on. Then being Tessa, she had the exact figures for me.

"John McCain had 84 votes, and Barack Obama had FOUR HUNDRED AND NINETEEN votes!" WOOHOO!!!!

Then she said, "They let me vote, even though I wasn't registered." Apparently they had registered voters last Thursday, when she was absent. This sort of cracked me up, my own daughter involved in voter fraud :D.

"Well, that is what they call a landslide," I told her, and then I explained the term. "Now let's hope that really happens."

I've been watching the news all morning, and yes, hope. I'm feeling it. Tessa and I will leave in a minute to go to the polls, wearing red, white, and blue. Mostly blue, as in states. We may not get a landslide, but I think we're going to get a win.

"You Have No Idea"

I've been hearing this a lot from Matthew. It just sounds so pre-adolescent, along with "No one understands how I'm feeling!" Ah, the tsunami of angst that is headed our way, I can feel it.

Matthew hobbled into the living room this morning, unable to put any weight on his right leg. He said it had hurt all night, like there was something wrong with the nerve. I rubbed his upper calf, near the fold of the knee, and felt a bunched up muscle. Seemed like a charley horse to me, so I gave him an ibuprofen and told him to drink a lot of water. All morning he grimaced and winced every time he moved, and wouldn't put his foot down flat when he walked.

"Does it still hurt?," I asked.

"You have NO idea," he replied.

Yeah, 'cause I've never had a charley horse before, and I have no idea how they hurt. Kind of like when he comes home from school huffing and puffing, heaving great sighs, and when I ask if he's tired, he says, "You have NO idea!" Yeah, 'cause **I've** never been tired before in my entire LIFE, so how could I have any idea?? I make the required sympathetic comments, and I do feel for him, but geez.

I watch as the peach fuzz darkens on his upper lip, as his voice sometimes runs this crazy gamut between low notes and high notes, as his feet expand. He's grown like two inches since summer, making him over 5'2".

He's 11 years old, and puberty seems to be knocking on our door, and I'm so not ready for it. You have no idea.