New pics; anticipated weekend nirvana

It occurs to me that it's been too long since I posted any new pic's of my babygirl. So, without further ado, a couple of the cutest pictures I've taken lately:
I have far more pictures of babygirl sleeping than all her other pictures taken together. I don't know why; there's just something especially pure, soft, and lovely about her sleeping face. But this is one of the most fun in the "sleeping" photoset - she was SOOO tired but wouldn't go down for an afternoon nap, instead passing out in her highchair as I prepared dinner. This was taken at my cousin David's house in Ardsley, New York - a three-hour drive from home, but well worth the drive. It's babygirl's first designer outfit: a Ralph Lauren Polo number, courtesy of a sorely-missed law school classmate. You can't tell, but she's eating a chunk of honeydew melon. David's wife put out a tray of cut fruit on the coffee table, well within babygirl's reach. She went back to it all day long, eating a strawberry here and a pineapple chunk there. Such good eating habits - Mama's so proud!

Anyway, my weekend will be highlighted by a day trip to the newly-opened Ikea home furnishings store in Stoughton, MA. I have heard innumerable rapturous reviews of this Swedish mecca of affordable accoutrements, and have finally made up my mind to experience the wonder firsthand. Plus, Mama needs a new set of couches in the worst way! Seriously, the place is as big as a football stadium, with parking lots to match. But they have preferential parking spots for customers with infants as well as playspaces throughout the store, so babygirl will be coming along for the ride. It also has an in-house restaurant offering such things as Swedish meatballs and lingonberry mousse to tempt my culturally-intrepid palate. I will be bringing along my buddy, she of the husband-who-just-moved-to-Bangkok, because she also needs new couches and a hefty dose of Swedish/American consumerism to distract her from her wordly cares. I await the weekend with bated breath.

Note to my husband (who is unaware of this blog): I happened to overhear, from the kitchen, Babymama asking you to babysit the holy terror for ALL OF SATURDAY AFTERNOON, and you agreeing to do so. However, I was not included in that conversation, nor did either you or Babymama clue me in afterwards. The aforementioned Ikea trip was planned AFTER that conversation, in a state of what you should assume to be my ignorance of YOUR babysitting committment. I fully anticipate that there will be fighting down the road, probably on Saturday morning, as you protest there is no way I could have been unaware of the arrangement and I can't possibly leave you alone with her. While it is true that I was not unaware, my awareness is coincidental at best and I will deny it to my dying day. If you want my help for such onerous tasks, please request my input ahead of time or at least clue me in afterwards. You're on your own for this one, babe. I'm off to Swedish furniture heaven.

Things that do (and don't) piss me off

I'm feeling somewhat inclined to be pissy, as this is my first day back from a five-day weekend. Here are some of the things that are currently pissing me off.

1. Cold sores. I caught the virus that causes these nasty face-blighting horrors on a 1992 camping trip with my future husband and five other grown-ups. We girls ill-advisedly shared a Thermos full of my friend C.'s "cuckoo juice," a highly alcoholic, fruity-licious cold beverage. Unfortunately, C. was coming down with an outbreak of cold sores, which efficiently commuted via Thermus-bus to my mouth. Thirteen years later, I still suffer the fallout of that bad decision. They frequently break out when my lips chap to the point where I get small splits. Right now, I have a split across the center of my bottom lip, with sores trying to break out along its entire length. Aaargh!!! My treatment of choice is a Listerine-soaked cotton ball, applied liberally and frequently. By liberally, I mean "applied until it stings, and then left there until it stops stinging - only then do you know for sure it's working." By frequently, I mean "every available moment when your mouth is not doing something else and/or in public." Also, keep the sores bone-dry. And DON'T POP THAT SUCKER!!! The result is a tough, leathery layer of skin atop the sore, such that it cannot burst open and fester visibly for a week. It looks like a really bad case of chapped lips rather than an early-stage case of the Bubonic Plague. But the sores still last just as long. The much-touted commercial treatments are bogus. They are in a moist ointment base which allows the sore to erupt and look festeringly gross until they heal. Listerine, and only Listerine, is of any help at all.

2. Long-term houseguests. Back in September, my nephew's babymama and her 2 1/2 year old daughter (my nephew's half-sister and NOT my brother-in-law's kid) wound up homeless. This situation was partly the result of her terminal bad decision-making, compounded by the sadistic involvement of the Rhode Island DCYF. Anyway, she calls my soft-hearted husband at 4:30 on a Tuesday, sobbing that if she didn't have somewhere else to live by 9:00 the next day, DCYF was going to take her daughter away and place her in foster care. She had nowhere to go. My hubby begs me to let her come stay with us. I can't say no to my hubby when he has tears in his eyes, so she moved in with us. (How pathetic: a 27-year-old woman has nobody she can stay with other than her baby's remarried daddy's brother, wife and baby daughter...) She's a passive-aggressive, lazy skulker. Her daughter is an absolute, unmitigated terror and a generally miserable child. They make me hate being home sometimes. Babymama's job is only 30 hours a week, so she can't afford to move out. Supposedly she's going to follow my brother-in-law and his family when they take my nephew with them and move to New Mexico at the end of January. Putting aside my doubts as to whether this is even going to happen, the end of January is a long way away. I never liked Babymama very much, and I really resent the fact that I'm being forced to bear the consequences of HER lifetime of bad decisions. And as far as her kid goes, I'm moving further along the spectrum of negative emotions from "annoyance" to "dislike" towards "actively can't stand" at an alarmingly fast pace. I want them out so bad I can taste it, but I couldn't live with myself if I tossed a 2 1/2 year old child out on the street in the winter, even this particular spawn of Satan. Any suggestions on how to diplomatically handle this situation are welcome.

3. The fact that, fourteen months after the birth of my child, I'm still carting around 40 extra pounds. Dieting is my least favorite thing in the whole world, closely followed by exercise-for-exercise's sake (as opposed to exercise undergone willingly in the course of doing something fun). I've got to get around to losing the weight sometime soon, but I can't stand the idea of doing it NOW.

And now, more in keeping with the Thanksgiving season, things that make me happy:

1. Coming into the office on a Monday after a long weekend to find in my mailbox a favorable decision on a Motion for Summary Judgment I worked very hard on in a complicated case. I'm a lawyer; I love winning.

2. My baby girl being in a ridiculously kissy mood throughout the entire aforementioned long weekend. (Just not on Mommy's yucky bottom lip, honey!)

3. My baby girl, and therefore me, sleeping through the night.

4. Yogurt-covered pretzels.

Excellent friends, part 2.

I got home from work on Friday, after having written that last post, to learn from my husband that our friend who previously spent three months doing tsunami relief in Banda Aceh, Indonesia has now been tapped for an even larger humanitarian gig. The same organization under whose auspices he worked last time have now selected him to coordinate all disaster relief in, I guess, second- and third-world countries. (I'm not sure how they classify this, but I don't think he'd be handling disasters in Europe or even South America, though I could be wrong.) Anyway, he will be handling the management and coordination of aid to Indonesia and to Pakistan in the wake of its recent earthquake, along with anything else that may happen on his watch. He got the call last Wednesday, asking him to show up at his new duty station in Bangkok, Thailand next Sunday. So just like that, on a week-and-a-half's notice, he's packing up his life and moving to Bangkok. This is a 6-month posting, after which he might be asked to continue in the same position and location, or moved elsewhere to another location and/or different position, or could move to a different humanitarian job altogether if he secures one for himself. I anticipate that, once he secures himself a permanent international position, my friend who is married to him will join him there, carving herself out a humanitarian niche there. While it will be a great loss to me to lose two such good friends in my day-to-day life, the world will gain much more.

Excellent friends and homeless families

Most of us have at least one friend who makes us feel small and petty and selfish by comparison. I have two, and they happen to be married to each other. One spent significant amounts of time in Indonesia growing up (his father was I believe in the Peace Corps), speaks fluent Indonesian, and was personally hit hard by the tsunami. Where the rest of us maybe called up the Red Cross and made a donation, he talked his employer into giving him a paid leave of absence and then flew to Indonesia, giving three months of his life to one of the most badly-hit communities. You can get a glimpse of his story here: http://www.planusa.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1971
(BTW, if anyone can tell me how to hyperlink text I'd be extremely grateful!)

His wife, however, is my very oldest friend. We met as little kids at day care. Through the years, we've had periods where we floated apart, but eventually the currents of our lives always moved us back together again. Today, she is one of my daughter's many "aunties," and I think probably the coolest.

Her parents have been active in the American Civil Liberties Union for years. By years, I mean decades. Their involvement predates my friend's birth by a long shot. They have been board members in their state for as long as I can remember. They brought their two daughters up in a tradition of activism, particularly in defense of free speech issues. A significant chunk of their teen years was dominated by a lawsuit commenced in my friend's younger sister's name, after her graduation from a public middle school prominently featured religious prayer. The point of the lawsuit was to ensure that her sister's high school graduation was free of prayer, i.e., state endorsement of a religion, or religiousness in general, at her commencement from a state-funded school. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which held that the Establishment Clause of the Constitution prohibited the inclusion of prayer at public school graduations. This was absolutely a landmark case.

My friend is now a state ACLU board member herself, along with her parents. Actually, it is incorrect to talk about having just two amazing friends in this post. Her parents are my friends as well - I have attended Passover seder and Chanukah parties under their roof for maybe ten years now. The whole family, collectively, has been named the state ACLU's Civil Libertarians of the Year, and they will be honored at a ceremony and dinner I will be attending tonight. I may not agree with them on every point - I sadly must admit that I am willing to sacrifice a certain degree of personal liberty in the interests of personal security, whereas they believe that he who would sacrifice liberty for security deserves neither. But their work is necessary, difficult, and deserving of respect. I am honored to know them, and to be included in their lives.

Next topic: the night before last, I saw on the nightly news that more than 57,000 families displaced by Katrina have been informed that FEMA will stop funding their shelter in hotels in two more weeks. That's more than fifty thousand families, the majority of whom will not be able to continue paying for their hotel rooms, and will find themselves with no roof over their heads a week after Thanksgiving, just weeks before Christmas. This is a major housing crisis, folks. And the timing couldn't be worse. Will the public once again step forward to cushion these families' landings? How can they be expected to do so? At this time of year, families who have shelter often struggle to provide some small Christmas luxuries to those they care about. And at the same time, they will this year be contending with record high heating bills, and gasoline prices that haven't yet returned to Earth. Where will these families go? Will their children be fed, and warm, and maybe get a gift or two on the 25th? I'm afraid that for many, the answer will be no. This may be the year when record numbers of families spend their holidays in tents, under bridges, in cars. For FEMA to cast them out now compounds injury with insult and even more injury. It is a collosal display of callousness.

Tonight, I go home and hug my baby tight and send out my gratitude that I am able to provide her with food, clothing, shelter, toys, and boundless love. Then, I put on a party dress and go out to toast my friends' lifelong committment to the protection of our beloved, beleagured Constitution. It's a good day to be alive.

Hello? Is there anybody out there? Just nod if you can hear me...

To a certain extent, posting to this blog has been an exercise in futility. I haven't gotten many comments at all, and frankly, I had to go fishing for those. But I will nonetheless continue to post, because I find some satisfaction in putting my sh!t out there for all the world to see - if only it were interested. You know, this is part of the reason why I haven't gotten too badly steamed up about things like the Patriot Act's provision allowing the Department of Homeland Security access to my library records and/or credit card records. I can pretty safely say that the DHS has *absolutely no interest whatsoever* in me. I'm a middle-class married mom with a full-time job who pays her taxes on time and goes to bed before 10PM most nights. My library records reveal nothing other than that I owe a couple bucks in late fees for forgetting to bring back "Hippos Go Berserk!" on time. My credit card records reveal an unfortunate tendency to purchase cheap costume jewelry on overstock.com. And not only does DHS have no interest in me, but I also wouldn't much care if it bothered to pull all of this scintillating personal data. To a certain extent, I feel like those who protest madly these provisions of the Patriot Act doth perhaps protest too much. I know, an unforgivable sentiment from a Northeast liberal lawyer whose best friend is the state ACLU's Civil Libertarian of the Year. But I also have no problem having my bag searched should I choose to ride the T, or being patted down at the airport should I choose to fly. If I wanted total privacy in every aspect of my life, I would stay at home with no Internet service and no library or credit card, and refrain from ever taking any public transportation ever. If by sacrificing my right to conceal my utter banality from government scrutiny, I can protect myself or others from an explosive demise, so be it.

Wow, what an utter and unexpected digression from my lead-in sentence. What I actually meant to say is, I don't think anyone's actually reading my blog, so for me to keep posting is an exercise in futility. But I nonetheless enjoy it, much as I enjoy buying my weekly Powerball ticket. In fact, just to really drive home the fruitlessness of this entire exercise, I've added a hit counter to the bottom of my page. It will continue to tell me how often I've come back and looked at my own blog. And if, by some chance, billions of Internet folks are actually coming here and reading my deepest thoughts without leaving a comment, I'll at least have the satisfaction of knowing I'm not quite shouting into the void.

Coffee's on!

Got them "hauled my butt to work for 6AM" blues.

Is there anything that ticks me off so much as having NOTHING to do at work? Many people might say that they can only dream of such good fortune. Not I! But this is because, in order to make my work day actually work for me, I have to wake up at friggin' 4AM. Up by 4, out the door by 4:50, hop into my carpool buddy's car at 5AM (more on him some other day), and in the door at work by 6. This allows me to miss morning rush hour. Also, to walk out the door at 2:30, walk across town, hop on a Bonanza bus at 3, get back to my car by 4, and drive back home for 4:30, thereby missing the afternoon rush hour as well. The point of the whole exercise is to allow me to spend 3+ hours with my baby girl before her 7:30 or 8PM bedtime.

Long story short, after waking up so friggin' early and getting in before the lights are even turned on in my office, I like to actually have some WORK ready to do, so as to make me feel like my sacrifice has actually been WORTH something. (Other than, say, a paycheck and benefits and the company of some really cool co-workers.) When I get in and there's nothing to justify my presence, it makes me feel like a gerbil running in one of those stupid pointless exercise wheels.

Well, today is one of those days. I've done stuff that wasn't even due for a month. I've updated all of my reference materials. I've gone over to the file drawer where they keep cases from an area I don't work on, in case the people who do handle that area were bogged down, only to discover that they're completely up to date. Somebody get me some lettuce and one of those upside-down water bottles so I can lick my H2O from the metal tube underneath, and bring me some running shoes so I can jump right into that wheel.

Anyway, for your viewing pleasure, I present my own actual coffee, in my own actual travel mug. I had to put it on the windowsill because, as stated before, they haven't even turned on my lights yet. You'll notice a cute picture of my dog in the background, too - free bonus gift with your purchase!



Anyway, for anyone who might have missed me during my 5-day weekend, don't worry. You didn't miss much. The entire DITH household was in various stages of a cold involving much hacking and nose-blowing/snot-sucking and whining. I did manage to take the babygirl to three different playgrounds in as many days. Other than that? Well, I did grocery shopping, cleaned the house, got the laundry washed AND folded, and made a slammin' turkey-noodle-three-cheese casserole with enough leftover for three days of lunches. Oooh, how exciting! It's just as well that we were sick, though, as we didn't have enough cash to spare to do anything more than just exist from one day to the next.

Anyway, if anyone's looking for me, I'll be over here. Running in this stupid exercise wheel. For, like, the next 7 1/2 hours.

Bleah.

That is the way I feel today. A couple of days ago I started feeling like someone poured cement into my lungs to about the halfway point and let it dry there. I didn't feel like coughing, but took an expectorant and forced myself to start hacking that shit up. By now I feel like the inside of my chest has been sandpapered. Also, my nose has joined the party, and after going through a full box of Puffs, my nostrils are turning a fetching carmine shade. And finally, just to round out my overall feeling of crapitude, the babygirl slept HORRIBLY last night. Woke up every 45 min's or so, howling of course, and only grudgingly going back to sleep. The hubby finally took her out onto the couch at midnight so I could get a whopping 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Only, I didn't, because, you know, I'm hacking up a lung.

This is the size of the coffee I need right now. And no, today I'm not sharing.



So, the other day I blogged reverently of Paris. Got home that night and saw MSNBC's coverage of the Paris riots. This makes me very sad. I mean, I've known for awhile that France doesn't always do a great job integrating its immigrant population and their descendants. I mean, this is a nation that outlawed the wearing of the headscarf in school by Muslim girls. What a great reason to drop out, huh? (Let's see, go to school = become an infidel, shame my family and go to hell. Wheeeee!) Not like our own country has done so much better; maybe in some geographic areas and in some educational/professional respects, but, c'mon, there was no excuse for what happened in New Orleans! (or on the Trail of Tears, or in the WWII internment camps, etc.) But I so love Paris, and it hurts to admit that Paris' ability to be the city I love depends heavily on it being visibly almost-totally white, with its inconveniently poor and pissy minorities stashed safely away in the non-touristy burbs.

I'll probably be offline for a few days. We're having some serious Internet access issues at home right now, and I'm going to be out of the office for a few days. I work from home every Wednesday, which means although I'm still working (sigh...) at least I get to do it wearing my jammies and can use my own pisser without worrying whether someone else can hear me pee. Thursday is my anniversary (4 years! Who'd'a thunk we could make it that long?), Friday is a holiday, and then it's the weekend anyway. So, long story short, unless my access problem spontaneously resolves itself, I will be out of the loop til Monday. I think you'll live.

Coffee, chickens, and Paris.

It's early here on the East Coast, and I really need some coffee. Won't you join me?



So anyway, I came in this morning and spotted a new addition to the office's, umm, eclectic decor. A wicker chicken has roosted on the reception-area coffee table. I know for a fact it was not here when I left yesterday. Nor do I know its purpose here, as it was not filled with leftover Halloween candy (to my great dismay). Some of you may read some of the same blogs I read - there's one I like called "Whatever, Mom," for whose author the ownership of first one, then several wicker chickens has deep philosophical and/or metaphorical meaning. So, here you go, ko_karma, this one's for you (perhaps you can enlighten me as to its significance in my life):



So finally, on to the third random topic du jour: Paris. No blog of mine could exist for long without touching on Paris. I have been there twice, both times with my husband. The first time was for just a day and a half in the middle of the mad pan-European dash that was our honeymoon. That was not nearly long enough. Our hotel room was a cruddy little room in a Best Western in the Opera district. We walked as much of the city as we possibly could, though, and I so successfully imprinted the feel of the city on my mind that I dreamed about it for years afterwards. The whole time, I fervently wished we had stayed for less time either in London or in boring suburban Trier, Germany so as to spend more time in Paris.

Finally, two years later, I threw fiscal prudence to the winds and charged us a week-and-a-half long proper Parisian holiday. This time, we networked a stay in a luxury Paris flat in a posh part of town through the wealthy father of a friend of a friend. We packed our best clothes and pretended to be another couple entirely for the whole time. We ate the best bread and cheese, drank the best wines. And most importantly, we walked and walked and walked. We made a point of walking through every arrondisment and every important neighborhood. I found, to my great surprise, that my high school and college French, though several years distant, had stuck to a great degree, and I was able to communicate surprisingly well. Everyone we met was lovely, friendly and helpful, possibly as a result.

I came back twice as deeply in love with Paris. Since then, a piece of my mind has been given over to scheming ways I might get to live there for a year or two. (Perhaps pursue an LLM in international law at a law school there?) But I can't figure out how to do that and still pay the mortgage back home. And of course, everything has changed with my daughter's arrival. So I think my next Paris trip might be several years from now, and I will take my daughter with me, and we will play at being French and dress and dine well the whole time. And we will stay in an apartment again rather than in a crappy, overpriced hotel, perhaps in one of the flats on this site: http://www.ilparisapartments.com/ With any luck, she will love the civilized adventure of it as much as I do.

And now, a totally random Paris picture I found on the Internet because I don't have any of my own photographs with me right now.



This has been a public service announcement. Thank you for your time.

Coffee of the day

I almost forgot, I promised to have fresh coffee brewed for my visitors. So, as promised, here it is:



Mmmmm. Coffee.

Gritting my teeth

Over the last year and a half, I sprouted a wisdom tooth. This was annoying on an ongoing and constant basis. It also involved frequent mouthsful of blood, as new areas of my gum were split by the emerging tooth. (This gave me great empathy for my daughter's teething miseries!) I always knew this tooth would be trouble. Its surface faces, not downward like all its upper-jaw brethren, but outwards so as to maximize friction against the inside of my cheek. This subsided over time as I developed a callous-like rough spot on the spot where the tooth rubs.

I always tried to keep this tooth clean, but it was hard given its odd angle and location in the way-back of my mouth. About a month ago, I developed a stinging pain in the wisdom tooth and in its next-nearest neighbor. After discovering that Sensodyne toothpaste was inadequate to the task, I gave in to the inevitable and went for a thorough dental exam for the first time in maybe 15 years. The x-rays revealed I have a cavity in the wisdom tooth, a larger/deeper one in the neighbor tooth, and a small cavity which hadn't yet revealed its presence in the neighbor's lower-jaw mate. The tab to get all this fixed? Depends on whether the neighbor needs a root canal, which of course the dentist won't know until he actually goes in to do the work. Without the root canal, it will be about $700. With the root canal, it will be $2,212!!!

For the record, the federal government (or at least my corner of it) does not offer dental insurance. I am on my own for this bill. Needless to say, I don't have $2,200 just sitting around collecting dust. My two options to pay for it are (1) borrow it from my home-equity line of credit; or (2) take out a special dental-work loan from a lender who is partnered with the dental clinic. (What sort of a comment is it on the sorry state of health coverage in this country when whole companies spring up to lend money specifically for dental work?)

You know, I resent the federal government for not picking up at least part of the tab on this one. Once upon a time, people took federal government jobs despite the low pay to get the great benefits packages. Now, we take both the comparatively low pay and the mediocre benefits, and try to just be grateful that we have jobs at all. Don't get me wrong, I really do like and appreciate my job. I have a fabulous and kind boss, a real peach (more about him on some other day), a reasonable work load, and hours that let me spend more time with my kid than any lawyer should reasonably be able to expect. I do good work, all of it done on time and to the highest standard of which I am capable. But would it kill the federal budget to provide dental insurance (and vision too, while they're at it) to their faithful employees?

Oh well. To be fair, when I used to work for a real law firm making really good money (and working insane hours), I *still* didn't have dental insurance. If big rich law firms and the federal government both stiff their employees on health insurance, then who the heck does? Or is dental insurance a complete thing of the past?

Happy Halloween!

This was Sarah's last baby Halloween - her last year in a baby costume, and her last year staying home. Next year we'll take her door to door, over in the good part of town where her Gramps lives. This was her Halloween costume:



She HATED wearing it. The headpiece was hot and the body piece was a little too short. I got about five other pictures of her looking really unhappy in it. This was the only picture of her smiling in it. But you know what? She was cute as all get-out in it. And sometimes a mom's just gotta dress up the baby, no matter what the baby has to say about it. Next year she'll have a cute little kid costume - maybe a fairy, or a princess, or a kitty. This was my last year to get her in a baby costume, and damn it, I enjoyed it.

We bought too much candy. I ate one little bar of each type of chocolate bar in the mix. That means, of course, that I ate maybe 10 or 12 mini-chocolate bars. I should have just bought one king-sized Hershey bar, eaten the whole thing, and called it done. (burp!) Sarah had her first candy experience - her daddy gave her a Tootsie Roll pop. Ten minutes later there's sticky candy on her hands, face, costume, toys, just everywhere. If she hadn't been wearing a daisy on her head, it would have been in her hair too. She screamed when I took it away and insisted she eat her dinner. After all, why should she eat steak, potatoes and Brussels sprouts when there's a Tootsie Pop to be had?

We still had about 3 cups of Halloween candy when I left the house this morning. I'll bet there will only be 1 cup left by the time I get home. Daddy will deny eating 2 cups of candy during the day. He will say that there wasn't as much there as I thought there was. Liar.