Dilettante's Progress

Whither autumn?

2007-10-21T16:41:00.000-07:00

So Mother Nature taunts us again. Last week she dangled a few cool fall-ish days in front of our faces, just long enough to start pulling sweaters and tweeds out of mothballs, then she unleashes a full on Santa Ana. Temperatures should be in the mid to high 80's all next week.

And Malibu is burning. Again.

But for whatever reason, my neighbor's liquidamber tree is giving the finger to Mother Nature, and is wearing her fall foliage, heat be damned.

Teh Funny Kitty Videos

2007-10-07T19:03:00.000-07:00

Maya's Granny has thrown down the Funny Kitty Video gauntlet with this.

I see your adorable kitties, and raise you a Leopard.

Manure Patrol

2007-08-25T07:15:00.000-07:00

This sign still hangs in my Dad's barn. It was a present from me either for Christmas or his birthday when I was about 12 years old, because it seemed to me at the time that these were the words I heard most often from him.

Some background: my folks first put me on a horse when I was about four years old, and my childhood passion was born. I started taking weekly riding lessons when I was about six, and immediately began begging for a horse of my own. For three and a half years, my parents tuned out my whining, and finally they snapped. When I was nine-and-a-half, they told me that if I could prove I would be responsible enough for a horse by taking complete care of our dog and cat for the next six months (feeding, grooming, cleaning up, making vet appointments) they would get me a horse for my tenth birthday. They never thought I'd do it.

We bought our first horse, Duchess, one week after I turned ten. Then a second, Bill. My Dad started riding, and suddenly found the meaning of life. We moved from the suburbs to the quasi-country where we could keep horses at home instead of boarding. Horse care was my responsibility, including feeding, grooming, tack care, and of course, cleaning up. We had next door neighbors who were NOT horse people and complained about flies and smell, so I was charged with mucking out stalls and corrals twice a day, rain or shine, which quickly became known as Manure Patrol.

But this was a good life lesson. Tempering the joy of any endeavor, (be it having animals or children or even a job) there's always some shit to shovel. Here's a pic of me, my Dad, and my son Sam who has also developed a love of "ride the horse."

They don't even TRY anymore....

2007-08-12T06:18:00.000-07:00

My e-mail software has a junk mail filter. I always check my junk mail file, just to be sure that valid e-mail hasn't been diverted there (sometimes it is). I've noticed that junk mail tends to have waves of themes. For a very long time, most of it seemed to be wanting to sell me drugs for erectile dysfunction, and fake Rolex watches. Lately the subject themes have been "we've approved your loan request" or "thanks for contacting us, we're ready to loan you money," and what appears to be bl*w j*b p0rn. (using the characters so those searching for actual BJP won't be directed here and be disappointed). Usually the senders make a token effort to make their names look like actual people, "Sherry Hound" or "Ivana Watch". Of course I never open these and delete them. I guess the junk mail senders have decided I'm not even worth the effort to try to fool, as today two of the sender names were "deception" (for a "loan approval") and "flimsy replica" (for fake watches).

Dilettante's School of Dog Walking Etiquette

2007-08-11T11:56:00.000-07:00

Lesson #35:

Try to remember not to wave at your neighbors with the same hand that's grasping the bag of poop. Meanings could be misconstrued.

Mixed Family Traditions Meme

2007-08-08T05:41:00.000-07:00

Maya's Granny tagged me for this meme. Here's how it works:

1. Post the rules.

2. You have to choose two different heritages that you (or an ancestor) really do have. They can be nationalities, races, religions, regions, or even political parties.

3. Make up a silly tradition (or as many as you want) that reflects them.

4. Do as many as there are mixes in your family.

5. Name five people to follow; inform them in the comments section of their blogs.

OK, this one is a bit tough for me because I don't have a lot of details about various ancestors and nationality/heritage.

On my mother's side, my Grandmother was German (mostly) and my Grandfather was Irish. So on St. Patrick's Day, the family sat down to a meal of corned beef and sauerkraut.

I have an ancestor on my mother's side (Great Great Grandmother?) who was Cherokee. But I don't know who she was married to or if she was on my Grandmother's or Grandfather's side. But I'll pretend she was married to a Polish man, so on Christmas they enjoyed a nice Bufflalo roast and Pierogi's.

My father's ancestors were Scottish, Irish and Welsh. So when they got together they always argued about which of them was most oppressed by the Brits. And whether the haggis course should be served before or after the boiled potatoes.

That's about all I can think of. We have a boring family, heritage-wise.

Hopefully my tag-ees will have more interesting families!

I'm tagging Linda at Bugwalk. She's the only blogger I know besides Jill at Somewhere You Feel Free, but I think Jill has her hands full right about now. I was priviledged enough to get to meet Baby Megan on Sunday, and a cuter baby I don't think I've yet met. (Except for Sam, of course, who turns 10 tomorrow!)

I've been "Simpsonified!"

2007-07-25T19:23:00.000-07:00

This is too cool. Go to http://www.simpsonsmovie.com/ . You can create your own Simpsons avatar. I think this is a striking resemblance to the real me.

Easy Keepers

2007-07-18T14:44:00.000-07:00

Harriet over at Feed Me! is dealing with one of those "if-fat-people-just-ate-less-and-exercised-more-they'd-all-be-thin" trolls. No matter how many studies and statistics you pull out showing that weight is largely due to genetics and that weight loss dieting has a woeful success rate, they still insist that it's a simple manner of energy in/energy out. 90% of the people I've run into online and IRL who cling so tenaciously to this fallacy are people who have never really struggled with their weight beyond the "I-noticed-I-was-getting-a-paunch-so-I-cut-down-to-two-beers-a-night" level.

When I was a kid, we had horses (my dad still does). We kept Quarter Horses at the time, which are known for being "easy keepers." This means that they can maintain or even gain weight on less food than some other breeds of horses. This was considered desirable in the 19th century West, when and where the breed was developed, because food could be scarce in that arid climate, and having a horse that wouldn't starve to death easily was a plus. The fact that certain breeds of horses needed more or less food per pound of body weight to maintain their weight was commonly understood among horse people, and not disputed.

Being a chubby kid, I used to joke that I was an "easy keeper" too; I ate the same food as my slimmer sister, but gained weight more easily and had more trouble losing it. I don't know why it's so easy for some folks to accept that weight is genetic with horses (or different breeds of dogs or cats) but not with people, unless of course it's that thin person we've all known at one time, who force-feeds themselves pies or peanut butter sandwiches in a futile attempt to gain weight. When it comes to a fast metabolism, there's usually no problem getting people to acknowledge that the energy in/energy out "rule" doesn't apply. I don't know why it's so hard to get the same acknowledgement in the other direction.

The Parent Police

2007-07-15T18:59:00.001-07:00

Or, another episode of What I Should Have Said to the Bitch.

This has only happened to me a couple of times, so when it does I'm in such shock that I'm usually left hanging for an appropriately bitchy response. Today I took Sam over to the mall to get out of the house for a while. He loves to walk around the mall to look at things and ride up and down the escalators. He's generally very well-behaved (today was no exception) and he was happy and excited and "flirting" with all of the female sales associates. We were at Nordstroms and I wanted to do one lap around the shoe department to see what was new. This woman was sitting in a chair trying on shoes, and had leaned her crutches against the chair so they were sticking out in the aisle. Sam likes to show me things, and had picked up a shoe from the display on the other side of the aisle for me to see, and didn't see her crutches behind him and accidently kicked them. I was holding onto his hand all this time, and as quickly as I could took the shoe from him, put it back in the display and moved him away from where her crutches were still blocking half the aisle, while telling him well within her earshot, "Honey, watch where you're stepping! Be careful please."

So we get a few feet away, and stop to look at something at a display table (which is now in between her and us), and several seconds later she turns around in her chair and says in one of those haughty, fake polite voices, "Will you PLEASE WATCH him!" and then because apparently she thinks I'm stupid, says again "Will you PLEASE WATCH him." I assume she's referring to my son, who I have by the hand (and had the entire time) and is standing there doing nothing. I just blinked a couple of times and said "we're leaving now." It's not like he was misbehaving. He just tripped over her fucking crutches. And I'd already moved him well out of range several seconds before. Where do people like this get off???? I know some parents do let their kids run amok in public, but that's not us. We always are consicous of his behavior and take pains to be sure he's not disturbing anyone, or we remove him. Gah.

The Other Child

2007-07-07T06:33:00.000-07:00

I don't think about him much anymore, the other child, the one we thought we'd have, the almost ten-year-old who I imagine would right now be riding his skateboard up and down the sidewalk outside the house instead of the ten-year-old watching Elmo videos and flapping his arms excitedly. The one who would be bringing home math and social studies homework, instead of tracing the letters and coloring the balloons. The one who would be fighting with me about whether he was old enough to walk to Burger King with his friends instead of fighting with me about whether it's time to stop playing long enough to get a fresh diaper.

But if we'd had that child instead of the one we have, he would have started brushing aside my kisses a couple years ago, and would have long since outgrown sitting in my lap at bedtime and listening to a Thomas the Tank Engine story. He would probably no longer think that going to Grandma's house to swim was the coolest thing ever, or get excited about an airplane flying over. He'd probably no longer be happy to go to school, and anxious to show us his ability to recognize letters and numbers on signs.

I don't think about that other child much anymore.

When Sam was first born, and we knew there was Trouble, we got a lot of well-meant advice and platitudes meant to console. Everything from "I'm sure he'll be just fine in time," to "God must think you're very special people to give you this child to care for." Neither of which actually consoled. Nothing prepares you for a child with disabilities. The first and overriding emotion is one of being overwhelmed, "we can't possibly care for this child." But little by little (and in our case, with a lot of support and hand-holding from people who knew better) you get into the routines, you learn how to fight the insurance company to pay for all of the services they're supposed to but will initially deny, you learn about the services available, you learn how to handle an IEP, and you actually find ways to have a reasonably normal life. You find that--most of the time anyway--you can cope.

There are some concerns looming: we're going through some behavioral issues right now (hitting or yelling when frustrated) that we're working on but that could be serious as he gets bigger and hits adolescence (when the testosterone kicks in, dialing up the aggression), finding living arrangements for him as an adult where he will be well cared for, and setting up finances/trusts so that he will continue to be cared for once we're gone and won't be at the mercy of whatever form of "compassionate conservatism" is carrying the day. That last is the one that worries us the most.

But then, I imagine we'd be worrying about some of this even if he were the other child.

"The One Stone Solution"

2007-06-30T06:44:00.000-07:00

A couple months back, I blogged about the neverending desire to be thinner than I am currently despite the rational part of me that knows it's bullshit.

Naomi Wolf in "The Beauty Myth" * talks about the "One Stone Solution" which is the 15-20 pounds that most women feel is all that lies between them and having an acceptable body.

And now Harriet Brown at Feed Me! has adressed this with amazing insight. Apparently Rachel Hunter, a model and wife of Rod Stewart has been tapped to be the spokesmodel for SlimFast, a product which she has never used or needed. Quoted in as saying when asked about her inexperience with the product, "But, you know, who doesn't want to lose ten to twenty pounds?" she demonstrates just how fucked up our culture has become about weight. Here's what Harriet said that really resonated with me:

This kind of fat trash talk is my least favorite. It's the equivalent of the
air kiss, the baring of the throat by the subordinate animal. It's a social
custom denoting (supposedly) good taste and submissive femininity.

Nail. Hammer. Bang.

*I think Naomi's lost a lot of credibility with some of what she's written since then, but IMO she got it right in this book.

How We Know the Universe Is Mocking Us

2007-06-30T06:30:00.000-07:00

Monday through Friday, I have to pry my son out of bed with a crowbar at 6:45 to get him ready for school.

Come Saturday, he's up and bouncing at 5:30, and wanting his cereal. This has been the pattern for enough weeks that I've decided it's a plot.

Reading List

2007-06-27T19:48:00.000-07:00

Yah, like I have time to read....

Just ordered Glenn Greenwald's A Tragic Legacy: How A Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency. If you're of a mind to read something political, this is the one. Glenn's blog, Unclaimed Territory was one of my regular stops, and now he blogs for Salon.com here.

Also finally broke down and ordered Rethinking Thin by Gina Kolata. This book has been getting some pretty good reviews on both sides of the fat issue (the rational side vs. the "Obesity Is Teh Icky And Will Kill Us All" side).

I'll review both once I've finished. That will keep me motivated to actually finish them.

Also, Joy Nash whose "Fat Rant" I linked to a while back has started her own blog. Joy's had over a million hits on her Fat Rant video at YouTube, and had since received lots of spashy media attention. Yay, Joy!

Ancient Chinese Remedy....

2007-06-23T20:15:00.000-07:00

I've been talking about doing this for months, but I finally called up the acupuncturist who treated Doug when he had Bell's Palsy and went in for a consultation about my arthritis. Dr Mao (yes, really!) is a 38th generation Chinese acupuncturist/herbalist. We chatted for a while about my symptoms (pain, stiffness and lack of mobility from the arthritis in my right hip) and what his treatments would and would not do (would help the pain, would not help the underlying problem which ultimately will need to be resolved with a hip replacement).

After the consultation it was time for treatment. I was a little anxious, but it turned out to be nothing to worry about. The needles going in feel like a slight nettle prick, but then you don't feel them. He put needles in several spots along my right side, from scalp to ankle, and hooked up some electric stimulation for the ones in my hip. Then left for 40 minutes. I was a bit restless for about the first 15 minutes, but after that I relaxed and dozed a bit. The rest of the day I felt very relaxed and "loose."

When I was done with the treatment, I picked up my herbs and the very exact and complicated instructions for brewing the tea that I'm to drink three times per day. My package contained three large sealed baggies of herbs (one week's worth), which look and smell like something scooped up off the forest floor. They're quite aromatic when brewing as well. Not unpleasant, just very....herbal. The tea itself reminds me of a rather bitter sasparilla. The first day I held my nose and choked it down, all three cups per day. The second day it still tasted icky, but not to where I needed to hold my breath. Today is the third day and I'm actually acquiring a taste for the stuff.

So far I'm not noticing any improvement in the pain and stiffness, but at least it's no worse. I've spoken to many people who have claimed that acupuncture helped their pain when nothing else would; I figure at best it will help, at worst I won't notice any affect.

It's Official...

2007-06-17T14:50:00.001-07:00

I'm a Dog Mom™.

You know you've crossed over the the dog side when you actually pay to have their pictures taken.

Friday Fat Rant

2007-06-08T13:57:00.001-07:00

This made me smile. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out.

Thoughts on "P.C"

2007-06-07T06:35:00.001-07:00

Whenever I hear or read someone who (often proudly) preferaces the point they're about to make with, "I'm not P.C." or "I know this isn't very P.C., but", my Babelfish translates as "I'm very attached to my prejudices and resent having to show respect to anyone who is/thinks different than me."

What most of the folks (usually conservatives) who throw this term around don't understand is that it was resurrected into modern parlance in the early 80's by liberals/lefties who were using it in a humorous/ironic way. (Among the Princeton Poli Sci grad students I was hanging out with at the time, it was most frequently used when chiding someone for their orthodoxy to any given set of political beliefs, left or right.) But I've found that most conservatives tend to be a bit literal-minded, and seemed to have had an irony-ectomy.

Thoughts on Food and Addiction

2007-06-06T21:38:00.000-07:00

Does not measure a woman's worth.

I like to go back through the archives of blogs I've just become acquainted with and read some of the older posts. Every Woman Has An Eating Disorder has a link on her sideboard to a post from 2006 about her one and only visit to a Weight Watchers meeting. Unfortunately, I attended more than one meeting. Many, many more. While I don't miss the obsessing, feeling hungry all the time, wanting to throw my baggie of raw veggies against the wall (and I like raw veggies), feeling like a failure when I didn't lose weight, the endless shopping, cooking and meal planning, the anxiety preceding any social gathering about whether there would be food that would fit into whatever iteration of the food plan WW was following that year, the endless explaining to relatives that yes I could have a salad but no I couldn't have Aunt Fannie's scalloped potatoes, there is one thing I do miss: the solidarity. You don't feel isolated at a WW meeting. Everyone there is in the same boat and shares your struggles. There's a lot of cameraderie and support and sense of shared purpose. And it's my belief that this is why a lot of women keep going, or going back, even if they aren't losing weight or don't have much (or even any) weight to lose.

I think it's also that sense of connection that makes Twelve Step programs work. Back in the 80's, when you weren't anybody unless you were addicted to something, I used to joke that some of my friends had simply switched their drug of choice when they "got sober." Instead of booze, drugs or bad relationships, they switched all of that compulsiveness over to The Program. Being On The Program™ became all they wanted to talk about or think about. For some, it became another way to avoid facing themselves and how they'd fucked up their lives. They'd talk the lingo, but the changes weren't happening. (Before anyone starts jumping all over me, I know that there are people who never would have made it without Twelve Step programs and who really did transform their lives. Those aren't the folks I'm talking about here.) Back in those days, a couple of my "addicted" friends suggested I go to Overeaters Anonymous. They knew I struggled with weight and food, and were eager to slap the Addiction label on just about anything that moved. So I went to a couple of meetings. Now this was in the days when OA wasn't about religious adherence to the "gray sheet" (the diet). Even though a part of me knew I wasn't actually addicted to food, I tried to follow the program and be "abstinent." But how to define "abstinence" when it comes to a substance that you can't actually abstain from without eventually kicking the bucket? No one in the OA group was able to offer me much guidance there either. "It's however you define it," was the standard answer at that time. I tried eating three "balanced" meals a day with no snacks, gained 5 lbs in three weeks, and gave up. These days, it's my understanding that OA has gone back to a food plan, which avoids all sugar and white flour, at least according to someone I know who was an OA regular about 5 years ago.

Part of why I couldn't believe that I was addicted to food was that I'd had times in my adult life when I wasn't obsessed or overeating. The first time was back in 1980 in the months after I read Fat Is a Feminist Issue by Susie Orbach. I stopped dieting, and almost overnight I stopped bingeing. I stopped worrying about my weight. The freedom I felt around food was a revelation. I hadn't felt that way since I was a kid. After a few months, the weight gain started to bother me, so back to restricting my food I went. (But I never did go back to "bingeing with a vengeance" like I had in my teens and early 20's.) I went back and forth with this stuff over the next twenty or so years. The cycle would go like this: I'd read something that convinced me that dieting was futile, I'd have a few months of eating like a normal person (or pretty close to it), then I'd get discouraged about my weight, go on a diet, lose weight, gain back some, all, or more of it, decide dieting was futile, rinse, repeat. I "did" Weight Watchers a couple of times during those years, the most "successful" stint being the months before my wedding, losing 15 pounds and keeping it off for about a year. Anyhow, I've come to realize that my eating was always most out of control following a diet, and when I gave myself permission to eat, the overeating stopped. Kind of the opposite of what happens when you're actually "addicted" to something.

It took me another few years to really commit myself to not dieting. In the process, I joined an online support group focused on the process of learning to have a normal relationship with food and learning to love our bodies as they are. It was based mainly on two books, Overcoming Overeating and When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies. Both approached food and weight issues from a feminist perspective, as had Fat Is a Feminist Issue. In this discussion group, the topic of OA came up frequently. And during one of these discussions, the light bulb went on that for me and a lot of other women, it isn't food we're addicted to, but dieting, or food and weight obsession. We're addicted to beating ourselves up over what we look like and what we eat. We're addicted to worrying about what the scale will say and if the restaurant will have grilled fish and diet salad dressing. We're addicted to comparing ourselves to other women to see whose the fattest. And especially, we're addicted to the fairy tale that getting thin will solve all of our problems, and that we'll get to be the Beauty Queen we never had a chance to be when we were young. It's not a physical addiction, no. But an eating disorder serves the same purpose as an addiction: to distance us from pain, to distract ourselves from the stuff we don't want to face about ourselves, and to narrow our focus down to one thing that we know and is familiar and predictable.

After a few years of really working on it, and experimenting with food and what works for my body, I can honestly say I have a pretty normal relationship with food. I can pass up dessert if I'm full, I eat what I want (provided it's available) when I'm hungry and I stop before I'm stuffed. None of this takes much effort anymore, which at times I realize is a small miracle. And I'm sorry for all of those years that I had a miserable relationship with food. I missed out on so much, not just tastes, but experiences. But in the end I'm grateful to be where I am now.

A Shilling, A Farthing

2007-06-03T07:54:00.000-07:00

If you hadn't noticed the link for My Alter Ego over on the left hand side, it's for the other blog I started a few weeks ago to give rein to my more frivolous, girly side that likes clothes and sparkly things. I don't know what I was thinking, I can barely keep up with one blog! Anyway, if you're feeling frivolous, stop by. Not that I've been posting about anything that serious over here lately anyway, but I've been ruminating on some more feminism/body image stuff that I'll post here soon.

Paris Report Part Trois: L'Art

2007-05-26T14:33:00.000-07:00

Carvings on an apartment building across the street from the café where I discovered that Darjeeling tea is the ultimate jet-lag cure.

Paris has some of the best art museums anywhere in the world. But art in Paris isn't just in the museums; it's everywhere. It's in the streets, the stores, the restaurants*, the parks, the architecture, even in the street signs and Metro stations.

*Interior of the restaurant at Musée D'Orsay. The food is also excellent.

And the quality of the light in Paris really is special. It really is easy to understand why so many painters and photographers have found inspiration here. All of this sounds so cliché, I know, but it's so impressive when you're actually there.

Sun and clouds near Pont Alexandre III. The bridge itself is a work of art and so quintessentially Parisian.

It was really thrilling to get to see actual paintings that I studied about in various Art History classes, and especially my favorites from the period starting with Manet and going all the way through to Kandinsky. The Monet Water Lilies panels at L'Orangerie were particularly impressive. Doug snapped over a hundred pics of art alone. Here are some of my favorites:

Manet's "Dejeunner Sur L'Herbe", a very controversial painting in it's day, and not just because of the nudity. The idea that someone would portray a modern scene with no historical, mythological or religious theme outraged the art establishment of the time.

One of Monet's "Water Lilies" paintings. Below is the actual lily pond in Giverny where he painted these. The bridge in the painting is in the far background in the photo.

Van Gogh. The photos really don't do justice to his colors and textures.

Kandinsky, my favorite Abstract Expressionist.

One of the coolest things about Paris is the juxstaposition of ancient and modern. Fountain near the George Pompidou Center.

Paris Report Part Deux: Gastronomie

2007-05-19T11:41:00.000-07:00

View from our hotel room window.

To say we ate well would be a gross understatement. While not every single meal was eyes-rolling-back-in-your-head good, enough of them were and the rest were still several notches above your above-average restaurant meal in the U.S. I joked that you almost have to be really trying to find a bad meal in Paris and we've been jonesing for the baked goods since we walked back in the door.

I don't know whether it's because the ingredients there are fresher, or have fewer preservatives, or whether it's because they aren't afraid of butter, or whether the French just have some extra cooking gene the rest of us are missing, but even dishes made from the most common ingredients just sing. When people talk about "French sauces" one tends to think of heavy, creamy sauces, but we found that this was rarely the case. Mostly the sauces even when made with butter or cream were complex and sometimes even delicate, and enhanced the flavor of the food rather than overpowering it.

Most restaurants also had good wine lists, and the staff invariably made excellent recommendations for which were best to pair with our food. We both enjoy wine, but neither of us will usually drink more than a glass or two, and so we were very happy to frequently find several offerings in "half bottles" which were just right for the two of us. Most places also had wines by the glass.

I was surprised that for the most part, portions seemed not much smaller than the restaurants we frequent here, though they do serve on smaller plates. I rarely was able to finish everything. They serve coffee after dessert, not with.

Some highlights:

Café Fernand in the St. Germain area. This place was in a little alley off the street, and we were looking for somplace to get lunch, saw the awning and wandered over. While we found very little in Paris that was "cheap", this was a great value for the money. I had Boeuf Bourgignon and it was falling-apart-eat-with-a-fork fabulous.

Taillevant. This was our one big spend-a-month's-rent-on-dinner (well not quite, but it was up there) splurge, and it was so worth it. Everyone should have one meal like this at some time in their life. The food was beyond incredible, and I loved that the prix-fixe menu we choose had several small courses that were just a few bites each. The servers were almost telepathic without hovering, it would seem like you'd be thinking, hmm, I'm ready for some more wine and they'd be right there pouring it. I can certainly understand how this restaurant garnered the almost legendary status it holds.

Le Comptoir. This is where we went our last night, and from all appearances, it's an unassuming little bistro. The prices are mid-range, but this place is also apparently one of Gourmet magazine's "five places you must eat before you die" selections. This is also in the St. Germain area (which really ended up being my favorite part of the city, had the most charm and atmosphere). I had the Carré d'Agneau (rack of lamb) and it was the best lamb I've ever tasted. And I love lamb. It was light, delicate and very, very tender. I also had a salad of haricots vertes with artichoke hearts and duck paté that I'll probably remember on my deathbed. Doug had heard about this place and that it was impossible to get into, but we had been tipped off the previous night by a very nice French couple that they have a first-come-first-served policy on weekends, so if you show up and are willing to wait for a table, you can get in. We did, and ended up only having to wait about 20 minutes, which apparently is nothing for this place.

The Little Brasserie We Found On Our Way To A Jazz Concert That We Didn't Write Down The Name Of. Here's where we met the nice couple who recommended Le Comptoir. I had an insanely good casserole type thing (which the waiter had recommended as being "very typical French") that was made with potatoes, cheese and wonderful ham and sausage.

Breakfast at the hotel. We'd purchased a package for our hotel that included continental breakfast as part of the price. The great part was that we could get it delivered to the room, which worked out well as I'm usually up first and sniffing around for coffee. The coffee itself was fantastic, made with a french press though decanted into a porcelain pot, and the baked goods that came with breakfast were everything you've heard about French baked goods. Croissants (and my favorite, chocolate croissants!) as light as air, rolls that were crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, brioche and very small sweet rolls. Excellent fresh butter and lovely jams were included.

Paris Report Part Un: L'Overture

2007-05-14T17:33:00.000-07:00

Because there's so much to share from this first-time Paris visitor, and because I don't have six hours at a pop to compose blog posts, and because if you're like me, you read blogs because they appeal to your ever-shortening attention span, I'm going to break it up into small pieces (just like they tell you to do when you have a Really Big Project). So here's Part Un of my combination travelogue/Burma Shave ad, otherwise known as L'Overture, because I'm going to touch on a bit of everything.

In short, Paris is wonderful. To expand a bit, as English teachers were always after me to do, it's a city for all of your senses. The art and architecture will delight the eye, and the food, the palate. The sound of the language, the street musicians and those wee-oh, wee-oh emergency vehicle sirens (evocative of Euro-spy movies) remind you that you're not in Kansas or even LA anymore. The smells of cooking, and of varieties roses that were bred a few hundred years ago for color and fragrance, not for lack of thorns, as well as the aroma that hits you when you walk into one of the many fine chocolate shops are other unexpected pleasures.

The vast majority of Parisians we encountered were as nice as could be. In fact, some were downright friendly, to the extent of leaning over from the next table upon hearing us speak English (and mangle French) to ask where we were from and offer suggestions for dining or museums or art galleries or other attractions. My French was much rustier than I'd realized, and I often found myself scrambling to find the right words, but just about everyone at least knew enough English to allow communication to occur.

Regarding other images we 'Mercans have about Parisians, don't believe the hype about French women; they do too get fat. However, true to stereotype, they do tend to accessorize well, and scarves are ubiquitous. You really do see people walking down the street carrying a naked loaf of French bread, and sometimes even gnawing on it. The streets in many parts of the city are indeed charming and narrow, and many drive those cute little Smart cars. The food is really, really, really good. So is the wine. And the bread. And the chocolate.

Even with 8 days in the city, we feel as though we barely scraped the surface of all there is to see. We focused mostly on museums, restaurants and the usual tourist spots, though we realized as we were leaving we'd never actually walked over to the Arc D' Triomphe to look close up, nor had we set foot in the Marais district, and we explored the Latin quarter only very briefly after dinner one night. We devoted one day to visiting the Versailles Palace and Monet's house and gardens in Giverny (which was one of my very favorite things we did).

Stay tuned for Part Deux soon, in which I will pontificate on one particular aspect of our travels.

Off to Pair-EE

2007-05-03T14:09:00.000-07:00

Car picks us up tomorrow at 5am for the airport. I'll post pics and a recap when we get back.

Au revoir, mes cheries! A bientot!

More Big Fat Invalidation

2007-04-29T18:30:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I haven't been reading Jennifer Weiner's blog as much anymore, as I love her books and have usually found her blog immesely entertaining. I also got to meet her at a book signing a couple of years ago, and found her to be just as funny, gracious and personable as she comes across in her writing. Anyhow, I saw a link to her entry from earlier this month about how someone reviewing Leslie Bennett's The Feminine Mistake chose to focus on the author's size and use that to invalidate the entire premise of the book. Weiner:

It’s a given that her premise, and even her title, would raise eyebrows and ire. Any time you write a book telling large groups of women that they should feel guiltier than they already do because they’re screwing up their lives, their kids, their marriages, or all of the above, you’re going to raise eyebrows and ire.
I wasn’t expecting sizism.
I wasn’t expecting Penelope Trunk.
Penelope Trunk is a professional beach volleyball player turned business advice columnist with a book of her own to flog. Her thoughtful, informed critique of TFM seems to boil down to this: who is Leslie Bennett to offer anyone life advice when Bennetts is “SO INCREDIBLY FAT!!!” (Caps and exclamation points Trunk’s).
“This woman,” Trunk wrote, in a blog post she’s since deleted and replaced with a sorta-kinda apology, “"is walking around telling people you have to have a career while you're raising kids in order to take care of yourself, and she is obviously not taking care of herself. Look, I wouldn't be harping on this if she weren't so fat..."
Wow. Always nice to see a sister raising the tone of the debate.

Anyhow, this reminded me of how often I've internalized that message, that anything I've accomplished is invalidated by the fact that I'm not thin. Even at 50 years old, after having achieved success in my career, a happy marriage, and some level of competence at parenting a child with special needs, I still sometimes feel like I'm somehow "less than" because I've never been able to sustain a slender figure. There are moments when that "failure" cancels everything else out, makes everything about my life seem less real. When I was a kid, everyone in the books I read was thin, as was everyone I saw on the TV and in magazines. Not much has changed, except that now I'm able to know that my size doesn't really define me, even if it sometimes feels that way.

Though I haven't yet read "The Feminine Mistake" I have read several reviews and synopses, and Weiner captures exactly my feelings about the premise of the book.

Ever since Caitlin Flanagan unleashed her notorious “when a mother works, something is lost” screed upon an unsuspecting, sleep-deprived, hormone-soupy, guilty and conflicted nation (or maybe that wasn’t the nation, and that was just me), I’ve been waiting for the inevitable rejoinder: the woman who’d step forward and say, just as unapologetically, “Yes, and frequently what’s lost is her independence, financial security, and ability to support herself and her children once the man who’s making her stay-at-home lifestyle possible can’t or won’t anymore.”

My mother was a stay-at-home mom. That's how she and my dad both wanted it, and it was the model for most middle-class families when I was growing up in the 60's. Then when I was 14, my dad wanted out of the arrangement, and I saw first hand how unprepared my mother was to deal with the financial realities of life, and how hard it was for someone with no higher education and no work experience for 17 years to find work that paid a living wage. I also saw many of my friends' parents' marriages dissolving, and the women/kids being far more financially vulnerable. At that point in my life, I promised myself that I would always be able to pull my own weight financially, and I always have. I won't lie: it's hard working full time and raising a child. But I know that the alternative is harder.

Hot ChaCha!

2007-04-14T17:30:00.000-07:00

Remember Lisa Whelchel from the 1980's TV sitcom "The Facts Of Life?" Me neither. Remember the "hot-saucing" controversy from 2004 involving the same Lisa Whelchel? Me neither, but apparently she's a bit of a religious nut and homeschooling advocate, and has promoted as a punishment for lying to put a drop or two of hot sauce on a child's tongue. Now as cruel as this might seem for most kids, for my son it's a big treat. Because of all of the brain stuff going on with him, he has what is described as Sensory Integration Disorder. His brain doesn't process well all of the various stimuli coming in. For some kids, this means they are hypersensitive to stimuli. Loud noises, harsh light, vigorous movement are all intolerable to them, and can cause them to freak out or just shut down. Sam is the opposite; he's hyposensitive. The way his PT describes it, it's as if every sensation is passing through a layer of cotton before it registers in his brain. So the things that set a hypersensitive kid off are the very things he craves. Flashing lights, loud sounds (he goes apeshit over fireworks), extreme movement (he could ride roller coasters all day long) all delight and excite him.

So back to the hot sauce. Our nanny, who's from El Salvador and has relatives in Mexico, brought some Tapatio to keep at the house for her food. She says that Sam saw her putting some on her food and wanted some too. She figured if she just gave him a little taste, he'd be turned off and quit asking. But like any other extreme stimuli, this was like gustatorial music to his brain, and he was instantly addicted. Well, not addicted exactly, but he asks for hot sauce with just about everything he eats. In the interest of preserving some of his stomach lining, we do limit how much he gets and we try as much as possible to dilute it with something milder.

Back when I lived in San Luis Obispo, I had several friends who were into really hot food. One friend used to say "if it doesn't make your face sweat, it's not worth eating." One night, we went out for Indian food with this same friend. He told the waiter, "make my dish as hot as you can make it." The waiter responded with a raised eyebrow. Three times, the waiter came back out from the kitchen and asked "are you sure you want it that hot?" Finally when the food came out the waiter told my friend, "it's not as hot as they can make it, but it's as hot as I can eat it." My friend ate every bite, mopping his face with his towel the whole time, and drinking 3 beers with dinner. "Wonderful, fabulous!" he said. According to his wife, he was sick all night.

Background Noise

2007-04-08T08:11:00.000-07:00

I grew up as a chubby kid during The Twiggy Years.

I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't want to be thinner. The effect of this has been to generate a constant kind of background brain static that never fully goes away, a dog-whistle whine of constant dissatisfaction. Even when I'd lost weight to the point where I was quite thin, the static remained. "Just another 5 pounds" was the seashell noise in my ear. And there really isn't a particular weight for me that's the Holy Grail, it's just always "thinner" than what I currently am. When I weighed 160, I thought it would be great if I could weigh 140 again. Now that I weigh about 130 (well within a healthy range for my height), my "ideal" has shifted to 120. I'm sure if I hit 120, I'd want to be 110.

From the time I was 14 until about my early 30's, I was either always on a diet, or bingeing my way off a diet, or planning my next diet. It felt like weight was the one constant "wrong" in my life, even though I drifted ambivalently through college and ultimately quit a couple of quarters short of graduating, slogged through some bad relationships (including a couple of poor marriage choices), struggled along in jobs that barely paid enough to cover rent and food, and dealt with more than a little familial dysfunction. Life had its "ups" during that time too: some great friendships, some adventures that helped build my self-sufficiency, some really fun and joyful times. But the constant theme that ran through it all was dissatisfaction with my body and weight. Even after I stopped dieting, stopped bingeing, and stopped thinking about food all the time (thanks to stumbling onto Geneen Roth's books as well as "Overcoming Overeating" by Munter and Hirschmann), the desire to be thinner has remained a part of me.

The upside is that at least I'm conscious of this now, and know it's not in any way rational. I'm not actively trying to lose any more weight (and honestly at my age it probably wouldn't be achievable or desirable). As much as I wish I could turn off the static, at least I'm at the point where I can tune it out to some degree, and not let it drive me any crazier than I already am. I also don't apply the same harsh standards to anyone else, either. In other people, I'm able to see beauty in all shapes and sizes. I don't hate how I look (on most days) and don't have a problem wearing a swimsuit in public, though I do buy the "flattering" styles and have left the bikini's far behind. I can eat one bite of dessert and stop. I crave salads pretty frequently. This thing doesn't run my life...much. Maybe it's just a form of OCD; I need something to fixate on. Maybe it's just habit, like a deep-rutted track in my brain. At any rate, accepting that it's there, not fighting it, not beating myself up for feeling this way seems to be the best way to deal. At least I know it beats planning to start a diet on Monday.

You say "Cliché," I say "Classique"

2007-04-07T14:12:00.000-07:00

Maude help me, but I love roses. Absolutely love them. It probably dates back from when I was a kid and we visited Butchart Gardens in British Columbia. I walked, entranced, through row after row after row of every type and color of rose imaginable. One of the reasons I always wanted to live in a house was to have a rose garden. And now I have one, a small one. Most of our yard is far too shady to be optimal for growing roses, but a patch alongside the driveway on the side of the house is perfect. When we were having the landscaping redone, the landscaper planted these for me. I'd asked him to put in a wide variety of colors, but he stuck with pinks, reds and lavenders. Oh well, they're lovely anyway and blooming like crazy right now so I thought I'd share. Enjoy!

Updates and a little middle-of-the-night excitement

2007-04-04T19:12:00.000-07:00

Don't worry, this post is definitely rated "G"!

Still feeling just not quite myself after almost two weeks after resuming normal meds and diet following my radioactive iodine treatment, I called my doctor on Monday to let him know I was still feeling a bit more weak and tired than normal. He gave me the option to up my Synthroid dosage which I jumped on. According to what he told me, the increased dosage is "more the usual" for someone my age and size. Today was the first day on the increased dosage, and I'm definitely noticing a difference. I've lost that weak-like-low-blood-sugar feeling, and the ravenous hunger that seemed to accompany it. My energy levels felt far more normal today. Even not having slept much last night, I'm not nearly as tired as I've been for the last few weeks.

So over the weekend, Doug finally decided that our mattress (15+ years old) was indeed worn out and in need of replacement, and we bought a new one. It was delivered on Monday. It's about twice as thick as the old mattress, which means that the top of our bed is now about 8" higher than previously, and too high for the dogs to be able to scale themselves. They haven't figured that out yet, though. Last night around midnight they were getting restless, so against my better judgement, I let them outside for a potty break. When I let them back in, Byron took a running leap at the bed, and didn't make it. He fell, yelped and ran away holding his right back leg up. I immediately feared he'd caught his leg and broken it, and cornered him. I couldn't feel anything amiss, and it didn't seem to hurt him when I felt up and down the leg, but he continued to hold it up and not put weight on it, so I feared the worst. I put both dogs in their crates in the kitchen (so he wouldn't move around in case it was broken or injured) and lay awake all night worrying about him. This morning I got up, let him out of his crate, and he was fine. No limp even. What a drama queen he can be! Looks like we're going to have to invest in some kind of step up for the dogs. My current idea is to get a chest to put at the foot of the bed; we can use it for storage for linens and the dogs can use it as a step. We'll see.

Dilettante Released from Radiation Leper Colony!

2007-03-25T12:31:00.000-07:00

Thank gawd. As of this morning, I am free to rejoin the human race, to sit in a room with other living things, to eat and drink from non-disposable plates, cups and utensils, and to wash my laundry in the same load with everyone else's. As I'm fond of saying, it's the little things.

The swelling in my neck and face is noticeably down today, and the soreness in my salivary glands seems to have abated. Doug and I dropped Sam off at Sunday school and then went and enjoyed a nice Sunday brunch, a belated anniversary celebration. I ordered a second Mimosa.

Back Home, Not Glowing In the Dark

2007-03-23T07:58:00.000-07:00

...Despite still having a small amount of radioactivity emanating from my neck. This will dissipate greatly over the next couple of days, but until then I have to limit my proximate contact with other living things. I did experience quite a bit more side effects than I had anticipated, including some pretty persistent nausea on Wednesday and now some soreness and swelling in my salivary glands and hoarseness. But the good news is that I'm back on my thyroid meds and already feeling a bit more energy, and very glad to be home and out of that hospital room!

While I was out of commission, I see that Gonzales-gate proceeds apace. Digby has more (scroll down to the post entitled Company Men), as does Echidne (scroll down to Gonzales-Gate Heating Up) and it looks as though Rove will be called to answer some questions up on Capitol Hill (though whether this will ever happen is doubtful, IMO; fully expect le Dauphin to call "executive priviledge, olly olly oxen free").

Echidne also has a disturbing item up about last night's America's Top Model (scroll down to "Death Becomes You, Young Lady!") about the bizarre and increasing acceptance of fashion imagery featuring models posed as if they had been savagely attacked or even murdered. I've noticed more and more of this in fashion layouts and ads, and have to say I do find it disturbing, that it seems to serve to normalize the erotization of violence against women. I can't help but recall Germaine Greer's quote (as did one commenter at Echidne's), "Women don't realize how much men hate us." I hate to think like that, but sometimes you have to wonder.

Just to give you an idea...

2007-03-19T18:43:00.000-07:00

...of how much I have not been suffering on a medically restricted diet the last two weeks, here's tonight's dinner, my last meal at home on my low-iodine diet:

Herb roasted turkey breast
Beet infused potatoes
Brussels sprouts (one of my faves if prepared correctly)

Thursday when I come home from the hospital though, there will be sushi....

Countdown to Radioactiveville

2007-03-18T15:00:00.000-07:00

So it's been two weeks now that I'm off my Synthroid and on the low iodine diet, and I have to say, it hasn't been that bad. I've been feeling tired and lightheaded, yes, but am only today starting to feel a bit creaky in my joints and achy, so I feel like I'm ahead of the game. I've still been able to walk the dogs at least once or twice a day and do dishes and laundry. Today I even visited the hairstylist for a root-and-highlights. (Doug drove and picked me up though. Due to the lightheadedness I'm not comfortable driving more than a few blocks.)

Thank goodness for heat-and-serve meals my BIL prepared, though. I don't think I could have done nearly as well on this very restrictive diet without going into Deprivation Mode had I not had a nice meal to look forward to each night (and leftovers for lunch the next day). With my history of compulsive dieting and bingeing, I know that feeling deprived tends to set me off and trigger overeating. Especially with my metabolism at about minus three right now, I'm glad that hasn't been an issue.

Tuesday I go into the hospital and around 5pm they'll bring me the radioactive iodine pill in a little lead box. Once I take the pill, I'm pretty much in isolation until Thursday morning, when I get a full body scan to insure that the radiation is leaving my system at the desired rate. Then I get to go home, but have to limit my contact with other living things for a few days. But at least I get to start taking my Synthroid again when I get home, halle-freakin-luja. We met with the doc and the "radiation safety technician" on Thursday to go over the process and precautions, and what you read on the web about this process is far more cautious and alarmist than what we were told, which is a relief. My boss and co-department head were both delighted to hear that I'll be able to have my Blackberry in the room with me, as long as I keep it in a sealed plastic baggie. Wednesday through Friday this week I worked from home, and it was nonstop from 7am until 6pm each day. The dogs are loving having me home, as I let them hang out in the front room with me while I work on the computer. When I get back from the hospital, I'll be able to pet and visit with them, just not sleep in the same bed for three nights. (Same rules as for my human family members.)

I asked the radiation safety tech if she knew where I could get my hands on an old-fashioned Geiger counter that clicks with increasing intensity the greater the radiation present. She seemed amused and said "most people don't want to know." I explained that I was a bit of a science geek, and that I thought it might be fun to call up my sister and some other people I know and say, "hey, listen to this...that's me!" She smiled a half smile and said, "we might have one still laying around somewhere, I'll see what I can do."

Plodding Along, Odds and Ends

2007-03-11T13:33:00.000-07:00

So I'm one week into my "get ready to get radioactive!" routine, and still doing pretty well. I've been off the thyroid meds since Monday and still not dragging too badly. I definitely feel a little tired, but so far have still been able to function. Energy levels are up and down, and the lightheadedness I'm periodically experiencing doesn't seem to be getting worse. If things continue this way over the next few days, I should be able to continue working. We'll see. I've been so thankful for the meals my BIL prepared within the really narrow dietary restrictions I'm having to follow until my procedure. He charged us half his usual fee, and the food is fantastic! If it weren't for him, I'd probably be living on carrot sticks, whole wheat matzhos and unsalted peanut butter. It's made the whole thing SO much more bearable, and not allowing the "diet deprivation" mindset to kick in. Here's how it works: he's prepared six different meals each week (2 servings each) which get vacuum sealed and can be stored in the fridge for several days. They just have to be put in boiling water for a few minutes to reheat. I have one serving for dinner and the other for lunch the next day. Genius!

Interesting that the Federal Prosecutor firing scandal has actually been making some real news. This is the kind of thing that would've been buried without a Democtratic Congress and Senate, IMHO. Some excellent analysis by Digby indicates the White House has it's pawprints all over this, quelle surprise - not. It's amazing to me the thuggery this administration has gotten away with while the news media is focuses on Anna Nicole's maggoty corpse and Britney's shaved head.

Maya's Granny has an interesting post about polar bear stories. I get such a kick out of the one about the runway landing lights. Really though, polar bears are the "canaries in the coal mine" when it comes to global warming. I just don't know how anyone with a brain or a modicum of scientific knowledge can deny this is happening, or that it's in everyone's best interest to try to take steps to mitigate it. Profits and short-sightedness are all that motivate some people, I guess. Never mind that their great-grandchildren are going to be the ones paying the price (just like the deficit price tag for Pee Wee's Big Iraq Adventure).

Sam's been going through another phase of getting frustrated easily and hitting, pinching and sometimes trying to bite whoever is in range. It's like he's having trouble processing any extreme emotions; even being very happily excited can set him off and he'll start smacking whoever is nearest. We're going to have to set up another round with a behaviorist. He'll hit, get sent to his room for a time out, then after a few minutes say he's sorry but do it again five minutes later. Especially now that he's getting bigger, this is worrisome. It's just so tough because he doesn't have the language or vocabulary to express what he's feeling. We know there's a lot more going on in his brain than he's able to convey and I really feel bad for him.

Well, I'm off to heat up some lunch (lentil stew and braised chard today, yum!).

Back in the Saddle

2007-03-03T06:43:00.000-08:00

And galloping my mouse over the open range. Our old PC finally gave up the ghost, so now I'm working on a brand spanking new (and fast!) one and on Windows Vista, which I'm liking so far. It also came with a flat panel 19" monitor, which is just the bomb, except that I'm still trying to adjust it as some images look pretty washed out. Haven't quite got it to where I want yet.

Anyhoo, lots of stuff going on. Tomorrow is my 50th birthday (yay!) so we're going out to a movie and sushi tonight. If that doesn't sound like much of a celebration for hitting another decade, worry not. We have a fabulous Paris trip planned in May, and it's just about all I can think about. I took 5 years of French, which I can still conjure up enough to understand most dialog in French language movies (and also know when the subtitlers got it wrong) but other than that I've never had the opportunity to put it to use. It will be my first trip to Europe, as well. I've traveled North as far as Canada and South as far as Costa Rica, but have never made it out of this hemisphere. I've been stocking up on books about Paris, including some history, and am almost all the way through one of the most interesting, The Judgement of Paris by Ross King. It combines history and art and personalities during a very tumultuous time in French history, and is a fascinating read. I took a few Art History classes back in high school and college, and this book brings a lot of it back. I've also started keeping lists of various peoples' recommendations for things to see and do, and have quite a list so far. We're actually in the city for about 7-1/2 days, and also want to take a couple of day trips out to Giverny (where Monet painted the water lilies) and the Champagne region to visit wineries and do some tasting. So it's sure to be a full dance ticket.

Monday I go on a diet. Not the kind you think, and not really by choice. I have to go on a low-iodine diet for two weeks prior to my radioactive iodine treatment on March 20. That means no seafood, dairy (aaarrrgh!), any commercially prepared foods except some condiments and mahtzos, certain types of beans (though I found out last night I can have lentils which I love). Fortunately, we have a personal chef in the family, and we've hired my BIL to make me some approved meals. Part of the reason for doing that instead of planning to cook myself is that I also have to stop taking my thyroid hormone on Monday, which means that over the next two weeks I will be come increasingly hypothyroid and can expect to be sluggish, have trouble concentrating, become constipated, and possibly lose a little hair. That plus the diet is likely to make me a very cranky animal. I've already warned my staff at work. But I'm thankful that it's only for a couple of weeks, it's not chemo, and once I'm done, I'm done. Thyroid cancer according to my doc is highly curable, and probably any cancer was removed already with the thyroid gland, so this treatment is more like added insurance in case there are any remaining stray thyroid cells. The treatment itself is painless, I take a pill containing radioactive iodine, and have to stay in isolation in the hospital for a couple of days. Anyone know where I can get a cheap Geiger counter? So by the end of this month, things should be back to normal, for which I am more grateful than I can express. That doesn't mean I probably won't be a whiny baby at least once or twice over the next couple of weeks.

Experiencing Techincal Difficulties

2007-02-24T18:59:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in the last few weeks as our 5-year-old PC has become very temperamental, freezing up frequently and requiring an "unplug" to reboot. Doug is currently out on a computer purchasing expedition, and I expect to have a working PC by tomorrow night. More bloggy goodness coming soon. Watch this site.

Remembering Bob

2007-01-14T07:41:00.000-08:00

My father-in-law passed away Christmas night, and was laid to rest on 12/29. At the funeral, four of his friends (two of whom had been his close friends for over 50 years) and all three of his sons delivered wonderful tributes, and I realized how little I'd known about Bob, even having been a part of his family for over twelve years. He was a guy who did much, and talked about it little. He believed in service, and in doing the right thing, always. I'd always had him pegged as an extremely ethical man, which was confirmed by those who knew him best. We will miss him, and at times when I call their house I still expect to have him pick up the phone and say "I can't hear you, here's Jean." (He was hard of hearing, wore aids and often had trouble with phone conversations.) My BIL's and SIL set up a memorial website, which includes transcripts of the eulogies from the funeral. Even the rabbi remarked that it was once of the nicest and most moving services he'd ever attended. http://www.brucebalan.com/bob/

I knew Bob as a guy who loved his football (especially USC Trojans, his alma matter), liked to stay active, and loved good food and wine. He adored his grandson, and was always pushing us to quit letting him have french fries. He loved to ski with the family, and was very depressed when his back problems finally prohibited him from hitting the slopes with the rest of us. He was generous, often taking the whole family out for nice dinners. But most of all, I remember him as being kind. While he might strongly disagree with someone's actions, I never heard a mean word about another person leave his lips. I'll always be grateful to him for being the man that he was, and raising his kids to be good, kind, and ethical people. Those are the qualities I most love and admire in my husband, and I know now more than ever where they came from.

This was the first time I'd even participated in helping plan a funeral. Jewish custom dictates that the deceased person is buried before the next Shabbat, so there are not days of viewings and the like. Jewish funerals are also generally simple affairs, as the belief is that money is better spent on the living than on the dead. Instead of flowers, charitable donations in the name of the deceased are sent. But we did have to pick out a casket, and a floral arrangement for the top. As we sat in the funeral director's office and told stories about Bob, and joked a little bit, and chose a between gladiolas and gerber daisies and cried a little and laughed a little, it seemed like the process of planning the funeral was the beginning of healing from the loss.

Season's Greetings from Southern California

2006-12-25T18:05:00.000-08:00

Or, Better Late Than Never.

It's been a bit tough this year with FIL in the hospital, but here's the obligatory (though entirely voluntary) Holiday post.

Though I converted to Judaism over 12 years ago, I still miss certain aspects of Christmas. Not, surprisingly, the tree or opening gifts Christmas morning. I miss the festiveness of it: the decorating, the gatherings, the music. We were never religious when I was growing up; Christmas was the Santa holiday and we never graced the inside of a church. I knew about the Nativity of course, and we sang Christmas carols, but it was never a religious holiday for me. I do still allow myself the indulgence of listening to some Christmas music ("Charlie Brown Christmas" by the Vince Guaraldi Trio mostly) and I did spring for a fir wreath this year (love the smell!), but that's about the extent of my recognition/celebration of the holiday.

But I was thinking about some of the more memorable Christmases in my life, and these few come to mind:

1. 1974. Back when I was in high school, we lived sort of out in the country. My parents had divorced a couple of years prior, and we'd had to sell the house we lived in at the time so the assets could be divided. We ended up renting a house just a couple of miles away, and my mom got to be friends with the couple who'd bought our house. The husband was active in the Rotary, who sponsored college and grad school students from other countries to come and study here. Abbas, one such student, was from Egypt, and was studying/teaching grad-level physics at Stanford. He was a very nice fellow, and also became friends with our family. That Christmas, he was house-sitting for the people who had bought our house. He went out to get the paper that morning in his pajamas, and locked himself out of the house. This was before the days of cell phones, and he knew none of the neighbors. So in 35 degree weather, he walked in his pajamas the two miles to our house. Abbas was probably about 6'5" and weighed all of 135 lbs. As he warmed up by our fireplace wrapped in a blanket, he joked that he must have looked very strange walking down the road and was afraid that if any people had looked out their windows and seen him walking by they'd think that Jesus had come back. That was also the year mom got drunk and dropped a can of soup on top of the glass lid on the Corningware dish that held the green bean casserole which shattered. She served the beans anyway and poor Abbas ended up chewing on a large sliver of glass. Somehow at that point eveyone else at the table lost their enthusiasm for the green bean casserole.

2. 1977. I was in college and was travelling Christmas night back from home to San Luis Obispo on the Greyhound. The guy sitting next to me was from Peru, and had been a child during the really bad earthquake in Lima in the 60's. He said that all of the buildings there were made of limestone, and just turned to airborne dust in the quake. Panicked people were running around crazily trying to find their loved ones. He was trying to get home and at one point in the chaos a woman he'd never seen before ran up to him and grabbed him by the shoulders, and put her face right up to his (she was apparently trying to find her child). He told me that as long as he lived, he'd never forget the look in her eyes. The way he told the story was so vivid and evocative, I'll never forget it. You meet the most interesting people travelling on Christmas.

3. 1980, and another travelling on Christmas story. I was working at a radio station at this point, and again was heading back home to San Luis Obispoon Christmas night from visiting my family. My sister by this point had inherited the Mustang, and she was driving back to Santa Barbara where she was in college. I'd agreed to give a ride to the engineer who worked at the station, and we were supposed to pick him up at a friend's house in Gilroy. When we got there, everyone was high on mushrooms and they had just returned from spending several hours in the emergency room due to one of the friend's run-in with poison oak while they were out wandering the hills playing wood sprites in their hallucinogenic state. We ended up giving the heavily-calamined friend a ride too, and I recall a bottle of Ouzo being passed about. I also recall that Sis was pissed, but I can't remember whether it was because of my drugged, giggly friends or the delay due to picking them up, or the open container. I'm sure she'll chime in and add her recollections to the pile.

A Not-So-Great Week

2006-12-11T18:58:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in the previous post, FIL got sick the week before Thanksgiving and they couldn't come to Mexico with us as planned. Last Monday he checked into the hospital, and Wednesday an MRI showed some dark spots in his liver and lungs, and Thursday a CAT scan confirmed that "it" (metastasized melanoma) was in his brain as well. The outlook isn't great, although apparently radiation is reasonably effective in treating the melanoma in the brain, which they were going to start today. The next step is for him to try to build up his strength and then the medical team will assess whether it makes sense to start chemotherapy for the stuff in his lungs and liver. Everyone's doing better now that there's a plan and things are moving forward. The first couple of days after the diagnosis were pretty devastating for all of us. He's 76, and has had his share of health issues...back problems, heart problems (including angioplasties and multiple bypasses) and the melanomas on his legs and feet. So now everyone's taking it day by day; the first test will be to see how he does with the radiation.

On a not-life-threatening-but-annoying-as-hell-front, I developed a toothache last week that got really nasty over the weekend. Went to the dentist today for x-rays, and the good news is that I probably don't need a root canal. She thinks it's just a cracked filling, but dang it hurts. Thank goodness for MIL sharing her Darvocet. It's the only thing that's let me sleep the last two nights. I go back to the dentist first thing tomorrow to get the tooth (teeth?) fixed.

And on a lighter note, Doug, who was (shall I put it mildly) "resistant" to getting first Byron and then especially Coco, has decided that the dogs ought to sleep in the bed with us. We've tried this little experiment for the last two nights, and for the most part it's fine, except for Byron's snoring. Of course, the dogs had no trouble adjusting, and it took them about a nanosecond to decide that the bed was now their rightful habitat.

Viva Mexico!

2006-12-03T11:06:00.000-08:00

Here's some pics of my new boyfriend. He's very affectionate and quite a good dancer! Didn't catch his name, though. But seriously, if you're ever able to do one of these "Dolphin Encounter" type programs, do it! It's so cool! The one we did was through Vallarta Adventures in Nueva Vallarta. They have several different programs: the one I did where you get to pet the dolphins, another for kids, and one where you can actually swim with them. I'm definitely doing the swimming one next time.

Thursday afternoon some friends of the BIL who are living on their boat in Nueva Vallarta took us out for sail. We headed down the bay to Los Arcos, some small rock formations that have caves and tunnels you can kayak through. Doug, Sam and BIL went off kayaking, and I jumped in for a swim. I put on a mask and looked in the water, and was delighted to find myself swimming in the middle of a school of hundreds of these (King Angel Fish):

It was really amazing.

Unfortunately, the in-laws weren't able to make it as FIL got sick. So we were mostly on our own with Sam, which isn't exactly the most relaxing scenario. We did have fun, but we're glad to be home, even if there is a foot-high stack of mail to wade through and about three more loads of laundry queued up.

Thanksgiving Table Pictures

2006-11-23T13:44:00.000-08:00

As promised. Disclaimer: I am not the world's best digital photographer. I am not even in the top 10.

It didn't come out very well in the pictures, but the dark thing in the middle is a cranberry glass turkey. There's one on each table. The first couple years I did Thanksgiving dinner, I had professional floral arrangement centerpieces, but I like the gourds and autumn leaves from my liquidamber tree in the back better.

Guess who made this? :-D

Turkey Today, Margaritas on Sunday

2006-11-23T07:00:00.000-08:00

This year, we are brining the turkey for the first time. I'll let you know how it turns out. I get the organic, free-range kind, and always cook it breast-side down to keep it juicy. BIL carves and lays it out prettily on the platter, so I don't have to worry about trying to present a whole, perfectly browned turkey on a platter at the table. I've made the stuffing (though we no longer actually stuff the turkey except with chunks of celery, apples and onions for flavor) and will do the gravy when we're close to serving. I cheat and use dry packaged gravy mix and just add pan drippings, but everyone always raves about the gravy, so there. And that's all I'm cooking, unless I get inspired to make the steamed green beans with the dijon dressing. MIL is bringing yams and cranberry sauce, BIL is bringing roasted root vegetables and carmelized-onion mashed potatoes (have I mentioned that he's a chef?), the cousins are bringing a kosher turkey (she only eats kosher meats) and Doug is picking up the biscuits and pies. And that, ladies and germs, is how you keep Thanksgiving simple. This year, we only have fifteen, which is a few less than previous years. SIL's folks went to Texas to see one of their other kids, and some of the other cousins aren't in town.

Thanksgiving has always been my holiday. Back in college and when I was first working in radio, I'd get together with friends and we'd cook up a storm, and feed people in waves, depending on when their shift on the air ended or when the bong-fueled munchies kicked in. For the first few years after Doug and I were together, the (now ex-) SIL insisted on hosting Thanksgiving. She made up a huge elaborate Southern feast (including a baked ham which always sent the Kosher Cousins over the edge). But they kept moving further away, and after one year travelling 450 miles each way in heavy traffic to their house, I said "enough" and vowed that I was going to enjoy Thanksgiving at home from then on. And within a few months the BIL and SIL split up, so I've hosted the family Thanksgiving dinner ever since. I love doing this, and it never feels like work. I'll post pics of my tables in a couple hours once the camera is recharged.

Sunday, we take off for Puerto Vallarta with Doug's folks for six days of fun in the sun. Tuesday I'm going to swim with the dolphins! I'll post pictures. Other than that I'm looking forward to doing a whole lotta nuthin'. Right now for Sam it's all about the ride on the airplane and we've been counting down the days with him for the last two weeks until the "airplane!". Since he's been taking swimming lessons and is now able to do some rudimentary dog paddling, I think he's really going to want to spend the majority of the day swimming. They have wonderful pools where we stay, with bridges to swim underneath and water slides. And cabana boys who bring margaritas for Mom. ;-) I'm taking a stack of books, too.

The C Word and Laugh Lines and Diets, Oh MY!

2006-11-18T14:35:00.000-08:00

Got the stitches out Thursday, and the scar is not hugely noticeable, though I'm still swollen and sore around the incision site. Turns out the large nodule was totally benign, but they did find a very small papillary carcinoma in one of the smaller nodules on the left side. The good news, according to my doctor is that this type of cancer is extremely curable, and in many cases no other treatment is necessary beyond the thyroidectomy. But he also wants to talk about doing the radioactive iodine follow up (which would probably happen after the first of the year) so it looks like I might not be done yet. Still, it's not chemo.

I went back to my old hair stylist today to get a cut. I just haven't liked the last two cuts I've had from the new stylist, though he is a genius with color and highlights. Michael is quite an interesting guy; he also has a "day job" working in the entertainment industry, but still cuts hair on Saturdays for a few clients. Anyhow we talked about our dogs (he and his partner are into competing with their dogs in agility events) and about our jobs and the industry in general. He kept talking and cutting and talking and cutting and now my hair is very short. Cute, but very short. At one point the sun was pouring in through the front window of the salon and beating down right on us. In that light I looked in the mirror and noticed that I'm developing some very defined laugh lines around my eyes. I really like that.

I occasionally check in on Big Fat Blog and this morning followed a link to this exceptional post at Tiny Cat Pants about dieting and beauty and suffering. I remember reading somewhere not so long ago a comment that fetishization of thinness and beauty is really a fetishization of female suffering, and on some levels that really rings true. Extreme thinness, high heels, boobs that look like beach balls...none of these come without some pain or at least discomfort. How many of us grew up hearing "you have to suffer for beauty", or in the words of another hairdresser friend of mine, "beauty isn't pretty". Anyhow the thing that always strikes me about blog entries or articles anywhere on the internet that talk about quitting dieting (especially when that discussion is within a feminist framework) is that three kinds of commenters always show up. First is the "yeah-well-men-have-impossible-standards-to-live-up-to,-too!" contingent. Second is the "you're-all-just-a-bunch-of-lazy-fatasses-who-are-ugly/hate-men/have-let-yourself-go-and-are-unhealthy-and-if-I-can-lose-80-lbs-anyone-can" representatives. This group especially strikes me as rather self-hating, because they're so locked into the "I willingly suffer, therefore I am superior to you" mindset. (I've found that the need in people to feel superior to others often masks a low opinion of themselves.) That group also doesn't seem to understand that other people may have different life circumstances and challeges that don't leave room for getting up at 6am to walk for an hour, or shopping daily for fresh organic produce, or spending hours at a time at the gym. They are quick to assign moral judgement on others who they believe don't live up to their rigorous standards. Then there are the "but-beauty-is-POWER-and-I'm-so-much-happier-since-I-got-my-boob-job-I-DID-IT-FOR-ME!" commenters. To which my standard response is that the only "power" inherent in "beauty" is the power to attract and appease those who hold the real power. Sure, the world is a far kinder place to those (women especially) who fit the current standards of attractiveness. But any power that can be taken away with the first sign of a laugh line or a sagging jowl or a bit of flab around the middle, is no power at all. I'd been working on a long post about my own history with food and weight obsession, but it bores me to tears to read it these days, so I won't subject you all to those ruminations. Suffice it to say that I spent many, many years dieting, bingeing, gaining and losing weight, and have finally come to some kind of equilibrium. I have a healthy diet (with a small "d"), my weight is within a healthy range and stable, and I've accepted the fact that I will probably always want to be thinner than I am. I can live with that.

Back Home

2006-11-09T12:55:00.000-08:00

So the bottom line is the surgery apparently went well. Of course the schedule got screwed up (my surgery was moved 2 hours earlier but no one notified us) so I ended up not getting into the OR until about 2pm. Surgery was done by 5pm, but I ended up staying in recovery until 1030pm because they didn't have any rooms ready. Which was OK by me since all I was doing during that time was alternating between sleeping and puking. Apparently I don't do anasthesia well. It took until about mid morning yesterday before I was able to hold down liquids. Once I could hold down some chicken soup I was ready to get out of there, got home about 3pm, and was in the shower by 330 trying to wash off the hospital smell.

According to the surgeon, the nodules on my thyroid looked "clean", which means that they were self-contained, not invading any other tissues, and his initial impression was that they didn't look cancerous. Pathology results should be done within the next couple of days and will hopefully back that up.

Everyone--doctors, nurses, hospital volunteers--was kind, informative, caring and (except for having to wait about 30 minutes at 4am for help going to the bathroom) responsive. Before the surgery, both the surgeon and the anathesiologist came over and explained everything they were going to be doing and asked if I had any questions. My surgeon and my primary care doc both came and checked in on me first thing the next morning. My only complaint was that the hospital nurses couldn't find a vein to save their lives. (I had to have blood drawn a few times to check my calcium levels and now have bruises all up and down my right arm.) It makes me really appreciate the nurse in my doctor's office, who always gets the vein on the first try and never hurts.

I haven't had much pain at all beyond the first few hours out of surgery. My neck is pretty stiff and sore, but I haven't had to hit the pain meds, which I'm grateful for. There's enough of a chemistry set still probably floating around in my system (which I'm doing my damndest to flush out by drinking gallons of water) that I don't want to add anything to the mix that I don't absolutely have to. I'm feeling pretty good considering the surgery was less than 48 hours ago, and look forward to getting back up to speed.

Surgery Tomorrow

2006-11-06T19:10:00.000-08:00

So tomorrow I get to kiss my thyroid gland goodbye. I think I'm ready: I'm washing my bathrobe to take with and I've already filled the prescription for the thyroid hormone I'll need to take for the rest of my life. I check in tomorrow at 10am and then get to sit in a hospital gown in a cold room somewhere for the next few hours (having had nothing to eat or drink since midnight tonight) until they deign to wheel me into the OR. I'm actually scheduled for surgery at noon, but I've been told by everyone to expect that it won't actually happen until a few hours later due to frequent backups in the OR.

I've been told to expect that I'll be able to go home the next morning, and I'm taking the rest of the week off. Both surgeons we talked to indicated that most people bounce back from this surgery pretty quickly, so that's a good thing. (We went with the second surgeon we met with, who does 200-300 of this exact operation every year.) They'll send my poor ole thyroid gland off to be dissected and examined under a microscope to determine if there's any thyroid cancer, though I've been told that the odds are against - only 15% of these apparently turn out to have any malignancy. The unfortunate part is they can't determine this without removing the gland and making julienne fries out of it.

So that's the scoop. How sick is it that I'm actually seeing this as an opportunity to have a little down time?

Dumb Luck

2006-10-17T18:34:00.000-07:00

So a couple of months ago I decided that since I hadn't been to the doctor for a physical in a few years, it was time to schedule one. Mostly I was interested in getting my cholesterol levels checked, not becase they'd ever been high, but because I've been eating more high-cholesterol foods lately and was curious to see if it would affect my levels (it did, but not much and my cholesterol is still considered "low"). Otherwise I'm pretty healthy generally, and usually don't get an annual checkup by my Primary Care doctor, just the gynecologist for the annual PAP smear.

I noticed during the exam that the doctor kept returning to the right side of my neck to poke around (I think they call it "palpitating"). He informed me that I had a "nodule" on my thyroid, but that it was probably nothing to worry about. He sent me over to the imaging place to get an ultrasound, to determine the consistency of the nodule and whether he'd be able to do the biopsy himself or whether I'd need to have it done under ultrasoud. During the ultrasound they also found some nodules on the left side, too small for the doctor to be able to detect. The consistency of the nodules was such that I needed the biopsy under ultrasound. That was done a couple of weeks ago and the results came back "indeterminate", so now I need to have a thyroidectomy. My chances of having thyroid cancer are still pretty low; statistically with my type of biopsy result the chance that there is cancer is between 10-20%, but they have to remove the thyroid gland altogether to make the determination. The bummer part of this is that I'll have to take thyroid hormones the rest of my life to regulate my metabolism. We interviewed one surgeon today and will meet with another one tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be able to get the surgery done early in November, so I'll be recovered in time for our Mexico trip the week after Thanksgiving.

Anyhow, the reason I titled this post "Dumb Luck" is that it was just purely chance that I went in to see the doctor when I did. I had not noticed the nodule on my neck at all and probably would not have until it had gotten much bigger. Of course, now that I know it's there I can feel it with my fingers, and see a slight swelling when I look in the mirror (the nodule is about 1"). So even if you're feeling fine, getting an annual checkup isn't a bad idea. I was also lucky in that my primary care doctor specializes in Endocrinology, so was probably more likely to notice the nodule and understand what it was.

I'll blog about the surgery when it happens, so you all can share in the fun.

Dude, Where's My Country?!?!?!?

2006-09-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

So while smiles are plastered on for the cameras and hands are shaken, and "compromises" declared, we've now legalized torture and indefinite detention without due process of law. We're created loopholes around habeus corpus. We can no longer, as a nation, claim any kind of moral high ground. We're supposed to be better than this.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. --Friedrich Nietzsche

Digby's had the best series of posts on this travesty I've read anywhere. Especially this one.

People and societies don't just wake up one morning to find they no longer recognize themselves. It's a process. And we are in the process in this country of "defining deviancy down" in ways I never thought possible. We are legitimizing torture and indefinite detention --- saying that we will only do this to the people who really deserve it. One cannot help but wonder what "really deserves it" will mean in the years to come as we fight our endless war against terror.

That's the thing that people who think it's A-OK to torture or imprison "them" without due process don't get. It doesn't take much for "them" to become "us." When it's acceptable in current political rhetoric to label those who don't support the Iraq war or Shrub's policies as "terrorist sympathizers," it doesn't take a great leap of imagination to picture outspoken critics being "disappeared" to gulags or worse. If you've ever watched the movie "Sometime in April" about the Rwandan massacres, the dialed up rhetoric of hate radio led neighbors to slaughter neighbors in the most brutal ways imaginable.

When even the opposition party won't stand up and speak out against this, what hope or recourse do we have? I can't help but think we're about to enter a very dark period in this country's history. The last six years have been a downward spiral, but I'm afraid we haven't hit bottom yet.

In Praise of Wisecrackin' Dames

2006-09-18T19:10:00.000-07:00

I've actually been planning to post this for a week or so, but in honor of Governor Ann Richards, here are some of my favorite real-life and cinematic Wisecrackin' Dames:

"Let me tell you, sisters, seeing dried egg on a plate in the morning is a lot dirtier than anything I've had to deal with in politics."

"They blame the low income women for ruining the country because they are staying home with their children and not going out to work. They blame the middle income women for ruining the country because they go out to work and do not stay home to take care of their children."

"I am delighted to be here with you this evening because after listening to George Bush all these years, I figured you needed to know what a real Texas accent sounds like." [1988 keynote address, Democratic National Convention]
--Ann Richards

"The first rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging."
"I believe in practicing prudence at least once every two or three years."
"During a recent panel on the numerous failures of American journalism, I proposed that almost all stories about government should begin: 'Look out! They're about to smack you around again!' "
--Molly Ivins

" I'm going crazy. I'm standing here solidly on my own two hands and going crazy."
--Catherine Hepburn as Tracy Lord from The Philadelphia Story.

And from that same movie, there's Miss Imbry, who steals every scene she's in,
Tracy: "Duluth. That must be a lovely spot. It's west of here, isn't it?"
Miss Imbry: "Yes, but we still get the breezes."

"I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that."
--Lauren Bacall

"You know Steve, you're not very hard to figure, only at times. Sometimes I know exactly what you're going to say. Most of the time. The other times... the other times, you're just a stinker."

"I'm hard to get, Steve. All you have to do is ask me."
--Lauren Bacall as "Slim" in To Have And Have Not

"I love him because he's the kind of guy who gets drunk on a glass of buttermilk, and I love the way he blushes right up over his ears. I love him because he doesn't know how to kiss, the jerk!"
--Barbara Stanwyck as Sugarpuss O'Shea from Ball of Fire. If you've never seen this movie, go rent it. It's a stitch!

"Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly."
"Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before."
"I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond."
"He's the kind of man a woman would have to marry to get rid of."
--Mae West

And of course, Steel Magnolias is a treasure trove of great lines:

"Time marches on and sooner or later you realize it is marchin' across your face."
"When it comes to pain and suffering, she's right up there with Elizabeth Taylor."
"There's so much static electricity in this room, I pick up everything but boys and money."
"Oh, Sammy's so confused he don't know whether to scratch his watch or wind his butt."
--Truvy

"The only reason people are nice to me is because I have more money than God."
"I'm pleasant. Damn it! I saw Drum Eatenton at the Piggly Wiggly this morning, and I smiled at the son of a bitch 'fore I could help myself."
--Ouiser

"The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize."
"Ouiser, you sound almost chipper what happened today you run over a small child or something?"
"Well, you know what they say: if you don't have anything nice to say about anybody, come sit by me!"
--Clairee

So let's hear your favorite lines by wisecrackin' dames. There are too darn few of us around these days!

More Dilletantin'

2006-09-17T18:51:00.000-07:00

Coco, who is now 8 months old, seems determined not to become housebroken. She'll pee outside or on our walk, and 30 minutes later will pee again on the kitchen floor (or wherever she is at the moment). She doesn't seem adverse to peeing in her bed either, like most dogs are, so crating her doesn't always guarantee that she'll hold it until she gets outside. Byron, who is a rather headstrong dog in many ways was a piece of cake to house train compared to our Miss Coco Thing.

Got a haircut today, and for the first time since I've been going to this stylist, I'm not sure that I like the cut. I liked it better after I washed out the various "product" and all of the styling he'd done on it, but the jury's still out.

Maya's Granny posted this today about recommendations coming from the International Conference on Obesity in Sydney (which sounds scientific but is really just a gathering of folks who stand to make a buck off peoples' misery about their weight like pharmaceutical and weight loss companies) that children as young as 5 be put on diets. This is pure and utter bullshit. Sure, if you want to create a child who will end up being obsessed with food and weight, and probably fatter than if she never started dieting, it's a recipe for success. Otherwise, probably about the worst approach you can take. I say this as a kid who was nagged endlessly about my weight by my parents from about age 6 on, and who often was denied certain "fattening" foods that others in my family enjoyed. It did not make me thin, (or even thinner) and it set me up for 20+ years of eating disorders and ultimately a higher weight. I felt that being fat was somehow my fault, because I ate the same food as the rest of my family (sometimes less) yet still I was the "fat one." The only explanation in my child-mind was that I was somehow defective at the core of my being that I couldn't just somehow will myself thin. That inherent sense of being different and somehow defective has never really left me. Even though thoughts of food and eating occupy very little of my consciousness these days and I rarely overeat or feel guilty about anything I eat, not a day goes by that I don't have at least fleeting fantasies about being thinner than I am.

I was saddened to hear that former Texas Governor, Ann Richards passed away last week. Molly Ivins does her memory some justice.

She was so generous with her responses to other people. If you told Ann Richards something really funny, she wouldn't just smile or laugh, she would stop and break up completely. She taught us all so much -- she was a great campfire cook. Her wit was a constant delight. One night on the river on a canoe trip, while we all listened to the next rapid, which sounded like certain death, Ann drawled, "It sounds like every whore in El Paso just flushed her john."

Governor Richards was a class act and an inspiration. She was inclusive and effective and lost to George W. Bush anyway, which goes to show that there ain't no justice in politics. One of my favorite quotes attributed to her is, "The roosters may crow, but the hens deliver the goods."

9/12 thoughts

2006-09-12T06:02:00.000-07:00

I didn't have a chance to post yesterday, but don't think I could've said it any better than Maya's Granny. Hang on to those people in your life that you cherish.

Keith Olbermann has always been a favorite of mine. Even when he was doing the sports news show on Fox, he brought a level of intelligence and wit that surpasses most of the talking heads even in major news organizations. If you haven't watched this video, do it now. It's one of the most powerful statements I've yet seen about 9/11 and the aftermath. A bunch of terrorists hijacked some planes on 9/11. The Bush administration has been hijacking our country ever since.

Tonic for a Parent's Heart

2006-09-07T19:26:00.000-07:00

Tuesday was Sam's first day back at school. He came home very happy and sang us a new song he'd apparently learned that day, something about grape juice (the only words we can make out are "grape juice" and "go go go...mmmm juice!"). Wednesday morning the first words out of his mouth were "I want school!"

He's in the same class with the same teacher he had last year. She's wonderful...very committed to the kids and runs a very structured and predictable day, which these kids really need and rely on. They know the routines and know what comes next, which makes transitioning between activities much easier. After so much craziness and upheaval and teachers who didn't "get" him (we still refer to his pre-school teacher as Frau Blucher) or who had nervous breakdowns halfway through the school year (his first year of kindergarten) it's such a relief for him to be in a classroom setting that really seems to be working for him. It's such a crapshoot with Special Ed; you don't have a lot to choose from, and you're at the mercy of the district hiring and staffing. The district won't give you much information about the experience and background of the teachers, and sometimes won't even tell you until a few days before school who youf kid's teacher will be. But we got lucky last year and this and for that I'm grateful.

Tabouli Salad

2006-09-02T16:32:00.000-07:00

Big Sur Coastline

Tabouli Salad
(Best made a day or two ahead)

1 cup wheat bulgur
3 cucumbers, diced
2-3 tomatoes, diced
1 red onion, diced
1/2 bunch parsley, minced
Juice of 1 lemon
2-3 TBSP extra virgin olive oil

Pour boiling water over the wheat bulgur, let stand for 20 minutes then drain

Mix everything together in a large bowl, cover, stick in the fridge overnight.

Everytime I make this, it takes me back to the early 70's and my friends' place in Big Sur. The Addams* lived at the end of the road where we moved when I was 10 years old, and we quickly made friends with their daughter, who was in between my sister's and my age. They were one of the first hippy/granola/Bohemian families I ever met. Their living room had hardwood floors, open beam ceilings, comfy beat-up sofas, track lighting and miles of bookshelves. Mrs. Addams wore blue jeans and Birkenstocks and let her hair grow long and straight, when our and most everyone else's mom still got a shampoo-and-set weekly at the local beauty parlor. She grew sprouts in jars on the kitchen windowsill. There was an artists' studio over the garage, a pottery wheel in the utility room off the kitchen and a bathroom that converted to a darkroom, where Mrs. Addams taught me when I was 12 how to develop my own black-and-white film and make proofs and enlargements. Mr. Addams had made a fortune in the electronics industry in the mid-60's and retired at 45. They bought 350 acres of rugged Big Sur coastline property and spend several years building their house there. Their property was right off highway 1 in one of those parts of Big Sur where the hills rise almost straight up our of the ocean. Their house was less than 1/4 mile in from the ocean, and 1800 feet up. They were they only people I've ever known who actually needed 4-wheel drive vehicles as nothing else could make it up the steep, rutted and narrow dirt road.

My sister had made a few weekend trips to visit there while they were still building the house and returned with tales of wandering the hills to gather large stones for the fireplace and the inevitable run-ins with rattlesnakes. My junior year of high school my sister and I, the Addams girl, and two other high school friends in our group went with her parents to stay in the newly-almost-finished house during the Easter break. We hiked during the days, coming back in the afternoons exhausted, filthy and with matted hair, played Ouija board at night by candlelight (especially wonderfully scary during the lightning and thunderstorm), binged on handfuls of Mrs. A's homemade granola, and learned how to wash a sinkful of dishes using less than a quart of water. Vinca grew by the stones leading up to the front door, and in the morning when we woke up we'd look out over a sea of fog some 1000 feet below. I remember that week as being an oasis in an otherwise weird period of my life. One of the dishes that we helped Mrs. A prepare for dinner was that Tabouli Salad and making it always takes me back to that week and the way the sun would turn everything golden right before it set.

*Not their real name.

And a Fine Time Was Had by All, pt. 2

2006-08-31T20:02:00.000-07:00

Surf Check in Santa Cruz

Sunday around noon we hit the road, heading north on Hiway 1, past the artichoke stands in Castroville (which were all of course on the wrong side of the highway where stopping would have necessitated crossing traffic twice), up to Santa Cruz, where we stopped in at step-brother's place for a BBQ and cake to celebrate his birthday. He still surfs daily in between his construction jobs, 50-mile bike rides, and girlfriends (most of whom also surf). After cake, we walked down to the bluff for a Surf Check (TM), then we packed up, hit the 1 again, drove north to Pescadero, then east to Woodside.

Sam Rides The Horse

And he enjoyed it so much, we saddled up and led him around a few times during our two-day visit. The horse's name is Binti, and she's one of my favorite riding horses. Even though she's 24, she still had plenty of giddyap, and her canter is as comfortable as a rocking chair. The dogs were also fascinated with the horses (and the horse poop, which dogs universally love to eat for some ungodly reason).

We also got to meet my sister for lunch at one of our favorite burger-n-beer joints,
The Alpine Inn, Formerly Known As Rosatti's. It will always be Rosatti's to us. On weekends the place is packed with the motley assortment of bikers (both pedal and motor), people on horseback and college students quaffing beer by the gallon, but on a weekday we pretty much had the place to ourselves and were able to visit and catch up. It was nice. And the burgers are great.

The folks have started cleaning out the closets, and sent me home with some family heirlooms: three San Francisco cable car paintings from the 1930's (which I just love because they were my grandma's and always remind me of her), a book of tinted Japanese photos from the 1880's, a portrait of an ancestor upon his commission as an officer in the Navy in the 1870's, and some various other documents. I think the Ancestor Portrait will have to be hung near the dining area for a nice bit of kitch, but I'm not sure yet where I want the cable car paintings. We don't have a lot of wall space in most of the house, so they'll probably end up in our bedroom, where I can enjoy them daily.

The trip home was delightfully uneventful. We've learned that our dogs are really great little travellers, and that we need to learn to pack bags more efficiently so that we don't have to completely empty the car when we're only staying somewhere for one night.

Tag, I'm It! (Meme)

2006-08-31T18:16:00.000-07:00

This is my first meme! Maya's Granny tagged me. Here we go:

1. Things that scare me:
Religious fundamentalists of any stripe
People who think nuclear war is "winnable"
Entrusting Sam's care to someone after we're gone

2. People who make me laugh:
My sister, Spot
Sam
Jon Stewart
Louis Black
Garrison Keilor
Margaret Cho

3. Things I hate the most:
Cruelty
Arrogance
Overblown sense of entitlement
The man who embodies all three, George W. Bush

4. Things I don't understand:
Greed
Lack of compassion
Most computer hardware
People who think reality TV is entertaining
People who are afraid of knowledge

5. Things I'm doing right now:
Blogging
Contemplating heating up a cup of coffee
Feeding the dogs

6. Things I want to do before I die:
Travel more
Fly in an open cockpit biplane (actually plan to do this for my 50th birthday next year)
Live in the mountains

7. Things I can do:
Learn new software quickly
Ride horses
Write clearly and concisely under pressure
Make good coffee

8. Things I can't do:
Sing
Apply eyeliner without smudging
Wear any clothing that's tight around my neck

10. Things I think you should listen to:
That little voice inside that says "don't marry him, he's an asshole!"
Wind in pine trees
Any music that lifts your spirits
Any music that helps you to feel
Children or dogs when they tell you they have to go potty

11. Things you should never listen to:
People who are ignorant
Anyone who tells you you can't do something
Fashion experts and movie critics

12. Things I'd like to learn:
To fly a small plane
To play the bodrhan really well
Cake decorating

13. Favorite foods:
Artichokes
Sushi
Wild-caught Copper River salmon cooked on a cedar plank
Really good cake with butter cream frosting
Cole slaw
Chicken salad

14. Beverages I drink regularly:
Coffee
Water
Wine

15. Shows I watched as a kid:
I Love Lucy
Get SMART
The Virginian
Batman
The Green Hornet
The Wonderful World of Disney

16. People I'm tagging (to do this meme):
Not sure, other than Maya's Granny I don't personally know anyone who has a blog.

And a Fine Time Was Had by All, pt. 1

2006-08-30T19:24:00.000-07:00

Sam and the dogs and me at the beach.

Just got back this afternoon from a visit up north to see my dad and step-mom. We spent Saturday in Carmel, which has become quite a doggie-friendly town. Dogs are even allowed to roam free on the beach. Stayed at Carmel Valley Lodge which I highly recommend. Rooms are casual and comfortable, dogs and welcome (they even offer a dog-sitting service) and they have a nice buffet Continental breakfast. We wandered around downtown Carmel a bit, had lunch at The Forge in the Forest which has a special patio for those who dine with their canine companions, as well as a doggie menu. The waiters bring out bowls of water for the dogs when you're seated, and stop by regularly to visit with the pups and offer doggie treats. Then we walked down to the beach, while poor Doug spent an hour circling trying to find a parking space.

Saturday night we enjoyed dinner on the patio restaurant at the Highlands Inn where I'm told my grandparents went for their honeymoon. Views, of course, were spectacular.

Athenae speak, you listen

2006-08-20T12:53:00.000-07:00

Nail. Hammer. Bang.

She sez:

Honestly. This is the same class of gits who would go around after Sept. 11 talking about how it crystallized the idea in their minds about the greatness of America or some shit, quoting people saying that 3,000 dead people had made them love their own families more, etc. The worldview Bush presented to them in the aftermath of that event (and it was a quick fucking aftermath: the dust hadn't settled before we were having mad coversations about the "9/11 generation" and a whole bunch of other self-absorbed bullshit) was one that allowed them to see themselves as part of something great.

(snip)

The real trouble was, it was bullshit from the start. If this truly had been a great cause, Bush would have called for enlistments and conservation, not spending and travel. If this truly had been the transformation of our country, Bush would have called for charity to alleviate the desperation and poverty that makes hatred of America seem like a solution. If Sept. 11 had been the wakeup call that everybody said it was, five years ago, we'd have rededicated ourselves to making this country, truly, the richest and most prosperous and free nation on earth, so that if somebody wanted to hate us for our freedoms, at least we'd deserve it.

If Sept. 11 had been the making of us, we'd be painting schools in Afghanistan, not in Iraq. And Osama would be swinging from a tall tree.

Feeding The Beast

2006-08-09T18:59:00.000-07:00

So I've been working on a post for it seems like EVER about some adventures in Costa Rica back in 1983, but I keep experiencing keyboard IBS (I'm either blocked or experiencing Detail Diarrhea where I keep mucking up the story with too much baggag- er, background). I promise I will get it into readable form, and in the meantime I'll tantalize you with some of the ingredients: Toucans, white horses, Frenchmen, Popeye, a sure-fire mosquito repellent, Peace Corps volunteers, a joint the size of a Cuban cigar, iguanas and Bob Marley. There.

Today is Sam's birthday. I can't believe he's 9 years old already, but on the other hand it seems like an eternity since the traumatic days surrounding his birth. He's very much enjoying one of his birthday gifts right now, a new Elmo DVD. Plus he had swimming and a big birthday cookie today at day camp, so I think he's had a pretty good day.

Ever fantasize about chucking it all and sailing to the tropics? Then you should check out Bruce's (my brother-in-law's) website...he's doing exactly that. It's not all lobster and margaritas, there are also storms and boat repairs, but I'll let you read about it there. Hopefully next year he'll be in Costa Rica and we'll be visiting him there, which is what prompted me to start reminiscing. See how nicely I tied that all together?

Schadenfreude

2006-07-30T07:35:00.000-07:00

According to Wikpedia, it's a German term meaning "pleasure taken from someone else's misfortune." It's not something I'm proud of, but I do indulge from time to time, especially when someone who adopts a holier-than-thou stance is brought down by their own human failings, as in the recent case with Mel Gibson, uber Catholic who was recently arrested in Malibu for a DUI, and proceeded to launch into anti-Semitic and sexist comments directed at the officers on the scene.

What Would Jesus Do? I never met the guy, but from all accounts he probably wouldn't have called the female officer "sugar tits" or complained that the "Jews run everything."

We Love The Manolo!

2006-07-28T05:53:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite blogs is Manolo's Shoe Blog. "The Manolo" serves up shoes and dishes celebrities, all with a certain panache and wit. Here's his most recent entry, shoe advice for a congressional aide:

Manolo says, the Manolo he can think of few jobs more demanding and less appreciated than to be the assistant to the congressperson.

It is like being the governess for the very head-strong and naughty young child, whom you must continually retrieve from one potentially dangerous or embarrassing situation after the next.

You are in charge of so many important things, such as arranging all of the play-dates with the lobbyists, and insuring that the committee homework gets done on time. You must endure the silly temper tantrums graciously and make certain that the self-esteem of your congresschild is properly cultivated.

Read the whole thing here, along with The Manolo's shoe recommendation.

Interestingly enough, I discovered Twisty through The Manolo's blog (it's one of his links). He also has very eclectic tastes in books and music, and has keyed me into some very interesting books. Oh, and if you're a fan of Project Runway, his Project Runway weekly episode recaps just don't get any better.

Never A Dull Moment

2006-07-27T19:05:00.000-07:00

Our kitchen counter looks like a pharmacy right now. There's medicine for Sam (two different anti-seizure meds), medicine for Doug (allergy and herbal stuff for his liver), medicine for Byron (antibiotics following his surgery for the abcess), and medicine for Coco (anti-inflammatories following her spay operation last week).

So Monday night, as is my usual M.O. when I get home from work, I set out everyone's evening round of meds so I wouldn't forget to give them. Fortunately, both of the dogs are good medicine takers: a Mighty Dog meatball and just about any pill goes down in a gulp. So I made Bryon his meatball with the blue and white antibiotic capsule, fed it to him, turned back to the counter and realized I'd given him one of Sam's Depakote (also a blue and white capsule!). Frantically, I called the vet; their office had already closed for the evening. Their message referred me to a 24-hour animal hospital, which I then dialed. After being put on hold for about 10 minutes (all the while hyperventilating while watching Bryon to see if he was going to keel over foaming at the mouth), they referred me to the Animal Poison Control Center. After being on hold with them for another 5 minutes (and still no sign of immenent violent death in Byron) a very nice vet, Dr. Yousef, talked me down off the ceiling. Turns out the amount of Depakote for a dog Byron's size wasn't even enough to give him a buzz. Dr. Yousef said he would've had to ingest 5-6 Depakote capsules before he'd be worried. Whew. That'll be $55, please. Visa or Mastercard?

At any rate, I was relived tonight when Byron gulped down his last antibiotic to finish the course. Now I only have to worry about Sam's and Coco's meds, and I don't think I'll confuse those; Coco's has a picture of a doggy on the bottle.

Not Too Strong A Word

2006-07-23T07:28:00.000-07:00

Monsters. Or, Compassion, Schmompassion For Anyone Who's Not An Embryo.

Digby's blog is one of the few political blogs I read daily (besides Echidne ), because of the insightful and passionate commentary.

Monsters is not too strong a word for the pieces of shit who are currently in charge of this country. They'll sell us all down the river for the sake of the next election. They're ginning up WWIII just in time for the 2006 midterms, and to keep the Fundanutters happy. I haven't been so full of dread about the future of the world since Reagan's Rapturists were in power. And even then, it was less a fear about global war than the immenent destruction of the environment.

Maybe Bush really is an idiot child (or so hopped up on drugs he's lost it ) and being manipulated by sociopaths. Maybe he's a sociopath himself as many have suggested. The only thing I can hope for (and probably in vain) is that someday there will be some accountability at the top, and these monsters do some hard time in prison.

Some funny stuff for a Friday

2006-07-21T06:28:00.000-07:00

Your Co-Workers Will Wonder What's So Funny...

Courtesy Bitch. PhD., indeed a "cheeky monkey."

From Twisty, truly a classic.

More Assorted Shit

2006-07-17T18:10:00.000-07:00

Your 1950s Name is:

Victoria Beverly

What's your 1950s Name?

But my friends call me Bev, natch! (Hat tip to Crazy Dust In My Coffee. )

Speaking of coffee, I thought I was a coffee Connoisseur until I ran across Coffeegeek.com. Damn. Once again the universe reminds me what a total Dilettante I am. These coffeegeek folks are Ser.I.Ous. about their coffee. I am totally intimidated.

Byron is doing much better. We went to the vet this afternoon to get the drainage tube out (have to believe that feels better) but he still has to wear the satellite dish for another three days, until his incisions close completely. We joke that we can hook him up to the TV and get the networks' East Coast feeds.

Yesterday we managed to get a babysitter and went to a movie. Saw "The Devil Wears Prada," which I'd wanted to see mostly because of Meryl Streep in the Miranda role. It was entertaining, and wasn't as bad as it could have been (actually the Miranda character had a lot more depth than in the book), but it also wasn't as good as it could have been either. Here's the premise: Andrea, fresh out of college and wanting to be a Serious Journalist lands a job as a personal assitant to Miranda who is the editor-in-chief of a preeminent women's fashion magazine, "Runway" (which is a thinly disguised "Vogue"). Miranda (supposedly based on Anna Wintour of Vogue), of course is known as a Dragon Lady, but anyone who can stick it out for a year and win her approval and recommendation has doors opened to work at just about any national publication they want. The interesting thing, though, is that the Miranda character, though demanding and bitchy and impossible to please is also shown to be smart and savvy and one step ahead of everyone else. There's also a moment where the Andrea character is complaining to a colleague about how hard it all is, and he (rightly) tells her that she's only "deigning" to be there, and isn't really committed (she's made it quite clear that she looks down on the fashion industry and is only doing this until she can get a "real" job). He reminds her that she chose to take the job, she's choosing not to quit, so she should buck up and do the best she can with it. From there, unfortunately, it becomes so much about how she becomes a fashion plate, and overshadows that she becomes much more efficient at anticipating and meeting Miranda's needs. And even though Miranda turns out to be the biggest shark in the shark tank, she's also a clear-headed realist about what it takes to stay on top in the field she's chosen, and is unapologetic about doing what she needs to do to keep from becoming some other shark's dinner. I don't think I could work in that kind of environment; I'm just not politically savvy and ruthless enough.

But I can relate to the "you choose to be here, so why not do your best" premise. Not many of my staff at work start out choosing what we do as a career (my department does very unglamorous "administrative" work in the TV industry). Many of them are aspiring actors or screenwriters or producers looking for a "day job" or to get a foot in the door. Some of them limp along, miserable for years, doing just enough to keep their jobs, and complaining about every little thing. If we're lucky, they leave after a while. Some discover they like the work and the (mostly) regular hours and paycheck, and do much more than "phone it in." And then there are the people who don't want to be Shane Black or Jim Cameron or Jamie Foxx, and who just want an intersting, challenging job with a chance for some advancement. We've got a majority of those folks now, and morale in the department is pretty good. The thing is, whatever job you have, it is what it is. As it says in The Inner Game Of Tennis, "The ball is never where it should be, but it's always where it is." Meaning of course, that if you swing at where you think the ball should be, you'll miss most of the time, that it's our expectations that get in the way of seeing things as they really are and choosing and acting based on that reality, which is necessary to achieve your objectives. Anyway, I think that's the more interesting story that the movie touched on but chose not to tell, in favor of fluffy, eye-candy, Hollywood fare. There were some clever lines, though. I had to laugh in spite of myself when one of the women says, "I'm just one bout of stomach flu away from my goal weight." I've so been there.

After the movie, we went to dinner at one of our favorite places, Napa Valley Grill which is a splurge but is always so consistenly good, we tend to keep going back when we have the opportunity for a nice dinner out. If you go, you must try the Shaved Artichoke Salad. It's my favorite and I have it every time. They have a super wine list, and if you have saved any room for dessert, their selections are excellent. We decided this time that discretion was the better part of valour, and skipped dessert in favor of a good night's sleep.

Why I'm Not A Veterinarian

2006-07-14T09:28:00.000-07:00

Not For Those With Delicate Sensibilities

I'm home with Byron this morning. He had to have surgery yesterday for impacted/abcessed anal glands, and they sent him home with a drainage shunt that has to stay in until Monday, a satellite dish around his neck, some pain medication, and antibiotics. I stayed home today because he seems to be in a lot of pain, at times crying and yelping and trying in vain to lick/chew at his bottom. I hate seeing animals in pain or suffering; it just breaks my heart. I had to stop watching those animal rescue shows on Animal Planet because I'd end up in tears every time. He won't lie down, keeps starting to fall asleep sitting up until the pain wakes him again. The vet said they don't know what causes the glands to become infected, but that some dogs are prone to it. (Oh goody.)

I used to want to be a vet. I love animals, and as a kid thought it would be a great way to be around animals all the time. One of the vets in the town where I grew up used to let kids who expressed an interest in becoming vets watch him perform operations. I did that once or twice, and once I got over the blood, I was fascinated. But then I started noticing that vets, like doctors, have to distance themselves from the suffering of their patients, and I knew I'd have trouble doing that. However the main event that put me off a career in animal medicine, was a demonstration of veterinary arts that I witnessed during one of my horse's not infrequent bouts of colic.

Those of you who have been around horses know that for a horse, colic isn't just a tummyache. Horses can't vomit, and if they get intestinal blockages, it can kill them, either from the blockage itself, or from twisted/ruptured intestines that can result if they are able to get down on the ground and roll. So when a horse has colic, you walk them. And walk them. And walk them. Sometimes for hours until they finally pass stools. And sometimes you walk them for hours and still nothing is happening and you can't hear any intestinal rumbling when you press your ear to their belly, so you call the vet. In this particular case, the vet gave our horse a shot to relax his intestines, and we walked him again for an hour, but nothing. So the vet returned, and donned an elbow-length plastic glove. "Hold his head," he said to me and I did. My horse's eyes almost popped out of his head as the vet proceeded to reach up into the horse's butt all the way up to his elbow, until he found the blockage and pulled it out...and like pulling the cork out of a shaken bottle of champagne, was showered head to toe with a fine mist of pent up manure. We hosed him off, and he went off on his next call.

So I'm waiting for the vet to call me back to see if it's OK to give him a little more pain medication, or if I can maybe get some doggie downers so that he'll at least sleep a little. Wish us luck, or it might be a very long three days...

I Wanna Be Katha Pollitt When I Grow Up

2006-07-13T10:33:00.000-07:00

Or Possess, At Least, A Scintilla Of Her Wit And Grace

I've been reading Katha Pollitt's new book, Virginity or Death! which is a collection of her essays for The Nation from the last five years. I've found it to be witty, insightful, witty, angry, witty and spot on. Did I mention witty?

So the big flap occurred last week in the feminist blogosphere after Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette reviewed the book in the NY Times. For those of you not familiar with political blogs, Wonkette gained notariety for being a "Washington insider" political blog that makes frequent references to anal sex. Ana Marie has become a sort of media darling, supposedly the representative of the Left Blogosphere. When a review of this book starts with the sentence "Strident feminism can seem out of place — even tacky — in a world where women have come so demonstrably far," and then references Katie Couric as a symbol of You've-Come-A-Long-Way-Babyism, you immediately realize that the reviewer is a lightweight who neither supports nor understands feminism or what these essays are about.

Echidne does an excellent job dissecting this review:

Let's unpack this post-feminist pink little purse. Strident feminism is "tacky" because we have token women in high places? Would it be ever so tacky and depressing of me to remind all of us that the number of women in politics and in the leadership positions in the media is indeed very tiny, small enough to fit into the most expensive Jimmy Choos? It's so boring and unfashionable to "stubbornly" try to defend the vanishing abortion rights? Sure. Why not go with the flow and start a firm designing really fab maternity clothes for all the pregnant mothers who didn't really want to become pregnant. Yeah, that's the ticket. They can wear tiny shoes, too. Choice is good, ladies. And to talk about all those poor women in the Middle East: such a downer. We can't help them so why bother our beautiful minds with all that shit (to paraphraze Barbara Bush the Elder). It's not fun.

The big problem with Pollitt's writing for Cox seems to be that Pollitt is b-o-o-o-ring. She's all serious in her wittiness and righteously angry and not willing to entertain the great appeals of anal sex. She's so 1970s, you know, and we don't want to burn bras anymore. We prefer bras that make our breasts the vanguard of the new feminism. Which is whatever we decide it might be. Oops. I forgot in this revelry of nasty writing that nobody actually ever burned any bras in that distant and evil-smelling unfashionable era, and that someone writing about feminism really should be aware of that.

As does Barbara Ehrenreich:

Cox is not the first post-feminist to denounce paleo-feminists as sexless prudes. Ever since Andrea Dworkin -- a truly puritanical feminist -- waged war on pornography, there've been plenty of feisty women ready to defend Victoria's Secret as a beachhead of liberation. Something similar happened in the 1920s, when newly enfranchised young women blew off those frumpy old suffragists and declared their right to smoke cigarettes, wear short skirts, and dance the Charleston all night.

Maybe there's a cycle at work here: militant feminism followed by lipstick and cocktails, followed, in a generation or two, by another gust of militancy. But this time around the circumstances are vastly different. In the 1920s, women were seeing their collective fortunes advance. The Western nations were granting them suffrage; contraceptives were moving beyond the status of contraband. Contrast those happy developments to today's steadily advancing war against women's reproductive choice: the banning of abortion in South Dakota, fundamentalist pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control.

But the best responses so far have been from Pollitt herself, both in this interview with Jessica Valenti of feministing.com and in her own Op-Ed in the NY Times, shredding again the old myth about feminists having no sense of humor. Throughout this collection of essays, Pollitt demonstrates why feminism isn't a dead issue, and why a feminist movement is still necessary even if Katie Couric is now a news anchor.

Desparately Seeking Style

2006-07-12T11:57:00.000-07:00

In Which, Gentle Reader, I Consign Myself To Fashion Fuddy-Duddydom

I've always had a love/hate relationship with clothes. ("Who among us does not?", might be a better question.) As I near 50, I'm not sure that I'm making peace, but I think I'm getting better at sorting out the wheat from the chaff.

Love: As a kid, I used to design dresses for my paper dolls and sewed costumes out of squares of felt for my Troll dolls. I started reading Seventeen magazine when I was about twelve (apparently right on target) and occasionally tried to copy the styles. I continued to read fashion mags pretty regularly up until my late 20's (I know, I know!) and would covet or dissect the styles presented on those glossy pages. Even when I had no money to spend on clothes, I used to pore over the Spiegel catalog looking at the clothes and daydreaming about how I'd someday be able to dress, when I was rich/thin enough, which leads to...

Hate: Growing up, there were still a lot of ironclad sartorial edicts. You didn't mix prints, you didn't wear white in the wintertime, and for the non-skinny girls, there were extra rules: no horizontal stripes, no shirts tucked into skirts, no big patterns. It took me many years to let go of those, but two fashion rules I still follow are no big prints (I'm short and they overwhelm me) and not mixing prints. Every year, commencing with the very first day of summer vacation, my mother would begin the excruciating process of shopping for the next year's school clothes. Put yourself in my shoes: it's hot, you'd rather be outside playing or in the shade under a tree somewhere reading a book, you're being forced to spend hours trying on clothes and being critiqued on whether they make you look fatter or not, being chided for being fat, having someone tug and adjust to see if they can be made to look right, and repeating this process at least a couple of times a week all the way through August until your mother is satisfied with her choices. All the way through my 20's, I was convinced that nothing I put on ever looked right on me, plus from the time I went to college until my mid-30's I made crap wages and had to do most of my clothes shopping in thrift and discount stores, so was limited by whatever was available in my size. "Personal style" meant that it fit and I could afford it, so shopping remained a teeth-gritting experience, and usually left me in such a state of self-loathing that I wanted to go home and binge.

After many years and working on my self image and body image, and having to live and work in the real world, what I've come to is that I like stylish clothes, but that I don't care much for Fashion, other than as kind of Kabuki theater. Most of what is "fashionable" is totally inappropriate for work anyway. You don't really see people dressed up like the women in Sex And The City, even in midtown Manhattan. (Maybe if you go out to clubs, but certainly not in offices or restaurants or on the street.) Most women have the sense to dress, well, more sensibly. And though dressing like a sexbot may initially garner some women attention, ultimately I think it prevents them from being taken seriously in the workplace, or at least in the types of workplaces I've been exposed to.

My taste these days runs mostly to "classics" (think Talbots ) but I struggle not to cross the line into "frumpy." It's tough sometimes to find clothing that's somewhere between the Teenage-Hoochie-Mama and The-Golden-Girls-On-A-Cruise extremes. A lot of younger women in my office have no problem with the THM end of the spectrum; last year I had to explain to one of my staff that a midriff-baring camisole with BOOTYLICIOUS in glittery letters across the chest wasn't really appropriate for the office.

So yes, Oprah and the What Not To Wear women would probably have a field day with my closet. I mean, I think these are cute shoes, Maude help me. I can appreciate different, more trendy looks on other people, but have come to the conclusion that they don't work for me. Plus, I mean who can really walk more than 2 blocks in these????

Miss Lorraine's School of Charm and Modelling

2006-07-08T15:21:00.000-07:00

When I was a child in the early 60's, Jackie Kennedy was a national icon, and up until I was about 7 or 8 years old, we dressed up for dinner at Grandma's, trips on an airplane, and holidays. "Dress up" meant stiff dresses with starched petticoats, black patent leather Mary Janes, and often little white cotton gloves. Here's a picture from Christmas, probably 1962.

The pedal-powered race car was a present from our Grandma. That's me in the car, and my sister, who shall be known only as Spot (her request) in the cowboy hat.

It's not for nothing that I threw in the Jackie Kennedy reference above. For white, middle-class women my mother's age, she was The Ideal Woman. From her taste in clothes, her slender figure, her bouffant hairdo's and uber feminine mannerisms, she set the standard that upwardly-mobile women aspired to. I don't think my mother was the only one in our neighborhood who harbored visions of slender, cultured, tennis-playing, French-speaking debutante daughters to live out their Jackie fantasies.

The light years between that vision and the reality of the two daughters she had to work with caused my mother much consternation. First, there was me: chubby, clumsy, with fine mousy brown hair that looked stringy if not brushed constantly (note the Pixie cut in the picture...I spent my childhood pining for hair long enough to braid) and horse crazy on top of all that, forget the tennis lessons. My sister, though thin, was a confirmed tomboy, who hated those stiff dresses even more than I and who preferred to play with Matchbox cars and GI Joes. She climbed trees and did James Bond kid-karate with the neighbor boys (breaking her collarbone once while practicing being flipped one's shoulder). We picked our noses, scraped our knees, had to be reminded to chew with our mouths closed and had no interest in the girly arts, such as walking up and down the hall balancing books on our heads like Hayley Mills in "Summer Magic."

The sign outside Miss Lorraine's School of Charm and Modelling must have glowed like a beacon for my mother. Situated on San Antonio Road, just north of El Camino (about a block from where Chef Chu's now continues to serve up some pretty consistently awesome Chinese food) in a small 60's "ranch style" shopping center, Miss Lorraines offered classes in "cotillion", manners, ballroom dancing for children and, of course, modelling. We passed it on our occasional family trips to Sears for garden hoses and such, and soon my mother began holding it over our heads like a switch. "If you can't start behaving like young ladies, I'm going to send you to Miss Lorraine's!" she'd threaten. (This replaced the threat from earlier days in which our bad behavior would result in being sent to live with The Indians, an idea that actually held a certain attraction for me because I figured I'd get my own pony.) Probably the only thing that actually stopped her from signing us up for indenture there was the worry of being judged pretentious by the other neighbor ladies.

My sister and I managed to elude Miss Lorraine's manicured clutches until the year I was seven, and a new upscale children's clothing store opened up on Main Street (and I believe is still there to this day). Unlike most children's clothing of the day, many of their ensembles mimicked contemporary adult styles. I particularly remember a couple of dresses designed to look like miniature Chanel suits that I regularly wore in second grade (of course not without commentary from my mother that they'd look so much better on me if I were thin). Presumably because she became an immediate and regular customer of this shop (ka-ching!), the owner asked my mother if she'd be willing to allow my sister and I to model some of the clothes in local fashion shows. But we'd have to take a modelling class to learn to navigate a catwalk. Eureka! This was the rock-solid excuse my mother needed to justify a set of classes at Miss Lorraine's. I think she figured she'd get us in the door on the modelling pretext, and before you could say "foxtrot" we'd be enrolled the Debutante Intesive Study program.

I honestly don't remember much about the modelling classes. I know that we went for 2 or 3 weeks for an hour at a time, and that there were about six kids in each class. We learned how to walk and turn and to SMILE! (dammit) and that we should want people to think we were having a good time. I do remember that my sister hated the whole idea, and would stomp across the dance floor like a construction worker in steel-toed boots.

Somewhere, there is the Super-8 evidence of our debut as child models which if I'm lucky has by now dissolved to dust. I remember the venue was outdoors, the day was hot, and that I was in a velvet dress and doing my best not to sweat. As part of the package, I was assigned to carry a brass trumpet. By the time it was my turn to go onstage, I was sweltering in the dress, and the trumpet felt as heavy as a bag of bricks. I remember little of my turn on the runway, but the home movies show a chubby girl with short hair in a red velvet dress shlepping that trumpet on her shoulder like a fireman rescuing an invalid from a burning building. My sister clomped down the runway, hunched over and with a scowl on her face, the very picture of seething resentment. (I always give my sister credit for being true to herself and honest about her feelings, regarless of whether that made anyone else happy or not. I've spent far too much of my life trying to be a Good Girl and to please others, and it's taken me decades to cultivate some of the chutzpah and sense of self she seems to have been born with.) My mother did not hide her disappoinment well that we had not been transformed into Poised Young Ladies. I think we did one more fashion show after that, and then she and the shop proprietor gave up on us. If I remember correctly, the second time I was selected to wear a baggy flannel nightgown as presumably this would not point up my obvious chubbiness. So much for the glamour of it all.

Threats of Saturday afternoon "charm" classes Miss Lorraine's were dropped not long afterward. Funny thing is, I can still do those model pivot-turns.

How Us Eeeevil Hollywood Libruls Celebrate July 4th....

2006-07-05T18:22:00.000-07:00

OK, so maybe I'm not "evil." I've been known to feed stray cats and hold doors open for elderly people or even younger folks with arms full of groceries or kids. And I let people merge in front of me on the freeway. Oh, and I've never invaded another country or had anyone killed or tortured.

And maybe we don't technically live in Hollywood, though our city motto is "Heart of Screenland" and we do have a major movie studio in town.

But I am an unrepentant Liberal, dammit, and proud of it!!! So what wholly disgusting and America-hating activities did we engage in to celebrate this Independence Day? Did we burn flags? Piss on the Constitution? (Nah, we'll leave that last one to the Bush administration.)

Nope, we started off the day with the annual neighborhood parade...

Families walking in the parade together and kids with patriotic decorations on bikes and wagons?

Check!

Homemade "floats" with loudspeakers blaring John Phillip Sousa marches?

Check!

Antique fire engine that later parks in the neighborhood for kiddie photo ops?

Check!

We sure are out of touch with Mainstream America here, and should be ashamed of our America-hating activities.

Even more radical, we follow up this scandalous display with [gasp!] block parties and grilling of hot dogs and hamburgers, consumption of same enjoyed with soft drinks (some "diet", oh my!) and beers (domestic AND imported!), and followed up with pie and cookies in the park while waiting for the fireworks show. And the fireworks! The most shocking display of pyrotechnics ever to grace the night skies.

I love the 4th of July!!!

The Dawgs

2006-07-02T07:15:00.000-07:00

I've always been a cat person. There were some dogs I liked, but I loved every cat I met. Then I met my husband, who I love even more than cats, and he's violently allergic to them. A few hours spend in the presence of cat dander renders him unable to breathe without medication. When we moved into our house which had been inhabited by the previous owners' indoor cats, we took great care to have the rugs thoroughly cleaned, and even removed in a couple of the rooms (exposing the hardwood floors underneath....gotta love an older house!). He still ended up in the emergency room a few days after we moved in, and had to sleep with a HEPA filter running for months afterward. So for 13 years, we lived without pets.

My in-laws had been making noises for some time that we should get Sam a dog. He'd gone through a period of several years starting when he was about a year old where he'd been primally terrified by animals, and over the last couple of years had been getting over it. MIL kept hearing stories from friends about how great dogs were for kids with special needs. We resisted the idea for a couple of years; our lives were crazy enough already, why bring another dependent creature into the mix? Then last September at a party, a co-worker showed me pictures of her Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. I'd always said if I ever get a dog, this was the breed I wanted. They're small but not yappy, they're good with kids, fairly mellow, and best of all, they don't smell. So I contacted the breeder that her dogs came from and two months later, Voila! Byron enters the picture:

So fast forward 5 months, and I get an e-mail from Byron's breeder saying she has some pups that she's looking for homes for, at a discounted price yet. I'd been having some pangs of guilt about Byron being alone during the day while Sam is at school, and kept having people tell me that dogs, especially Cavaliers, are so much happier with another doggie companion, and....

Coco joins the family! She's Byron's half-sister (same father) and they get along like brother and sister...fighting over a toy one minute and curling up together to nap the next. She's much more of a cuddly dog than Byron, and so far much easier to train. So we've gone in the space of 7 months from a no-pet family to a Two Dog Family, and it seems to be working out very well. Oh, and Doug's allergies don't seem to be triggered by the dogs.

They both love Sam and vie for his attention. When he wants puppy kisses, he sits down on the floor and purses his lips, and soon both pups are eagerly licking his face. It's amazing how Byron especially seems to understand him; he'll let Sam take a toy right out of his mouth, and is so tolerant of Sam's sometimes clumsy attempts to pet or hug him. I still can't say that I love all dogs, but I sure love ours!

It's the Small Things...

2006-07-01T20:36:00.000-07:00

Our son, Sam has just graduated to shoe-insert orthotics. This wouldn't be a big deal, except in comparison to what he's graduated from: stiff, over-the-ankle, tough-to-slip-on, fastened-with-two-velcro-straps, next-to-impossible-to-find-shoes-that-fit-over type orthotics, which made putting on shoes into a 5-minute ordeal, and pretty much prevented him from learning to put his shoes on himself. He'll be 9 in August.

A little background: he's mentally retarded, has mild hypotonic CP, seizure disorder, moderate hearing loss, and profound speech, cognitive and fine motor delays as a result of lack of oxygen in utero the last few days (or maybe weeks...nobody knows) of my pregnancy. He was born by crash C-section three days after my due date, after we'd gone to the hospital because I hadn't felt any movement from him in several hours. By the time they got him out his heart had stopped, and they performed CPR for nineteen minutes before they got it started again. His Apgar at nineteen minutes was 0-0-1. At first they told us he probably wouldn't survive, then after we took him off the ventilator at 11 days, that he probably wouldn't have a suck reflex, then that he'd probably never sit up or walk or talk (they didn't use the word "vegetable", but that was pretty much the picture being painted) and then at some point after he'd defied each one of those predictions, they stopped predicting and just said "we don't know." Today he functions at anywhere from a 2-4 year old level, depending on the particular function and how motivated he is. He's a wonderful, sweet, loving, handsome, flirtatious kid with a joie de vivre that puts most of us to shame, and a deep and abiding love of roller coasters (which he refers to as "the fast train"), Thomas The Tank Engine, and "his"dogs, Byron and Coco.

So today we went and got new shoes. The first pair we tried--magic. The orthotic slipped right into place in the shoe, and the shoes slipped effortlessly onto his feet. Little by little, it gets easier. Slowly, but it does. Days like today remind me of that.

Java Jive

2005-02-26T19:11:00.000-08:00

I am now and have been for several years, a devotée of Peets coffee. No, they don't pay me, but I shill for them constantly. They have the most consistently high quality beans, and roast them nice and dark like I like, and they are almost always nice and fresh and oily. When I first moved to LA, I had to mail order, but now they have several locations within a few miles, which gladdens my heart each time I find a new one. I'm particularly fond of the coffees from the Pacific: Sumatra, Aged Indonesian, Kona. I'll occasionally foray into the African varieties, but steer clear of the Mexican and South American beans. Way too acidic. "Columbian coffee--the richest kind?" To that I say Feh! Put it up against a good Sumatra and it capitulates like a wet paper towel. For my decaf though, I tend to stick with French Roast. It still has that decaf flatness, but less so than others I've tried.

I don't understand LA's fascination with and success of The Coffee Bean And Tea Leaf chain. The two or three times I've tried a cup of their coffee, it tasted like so much dishwater. The beans seem to be dry and roasted to a wimpy tan. The only think I can figure out to explain their success is that Brad Pitt supposedly used to frequent their Larchmont location (pre-Jen) and gave it that star caché. I'll occasionally hit Starbucks in a pinch for a latte, but don't buy their beans.

I buy beans whole and grind them right before use, which drives the spousal unit crazy. He doesn't like coffee, has never been a coffee drinker, and tries to dismiss my love affair with the dark brew as a garden variety addiction. I've been through several coffee makers through the years; right now I have one of those thermos ones. I love coffee made with a French press, but I love being able to set a timer and wake up to the Gurgle of Life and the lovely aroma even more.

Broken Record

2004-10-02T07:13:00.000-07:00

Someone in one of the monster comments threads over on Atrios suggested that the new meme (they're awfully fond of the word "meme" over there) for the Democrats should be that Bush sounds like a "broken record." Especially in the debates. As Ron Reagan on CNN quipped, he came with 30 minutes of material, which he then kept repeating over and over.

Anyhow, "broken record": I like it. It's short, it's punchy, it's easy to remember and evocative. Tell your friends. Bring it up in all your conversations about the elections. Let's get something going that will stick to Bush like the ridiculous "flip-flop" charge has stuck to Kerry. Let's see if we can tar them with their own brush.

On Life As A Mixed Bag

2004-10-01T19:37:00.000-07:00

I was prepared to hunker down with a nice tumbler of single-malt and watch the debates, and the subsequent media evisceration. Was fully prepared that no matter how well Kerry did (or how badly Bush performed) that the media spin would quickly declare Bush the winner. Wow, was I pleasantly surprised! Not only did I witness Kerry mopping the floor with the Sock Puppet, but was stunned to find that the polls in the mainstream media were overwhelmingly reflecting the aforementioned janitorial act. Despite my momentary pleasure, I know better than to gloat, and know better than to be complacent. The right is organized, well-funded and tenacious...they aren't going to give up without a fight, and a dirty, rigged fight at that. (I'm reading David Brock's "The Republican Noise Machine" right now, and it's an eye-opener.)

Then comes the bad news: the death of Doug's best friend's sister, a vivacious, good-natured, intelligent woman who was only 33 years old. She was healthy, and her death was not only tragic, but unnecessary: a result of complications from a liposuction procedure earlier in the week. She was home and sleeping in a chair per the doctor's instructions, and apparently threw a clot. She went to sleep Tuesday night and was dead when her mother came in to check on her Wednesday morning.

I'm sad, but also angry. Sad for her family's loss, four years to the day that her father died. Sad for her mother and brothers and sisters and friends. Angry because she didn't have to die. Angry because of the messages bombarding us that our bodies are not OK, that we should strive for physical perfection, that how we look is more important than who we are or even whether we live. Angry because of programs like "The Swan" and "Extreme Makeover" that downplay the pain and risks of these surgeries, and angry at a culture that plays lip service to "health" but drives home the notion that "beauty" trumps health every time. Last night I was lying in bed contemplating the stomach that I've always hated and realized that whoever said that loving our bodies is a revolutionary act was spot on. I need to dust off and polish up my revolutionary self.