the modernity ward

Awful

I went out to lock up the chickens after the girls were off to bed and could only find three of the four.

I hunted under the porch, in the nesting boxes, the shed -- nowhere. Chickie Emma, the smallest and nicest of our hens, a little blue-egg-laying Araucana, was not to be found.

Then I noticed the 25-gallon plastic tub turned upside down.

I lifted it.

Underneath was a very dead Chickie Emma, along with a final blue egg.

I knew immediately what had happened: Daphne, my holy terror of a three-year-old, was the rooster of the flock, and when she came walking all the chickens froze in their tracks, let her pick them up, docile for only her. She also, of late, had been experimenting with trapping them in the shed, once even hiding two under the plastic turtle-shell lid of her sandbox. I spoke seriously then, explained that they would die, sent her to her room.

But I must not have been watching closely enough early this morning. In fact I know I wasn't. And then we left the house and were gone most of the day. The hot, sunny day. That poor little hen. What a horrible way to die. Not the humane death I had envisioned for the animals under my care. No, a hot, unpleasant, miserable, protracted death for a sweet little creature I loved best -- we all loved best -- of our chickens.

I dug a hole in the dirt just to do something with my rage. Daphne was asleep already but Sophia wandered out. I showed her Emma's stiff body, let her pet the chicken's feathers, explained what had happened. She was unfazed, and tried to comfort me by suggesting we get another chicken.

I didn't bury Emma. I put her in a trash bag in the freezer. When Daphne wakes up in the morning I will show her, and we will talk about what happened, and we will bury Emma in the yard together. We will plant a tree over the spot. ("An apple tree?" asked Sophia. "With branches to climb on and a tire swing?" [She's been agitating for one lately.])

Not that I expect this to change Daphne's behavior. She's three. Innocent, in that her brain isn't capable of making the connection between her action and the chicken's death, or for that matter of stopping the action even if she DID understand that at the very least she would be in trouble.

Obviously there's one person at fault and that's me. I didn't see what happened, I didn't watch closely enough. Worse still, I was congratulating myself all the while for providing a little wildness for my girls, an unfettered life in the confines of the backyard, with dirt and animals and bare feet and tree climbing.

That wild dirty-footed life includes death as well. Sometimes at the hands of a child.

I'm so sad for that little chicken. 

I'm Just Sayin'

You can now get a copper IUD even if you have a history of ectopic pregnancy.

I have an appointment next week, to be rescheduled depending on precise arrival date of the monthlies.

I declared very definitively, some years back, that AS GOD IS MY WITNESS I WILL NEVER USE BIRTH CONTROL AGAIN, but HA HA, that. Absolutely no other method is acceptable to me, so Paragard is my last best hope; I am optimistic that it will not cause me to hemorrhage monthly or slice through my insides like a tiny cocktail sword because that can totally happen, I read it on the internet, and that it will prevent any inconvenient disruptions to my attempts at bettering myself.

About that: I had it all in my head that I was destined for A Certain UniVANDYersity's Accelerated MSN program -- two years of a solid wall of work at the end of which English majors are awarded Advanced Practice Nurse credentials. I had attended an open house a couple of years ago, researched, met people who had gone through the program, and then I decided to go to one more open house -- since I now was most of the way through my prereqs and had some relevant questions.

And you know, they pretty much talked me out of going. Without trying to.

The first nail in the coffin was the student panel, where five fresh-faced youngsters (well, relative to me) talked about the workload and the tens of hours of studying they put in, on top of 30-40 hours a week in the classroom/lab/hospital. You have to make time for yourself, they advised us. Give yourself permission to do something fun once in a while. Have a social life.

"Do any of you have children?" I asked. Ten eyes opened wide and five heads shook slowly, back and forth. "But I have a friend in the program with kids," one young man volunteered. "See, he just parcels out his time -- he goes to class until 2 or 3 and then spends 2 hours in the library, and then he's done for the day -- he goes home to his kids!"

I wondered, inwardly, about Father of the Year's wife and just how much she was doing to make his quality time sessions possible. Did she work full-time or part-time? Did she do all the grocery shopping, the meal planning, the house cleaning, the shuttling around of offspring? Hmm.

Other students knew people with kids who went through the program -- they scheduled tightly, depended heavily on family. Which I would love to do, except that all my family lives somewhat outside of commuting distance.

So. That was the first nail. The second was the revelation that the job market for advanced practice nurses, here in the immediate Nashville area, is pretty well saturated. It stands to reason, with multiple schools pumping out MSNs. "But people retire, people die, people have to go on leave," one instructor said encouragingly. "Jobs do open up."

Third was the suggestion from a program higher-up that we be willing to consider working as an RN -- because as a nurse practitioner, you are a nurse first. That we be willing to persevere if we don't get that dream job right away -- and something like 95% of grads did in fact get those coveted APN positions.

What I heard, in short, was that I might dig myself into 70K worth of debt, exhaust my inner and financial resources, spend almost no time with my family, and stress myself into a full-body twitch, just so I could either take a job I could have gotten with half the schooling, stress, and debt, or sit around waiting for someone to die.

That would be three nails in the coffin of NO.

The good news is that one, if one already had a BSN, could enter at the MSN level and spend 3-5 semesters doing the advanced coursework (intense but nowhere near the breakneck pace of trying to cram six semesters worth of knowledge into three), emerging with not only that bright shiny degree but a solid work history, a knowledge of the local job scene, connections galore, and presumably, one's sanity intact. Not to mention a better sense of what field one might wish to enter (the Certain UniVANDYersity's accelerated MSN requires you apply to and stay within one discipline).

Oh, and not to mention, in a certain blogger's case, the possibility of a move in the next year or two (this new plan puts me through MSN school just in time for Sean's tenure review).

I am still taking the GRE on Wednesday, because I did not do this to my brain for nothing -- and the score should still be "fresh" when I get around to using it, three years from now. A slight change in course, is all this is. I hope you all will enjoy the thought of me having to take religion classes at a Baptist institution. I know I do.

 

 

 

A Band-Aid in My Pocket

One of the many preachers in my family had a favorite story to illustrate God's Midwestern roll-up-Your-sleeves eye-on-the-sparrow all-up-in-your-daily-business attitude. It seems this preacher was dressing one morning, and upon fastening the collar of his shirt he did hear the voice of God Himself:

"Put a Band-Aid in your pocket," said God.

"But God!" argued the preacher. "Why? What could I possibly need with a Band-Aid?"

"Just put a Band-Aid in your pocket," said God. If it had been me speaking to one of my offspring, I might have tossed in a silent goddamnit, but in this case I guess it would be redundant. Or maybe God in His infinite post-Pentateuch patience is untroubled by constant belligerence. Anyway.

Dubiously did the preacher man tuck a Band-Aid into his shirt pocket, and off to the church he went to prepare the week's sermon. And sure enough, before the morning was out, why, he'd sliced his finger bloody on the very paper he used to type his sermon!

So there you have it. Proof that God speaks to us still, in the flat twang of the middle west.

* * * * *

It was either a similar divine guidance or just the good sense to realize that if every damn other thing in the house was tottering on its last legs, the furnace probably wasn't any different, that let me to set up a service appointment for the furnace. When we moved in it was February, and we assumed of course --  of course! -- the annual maintenance had already taken place. I hadn't got around to doing it before Christmas, and everything seemed to be working fine, but as soon as we pulled in from Virginia, I was on the phone to the HVAC people. The niggling fear that if something were to go wrong, it would go wrong so spectacularly and so inconveniently, drove me to take the next appointment even though I usually put off appointments as long as possible.

And wouldn't you know it, I was awfully glad for that Band-Aid in my pocket.

By now I'm used to workmen surfacing from the crawlspace bearing spiderwebs in their hair, shellshocked expressions, and alarming pictures on their iPhones. This guy came up with a capacitor that was incapacitated, a safety switch that literally crumbled to pieces on the table, and a picture of a blower fan that looked like it had been hauled up from a shipwreck.

The previous owners of the house evidently performed ZERO maintenance on that unit. For the past decade. I am shocked -- not at their general heedlessness, because by now I've been living with their every bad decision for almost a year -- but that the furnace was still working. And not on fire.

We got it all tuned up, and now the faint wheeze of warm air is a jet blast of hot air, so that's good. There's still the little problem of how to keep the warm air in, but reinsulating and adding a vapor barrier is on the Fall 2011 list, so we'll just have to wear slippers for another few months. It's not as good a story as the preacher-relative's, which does bring up certain thorny theological issues such as why didn't God just tell him to watch his thumbs around the legal-size, but if it keeps us from having a mini-Chernobyl in the crawlspace, I'll take it.

 

Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Roundly Derided on My Blog

This week the girls and I strolled down to the elementary school to register Sophia for kindergarten. (My GOD.) We were chatting with the secretary about Standard School Attire at our school -- because it's a magnet, they allow any color of shirt, since kids are being drawn from all over the district and each school has its own special allowable colors, and they don't want to render useless a closet full of hand-me-downs or whatever -- and the other mother in the office, also registering her kindergartner, chimed in.

"My daughter will be so pleased," she declared, "since she's really sad about not being able to choose her own clothes otherwise. Because of the uniforms," she clarified. "She's really more of a sequins-and-feathers kind of girl." (I am not shitting you.)

"I'm a fan of the Standard Attire," I said, "mostly because I don't like having the sparkly-high-heels fight every morning."

At this point Other Mother fixed me with a wet-eyed pitying look, pressing her lips together in a concerned semi-smile.

"My daughter has always dressed herself," she said. "You know" -- and here the pity turned to syrupy condescension -- "clothes are really the only way children have to express themselves."

And there I stood agog for what felt like fifteen minutes, while my future entire flashed before my eyes: clearly our children would be assigned to the same kindergarten classroom, the same first, second, third, class play orchestra recital middle school high school summer programs OH MY GOD.

"Sophia has always dressed herself," I stammered, "but I insist on sensible shoes." Although it's possible I actually said "Oa bllfft ggnn bruup!" I was catatonic with...something. Not rage, but utter speechless disbelief. Because, hey, lady, do you think I forced that child to come to school that morning in a bathing suit, obviously homemade American flag-themed skirt, and frilly undershirt?

As Sean put it later: "Judging me: UR DOIN IT RONG."

I mean, there are many facets of my parenting you would do well to judge me on: my reliance on Sonic shakes as a bribe, my inability to control the volume and tone of my voice in my rage at horrible four-year-old behavior, my desire to spend just a little goddamn time on Facebook which results in Sophia sometimes watching SpongeBob during Daphne's nap (without me there to mute the commercials, God, I know). But we've let Sophia dress herself, sometimes in defiance of meteorology, for as long as she's been able. She's gone out in the snow in a t-shirt (I carried the coat for when she changed her mind), she's worn elaborate formal dresses for days on end, she's mixed and matched and made beautiful fashion. Heck, there was a week in 2007 when she wore a pair of underpants as a hat. In public. All week. (She was so proud of her "ha'" that we couldn't bear to make her take it off.)

But I never made these allowances under the delusion that fashion was the only available avenue for self-expression and discovery. That's just stupidity masquerading as progressive parenting. In fact, I would go so far as to deem it anti-feminist, if you really want to go mucking around in there. Means for self-expression, sure. But not the ONLY one. Even little kids have voices -- or should, at least -- in their families and schools. Especially families ostensibly "progressive" enough to allow self-outfitting.

At any rate, Sophia is so jazzed about her uniforms that she would probably wear them even if they weren't required. She looks like a million bucks in her little khaki skort and pink polo.

She was delighted to learn, however, that any kind of tights -- colors, stripes, polka dots -- are allowed. At least she'll be able to share herself with the world that way. God knows it's all she's got.

More Flood

I was going to direct you to Aunt B. over at Tiny Cat Pants, because of her insightful commentary on the ramifications of Nashville's flooding, but Newsweek beat me to it! But go anyway. She's awesome.

We have water restrictions still, as we're down one of our two water treatment plants (the second one is drying out and being spiffed up right now). But we went down to 37% capacity for a while, because some people were watering their fucking plants or washing sidewalks or whatever. Meanwhile I washed my nursing bras (because nothing gets funkier than a nursing bra on a hot day) in the kids' two inches of bathwater. I wouldn't have bathed them, but Daphne colored her whole head with wet sidewalk chalk. Which was...awesome.

We've gone to disposable diapers and paper plates around here. It's not really The Long Emergency; more like the Long Picnic, since our whole neighborhood stayed dry (we're pretty high above the river on this side). But there are whole sections of town that were nearly wiped out.

* * * *

In other news I am having foot surgery tomorrow for my hallux rigidus, so I might be a little looped next time I post. You've been warned.

How High is the Water, Mama?

Not high enough to reach us -- we're up on a hill above the Cumberland, and even within our hilly neighborhood are at a high point. Our crawlspace was a little muddy around the perimeter, but water wasn't getting under the house (a minor miracle, as roof runoff was rushing all around the house). We did get some roof leaks all in the back of the house, as did our other north-facing neighbors -- and these aren't spots that have leaked in heavy snowmelt or rain before, so we think it probably has something to do with the 14 inches of rain that fell over two days. In some places it was twenty.

Yeah, you read that right.

So how high is the water? It's high enough to do this. It's high enough to submerge one of our two water treatment plants, and high enough to flood LP Field, and Opryland, and a lot of downtown, and a lot of the west part of town. The giant scrapyard next to the river is underwater, the tops of heavy equipment visible above the water. The river stinks of gasoline. 

In other words: not good. But us, we're just fine.

Needful Things

I'm all balled-up unfilled needs inside right now, and while some of them are par-for-the-course Mama needs (fifteen minutes to self, peaceful shopping trip as have few well-fitting clothes) some of them are harder to pin down. We'll call those the "Daddy Drank" needs. Not that our dad was cruel to us or violent, ever -- but there's something about an unpredictable adult presence that's just good to the last drop, forever and ever. Today Dad was calling each of his daughters in succession with increasingly weird requests. "Write down everybody's middle names and birthdays, because I forget otherwise." Later, "I want you to take down this letter and email it to your sister so she can send it to her mother-in-law."

The family is in unity right now with regards to Dad's ongoing treatment and prognosis, and we all find this stuff hilarious if aggravating in the moment, but argh.

It makes me need to shop.

Not that I can actually go anywhere in person, because there is the matter of the little burdens beloved children, but I can tell the well's running dry when I elect to hide at my desk, hunched over eShakti or Anthropologie, imagining a life in which I wear fetching dresses while I stand in line at the taco truck, bopping ever so undetectably to the music from the record store. Also I wouldn't need prescription glasses so I could wear cool giant bug glasses, and my hair might be thicker.

No matter that I had that life and spent my free moments dreaming of dirt-smudged kids and spaghetti and the park and little pajamas. (I really did. My daydreams were nothing if not realistic.) Wouldn't trade it blah blah blah. My capacity for happiness has only grown.

But honestly? The clothes were better. And cleaner. And there was a lot more free time. These are just facts.

I did buy some new nursing bras. Why buy nursing bras when you have a 15-month-old? Well, for one, it's hard to find my size in a non-nursing bra at places like the Gap. For two, all my old nice-quality bras are just a little too small for my enormous rack, and even as I squeeze into them I hate having to actually deal with nursing in them. The bras that I can find play it fast and loose with the underwire placement, and man oh man. I do NOT need a plugged duct. You know what else? Most bras are just really, really uncomfortable to wear. I'm too big to go comfortably braless right now, and dude, when it's hot and muggy, I do NOT like skin touching skin.

Lucky for me, Bravado is making some awesome bras. I've been wearing the Bodysilk bra exclusively since Daphne was born (which is actually extremely flattering on me), and only now are they starting to look a little played-out. I got this and this. Let's hope they feel good and make my Lady Friends look fabulous.

Whoa. That was a digression, right? I was actually going to tell you about how we're lining up sitters left and right so I don't lose my frickin' mind trying to go to doctor appointments and the occasional haircut. I was scheduling all my doctor appointments (there are a lot, with the orthodontist and the surgeon and also the foot surgeon!) at weird times so I could borrow Sean from work, but that is just not the way I want to roll. And I was getting haircuts late at night (well, like eight), so after the kids were in bed but before they closed, and that sucked too. So I scheduled everything all in a block and Daphne is just going to have to deal with a four-hour babysitting session. Even if she cries the whole time. Which...she might.

Why is it every time I do anything away from the girls I feel panicky and selfish and horrible? Sean is supportive and happy to do whatever I need -- I just feel like, hey, this is my only job right now, why do I suck so bad at it? I tried to go try on clothes, and realized what time it was (almost 5, Sean was home with kids) and ran out of the store in tears. Because I had so totally fallen down on the job and dinner wasn't ready. That's weird. And unnecessary.

Also a darn good motivator to get on the back-to-school train. I think I might be saner juggling a work schedule and kids, much as I love being at home. I don't know. What do you think?

Also, how do you know your well has run dry? Do you window shop online? In real life? Read In Touch or Life & Style?

Time to heat up the leftover lasagna now. Only one more day of chopping up everything until it looks like Alpo! Yay!

I Can't Eat Salad, But I Can Post It.

1) Cherry Dump: a very good thing. It may or may not cause me to experience its...not namesake, exactly, but a thing of the same name. What's that called? But who cares! It was delicious. And I didn't even have to go to Girl Scout camp to get it!

2) I made up something awesome and mushy. You take some mashed potatoes, inundate them with any kind of cheese shreds called Fiesta! or Mexicano! or the like, and then apply my special sauce, consisting of two large blobs mayo, one large blob yogurt, a dash of hot sauce, tablespoon of V8, and a sprinkling each of chili powder and chipotle powder. Hot DAMN! Tastes like something Taco Bell might sling, but it fits into my tiny hadrosaur mouth! (Side note: can now open my mouth about 1.5 fingers. Believe it or not, that's an improvement.)

3) Postpartum depression is so popular, she gets to have ALL the fun. Well, no more. Other postpartum mental disorders such as postpartum anxiety and -- my personal favorite -- postpartum OCD (see? it's a thing!) gotta represent. Check out this organization, spreading the good word. Additionally, Marcie Ramirez of the Middle Tennessee chapter will be on The Dr. Oz Show on April 1, talking about OCD (apparently just regular-old, although she will be a guest again if they cover PMDs in particular). If I'd had any inkling that my crazy was related to postpartum, I might have done a better job getting help. Heck, if I'd known that postpartum anxiety and OCD even existed! Isn't that shameful?

4) I know, I know. You want to see the grill. Well, you'll have to wait! Until I decide to get up and find the camera and take a picture and find the cord and plug it in and...urgh. Someday. Someday, dudes.

5) Breaking Bad: I tried. I really did. I can't watch it. It's too unrelentingly bleak. It makes The Wire look like DragonTales.

6) It didn't take long: Sunday I was reading the paper and counted three people either quoted extensively or running a byline and photo that I actually know -- like, I could walk up and say hi and they would know my name. Small town, Nashville. I likes it.

7) Do you have a swing set you like? We want one that's under $400 and not huge, but it does have to be safe and sturdy enough to last some years. Doesn't need lots of bells and whistles, just a couple swings and a glider, maybe some rings.

8) Oh, and #5 up there reminds me: my surgeon looks like a clean-cut bespectacled version of McNulty from The Wire. Mmmyeah. You know you wish he'd peel your face back and move your bones around!

A Little Tease

The first house pic, complete with piles of painting supplies and (free!)(thanks Rachel!) table in pieces. This is the front door viewed from the middle of the hallway.

What are your thoughts on the paint treatment? It's sort of a multi-yellow-gold rag paint job. We go back and forth on it. It would be a ridiculously big job to paint the hallway (you'll  see why in future pics), but...we aren't sure.

An Informative and Unfunny Post, With Apologies

1) As soon as I find the camera cord I will post some pictures! We are down to one big box of off-season clothes and three small boxes of pictures/wall stuff. And better still...

2) The bedroom is almost painted! The previous owners went with a kind of Caladryl/sunburn color scheme, with a nasty salmon wall (there's good salmon and there's bad salmon, and this one looked like a skin condition) and what is turning out to be a very pale pink ceiling. God. Who does that?

Ordinarily this would not be a huge deal, but half the room has a cathedral ceiling. I'm hoping the reflection from the vintagey-turquoise wall paint is enough to drown out the pinkness.

3) The contractor who did our must-do list of Terrifying Things Under the House (tm) came in well under budget, and did a lot of things that weren't even on the list (like fixing our sagging front gate, removing some rotten gingerbread from the side of the roof, and installing an extra beam under the floor). We were so impressed that we will continue to give him money for all the other things we keep finding. Urgh.

4) The roof, as it turns out, is in pretty good shape. The floors, on the other hand...well, Contractor Bill said he had never seen a floor so undersupported. Nothing's going to collapse, but the joists are too far apart and not thick enough. As a result there are lots of shifty, soft spots in the floor. I don't mind the cracks (except as they admit a ridiculous amount of cold air) but I have a hard time walking barefoot as it is, and little shifts really bug me. We're trying to decide what to do about that: get under the house, reinforce and add insulation board or plywood? Or win the lottery and do the whole thing in Marmoleum? Option C is to ignore it for the next six or seven years, throw some rugs down over the worst spots, and keep poking rope insulation in the big holes.

5) The problem with walking barefoot? Apparently I have substantial osteoarthritis and big old bone spurs in both big toe joints -- in other words, hallux rigidus. What finally drove me to the orthopaedist was hearing my mother complain about how she couldn't wear any of her shoes, and how painful it was to have her feet touched. I might have voiced a few uncharitable thoughts about toughening up, and isn't that just how feet are, they hurt all the time and you can hardly walk? And stubbing a toe is mortal agony? Then the lightbulb went on, and the upshot is that I have scheduled a cheilectomy (possibly with something more elaborate depending on what they find) for the end of April.

You know, after my new face is hard-set. Urk.

6) Speaking of: March 8 is my surgery date. (If you're just tuning in, I'm having orthognathic surgery for open bite; the surgeon will remove some wedges of bone from my upper jaw and also widen my palate, so I can eat and talk like a person again.) My mom is coming and I'm trying to think about that and not about, say, general anesthesia and catheters and a Sawzall in my face.

I keep wanting to overlay some larger narrative about how things wear out and how I have sympathy for my old house and its bowed joists and dry-rusted cast iron, considering my own shredded wear surfaces and deteriorating structures.  But -- ha! -- I'm too busy to frame out the thought. It's like having a new baby, having a new-old house and two small children to run after (and Daphne is VERY MUCH in the running-after stage, you literally can't take an eye off her or you'll find her trapped on top of the pedestal sink, for example, or eating cat food or dancing on top of any chair not tipped over). I'm tired and scattered and in awe. It's good, but WHEW am I ready for that week in Aruba that I'm planning to pay for with my lottery winnings.