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me, me, me archives (summaries | full text)

Limbo is Not for Lori

I was talking to my mom on the phone last night about how lately I seem to be suffering from Weekend Depression, and how I haven't been looking forward to Cleaning Night as I used to (in fact, I'm dreading it these days). I speculated that the two phenomena might have something in common, since they started at around the same time, and both seem to stem from resentment of the Mountain View house. I think that now that I've given up my house in Truckee, I'm feeling a little stuck in Mountain View. I know that eventually Al & I will buy a new house together, and I'm excited about that prospect: it's why I didn't feel sad about putting my house on the market. I knew it was paving the way for something new and different and better. The problem is that I can't wait for the new, different, and better thing to come. As mom observed, "you'll take heaven or hell, but you can't stand limbo."

Why Bunny?

I chose "bunny" for today's webcam caption, and my husband just asked me why. "Bunny hair," I replied. This doesn't make much sense to anyone I say it to, but whenever I dye my hair pale pink, I refer to it as "bunny pink" or just "bunny hair." The reason is that when I was 5 (or 3? or 1?), I got a pink stuffed rabbit for Easter. Ever since, I've associated that pale pink color with bunnies, even though I've never met an actual bunny that's pale pink.

I think my mom might still have that bunny at her house, actually. If she does, I'll take a photo of it next time I'm there. It probably looks pretty sad now (though, to be honest, it looked pretty sad the last time I remember seeing it, which was about 15 years ago). Mom sewed on buttons to replace the eyes it lost over the years, and she mentioned once that its ears had stood up when she and dad bought it for me, though they drooped within a year. This was a shock to me, as I'd thought its ears had always drooped.

I'm trying to remember if I'm remembering actually finding the rabbit where the Easter Bunny had hidden it (in a wicker ottoman we used to have), or whether I'm remembering the photograph of me finding it...

April Approaches

There's a lot to look forward to in April: Daylight Savings Time, a new hockey season, the Easter Bunny's arrival, warmer weather, blooming flowers.... Unfortunately, to get to all those good things, we have to enter April via its first official day, otherwise known as April Fool's Day. Oh, how I loathe April Fool's Day.

It's not so much that I don't have a sense of humor (I do, really!); it's that I don't find practical jokes particularly funny, and I don't appreciate being lied to. These seem to be the hallmarks of any successful April Fool's Day. My father seemed to look forward to April 1 every year, though specific memories of tortuous April Fool's breakfasts with him only date back to my pre-teen years, when my sister and I got up early enough for school that we would see him before he left for work. His cousin Ducky, who was in perpetual tease-the-kids-with-lies-and-practical-jokes mode, seemed to regard the day as something of a national holiday. Ducky's own kids seemed to roll with it, but I was always demanding exasperatedly that he just tell me the truth, which is probably where the rumor that I have no sense of humor started.

My hatred of April Fool's Day pre-dates The Great April Fool's Debacle of 1980, but certainly that incident cemented April 1 as a day of infamy, a day to call in sick, a day to avoid contact with other humans if at all possible. The story goes like this: I'd woken up that morning with an impression so strong I can only call it a premonition. It wasn't like hearing a voice so much as having a message stamped clearly on my brain: KIM AND LAVINIA WILL PRETEND TO BE YOUR FRIENDS TODAY. IT'S AN APRIL FOOL'S JOKE. DO NOT BE FOOLED. Wow, I thought. I will be *totally* prepared for their shenanigans!

At recess that day, another girl from our class approached me and said, "Kim and Lavinia want you to come play with them." I was wary, and said no thanks. She kept insisting, however, so I finally went over, prepared to call their bluff. Kim and Lavinia seemed a bit reserved at first, too, but then we got sucked into some game of pretend or another, and I forgot all about being wary. We played together for the remainder of recess, and then on the way back up the hill to our classroom, Kim and Lavinia started telling stories. I remember Lavinia telling one about a particularly large crap that she had taken, which was odd for a relatively prim 6th grader in those days. I was a bit shocked, and tried to come up with a more appropriate word for the one she was using ("shit", I believe), when they stopped me short.

"Lori, I don't know how to tell you this," said Kim. "But all this has been a practical joke. We don't like you at all!" "April Fool's!" they squealed as they ran up the path ahead of me, leaving me standing there, completely dumbstruck. I finally yelled after them, "I know! I knew that! I knew it was just a joke!", but it was too late. Who would believe I'd had a premonition that this very thing would happen? And who *wouldn't* believe me a fool for falling for it anyway?

OK, so maybe I hate April Fool's Day because, as a fool, I take it on the chin on April 1. I prefer to think of myself as someone with an overdeveloped sense of justice, and ok, possibly, an underdeveloped sense of humor. Whichever you think of as the greater handicap, please keep it in mind and take pity on me tomorrow. No practical jokes, please.

Hyphenated

My name is Lori Hylan-Cho. I answer to Lori Hylan, because that's who I've always been, and even to Mrs. Cho, if I'm checking into a hotel under a reservation my husband has made, but my legal name is Lori Hylan-Cho. It's the name that's listed on my driver's license, my passport, and my Social Security card. It's the name I invented for myself a few hours after my wedding, when I decided that I wanted to both remain a Hylan and become a Cho.

I used to think hyphenating was kinda silly, until I was faced with a name-change decision myself. Up until the wedding day, I was planning to stay Lori Hylan. There really is something special and spiritual and life-changing about getting married, however, and after going through the whole experience, I found I really wanted to be Hylan-Cho, not just Hylan (and not just Cho).

Of course, I did not invent hyphenated names: They've been in vogue for YEARS. This is why I find it so appalling that so many databases, web forms, and humans can't handle them.

All my airline tickets read LORI HYLANCHO. So do most of the hotel reservations I make over the web. (One attempt to foil the space-and-hyphen-eating Last Name field resulted in a reservation for Lorihylan Cho.) This is mostly just annoying, but it's often inconvenient as well. The new self-check-in terminals that airlines practically force you to use don't recognize the name on my credit card, LORI HYLAN-CHO, as being the same as the one they have in their reservation system, LORI HYLANCHO, so I have to know (and type in) my ticket number in order to get a boarding pass.

Most web forms merely butcher my name after I click Submit, but I recently ran into a form validation script that wouldn't accept my legal name. It was on the TiVo website, where I'd gone to order a replacement remote (our TiVo arrived with the car, but the remote went into storage). The weirdest thing about it is that it accepted Hylan-Cho as a valid last name for shipping, but it declared it INVALID for billing. The name that's *actually on my credit card* was invalid for billing!

As galling as some of the computer rejections and modifications have been, the human butcherings are usually worse. As we traveled on our honeymoon road trip, I'd call ahead to hotels to make reservations, giving my newly-minted name each time: "H, Y, L, A, N, hyphen, C, H, O". Upon arrival, I'd find that I'd been registered as Lori Hylan/Cho, Lori Hylan'Jo (my favorite), or Lori Hylan,Cho. I had no idea that so few people knew what a hyphen was.

The latest and most maddening misnomer, however, came with the loan documents for our new house: I'd been renamed by our mortgage broker to Lori H. Cho. MY NAME IS NOT LORI H. CHO. My middle initial is M, and always will be. Some women, when they marry, take their husbands' names and use their maiden names as their middle names. I think it's a great solution for some people, especially when the woman wants to preserve her name, but when one or both names are too long for hyphenation. It's also great for people who want to avoid the hyphenation horrors I've encountered and still use both names. But for me, the hypenation was intentional and desirable.

As I crossed out H. Cho, wrote in Hylan-Cho, and signed Lori Hylan-Cho on line after line and page after page of the loan documents, I got more and more angry. Lori H. Cho DOESN'T EXIST. I'm not sure why I reacted more strongly to this butchering than to others (which have included Laurie Hyland and Lon Highland along with the aforementioned Lori Hylancho and Lori Hylan'Jo). Perhaps because this wasn't just a ridiculous—and temporary—hotel reservation ("allo, is this missus 'jo?"), but a legal contract. If it isn't fixed, my name will be wrong on the deed to the house.

It also seems like a slap in the face, a sign of disrespect with a hint of sexism. I gave a lot of thought to what my name would be after I was married, and took pains to change it on all my legal documents. Either my maiden name or my married name was on EVERY SINGLE SUPPORTING DOCUMENT we gave the mortgage broker; not ONCE was it listed anywhere as Lori H. Cho. So why would he assume that Lori H. Cho was my name? Had he really never encountered a hyphenated name before? Did he really think that I couldn't bind my husband's name to my own, that I had to assume my husband's name alone and relegate mine to a middle-initial memory? Was the person who typed up the forms just lazy?

I don't know. All I know is I'm not Lori H. Cho.

Big Birthday

I turned 35 this weekend. I am now what people used to consider "middle aged," though I believe that mark has moved to 45 or 50. I am now at the point where a pregnancy would be considered "high risk". I am now 10 years older than my dad was when I was born. And I feel GREAT. I am relatively healthy, I am meeting my financial obligations, and I am a hell of lot wiser than I was at 25... and yet in many ways I am still living the life of someone in her twenties.

It's ironic that a kid who was so grown up at 5, 10, and 15 that she used to scare parents and teachers would have such a delayed adulthood, but that has pretty much turned out to be the case for me. It's not that I delayed marriage and family for the sake of my career; it's that I haven't had marriage and family on my to-do list at all since I turned 18. I was willing (and excited!) to live my whole life as a single woman, with none of the markers people associate with adulthood except a few wrinkles. I saw no reason to give up jeans and baseball caps and Sketchers and Doc Martens just because I turned 25 or 30 or 35. Spending almost 10 years in the web and web-software worlds abetted that scheme, of course— I've worn jeans and t-shirts to work since 1995—but I'd declared myself a Dyes 'R Us kid even before that, when I worked at the World Bank. My years at Macromedia just never forced me to give up anything except my (admittedly barely-) business suits.

To my great surprise, I fell in love at 33 and got married a couple weeks before my 34th birthday, but even marriage hasn't really forced me to grow up. My husband and I have had great fun running around like kids, playing hockey, traveling around the country, and moving at will without regard to school districts. Sure, I don't go out to clubs and parties like I used to, and I pretty much stopped drinking when I experienced my first real hangovers around age 31 or 32, and yes, the kids will spot me as a geezer by the faint wrinkles and the requests to turn the music down, but by virtue of the fact that I am doing whatever I want whenever I want to, I feel like a kid.

Actually, now that I think about it... doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to was *not* a hallmark of my childhood (or even of my early twenties). This freedom is something new, perhaps something uniquely identified with my thirites. I remember my roommate Pat saying that her thirties were her favorite years, though 42 felt pretty darn good, too. (That was before the cancer diagnosis.) I can totally see why: financial freedom, personal freedom, experience enough to make smart choices (and the emotional maturity to recover faster from poor ones), and a body that's still in relatively good shape. (OK, my thyroid's a bit out of whack, and I have a couple other chronic conditions, but I'm fit and functional and in better shape than I was at 20.)

I don't feel old, I feel equipped. Ready for new adventures, to take on the world on my own terms, to defend my choices and my changes of mind. Maybe I haven't postponed adulthood after all—I've just experienced it differently than most. I've gotten to do it my way. How lucky am I for that?

The Name Butchering Continues

I got a direct mail piece (aka snail spam) today regarding my AAA membership. It was addressed to Lori M. M. H. Cho. I sound practically royal.

Mawiage Is What Bwings Us Togevah Today

Today Al and I celebrate our second wedding anniversary.

Miscellany

A few random items:

• dj blurb opened up comments on his endorsement post, and I loved reading all most of the different points of view. (Most—but not all—commenters support Kerry, but whom each person supports not as interesting as why.)
• Al and I start childbirth classes tonight. This week's pregnancy newsletter from ParentsPlace.com seemed to suggest that I'd be nervous about the birth by now, but for some reason I'm not.
• I am loving The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill. Fascinating book that is helping me make the distinction between Bush and his inner circle and other, honest Republicans whose views simply differ from mine (or don't, actually). I've been reading huge sections of it out loud to Al, a sure sign that it's a life-changing read (similar to And the Band Played On and Nickel and Dimed).
• I am not a designer. So sue me.
• As promised, I converted the all hallows eve blog (and its archives) to Movable Type last night. I can't wait until Sunday!
• I'm making headway (literally) on my Patrick costume; I got his eyes, eyebrows, and mouth done last night, and I'm looking less like a klansman. This afternoon's project: painting purple flowers on his bermuda shorts (actually a pair of green Gap Body sweatpants, pinned up a few inches).
• Warning: There will be another post about Annie later today. With photographs.
• Today is my 36th birthday. And I feel fine.

Things I've Been Doing Over the Past Week Instead of Blogging

1. Cleaning up the house and changing sheets on the guest bed in preparation for a brief visit from the baby's godmother (my friend Sandra).
2. Buying a video camera (it's required when you have kids).
3. Attending (with godmother in tow) the baby shower my sister threw for Al and me at her house in Maryland. (My sister really outdid herself, I must say. Fabulous gig.)
4. Picking up essential items that we didn't receive as gifts at the shower (we specifically asked that the shower not be about getting gifts, but people got us some awesome —and much-needed—stuff anyway). What we still needed, and bought on Sunday with the Babies 'R Us gift card Sandra gave us: A changing pad, a diaper bag, some more receiving blankets, layette gowns, and a couple other random things.
5. Washing zillions of onesies and baby socks, crib sheets, receiving blankets, burp cloths, no-scratch mittens, and layette gowns.
6. Buying diapers.
7. Stocking the freezer with Smart Ones, the frozen grilled chicken sandwiches Al likes, and the Alvarado St. Bakery multigrain bread we both love; the pantry with casserole fixins (pasta, condensed soup, canned salmon) and canned fruit; and the closet with cleaning supplies for my mom.
8. Peeing every five minutes.
9. Framing and hanging the final photos, subway maps, and Paddington Bear drawings for the baby's room. (It's a travel-themed nursery.)
10. Mulling over the proposed platform for my new political party.
11. Addressing Christmas cards (which will double as birth announcements this year).
12. Writing thank-you notes.
13. Watching football. (I have Ben Roethlisberger, Jerome Bettis, and my personal favorite, Hines Ward, on my fantasy football roster, so I was thrilled to see the Steelers whup the Eagles this weekend. Sorry, Philadelphia.)
14. Staring at the Pack 'N Play at the foot of our bed (and the baby swing and bouncy seat in the living room, the stroller frame in the dining room, and the car seat in—where else?—the car) and feeling a mix of excitement, fear, and horror. OH MY GOD, WE'VE BECOME TWO OF THOSE PEOPLE. WE HAVE BECOME BREEDERS.
15. Getting outside as much as possible during the day to combat the depression that's descending on me as the days get shorter and the belly gets bigger.
16. Planning all my trips up and down the stairs so I never have to go from the basement to the third floor in a single shot.
17. Trying to find a nightgown I can stand. (I've been advised to bring my own to the hospital, since the hospital gowns are awful, but I find that I'm not really a nightgown person.)
18. Thinking about packing my bag for the hospital, but not actually packing it.

And More Tumbling

Last night, when I fell down the stairs for the second time in as many days, Al was there to pick me up off the floor. This time slippery socks were the culprit (it's why I usually wear shoes in the house, to my mother-in-law's horror). Basically, last night's fall was almost entirely different from the day before's; the only thing they had in common were that they were falls down stairs. A quick comparison:

This Week...

• Our babysitter (whom Austen and I really, really like) was on vacation.
• Our Mac Mini had a serious hard drive error that prevented it from starting up, that required a three-hour visit to the Apple store just to get most of the data backed up, and that required a complete reformat of the hard drive. Luckily, almost all of the photos I've taken over the past 8 months were salvaged, as was all the iTunes music. We'll be backing up more regularly now, of course.
• Austen fell out of our bed when a midday phone call from a fucking telemarketer woke him from a nap. He has a bruise on his elbow and his hand, but otherwise he's fine.
• We are trying to establish a new nap routine (Pack 'n Play or crib only, not our bed), and the angst involved is really wearing me (and Austen, I imagine) down.
• Austen has screamed so loudly and piercingly that my ears have shut down several times. It's like going momentarily deaf.
• I had a migraine.
• We ran out of Advil. (Not that it really helps anyway.)
• I won the over/under. At today's 8-month doctor visit, Austen was 22 lbs., 7 oz.

That Explains It

Suddenly the somber mood of my previous post makes sense: I've got a migraine coming on.

More Efficient Than I Realized

I was thinking that I hadn't spent the time during which the babysitter was here today very wisely—I mostly finished the post I started last night for this blog, vacuumed, worked on improving the layout and navigation over at the ice hockey escapades, started but didn't finish a note to Valerie, and moped about having a cold—but as it turns out, this was probably a pretty good use of my time. It's not even midnight yet, and since the babysitter left at 5:40pm I've managed to feed myself, put the Boopster to bed, watch a TV program I wanted to see, edit all the hockey photos I want to upload to my new team's site, clean up the kitchen, pay bills, do some financial research, upload a few photos to Flickr, take a shower, and listen to an archived episode of Fresh Air. I managed to do those things because I got all the high-priority web work, house-cleaning, and moping out of the way earlier. Man, I'm good.

Master Chef to Total Clod

I was so PROUD of myself last night for making exactly the meal I wanted from ingredients I already had in the house. I sliced a medium onion (with a knife), sauteed it until browned in a saucepan with a little butter and olive oil, and then added a can of vegetable broth, a dash of dry sherry, and a few grinds of pepper, and let it simmer for about 30 minutes. I then topped it with a toasted slice of Metropolitan Bakery whole wheat sandwich bread (oh, so seedilicious) and a handful of grated gruyere and stuck it in the oven at 275° for about 10 minutes. It was AWESOME, especially accompanied by the sliced Cameo apple I picked myself that afternoon (in a pouring rain, I might add) and a Yuengling Black & Tan (purchased from Pete's Famous Pizza, which is just around the corner, for $2.50). I obviously rocked as a chef, and this amazing onion soup was proof.

Of course, the universe knows a thing or two about hubris. I wanted to use some of the 10 lbs. or so of apples we picked yesterday, so I decided to make an apple buckle/coffee cake. I wanted to make sure the apples were sliced thick enough so we could taste them in the cake, but not so thick that they wouldn't cook properly, so I pulled out the mandoline that Winsha gave us for our wedding three years ago. I'd never used it before because, quite honestly, I was scared to death of the damn thing. I just knew I'd lose a finger using it.

I got one Crispin apple sliced perfectly, however, so I thought, "OK, no problem! This isn't so scary!" And then, as I was slicing apple number 2, I looked up to tell Al what kind of butter to buy for me at Trader Joe's. In the middle of a sentence that started, "It's the unsalted European-style butter in the blue and yel......", "yellow" turned into a yell. "ARE YOU OK?" Al asked, loudly but as calmly as possible, since Austen was in the room. I grabbed what was left of my thumb and replied through a clenched jaw, "NOT OK. NOT OK. DEFINITELY NOT OK" while walking very quickly in a loop around the kitchen and dining room and holding a rapidly-reddening dishtowel around my wounded digit.

After a few minutes of attempting to hold panic at bay, I started wailing. We couldn't get my thumb to stop bleeding long enough to smear some Neosporin on it, so we finally smeared some on a Band-Aid and managed to get it wrapped around my finger fairly tightly. It took another 10 minutes or so of ice and elevation to get the blood to stop bubbling out the top of the bandage, though. The good news is that Austen showed concern when I was freaking out, but he didn't start crying himself; he stayed calm and out of the way in his Pack 'n Play. I think this was mostly due to Al's efforts to underreact than overreact, and the fact that Al's first instict when I started in with the "NOT OK, NOT OK" was to grab Austen and take him out of the room so he didn't see all the blood.

I do still have a right thumb, thank god, but a chunk of skin and an even bigger chunk of fingernail are now missing from it. Sadly, I think the mandoline will be going back into its box for another three years, and I won't be making apple buckle today. On the plus side, this wound makes the horrific papercut I got on my left middle finger earlier today seem like nothing at all.

It's That Time of Year Again

Happy birthday to Hillary Rodham Clinton (58), Victor Grigorieff (35, I believe), and me (37). And anyone else who was born on October 26, too!

Apparently I'm Showing My Age

Austen and I went to watch Al's hockey game at the University of Pennsylvania's Class of 1923 Ice Rink tonight. Toward the end of the game, Austen started melting down, so I put him in the stroller and walked him around outside for a bit. I'd just come back in and was standing by the glass near the entrance when I noticed a woman in the stands above me... holding a large bar of one of my favorite kinds of chocolate. "You came prepared, I see," said I. She smiled and said, "is one of your kids playing?"

I was so startled I wasn't sure I'd heard her correctly at first. Then I did the math in my head, and I decided that though it was theoretically possible that I could be the mother of one of the guys on the ice—most of whom were students at Drexel or Penn—it wasn't very likely (and certainly not if you knew me). "Um, no," I replied. "My husband is."

"Oh," replied the woman, who seemed neither embarrassed nor that much younger than I. In fact, I would have said that we were "about the same age," though now that I think of it, she was probably in her early twenties. I guess, technically, I could have been *her* mom. Wow.

I Think I Know Why, Too

This just came through the mail slot:

I've been complaining off and on for years now that I get mail/calls for Lori H. Cho when that's not me, but now I'm starting to wonder if there *is* a Lori H. Cho somewhere—one who's over the age of 55—and whether my records have somehow gotten mixed up with hers. I should check my credit report just to make sure nothing funny is going on.

6.50

I had a dream last night that the plan to hire me back full-time at my old company had been delayed, and that in the meantime I was going to contract for them. My boss' boss asked me what I proposed for an hourly rate. After doing some quick math in my head that involved my old salary*, I came up with $6.50 an hour.

It was only after I got my first paycheck and saw how small it was that I realized I'd made a mistake with the decimal point—I should have proposed $65 an hour, not $6.50! This stupid math error haunted the rest of my dreams, even after my fast-asleep mind moved on to unrelated topics. How was I going to pay the babysitter on only $6.50 an hour? How was I going to support my family? The undercurrent of "6.50... 6.50... 6.50" kept niggling at me until it finally woke me up.

*Neither $6.50 or $65 have any relation to my old salary. Obviously my sleep mind can't do math.

Avocadoh Contrivium

A bit of memery copied from ratphooey. My favorites are #s 4, 6, and 9. They seem the most plausible, don't you think?

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Avocadoh!

1. There is no lead in a lead pencil - it is simply a stick of graphite mixed with avocadoh and water!
2. If you keep a goldfish in a dark room, it will eventually turn into avocadoh.
3. While sleeping, fifteen percent of men snore, and ten percent grind their avocadoh.
4. Avocadoh can drink over 25 gallons of water at a time.
5. The horns of avocadoh are made entirely from hair.
6. Avocadoh is the only one of the original Seven Wonders of the World that still survives!
7. It can take avocadoh several days to move just through one tree!
8. It took avocadoh 22 years to build the Taj Mahal!
9. Avocadoh can be very poisonous if injected intravenously.
10. The first avocadoh was made in 1853, and had no pedals.

Sick

We are all sick here at Casa Hylan-Cho. Austen has been sick almost continuously since he caught the cold I had at Christmas, and I have been sick off and on with various chest and sinus afflictions since before that. At the moment, Al's the sickest of us all; he's been home from work for a couple days now. I've been washing my hands like a maniac, but as I've said to Al, that doesn't help so much when your infant son is sticking his boogers up your nose—booger-to-booger contact being the #1 method of disease transmission. I'm hoping that since we all seem to have the same thing now that we'll all get better at the same time, and that we'll stop giving this virus a chance to mutate and attack again.

Meanwhile, we're going through Kleenex (both the Lotion and Anti-Viral varieties) at an alarming rate, especially since Austen finds great joy in pulling as many of them out of the box as he can at one sitting. The other night I found him in the linen closet, attempting to pry great wads of tissue from under the plastic wrapping that covered one of the stand-up boxes. This morning he seemed to get the hang of the whole Kleenex Conservation thing, though: He pulled one out of the box, held it up to his face, made a noise that sounded like "ahroooooo", and then held the tissue to my face and gestured as if to say, "now you!" I guess it's better than having the boogers shoved directly up my nose.

As much icky goo as is coming out of Austen's nose, I think more of it's going down his throat and into his stomach. Yesterday morning, after waking up at the completely normal time of 6:10am, he rather abnormally screamed for 20 minutes and then conked out again on his sheepskin rug in the basement 'til 9:30. Al watched him sleep for two hours, but I only lasted 30 minutes before I had to get things done up in the kitchen. When I finally heard him stir, I called, "good morning, sleepyhead!" and headed down to get him. As I reached the gate at the bottom of the basement stairs, he said, "Uh oh! Uh oh!" and then horked all over the sheepskin rug. I quickly climbed over the gate, at which point he started to say "uh oh!" again but was interrupted by a heave. It was so cute how he was obviously fighting the urge to vomit (and he was largely successful—although he heaved a bit more, only a little dribble came out). Luckily, he held his breakfast of milk and Bear Naked Triple Berry Oatmeal down just fine.

Tomorrow we are all driving down to Wheaton, MD so Austen and I can get our hair cut by my favorite stylist, Toni at HUGO Salon. We're both looking rather shaggy these days; Austen hasn't had a proper haircut since I cut off his Gollum strands back when he was seven months old (which I guess means he's never had a proper haircut), and I haven't had one since my hair was purple back in May. I have some nostalgia for both that cut and the purple color, but I'm reluctant to dye it when we're about to take a vacation that will involve lots of swimming and sweating, and I'm not sure Toni will feel as inspired by my plain white hair as she was by the purple. I guess we'll see... I'll hopefully have some before and after photos of us to post tomorrow night.

Haircuts

As promised, here are the before and after photos from Austen and Lori's Haircut Adventure. The cut I got is very similar to the one I got in May, only with shorter bangs and the part on the opposite side. (I kinda wish she'd left the bangs a bit longer, but I think she did it this way to even them up—they were shorter on the right than the left.) Austen got his cut while sitting on my lap (good thing we brought a spare shirt for him to change into, because we didn't bother with a drape). We distracted him with a cell phone while Toni made a few strategic snips.

And More Sick

From about 9pm to 1am last night, I was plagued with what I can only assume was food poisoning. I'm guessing—but cannot prove—that the culprit was a Brazilian Shrimp Burrito from Whole Foods; I got a bad one once before and almost swore off them completely back then. I *will* be swearing off them completely from now on. I was worried that I might never be able to eat another orange as well after last night's drama—an orange being the last thing I ate, in an attempt to soothe myself, before the vomiting started—but I don't feel the same aversion to them that I did at midnight, thank goodness. California navels are in season right now (for east-coasters who are used to getting California oranges year-round and were unaware that there *was* a season, it usually runs from late January through March), which means they're cheaper, sweeter, and more abundant than usual. I've been known to subsist entirely on oranges when the CA navel season and a particularly stressful period at work coincided, so giving them up would have been so, so sad.

Although I find myself with no particular aversion to oranges this morning, I don't think it would be in my best interest to eat one for breakfast. I seem to be done with the vomiting, and I *am* starving, but it's hard to imagine actually eating any of the foods we have in the house at the moment. Maybe if I hunt around a bit more, I'll locate some saltines.

I think one thing that's adding to the lingering nausea is the fact that we have a temporary babysitter today; Hannah doesn't start full-time with us until next week, and I'm already working, so we needed to cover today and Thursday of this week. The temp sitter is totally fine, but as I hadn't met her before today, I have more butterflies than usual when Austen's out of my sight (as he is now—they're out with the stroller). I'm sure everything's OK, but I'm still fighting the urge to call her cell and tell her to COME BACK RIGHT NOW so I can hug my kid.

Begin the Beguine

Avid fans of Sesame Street will recognize the title of this post as the line that the Count sings to the Countess after the number 14, which makes it appropriate for a summary of Austen's 14th month of being. (It's also, incidentally, the title of a Cole Porter song.)

This update is likely to be as much about me as about Austen, as this is the month I started working full-time again, under the best possible scenario: The team I worked on for almost 7 years when we lived in California had an opening right when I decided I wanted to work again. I get to work on a team I love, doing work I enjoy, creating a product I actually use (I'm using it right now, in fact)—and all from home, where I can take Austen breaks instead of coffee breaks. It's taken a couple months to get all the paperwork processed, but that gave us time to sort out our nanny issues. I'm thrilled to say that after many frustrating weeks of combing craigslist and being unable to find a good match for us, our current nanny decided to come on with us full-time. This is a good thing for me, of course, but it's also fantastic for Austen because Hannah and he have similar social-butterfly personalities. They're out right now playing with another nanny and her 16 month-old charge, in fact.

We also have Hannah to thank for the fact that Austen is now enrolled in a music class for toddlers; she did all the research, located a class near us, and called to see if we could come watch a sample class before deciding to enroll. I went to the first three or four classes, and they're really fun. We got a songbook and CD to play at home so Austen can become familiar with the songs, and now that he recognizes the tunes and the activities associated with them, he's TOTALLY INTO MUSIC CLASS. The great part is that even if I can't make it to any more classes, I can still sing and play with Austen in the evenings because I know the songs now, too.

[photos added 02.01.06, after this morning's Music Class]

In addition to the music and the activities—perhaps more than the music and the activities—Austen likes music class because it affords him the opportunity to hug and kiss other little kids. He's been hugging (and knocking down) other kids since before he could walk, and over the past month he's started trying to kiss them, too. He started by practicing on me a couple months ago, and once he got the hang of closing his mouth more and not probing with his tongue, he decided to spread the love around... which, now that I think of it, is probably why we've all been sick since Christmas. On Sunday he enountered an 8 or 9 year-old at the ice rink in Aston who crouched down and smiled at him, and Austen immediately moved in for the kiss. Unfortunately, the kid was wearing a skateboarding helmet on which Austen bonked his head every time he leaned in. Didn't stop him from trying five or six times before Al finally suggested to Austen that he give up.

After experimenting with a few different formats, we've settled into a regular routine around here now. Austen now gets a bath every night (unless we're out late) instead of every other night; Al gets in the tub with him and then takes a shower while I put Austen's jammies on. We watch a little Sesame Street together, and then between 7 and 8pm I say, "ready for bed?" Austen lifts his arms up in the "pick me up!" gesture, I say "kiss Daddy good night!", Austen kisses Daddy, and I take him upstairs. On go the HEPA filter and the humidifier, and then I carry Austen around the room while singing a series of standards and lullabies. The last tune is always the classic lullaby, though I vary the lyrics from night to night. I've settled on these two verses at a minimum, however:

Lullaby, and good night
In your crib you'll be sleeping
With your eyes closed, fast asleep
We'll be here when you wake up

Close your eyes, little bean
We'll be here in the morn
Sleep 'til seven or eight
And we'll come get you then.

The whole put-down routine takes from five to fifteen minutes, depending how ready for sleep (and how snarffly) Austen is. If he's especially resistent, I sing more animated songs first and then work my way to the slower ones.

Despite the admonishment to sleep until 7 or 8, Austen's up between 6 and 6:30 most mornings. Al gets up with him, plays with him down in the basement, and feeds him breakfast while I sleep a while longer ('til 7:45 most mornings, 7 on Mondays) and then get dressed. We trade off at around 8 or 8:15, and Al gets ready for work while I get Austen dressed. (Mondays are a little trickier, because Hannah comes at 8 instead of 9.) So far it's working really well for us, though I'm sure Al could use more sleep than he's currently getting. He much prefers getting up with Austen to putting him down, however, so I think the division of labor suits us.

Austen seems to be adapting fairly well to the fact that I'm working and that Hannah is here more often, although I think he's a little sad that he doesn't get at least one day alone with me during the week. The other day I held him while Hannah got her coat on in preparation for taking Austen out in the stroller, and Austen waved bye-bye at her. I said, "oh no, honey, she's not leaving yet. You're going out together." He waved again, more firmly this time, and both Hannah's and my hearts broke a little. He couldn't have been saying, "Mommy's here now, you can go" more clearly. I was secretly glad when we had an uncovered childcare day last week (Hannah wasn't full-time yet, and the temporary nanny got sick), so Austen and I could spend the day together running errands. I'm also making sure that I get down on the floor and play with him whenever I'm not working.

Of course, that means there's no time for chores. Obviously weekday baking has fallen by the wayside (though I can sometimes squeeze in a batch of muffins on the weekends), and the laundry tends to pile up now. I have figured out how to incorporate Austen into a couple chores, however; it started with stirring pots on the stove, and then progressed to unloading the dishwasher (perhaps because he realized that's where his beloved spatulas come from). I do all the dishes and glasses, and Austen unloads the silverware. He started by handing me one knife or fork or spoon at a time, which I would put away in the drawer while saying, "thank you!", but the other day he carried several spoons in a row to the drawer and tossed them in himself.

Austen also likes it when I vacuum, though the appeal of the vacuum cleaner is the exhaust that blows out the front—which means he's constantly standing right where I need to vacuum. We've worked out a game where I chase him around with the vacuum cleaner, and in this way he gets his hair blown back as desired, and I eventually get the whole room cleaned.

Tag Me! Tag Me!

OK, so here's where I admit that I occasionally do wish that I were one of the Cool Kids. Most of the time I'm like, "yeah, I know the cool kids, but I don't hang out with them. Because, you know, I've got my own stuff to do," but lately several of my favorite blogs have all been doing the Four Things Meme, and I confess I was feeling a little left out. Although no one's technically tagged me, and I can't pretend that I never do memes (because why would you do that?), I'm going to pretend that John tagged me because I'm listed among the four blogs he's following. Thanks, John, for making me feel cool.

Four jobs I've had

1. Temp, Executive Office of the President
2. Research Assistant, The World Bank
3. Webmaster, Mecklermedia
4. Senior Developer Support Engineer, Macromedia

Four movies I can watch over and over

1. A Letter to Three Wives
2. Christmas in Connecticut
3. Wife vs. Secretary
4. The Shawshank Redemption

Four places I've lived

1. Athens, GA
2. Arlington, VA
3. Norwalk, CT
4. San Francisco, CA

Four TV shows I love

1. Veronica Mars
2. Entourage
3. My Name is Earl
4. Flip This House

Four places I've vacationed

1. The Wicklow Way, Ireland
2. Kapalua, Maui
3. New Orleans, Louisiana
4. Auckland, New Zealand

Four of my favorite dishes

1. Bulldog tofu
2. Homemade frittata with potatoes, scallions, red peppers, and a mix of boursin and cream cheeses
3. Mutter paneer
4. Spicy tuna rolls with mango and black sesame seeds (ONLY IF the spicy sauce is made with mayonnaise)

Four sites I visit daily

1. Google
2. Flickr
3. ratphooey
4. Val's wicked cool blog

Four places I'd rather be right now

1. Snuggling my poor, sick husband
2. In Portland with Val
3. Anywhere with Kristin
4. Pushing Austen around San Francisco

Four people I'm tagging
(I have to say this is the hardest category, since practically everyone I know and read has already been tagged, some of them months ago...)

1. Val
2. nj
3. Shuna
4. foggyknit

Blogging Block

I am feeling so overwhelmed by the backlog of blog posts waiting to be written that every time I get a chance to actually write one, I end up reading other blogs instead of writing in my own. So yes, I am WELL AWARE that I owe y'all (and myself) a Vacation Summary, Part 2 and an Austen @ 15 Months update, not to mention various and sundry other observations that have been piling up on little slips of paper around the house.

In the meantime, in case you were wondering, those Vanilla Sunshine Cupcakes at Starbucks are actually pretty good. Good cake, good frosting, perfect little daisy-shaped sugar disc on top. Yummy.

Oh, and the main reason that I haven't had the time or inclination to write: I'm swamped with work. Yes, WORK! And for the most part, I'm loving it. I feel so lucky to be working full-time FROM HOME, and to have Hannah coming every day. It's good for me, it's good for Austen, it's good for all of us. More on this topic later, I'm sure, but to summarize: 1. Things are good. 2. I'm very lucky.

That is all. For now.

Things That Have Occurred to Me in the Past 24 Hours

I keep remembering new behaviors that Austen exhibited for the first time during his 15th month of life which I neglected to mention in my 15 month update (or anywhere else—I haven't been writing in my little bedside journal regularly lately, either). I figure I'd better record them somewhere before I forget, and here seems as good a place as any. The main three that have come to mind in the past 24 hours:

• Blowing raspberries ~ I think this started while we were in Hawaii. I've been blowing raspberries on Austen's cheeks, hands, feet, and belly forever, but one morning after Austen got in bed with us he blew a raspberry on my belly. It totally cracked me up, which of course encouraged him to do it again. It's now his favorite playing-with-mommy game after...
• Bellybutton! ~ Again, this is something I've been doing with Austen for a while: every time he touches my bellybutton (or I touch his), I shriek "BELLYBUTTON!" Usually he'll press three or four times in a row, and each press gets a "BELLYBUTTON!" shriek. What's changed recently is that he's now acutely aware of his own bellybutton. He can locate it right away, and he'll often alternate between pressing his and pressing mine. He also likes to cover mine up and then go hunting for it again.
• Knock, knock ~ Austen started closing doors on us months ago, and I'd always knock on the door and ask, "is Austen home?" before opening it up for him. Now whenever he closes a door, he knocks (and then either twiddles the knob himself or waits for me to open the door). He knocks whether he's the one inside the room or outside it—I guess he just assumes that a knock is the precursor to opening a door.

In other news, I am happy to report that though my tendonitis isn't improving yet, asking Al to move the Clipper chair into Austen's room so I could put him to sleep while sitting down turned out to be a Very Good Move. The bedtime routine is now back to 5-10 minutes instead of 20-30, and there's no additional stress being put on my arm (or my nerves). The shorter, less stressful routinue meant that I had the energy for Pilates tonight, and I think that is something that could make a positive difference in the tendonitis situation. I could feel all the knots in my back when I was doing the Rolling Like a Ball exercise, and I felt more relaxed after completing the 20-minute workout.

What isn't going to help my tendonitis is Super Tetris. I hooked up my old PowerMac 7500 to the monitor with which my employer was kind enough to supply me, and in addition to finding a few missing avocado8 files on there, I also rediscovered Super Tetris—also known as Super Sucker of Time. I LOVE that game, and I can spend HOURS playing it. Or at least I could before I became a web/software geek and began spending 8-12 hours a day actively working on a computer. Thirty minutes of playing tonight had my right wrist and elbow in knots, sadly. I wonder if I can learn to play left-handed?

Sick AGAIN

We arrived safely home—but sick—from San Francisco on Sunday night. Austen caught a cold on his second day in SF, and he passed it on to me on Friday night. For some reason the version I got was more virlulent, and... well, you probably don't want to know the color or quantity of the goo I'm now hacking up with every coughing fit. Never have I been more glad that I work at home, where I can drag my laptop into the bedroom if necessary. (And if this shaking doesn't stop, it may soon be necessary.)

As I alluded to in my previous post, I totally underestimated how much work it would be to bring Austen with me to SF, even though Hannah was there too. How do regular work-outside-the-home parents do it? The childcare handoffs and mad dashes to and from the office are ridiculous.

I was glad to have Austen with me, and it wasn't *too* hard to bathe him and put him to bed each night (even though he cried through every bath, and on Friday night he went completely ballistic at bedtime, to the point where *I* was sobbing and begging him to JUST STOP CRYING). I'm also really glad he and Hannah got a chance to explore San Francisco, and that Austen and Ellen (Jean and Sho's daughter) got not one but TWO opportunities to play together. But for all that, I'm not sure I'd do it again. I guess it depends on the length of the trip, and whether Al is coming with us or not, but at the moment I'm thinking no.

Incidentally, we'd already decided before this trip that I'd be going to the Vancouver Tournament alone this year; now that Austen's walking, it's too hard to watch him at hockey games, and it'd be no fun for Al to chase Austen around all the time while I played. Plus, it's just damn expensive (not to mention difficult) to get from Philadelphia to Vancouver with a toddler. We decided we'd rather use the money to send Al on a weekend by himself, doing something he wants to do.

Anyway, at the moment work and sleep are my highest priorities, but I'll upload the few photos I took in SF (mostly of Austen rather than of the city itself) to Flickr as soon as I feel better.

The Potato Says...

I should preface this post by saying that I am more or less following a plan to get control of my mood swings, irritability, occasional bouts of depression, and generally erratic behavior, and that this plan involves eating a potato every night at bedtime. The potato is designed to boost my serotonin levels a bit—emphasis on a bit. Too much potato = too much serotonin = headaches and wild dreams. So this could all just be the potato talking.

Last night I dreamed I had breast cancer. I also dreamed that I went to visit my dear friend and former roommate Pat... who died of breast cancer in 1998. I can't remember if the two dreams were intertwined, or if one came before the other; I just know that both dreams were vivid and memorable.

Pat Dream: I have no idea where we were, except that it was wherever Pat happened to be living (or not living, as the case may be). There was another woman there whom I know I should have recognized, but I can't think now who she could have been. Anyway, I remember that Pat proposed going on a bike ride, and I said, "I almost packed my biking shoes and clothes because I thought you'd want to go for a ride... but then I remembered that my bicycle isn't here, so having the right shoes and clothes wouldn't help." Pat and her friend rode their bikes, and I kind of tagged along on foot. I remember trying to catch up with Pat, both literally (I was obviously slower on foot that she was on a bike) and in the "what have you been up to?" sense.

Breast Cancer Dream: I was in a doctor's office or hospital (though the chair I was sitting in was more like a dentist's chair) getting some tests done. I remember the doctor being really nice and very professional, and I remember him telling me all kinds of things about the test results and going over "options." I remember looking at (and getting a copy of) the test results. As soon as I left the office, however, I realized that we'd talked a lot about what seemed like breast cancer treatment options... but that he'd never actually said I had breast cancer. Did I have breast cancer???

I went back to the office and asked to see the doctor again. He'd gone out or into surgery or something and wasn't available. I asked to see someone else, but I couldn't get anyone's attention. I remember looking at the nameplates that were hanging on the wall beyond the receptionist's desk to see how many doctors were in the office.

The next major chunk of the dream was spent in trying to find someone, anyone, who could tell me whether I had breast cancer or not. It took a huge amount of time and effort on my part to find someone who wasn't busy—or who would even look at me. Finally I found a nurse practitioner who would give me the time of day. I remember she was blond, with a bob haircut (and now that I think of it, this archetypal woman has been in several of my dreams lately). I said, "I had a, um," and I totally couldn't remember the name of the test, so I waved my hand in front of my chest as I "ummmed".

"Mammogram?" she supplied.
"No, it wasn't a mammogram," I said. "There was no squishing involved."
"Oh, I know the test you mean," she said. I couldn't remember if she told me the name of it or not; if she did, I can't remember it now. I just remember that it involved lasers.
"Right, well, these are my results," I said, indicating a sheet with two lines on it, one much longer than the other. "Does this mean I have breast cancer?"
"Yes," she replied.

Oddly, I felt a little relieved—finally, I knew for sure. "Is it bad that my line [on the results] is so much longer than the normal, reference line?" I asked. The nurse rubbed her forehead with her hand, and I knew it *was* bad. "Jeez," I muttered. "Now everyone's going to blame me for not getting a mammogram. I'm 37, for chrissakes! How many mammograms do you really need in your life? And what do they do for you, anyway, besides scare the crap out of you?" [Aside: Pat got regular mammograms, and she had to go through several scares over what turned out to be fibroids... and they didn't catch what did turn out to be cancer until it was too late. She had some weird inflammation that the doctors wrote off as a 'systemic infection', but we suspect it was her lymph nodes getting attacked/trying to fight off cancer.]

The nurse replied, "mammograms are good for finding masses, but that's not what you have. I don't think a mammogram would have found anything for you." Just then a bell rang, like a school bell at the end of a period. The nurse said, "oh, 6:00, gotta go," and like everyone else pouring out of their offices at that moment, she turned and ran for the elevator. I was left standing there, wondering how the hell I was going to get down from the 39th floor with the elevators so jammed with people.

Of course, that wasn't the only thing I was wondering. As I made my way to the stairs with an idea of walking down to my office on the 37th floor (hello? I work at home) and working a while—at least until the elevators were clear—I started thinking about what my plan should be. Should I bother with chemo and radiation in an attempt to prolong my life, when those treatments were so likely to drastically impact the *quality* of my life? Or should I just try to live the best life I could for the next year or year and a half that I had left? I was leaning toward the latter when I slipped on some files someone had left on the stairs, landed at the bottom next to Jack Herrington's (my old cubemate's) cube, said hi to Jack, and then got lost looking for my cube because I didn't recognize the office at all after the Macromedia-Adobe merger.

I don't remember whether I woke up because I was lost, or because I heard Austen wake up in his crib upstairs. I just know that I heard Austen give his "I'm UP" squeak shortly after realizing I was awake. Both dreams were vivid and immediate in my head, as if I'd dreamed them simultaneously.

Unscrewy

It's been a busy week here, both workwise and familywise; I can barely keep up with my personal e-mail, and I obviously haven't had time to write here. If I owe you an e-mail response, please sit tight (or send me a reminder). I'm going to use the time I would have otherwise spent on answering an e-mail or two to give an update here before I forget all the things I wanted to say. Be warned: this is going to be a really random post.

[Oh FART! I just realized that I blew by the 17 month milestone. Geez, that's twice in a row! I'm not sure I'm going to bother writing one, since I've posted about a lot of the stuff that's happened this month already, and I was planning to mention a couple more things in this post anyway.]

For probably the past 15 years or so, I've coveted the non-childproof caps on prescription bottles. The child-proof ones are often impossible to open, and it seemed silly for someone who didn't have—or want—children to have them. They're the default, however; you have to ask for non-childproof caps, and even sometimes when you ask you don't get one. The pharmacists are just too used to reaching for the childproof ones, I suspect.

Weirdly, I continued to covet the non-childproof caps even after Austen was born. At first, it didn't even occur to me that I might actually need childproof caps now, and then when it dawned on me that, hey! I have a child!, I rationalized that Austen couldn't even crawl yet. He wasn't about to go messing in my nightstand without my knowledge. Of course, all that's changed now; Austen's perfectly mobile, very nosy, and excellent at unscrewing caps. When my latest supplies of Zyrtec and Levothyroxin arrived a while back with childproof caps on them, however, I still felt a pang of annoyance: why had I not remembered to ask for non-childproof ones?

As it turns out, the "childproof" caps on the bottles that Caremark sends aren't particularly childproof anyway, unless you make sure to screw the cap on very tightly and then check to make sure it's secure with a counter-clockwise twist. (They're also far too large for the amount of medicine in them, which seems like a waste.) Austen has gotten the top off the Levothyroxin bottle several times, which usually means several minutes of me scrounging around on the floor and reaching under the bed and nighstand to fish out tiny green pills. Thank goodness Austen hasn't shown any interest in eating the things as of yet. He's more concerned about why his shaker isn't working.

Last Saturday, as we were getting ready to head down to Al's parents' house, Austen brought his stepstool into the bathroom, where I stood in front of the sink brushing my teeth. Instead of plopping the stool in front of the toilet, he tried to bump me out of the way so he could put it in front of the sink. I finished unscrewing the head off the electric toothbrush and then moved out of the way. As Austen climbed onto the stool, I said, "do you want to brush your teeth?" He nodded, so I got out his little kid toothbrush and put some training toothpaste on it. He shook his head no and did the reach-and-whine for my toothbrush head. "You want to use Mommy's toothbrush?" I asked. He nodded, so I handed it to him. He stuck it in his mouth and went, "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee". Apparently he thinks *I* make that buzzing sound when I brush my teeth.

Austen has become enamored of late with reaching his hand back as far as he can and then bringing his palm to my chest. He knows he's hitting me, and I always tell him rather sharply "you do NOT hit Mommy." If I see him winding up, I'll grab his arm and tell him NO. Whether he gets the first whack in or not, after the reprimand he tries to push it a little by patting me a little roughly on the chest. It's not really hitting, but sometimes I give him the evil eye or another reprimand to let him know it's pretty darn close. Unfortunately, I didn't see him wind up when we were celebrating Al's dad's birthday at Woo Lae Oak on Saturday, and this time he slapped me in the face, hard enough to leave a red mark on my cheek (not to mention knock my glasses askew). Obviously we were out in public, and I have no desire to spank Austen, but there was definitely a grab of both of his hands and a dangerous growl in my voice when I told him that he was NEVER EVER, EVER TO DO THAT AGAIN.

On a related note, while I had already picked out a specific chair in our house to be used as a Naughty Chair, I had hoped we wouldn't be needing it until Austen was old enough to sit still and not try to climb out of it. Now I'm thinking that we may need to rig a child-proof seatbelt on the thing.

Austen and I are both sick again with sinus infections. I'd finally gotten rid of the last of the green goo from the one I caught in San Francisco in March (yes, it took four weeks!) when this one struck on Sunday morning. I suspect the Spring allergens are partly to blame for inflaming my entire respiratory system, and I also suspect that Austen has allergies, too. The doctor says he's too young to have seasonal allergies, but he shows all the signs: red, itchy eyes; sneezing; and numerous respiratory infections.

I finally pulled the trigger and registered for BlogHer. I waffled for a long time about whether I really wanted to go, especially since I'll probably end up standing in a corner and not socializing anyway, but I figured that it would be useful for a project my team is working on even if I didn't actually walk up to Eden and say, "hi, I'm the nut who sent you Prep; thanks for sending The Curious Dog in return." (I recommend both books, btw; writing reviews of them is yet another thing I haven't had time for lately.)

I'm going to fly out to SFO on Thursday July 27th and spend the day in the office, and then I'll head down to San Jose for the conference. I should be at the hotel sometime Thursday night. Sadly, I couldn't extend my trip—Austen, Hannah, and Al are all staying in Philly—so I'll be leaving from SJC early Sunday morning. If you'll be at BlogHer, too, come say hi. I'll be the one standing in the corner, being antisocial.

Procrastinating

I'm not sure why I have enough time to read through my old blogger archives, buy a new webcam, revive (and redesign) the webcam archives (formerly "the gallery of silly faces," now dubbed "a history of hair", though there are plenty of silly faces still in there), and otherwise procrastinate, but I don't have time to write about all the new words Austen has learned, the fact that my upper back is ABSOLUTELY KILLING ME, the list of things Austen has spilled this week, how going to bed earlier so I can get up and go for a walk ALONE in the mornings has changed my life, how much I've been missing Annie lately, Austen's long-overdue new shoes, or the last 5 hockey games I've played (not to mention the tournament I'll be attending at the end of this month), but there it is.

I'm reluctant to promise that a post about all the things I should've written about but haven't will be forthcoming this weekend, as I suspect my back is hoping for some time away from the three computers at my desk. I *did* manage to post all my photos of our Saturday in Intercourse, PA to Flickr, however, as promised.

We're A-Walkin'

There's been a lot of walking going on here at Casa Hylan-Cho. It started a couple weeks ago, when I finally figured out how to work some exercise into my day: go to bed earlier. (Duh! Although, as you've probably noticed, going to bed earlier means less blogging.) I now get up when Al and Austen do, put on my exercise clothes, and go out for a walk/jog/hop/whatever. Usually I end my route at a Starbucks, where I purchase a decaf short latte for the return home, but not always; yesterday, for example, I walked over to the Art Museum, ran up and down the steps, and then walked home.

I love being out in the brisk morning air every day, but I especially love being out on weekend mornings. With far fewer people rushing to work, the streets stay quiet until 8:30 or 9 at least, and it seems I have entire neighborhoods to myself. (Of course, I still get asked for directions by someone—it's a weird, magnetic thing I have—no matter how otherwise deserted the city may seem. I've taken to noting the location of and route to every museum, government building, Wawa, gas station, grocery store, and on-ramp I pass so that I'll be prepared for the next lost soul.)

I'm enjoying the morning walks so much that I wonder what took me so long to JUST GET OUT THERE. I think I must've been thinking of exercise with a whine in my mind, like exersiiiiize, as in the kind you'd get at the gym. This is different; I feel no obligation to sweat (though I usually do), or to run if I feel like walking, or to stay out for a particular length of time. I just pick a direction and go. I know I'm doing some physical good because I can feel my leg muscles responding, but I think the real impact may be on my mental state. I feel so freaking FREE walking around the city by myself, with no purse, no kid, and no stroller.

Speaking of strollers, I've written so rarely lately that I don't think I mentioned that the Zooper was a casualty of Watermelon and Prune Day. It's not like the stroller's completely ruined; I just can't figure out how to get the seat cover completely off so I can throw it in the wash, and I've been extremely slow to wash it by hand. Luckily we also have a Maclaren Triumph, which we used to use as our travel/mall stroller and which has now become our primary stroller. I like the Maclaren, but it pulls hard to the left—it'll practically do a 180 on sloping sidewalks—and at the moment my left shoulder is severely out of whack, making the stroller struggle painful as well as annoying. I'm thrilled when Austen's up for a walk without it... which these days is most of the time.

If I could figure out a way to carry a ton of packages *and* Austen, I wouldn't bother using the stroller at all anymore. Austen can easily walk the 5 blocks or so to the nearest Starbucks, and Trader Joe's, at two blocks away, is a cinch. The last couple times we went to the mall we didn't bring the stroller. (I must say, holding the mall-entrance door for a woman pushing a six year-old in a beat-up Graco while Austen trotted alongside Al made my brain do a double-take.) It even crossed my mind while I was out walking this morning that Austen might actually walk instead of riding in the backpack if we ever manage to get out and hike the Wissahickon Gorge like we've been talking about. (Of course, I'd bring the Kelty Kids pack just in case; I'd just be so happy not to be lugging 27 lbs. of baby in it most of the time.)

The only downside to jettisoning the stroller is that walking with Austen is a bit like walking a dog who stops to sniff every hydrant, mailbox, lamp post, and park bench. Most of the time I don't care too much; if we've got an hour to kill, why *not* stop and poke every parking meter? It only gets old when bathtime is 5 minutes away and we're still 3 blocks from home, and I can't extract Austen from the hedge he's stepped into. For the most part it's entertaining and fun, and I don't mind carrying Austen for a couple blocks when his legs get tired. It's a good chance to make forward progress, not to mention snuggle my super-cute kid.

Walking to Mother's Day brunch.
We brought the stroller this time because we didn't leave enough lead time for the leisurely, meter-beeping pace Austen prefers... although we didn't have to stuff him in it—against his will—until we got to 18th and Market.

As If My Ass Weren't Big Enough Already

I fell down the stairs AGAIN this morning. I was tiptoeing out of our bedroom so as not to wake Austen (who'd come down at six and then fallen asleep again), with my sneakers and socks in one hand and some cash and my Starbucks card in the other. I'd noticed on several occasions recently that when my feet are dry, the wood floors—and especially the wood stairs—become very slippery, so I should have been more careful here. Of course I wasn't; with my hands full I couldn't hold on to the railing.

The good news is that I'm tall enough that I once I've started to fall, I don't hit more than three or four steps before coming to a halt. If I were shorter, I might slide all the way to the bottom, but as it is, I usually end up sideways, jammed between the wall and the railing. The bad news is that I'm high enough off the ground to start with that when I land, I hit hard.

This morning I hit the first step high on my left butt and about halfway up my left forearm, breaking the skin on the latter and causing a huge, blood-filled knob to appear on the former. I'm proud of myself that I didn't yell—I only gasped—because it meant that I was putting my child's need to sleep before my own need to whine and cry like a baby. Yay, maternal instincts! I only managed to hold back the tears until I got down to the living room, however; the pain was extreme, and I could feel that stupid knob forming under my hand:

Yeah, just what my already-large ass needed: A large, painful, and asymmetrical lump!

Knob Update/Kid Update

The knob on my butt:

• is getting bigger, not smaller.
• has turned black at the bottom.
• is very tender.
• still looks like I'm trying to grow a third ass cheek.

The kid under my feet:

• started saying "thank you" out loud yesterday.
• now imitates us by shrieking "NOOOOOO" when he's about to do something he isn't supposed to do.
• can say "ball", "PITsa" [pizza], and "pasta", among other things.
• refers to every Sesame Street character, and the show itself, as "Elmo".
• will point to Cookie Monster, Big Bird, and Oscar correctly if you say their names.
• says "Elmo" and waves bye-bye at his bib (which might have Big Bird or Cookie Monster on it) when he's done eating.
• learned how to go down the steps at the playground using only his feet/legs and without holding a handrail yesterday. Which is more than I can say for myself.

Gruesome Injury Photos

It's difficult to show the injury to my butt without mooning the entire Internet (and even harder to photograph your own butt), but I think I've got something that's cropped enough to show some of the damage without violating any obscenity laws. Because of the cropping, it's hard to tell the relative size and position of the injury, so I'll do my best to describe it. The bruising you see is in a sling-like shape under the knob. In other words, the part that *isn't* reddish-purple is the center of the knob, and the swelling extends higher up my back than this photo shows. The left edge of the photo, just at the top of the bruising, is roughly where my tailbone is.

The photo of my arm is much less gruesome, mostly because the bruise is bluish-purple instead of reddish-purple.

Hannah had the brilliant idea of taking some Advil to help with the swelling, and although it still doesn't seem to be going down after 800mg of the stuff, the pain is much better. I just hope I can put on my hockey pants—and before that, endure two 3-hour flights—on Friday! I'll be taking a small pillow to stuff behind my back just in case...