"The Most Elegant Configuration a Hand Could Have..."

This week was my Grandma Kitty's 83rd birthday, so my mom and I took her to lunch at Red Robin. My grandma is in the fairly late stages of dementia and lives in an Alzheimer's care unit at a nursing home here in Reno.

Confession: I am not very close to her, my mom's mom. Her memory loss makes it hard to hold a conversation. I don't see her as often as I should; I have never actually been to visit her at The Courts, the home where she lives. This is because I don't really know what to say to her...I never have. Things were this way even before her mind and her memory started to go. Growing up, we rarely saw her because she and my grandpa Jack, who died in 1999, had retired when I was very little to become "snowbirds," meaning they traveled the country in their RV, moving as the seasons cycled, gravitating to warmth. When I was little they would come through Reno once or twice a year, but as we got older my grandfather's lungs declined and he was unable to handle the altitude here, so we saw them less and less.

Even when we did get together, though, something about the relationship with my grandmother always felt stilted, formal, reserved, lacking laughter. Grandpa Jack was a little more fun--my memories of him are his unique laugh, at once a boom and a titter, and occasional practical jokes like the time he had my aunt's husband, who had never eated an artichoke, believing that the purple leaf-tips were deadly poisonous and that he had to eat around them with the greatest of care. But despite his humor he was still reserved, discipline-oriented in the old fashioned way which says children should be seen and not heard. So they saw my sister and I when they could, and heard us--which would be to know who we were--rarely, if at all. My mom talks a lot about this now, about growing up in a home where love was expressed via discipline and rules and distance. She made it her mission to make sure my sister and I grew up very differently.

Of course dementia hasn't strengthened the quality of our relationship. She's difficult to talk to much of the time--she swings from paranoid comments (she's gotten better about this though; when her mind first began to fall apart, she thought everyone was either after her or up to no good. She was convinced that her assisted living home was a front for a whorehouse) to nonsensical comments and then to even more nonsensical comments. Oddly, she never talks about my grandfather, but she does claim to have multiple husbands and giggles girlishly over certain men she encounters, including an unfortunate postal deliver. Even when she seems somewhat here, I just don't feel warmth toward her. There's love but not the warm love I would like to feel, not the warm love I feel I SHOULD feel. But sometimes I catch a glimpse, just a quick peep into the world of her, a woman-life she must have had but couldn't share, a loving heart beneath the reserve...

I caught a glimpse this week. My grandma has been very into babies lately; she often carries around a plastic baby doll and talks about him and to him like he's real. So we are in the restaurant. And she is facinated by my baby (whom she thinks is my mom's baby). And she can't stop looking at Scarlett, even when we try to talk to her about other things, she is utterly distracted. And then the moment: she is cooing to Scarlett and then about Scarlett and then, I think, about this baby boy that lives in her mind and then she is describing, from nowhere, the feel of a baby's hand on her cheek, she tells me he reaches up and touches you, so tenderly, his hand in the most elegant configuration a hand can have, and it is...

And then she derails, and it's gone. It's another subject--the little girl across the restaurant who has "sticks in her head" (she was wearing ponytails). It's gone but these words stay with me, stop my mind for a minute, and that warmth I'm wanting, there it is. It bubbles up because something about her eyes and her tone remind me in that instant that she is a mother and was once a young mother and she felt, once or a million times, that fierce and tender love in the softness of the tiny hands of her babies. She loved. Even if that love lost its voice as she grew older and they grew older and convictions and conventions told her you don't talk about that tiny hand, that love. But she felt it. And in that moment, so did I.

My screensaver this morning, a surprise from Mario...

Gotta love a husband who can photoshop!

I'd Like to Propose a Toast: To the Meeting of the Gametes!

Today is April 19th, a day which I feel deserves a special commemorative blog.

One year ago today I was standing in front of the sink--I have the vague impression that I was doing dishes, but god knows that doesn't happen often, as my husband can attest, so I was more likely in some stage of the cooking process--when I felt an unmistakable intense pain on one side of my pelvic region. Now, normally this is the type of pain that makes women roll their eyes, reach for their Midol, and bitch to whomever is nearest about the unfairness of being a woman, or perhaps if that person is male, pick a fight with him out of sheer irritation at the fact that men don't have ovaries.

But my reaction was different--it was one of tentative celebration, because if the pain was real-pain and not hope-pain, then I was ovulating. And THAT meant that the Clomid was working.

At that point in time, Mario and I had been trying to conceive for nine months. Granted, this is a LOT less time than many people spend strugging with fertility. We were lucky to already be receiving treatment that early; most doctors require that people try for a year before they will help. But already, I was afraid to hope. I had gone off NINE YEARS of the pill about thirteen months before, only to find out that my regular-as-a-clock cycles were completely birth-controlled; when left to its own devices, my body couldn't really be bothered with reproductive functions. My cycles came sporadically, only about every four months on average, making the possibility of conception rather slim. To make matters worse, while I was undergoing tests my doctor suggested that we have Mario tested too, just to rule out any problems there. Unfortunately, it ruled them in, possibly the result of years spent on a bicycle (he is an avid cyclist).

I was very depressed the day I found this all out. Drugs would possibly help me, my doctor said, but wouldn't address his problem. She didn't seem to have much hope for us but agreed to try Clomid, first 50 miligrams and the 100. However, if those dosages didn't work she would be sending us on to a nationally ranked but prohibitively expensive fertility specialist here in Reno.

So, Mario quit cycling, and I started first Provera to induce a cycle, then Clomid to prod my ovaries into production. Oh, the days of fertility drugs: they are days of montonously charting basal body temperatures, peeing on sticks and in cups, thinking of the calendar in terms of Days 1-28, having sex when you are not in the mood and having to abstain when you are. The first cycle made me hyper hormonal--mood-swingy, temper-tantrummy, hot-flashy, and didn't work for crap. My ovaries laughed in the face of 50 miligrams. "Ha ha," they said; "you'll have to come up with something a leetle more potent than that to get us off the couch. Pansies!" So we turned up the heat: 100 miligrams, the do-or-die-dosage. More accurately, the do-or-be-forced-to-start-thinking-how-far-into-debt-you're-willing-to-go-for-an-ankle-biter dosage.

Which brings us back to that day in front of the dishwasher. There was something about April; warming month, days of new life and cherry blossoms that appear and perservere through the last blusters of winter, it glowed in my mind. Before knowing the extent of our problems, I had confidently predicated to one of my friends that we would get pregnant in April. So when I felt those cramps, those cramps that said my ovaries were surrendering one little hostage ovum, I felt a fearful hope.

I carried that hope in my heart over the next couple of weeks until it was time to test, when it became a knot in my throat. My hands shook as I waited for the test to turn...one blue line...and no more. The test said I was not pregnant.

Devastated, I called my doctor. She said there was nothing more she could do; it was time to go on to the Big Fertility Guy. She made me an appointment several weeks from then, and I spent the interim days scrutinizing our bank account balance and researching IUI and in vitro and calculating how many rounds of each our life savings could afford...um, not many. I consoled myself that at least I could still drink at the party or two we attended over the next couple of weeks, including our friend's 30th birthday blow-out where Mario I actually CLUBBED for the first time in years, and did the requisite drinking...

A move that, of course, I would live to regret. Several weeks later I noticed something odd; I kept feeling like I was going to start (girls, you know what I mean). Hmmm, I thought. Maybe the Clomid DID work, it just worked late or something. Days passed with no sign of Aunt Flo, but I continued to feel that odd feeling, and then one morning, the day before Mother's Day, I woke straight up with one thought in my head: I need to take another test. I hopped out of bed, fished a test out from the jumble of TTC-related items under the bathroom sink, and aimed my first morning's doodle right at that stick. One blue line...and then another across it. Was this real? I dug up another test...that beautiful little cross again. I was pregnant. We told our families the next day, a very special Mother's Day, and on Monday I cancelled our appointment with the fertility specialist.

One year ago today, a reluctant little egg began a journey that would change its life, and mine; it would encounter a determined little guy with a wiggly tail and nine months minus three days later (an endless epoch; how can language even allow me to sum it up in a word, a sentence?) Scarlett Celeste Colombini would arrive in the world. Little cells, I salute you, the memory of you and what lives on now; I salute you and the miracle of meiosis. Thank you for making me a mom.

Putting My Foot Down...Then Lifting it Back Up

So Friday I had this form I had to finish and submit. It was the last day (of course, I'm a procrastinator!) to file for reimbursement for travel expenses, and I will be heading to a conference in Seattle in May. The office staff in my department are...well...let's just say it is important to stay on their good sides. One toe out of line, usually, and the entire department gets a snide email about the evils of leaving a banana peal by the computer, clogging the copy machine, or, of course, being late with forms. Anyway, I had to get the form done.

And Squidge was NOT cooperating. She was tired and was fighting sleep as she always does and nothing would appease her, nothing. She was shrieking like a banshee no matter what I did. And it was then, as I was jiggling her around trying fruitlessly to finish the form while she screamed, that I cracked.

I picked her up, marched her to her crib, set her in it, turned on our fabulous video monitor (thank you EmilyPie!), shut the door behind me, and went back to my computer. I could see her screaming on the monitor...and screaming...and screaming...but I couldn't hear it.

I felt triumphant. I AM TAKING MY LIFE BACK, I pronounced to myself! See, I can let her cry it out! She WILL learn to nap in her crib. She WILL learn to be put down for TEN DANG MINUTES sometimes and entertain herself. I was strong. I was resolute. I called my mom and told her we are laying down a new law: no more cuddling and coddling to sleep--this is always what she gets and it's getting harder and harder! When she gets sleepy, she's going down for a nap. My mom applauded me taking a stand and promised to help. A while later I woke her up to take her to school, and she clearly wasn't too happy with me, but I was assured of my RIGHTness.

Well.

Then I started looking around on the internet (oh you bain and blessing!) for suggestions about how to get nap-hating babies to go down. And I started finding all these websites that say it's BAD to let babies cry it out...that it BREAKS THEIR SPIRITS.

And then I started feeling AWFUL. Scarlett has so much spirit...and I would be BREAKING that spirit? Like, cracking, fracturing, suppressing, breaking? Oh, what a terrible mom! How could I do such a thing? I want my daughter to be spirited!

So. Back to square one. No more letting her cry it out, at least for awhile. Instead I'm going to start putting her in her crib every time she falls asleep in hopes that she'll get used to it. My mom agreed...but I've already caught her cheating. Two days into the new regime. And, um...I've cheated too.

It's tough to be a mom.

Random Calculations and Scraps of News

1) We rebooked our tickets for Hawaii (see post four or so back.) After losing our first tickets to ATA's bankruptcy, I was concerned our only option would be to fly out of Reno on crappy, expensive, red-eye flights, but I was totally wrong. We are flying out of SAN FRANCISCO on crappy, expensive, red-eye flights. That's eight hours in the car, which will probably become twelve, with the Screaming Bean screaming. Moreover, we will be taking these crappy flights IF and ONLY IF my parents can rebook their tickets too. They found out today that Southwest--who heroically promised they would rebook their customers in the wake of ATA's bankruptcy but have since realized the dangers of overcommitting oneself--is leaving them high and dry. Or low and nowhere near the ocean, if you will. If they don't go, we can't--they were going to let us crash with them in their condo, and there is no way we can afford our own. Is this trip beginning to seem cursed?

2) Squidge Bean is really beginning to get her hand-eye(-bowel) coordination down. She is starting to reach out and feel our faces, which is the cutest thing. This morning we were playing and she had one hand on either side of my chin so deliberately and was looking in my eyes and it was so endearing and then...she let one rip, long and loud.

3) For some reason, in the last hour or so of my functional grammar seminar (sounds mind-numbingly boring but is actually only mind-numbingly hard and rather fun--eg we often examine data sets that allow us to conclude that Bill O'Reilly is completely incoherent, while Sarah Vowell is brilliant. Rah rah liberal education!) I often get spacey and find myself strangely drawn to mathematical calculations. I usually play with our budget, but that gets depressing, so today I changed it up. My little number doodles revealed that Squidge is 85 days old today. This means I have fed her somewhere around 765 times, using a lowball estimate of 9 feedings a day (I am still waiting for the glorious time when she will habitually go more than two hours between feedings). Because I feed her for approximately 30 minutes a time, that means I have spent approximately 22,950 minutes feeding her in the last twelve weeks. That's 382 hours. That's almost 16 days. That's over 2 weeks, out of the last 12, that I have spent with a cute little parasite attached to my boobs...

4) ...Which apparently are creatures of the night. After twelve weeks they still get ridiculously full and sore when I'm sleeping, even if it's only been a couple of hours since the Bean last ate. In contrast, during the day I'm often fighting to get them to produce. It is odd finding out that your boobs are decidedly noctural while you are a day owl. Oh, and that you can smell like milk All. The. Time, even when you've just showered.

5) Apparently iPhones are amphibious: my mom dropped hers in the toilet today and it survived. Technology never ceases to amaze me.

The White of the Orange: Confessions of a Weird Eater

I had another one of those stress days, where the weight of everything I have to do started pressing down on me, where the semester's end and THREE 25-page, publication-quality-or-very-near-to-it papers loom...But. I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk instead about what I will nickname, affectionately, WFT's...Weird Food Things.

I am inspired to talk about WTFs because I took the Squidge Bean over to my parents' house today so I could have my arms free to do some homework for awhile, and also so I could give my mom a break from trekking up here. When I walked in, there was a gigantic bag (I'm talking 20 pounds) of birdseed sitting open by my dad's armchair. Now, the presence of this bag was nothing unusual--he and my mom enjoy watching the birds in their yard, and my dad makes these birdseed cake things to hang from the trees. What was unusual was the location. In a flash, I turned to my mom and asked, "Has Dad been EATING that?" She burst out laughing and said yes, he likes raw seeds, and how on earth did I suspect?

Well, I suspected because my Dad is prone to WTFs. He is famous for eating the tails from tail-on shrimp--no, not the meaty part, the silicate shell part that normal people tug free and abandon on the rim of their plates. When we go to Thai food, he will swipe those suckers off your plate and pop them into his mouth like peanuts. Nothing really deters him in the way of normal food cleanliness or appropriateness (my husband shares this flaw. He claims old food is still edible even when it has practically started its own hair band in the cheese drawer. When we were traveling in Thailand, he once ate a grub). My dad is an avid red meat eater and recently, to make a point (to me of course, because I got aggravated that he was dripping raw meat juice on the cutting board where I was chopping veggies for a salad) he carved off a chunk of raw tri-tip and chowed it down. Raw. Fresh from the plastic.

Now, I have no WFT's with meat. I'm a white-meat-and-fish-only girl since 1997, when the revolting quality of college dorm cafeteria meat finally iced the cake of years and years where rare meat from animals whose dead heads hung on the wall was my only dinner option. But I do have my share of other oddities. I am a rather nutty eater of fruit. I scrape the white of the orange out with my teeth, and even stranger, I like to eat the skin off of orange seeds. Indeed, I enjoy rinds in general. And the skin of seeds in general. Yes, it's weird. That's why I call them WTFs.

I also confess a fetish for spoon foods. Particularly custard-y varieties of spoon foods like, well, custard, and tapioca, and flan, and rice pudding. In fact I get aggravated when people serve a spoon-friendly dish (like hot brownies topped with ice cream) with a fork. People, come on. It is just unfair to let all of that goodness escape through the tines. Forks are SO not pleasurable to eat with.

And, at the risk of sounding eating-disorder-esque, I can put away a whole bag of candy like there's no tomorrow. Lately I have a particular adoration for Twizzlers. Did anyone get that forward that's going around about how margarine is only one molecule away from plastic? Well, my husband says Twizzlers are probably ZERO molecules away. Honestly, they taste totally synthetic. When I consider them objectively, I don't even actually like them. But for some reason they call me and I buy them all the time and hide them in the pocket behind the driver's seat of the Rav and eat them unmercifully.

There are more...many more...but I can't think of them right now. So...anyone else want to confess a WFT?

The Video Camera is not a Toy

Okay, don't look at this if you have anything against baby doody. But I had to post it just because I crack myself up in this video. (Cracking oneself up is a genetic trait from my mom's side of the family!)


green eggs and... from Mario Colombini on Vimeo.

Apparently, I'm totally going to be one of those parents that embarrass their children. I acknowledge that posting this video way worse than showing Scarlett's first boyfriend a picture of her naked in the bathtub with chicken pox, which is about the worst my parents ever did to me! Maybe I'll "forget" to tell her about this when she's older.

How to Get Smiled at by Strangers, for Dummies

When I was pregnant, I got my fair share of attention from strangers, like most pregnant women (even if at the end, because I never got that big, I kind of felt like I was getting less attention than I deserved!) When I would go to the grocery store or the bank or what have you, strangers would often smile at me and ask me when I was due, what I was having, if it was my first, etc. The one place this rarely happened was a place I mildly hate to shop but do anyway because, well, it's cheap: WalMart. Fat, cranky, trundling pregnant women are no rarity there--in fact they seem to be a large percentage of the shopping population (the shopulation?)--and when I was one of them, I joined the other preggies in fatly, crankily, trundling around, ignoring each other.

Now, though, I've apparently I've found the formula for getting smiled at by EVERY person shopping at WalMart: wearing Miss Scarlett, facing forward, in her Baby Bjorn. I did this yesterday because she's generally just intolerable in her carseat these days, a total pill who sticks out her bottom lip petulantly and squalls at the sheer injustice of being safely strapped into anything. She likes the Bjorn much better because she can observe everything and get noticed by everyone. And man, did she. All of a sudden, I noticed that almost everyone I passed smiled at us. Old ladies squeezed her toes and called her a dear (and one very old man called her a boy, but we won't worry about that.) People stopped me in the vegetable aisle to ask how old she was. Other new moms gave me conspiratorial smiles and how-cuted her, obliging me to how-cute their offspring reciprocally. I started to feel like I was in a Mentos commercial, or one for deodorant, or something.

At the risk of sounding like a misanthrope or cynic, I'm not actually sure I liked this experience. Unless I'm in a gregarious mood, I usually enjoy doing my shopping in my own world. And as great as it is to hear Squidge complimented, I'm not used to having to exercise my cheeks so much with all those conspiratorial little smiles when I'd rather be silently pondering dog biscuit brands. Plus, it's rather taxing to answer "thank you so much" when people say how cute she is, as opposed to "I know, isn't she?" which is the answer that comes to mind. (This is not 100% vain/proud mother. This is only 75% vain/proud mother and 25% thinking it's nothing I did to make her cute, she's just cute on her own, and she's a real little person, so feels more natural to agree with compliments than to accept them.)

Anyway, I'm guessing my days of antisocial shopping are over, at least until Miss Scarlett's old enough to join in the "Mommy I want THAT" chorus that is sure to turn all those what a cute baby grins into what a spoiled little BRAT! glares. Won't that be heaven?

Mayday: Flight To Good Times, Going Down

I woke up to the lovely news this morning that ATA airlines was throwing in the (little lemon-scented wipie) towel, filing for bankruptcy, and canceling all future flights with no regard or recourse for the many poor consumers who, innocently, began their day believing the good money they paid for tickets to Maui guaranteed that they would actually get to go to Maui. Now, normally the financial foibles of airlines concern me not a whit (okay, with the exception of the time that Reno Air went down. Reno Air had great prices, was hubbed in my own sweet hometown, didn't skimp on the snacks, and had stand-up comedians for pilots. Flying them was fun, cheap, convenient so of course they went out of business) but I happen to have vested interest in ATA. $1365 dollars of vested interest, to be specific.

Yes, I was one of those innocent consumers; I've been rudely awakened from dreams of papayas, pina coladas, and (pictures of) six-month Squidge in an adorable baby bikini, and dammit, I'm cranky now. Okay, make that downright pissed. Mario and I were looking forward to mid-July and my cousin's wedding in Maui, even though it was a difficult decision to go in the first place. On one hand, it was a great opportunity for a family vacation, Squidge's first...on the other, we are financially struggling, and common sense would dictate that extravagant vacations wait until that's no longer the case. But it meant a lot to my cousin, so we finally said good-bye to some precious savings and made the reservations. Apparently it was just our luck to have the Expedia roulette wheel land on the airline with the financial management skills of a plate of mahi mahi.

At least I paid with my credit card (ha ha, the pay-later mentality validated!) and Wells Fargo can refund me (hopefully) by pulling the money back from Expedia, who would have to have a valid reason to protest this retraction--and ATA's Chapter 7 should keep them quiet. But a preliminary glance at what's available now is pretty depressing. Tickets are hundreds more for crappy, too-early and red-eye flights (with a six-month-old? Don't think so.)

As sorry as I'm feeling for myself, I'm feeling more sorry for my cousin, dealing with all these de-flighted relatives. We aren't the only wedding guests who are going to have to consider stowing away on a pineapple freighter if we want to see her say "I do."

Poop.

Load Gun, Shoot Foot

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/81-graduate-school/

Oh god.

Falling into Disrepair

Last night in my Writing Across the Curriculum seminar (very exciting, yes) I truly realized the state of neglect I have let my body fall into. I was, as usual, in heated discussion about something or other (the ethnography of thought, anyone?) when I realized I had an itch on my right elbow. I unthinkingly reached my hand up my sleeve to give it a good scratchy-scratchy, when I suddenly realized how my skin felt.

Desert. Cracked earth. I'm talking dragon scales, people. I took a peak at it when no one was looing, and shuddered in horror! I'm not just talking dry. I'm talking snake about to shed! And I suddenly realized how long it's been...ummm, since about the morning of January 15th (the day I went into labor, of course) since I actually took the time to rub lotion on my own body. Oh, I've rubbed it on Baby Squidge...but not on myself.

I have never actually done most of the things women do to keep themselves up. Think of all the possible maitenance--hair, eyebrows, fingernails, toenails, tanning, other skin treatments, waxing, shaving, plucking, working out, on and on...it makes me exhausted just pondering it. That kind of maitenance is a full-time job, and I usually have at least two of those already. I keep up with my hair these days--trim every six weeks and color every twelve weeks, because it gives me true please to have redder hair than nature gave me-- and that's about it. I miss exercise and am trying to do it when I can. But this is ridiculous. I hardly even look at myself these days, and most of the time I am in such a rush to get ready and STOP THE CRYING that I (here come confessions) rarely shave my legs, brush my teeth for too short a time, skip the floss WAY more often than I should, skimp on scrubbing in the shower...

In short, it's happening.

I'm letting myself go.

AUGGHHHHHHHHHHH!

But what can I really do about it? Last night when I came home I stole some of Squidge's Eucerin ointment and greased up the old elbows (yes, the left side was just as bad as the right.) My new-month resolution: to maintain human-looking skin, if nothing else!