it’s not just something you use to get yourself stuff… it’s hours of fun, too!

today’s theme is money and how it can provide hours of activities for the whole family! (it is, after all, black friday.) BC started me down this thrilling path by deciding that it would be fun to experience black friday! don’t you want to hit tyson’s corner center at ungodly o’clock? sure. i know i did.

i told her that despite the mall opening at midnight, i would not be triapsing there at that time. we settled on waking up at 5:30am and hitting the mall then. and hit it hard we did. girlfriend, you see, needs new clothes. and there were some specials that would be too hard to pass up. two pairs of jeans, one skirt, two camis, three shirts, and one pair of sweats later, we did quite well. (i also did well on two cashmere sweaters at macy’s which i had been stalking for two months. a crazy sale price plus a coupon made it something i could finally do. (yeah, i use coupons. so what?)) also two pairs of dockers for BS, and the only person who got bupkes on this trip was jools. (not for lack of trying: we hit the gamestop, but it didn’t have a lot of there there for him. at least, notthat was on sale, anyway.)

the ladies at vera bradley were a little cuckoo, i would say. they were pretty clueless and the sale items we wanted weren’t there. ladies, step away from the paisley.

so what’s even more fun with money? looking into a piggy bank that i’ve had since i was in high school and seeing which quarters are now collectibles in jools’ book. and that’s what we did. wow, the boy exclaimed, a quarter from 1968! that’s really old, isn’t it??

uhm.

anyway, we found a bicentennial quarter, a coin from greece (also 1968!), a shekel, and all sorts of stuff… including some pretty gnarly-looking pennies. which leads us to fun with money part three: let’s learn about oxidation! i found a little piece called chemistry fun with pennies and mixed up a little vinegar-salt mixture. the boy threw in a bunch of pennies, a quarter, and a dime for good measure. we’re still waiting to see what happens, though the pennies seem to be improving…marginally.

in other news, my fingers have this awful vinegar/old metal smell. i guess i officially smell like money.

wow. inboxes can get pretty full.

i don’t often open my gmail account. everything gets forwarded to various places and all is well. but tonight, morbid curiosity had me fire up the old gmail to see what was happening… and what was happening was over 40,000 emails, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. well, not really kissing but merely clogging up my li’l corner of cyberspace.

::insert guilt here::

so i started thinking of the major offenders, to which i have subscribed and never cleared out… places like groupon, for example.  search, delete, search, delete, etc. it gets pretty boringly addictive. can i make it below 39,ooo? can i make it below 38,000?

after about 30 minutes, i am only just about 35,000. how the hell did i get this many emails?

i live in fear for when i finally confront my facebook emails. that may require an intervention.

so see you when i come up for air. maybe when i hit 30,000.

sometimes the truth is more wonderful than fiction.

every year, our elementary school has a movie night. the kids all huddle on the cafeteria floor on blankets and in sleeping bags to watch what is usually a pixar movie. this year, we gathered to watch rio. the boy has had a tough week at school; it’s hard being different and the kids seem to get less empathetic and increasingly nasty. and yet, the boy wanted to go. i hope i see M there, he said to me as we hopped into the mommobile.

sure enough, we did see M. M, you should know, is a wonderful little girl who has been in jools’ class since kindergarten, though this year, they are sadly separated. since kindergarten, when they vowed they would marry when they were grownups, the two have been tight friends. somehow, waching them together is like watching an old married couple; he is always doing goofy things and telling jokes to make her smile, and she pinches him when he is misbehaving.  M has a wonderful, warm heart. i genuinely adore her.

last year, the boys started teasing jools. julian and M, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes jools in the baby carriage. and so on. mom, he told me, how do i tell M that i like her but she’s not my girlfriend?

i don’t know, i replied. do you still like her?

of course i do, he had replied.

well then, be friends. don’t worry about what everyone says. be nice to her and she should be nice back.

so tonight, jools sat on M’s sleeping bag with M and her sister. M’s dad bought a big box of Nerds and they all shared them. M’s sister kept taking the weird lollipop jools had, which was part lolly and part flashlight, and lighting it up throughout the movie. M got up a bunch of times to find her friends, jools told me, but she always comes back. (that’s okay, mom, julian reassured me.)

so tonight at bedtime, i asked the boy how his evening was.

you know mom, he replied, M is probably my best friend. she is the one person who is always nice to me and comes back to me.

i smiled. we all need that person who comes back. no matter what.

some days, we need to see miracles. i found this: an article with an audio/video from Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, telling everyone she’s getting stronger. it’s very powerful. and since i’m feeling a bit down today, i don’t really have a lot to contribute to the blogoverse, so the least i think i could do was share something positive.

if i figure out how to get the video in here, i will. but in the meantime, you will find it in the article.

that noise would be ouch!

today’s post brought to you by the letter b for benadryl. sometimes, i think benadryl is what stands between me and oblivion.  i took some last night and i’m pretty sure i’ll have a better today for it.

yesterday, i had my monthly infusion of IVIg. (for those of you unfamiliar with why i do this, this is how it all started and this is pretty much my situation.  yes, i’m still having more fun with common variable immunodeficiency than humans ought to be allowed, though i am in better health than a lot of people who have it.  the new nurse was very nice, but for reasons i don’t understand, she didn’t run my line with the pump. it took several tries to get a vein working for me (in my hand, which i hate); and it wouldn’t run very fast. after a time, the line blew.

to make a long story short, i was stuck 13 times yesterday, a new record, including two times in each hand and three times by a doctor. this doctor was the first one who actually didn’t do a bad job, though if ever you are in a situation where the doctor wants to try to put in your infusion, you should generally run fast in the other direction.  unless your doctor was recently in residency, he/she hasn’t put in an IV probably in decades. (yeah, you don’t have to thank me.)

eight hours later, i was finally finished, though not without the nurse using heparin to flush out my line four times because it stopped. it was a miserable day. i felt like crap. and gues what — i broke out in hives on my hips and legs.

time for two things: 1) a call to my BTD, who told me to take more motrin next time and that it was likely just a reaction to the Ig, and 2) time to hit the benadryl.

feeling better today, but have the usual dull headache happening. i should be grateful – i get the medicine, i do pretty well, and life is pretty good.

but yesterday left me wishing someone could make everything  all better. for keeps.

so it has been a thrilling day.

i’m still fighting some upper respiratory thing, finally with some ceftin since it’s the next antibiotic in my rolling list of meds. i’m feeling stellar, and that alone, makes it a great day. then, i knew it was trouble when i heard my cell phone play “darlington county” — that’s my ringtone for our public schools. seems i had to pick the boy up from school because he was whacked in the tooth on the playground by a metal piece of playground equipment that another boy was bouncing on… then, he threw up, so i took him home. after an initial rest period, he seems okay, so i’m just going with the no-concussion track for the day. hope i’m right.

you know, mom, there goes the whole idea of adam and eve.

exactly right, i replied.

so i guess the day wasn’t a complete wash

getting old. i guess it’s better than the alternative.

for those of you who don’t know me in real life, i am, in short, a spaz. i have fallen off amtrak trains, been pushed down a metro escalator (during rush hour!), fractured my ankle while participating in a boot camp class, and destroyed my left knee while taking a leap at the ice rink (and realized that i don’t bounce the way i did when i was, er, slightly younger. like the year before, when i turned 21.) i loved being active while growing up, and yet it is no wonder that at my age, my parents grimace audibly every time i mention my interest in trying some new strenuous pursuit. this winter, when we took the kids to learn to ski, i was cautioned by basically EVERYONE related to me that i was not, repeat, NOT to take skiing lessons. even BTD, a medical professional who spends plenty of time telling people the benefits of exercise, told me to cease and desist. i really, REALLY wanted to ski, too.

but alas. i did not.

last year, after several months of PT for my ankle, i went walking with my friend. only, too bad for me: i tripped over a tree root and re-injured the aforementioned ankle. (hints from heloise’s evil sister: when you hear a snap coming from your ankle, it isn’t a good thing. ever.) so welcome to more months of PT until early this year, when i was determined to try the couch to 5k program, a program i have started and never finished about 5 times now.

see, my attempts at the couch to 5k program resemble a certain someone’s attempts to build a castle:

i would be the couch to 5k person who continually sinks into the swamp, possibly after burning down, and maybe even after getting run over once or twice.

anyway, i attempted running back in march. oh, it was an unseasonably warm day, and i loved running up and down the hills in our impossibly semi-mountainous part of the people’s republic. i felt so great afterwards, and the accomplishment made me beam. but the next day? my right knee, ever-jealous of the reconstruction that happened to her left counterpart, mutineed. no bending for you, lady! going down stairs was particularly murderous. and so i knew something was rotten and phoned up the guy who fixed the left knee.

his office never called me back.

so, in a fit of annoyance, i called another orthopedic group, which fit me in promptly…for the end of may. it’s a good thing it wasn’t some sort of emergency; but i figured that if it still bothered me in two months’ time, then it would likely be worth the trip. and today was the day.

after some x-rays, poking, prodding, and slight conversation with a doctor who looks to be about my age, i have what is called (in klingon, apparently) excessive lateral patellar compression syndrome. not to be confused with either the china syndrome or the pepsi syndrome, apparently. my patella (also known in some parts as a kneecap) doesn’t want to stay in it’s groove. (it is busy finding its groove elsewhere, like stella.) i have some try-it-at-home exercises to do that may help strengthen some of the muscles. and if that doesn’t work, they’ll gladly make me do some…PT. (not again! not three years in a row!!) i could get a shot, but that’s not really a long-term solution.

but apparently, this is also the start of arthritis in my knee. and eventually, i will have surgery in this knee’s future.  and the very best part: the doctor telling me that perhaps i ought to stop doing the things that cause this.

read: no more couch to 5k program for you, grasshopper.

someone pass me the geritol, please.

yeah. i’m that mom.

today was the big day in second grade. parents were invited in to see the two-part museums the children had created for american studies and science. part one involved native american tribes. each class contributed two docents to discuss their particular exhibit. i was thrilled to witness jools and his little girlfriend rose perform as docents, discussing all sorts of native american things. (not as thrilled as jools was. he often isn’t selected for these sorts of things, and as he was this time, he was jumping out of his skin. he couldn’t wait to do his bit. which, i would add, he did knowledgeably and marvelously, unbiased mom that i am.) we all moved around to each class’s native american exhibit, listening to their classes’ docents discuss all things powhatan.  it was really a creative and well-done idea, and i send many kudos to the teachers and kids who worked very hard to put it all together. a lot of learning clearly took place!

part two of the exhibits involved their biome unit.  (i don’t remember anything about biomes when i was a kid. we just talked about nature.) the kids learned about three different biomes: the desert, the deciduous forest, and the grassland. each child was to make a diorama depicting an animal from one of  those three selected biomes. they also needed to write about the animal, it’s interdependent relationships,  and interesting facts. there were quite a few bison, many cheetahs, lots of slithering snakes, all probably selected from the big list o’ animals distributed at the start of the project. did we pick one of those aforementioned animals?

of course not.

when we sat down to discuss the selection of the animal, we went to a website recommended by the teacher as a great resource on animals. from there, i’m not sure where we went, but we stumbled on an animal which, the minute i read its name, i knew would be the one the boy would select. ohmygawd how COOL, the boy exclaimed when i showed him a picture of this little, nonpredatory, ant-eating aussie lizard. it was settled. our animal would be: the thorny devil.

now i could tell you loads and loads about this adorable little dude, but a picture (or video) is probably way less verbose and far more informative than i’ll ever be.

anyway, we read together in books and on the web about this little creature. as he has a tough time writing neatly, the boy typed a sentence a day about this lumpy lizard until we had critical mass.  we also discussed how to make the diorama. i reminded mr. man that i passed the second grade; so while i’d be glad to talk about the project and help him get what he needed, for the most part, he was on his own. he painted the inside of a girl scouts thin mint box blue and pasted cotton balls for clouds. we put down a mass quantity of glue on the bottom and poured sand (from our old sandbox sand bag) on it. he made a shrub out of green tissue paper from an old gift. the husband bought the boy some clay, and he fashioned a lizard as best as he could out of several colors. and then, he stuck toothpicks all over the lizard to show it’s spikes.

so today in class, after the native american museum part of the program, we entered the kids’ classrooms, whereupon everyone stood up and talked about their animal. the boy did a fine job mentioning that the devil gets water by both absorbing it through it’s tummy as well as by drinking the rain gathered in the little valleys created by the spiky skin on his back. well done, little man. he was so very, very proud.

and i was, too.

so then, we all walked around the classroom, admiring everyone’s work. i noticed plenty of ready-made plastic animals stuck into boxes. some dioramas were really quite realistic — one boy put actual cacti into his to show it was the desert. (i’m too much of a slacker to have gone there. bully for him.) and i stopped for a moment, standing by the boy’s diorama, when i overheard two boys talking as they peered into jools’ work. look, one boy said, laughing as he looked at jools’ interpretation of the thorny devil. he stuck TOOTHPICKS into his lizard. that looks dumb.

and i couldn’t help myself. i know i’m supposed to behave. i know i’m supposed to be an adult. and i know i would say something sharp to my son if i heard him making fun of someone else’s hard work. and, as part of the global village which it takes to raise children, i spoke up.

you know, i said, giving my sternest parental look, it’s really hard to make those spikes. you shouldn’t make fun of something if you haven’t tried it.

the boys looked at me, surprised, then sheepish. and fled.

natural instinct is a hard thing to fight.

Dear, dear Charlie Sheen.  Watching you implode before the public eye like a supernova hellbent on destroying itself and anything in its path has been riveting, I admit. To be sure, I don’t think I can keep track of the various news stories that have splashed across the screen in the past few weeks. Something about prostitutes, drugs, alcohol, allegedly threatening violence to various ex-wives, having your children removed from your care, stopping production of your sitcom… all you’re missing is a link somehow to the middle east and you’ll hit some sort of perfect storm of newsworthiness.

And your words,  your nonsensical, inflammatory language. It has been captured by numerous television and radio outlets, all falling over themselves to have you on in order to boost their ratings. People love to watch a car crash, and you, my friend, are an explosion tantamount to a fiery Indy 500 moment coupled with an atomic bomb. Several web developers have created sites which do different things with your random quotables, all in the name of grabbing their 15 minutes on your back.
It all has made me think of my grandmother.

I never really knew my grandmother, you should understand; she died when I was 11. My direct memories of her involved brief Sunday night phone calls where we talked about Lawrence Welk, trips to Nathan’s for hotdog lunches, and a painting of a rose she made for me which I treasure to this day. I never went inside her Long Island apartment; it was part of a residence filled with the newly-liberated, completely unsupported mentally ill of 1970s New York, intermingled with a lot of elderly people. It was far too scary a place for me, a little girl. I often wonder what it must have been like for her.

My grandmother was, in the parlance of the day, manic-depressive. She endured shock treatments throughout her life as well as many other treatments probably unfathomable to people nowadays. There were points in my father’s and my aunt’s lives where they were sent off to live with aunts and cousins while my grandmother was getting help. How frightened she must have been, and what was worse — the illness or the cure? Back then, mental illness was not only unacceptable, it was stigmatized. You were somehow a defective specimen of humanity. Dignity never entered into the picture.

But my gram attempted a life of dignity in between these times. It couldn’t have been easy, losing her husband pretty early on in all of this. And sure, there was the day when she went out and, apropos of nothing, put money down on a house.  I don’t ever remember her babysitting my brothers and me the way my other grandparents did. My gram was not a regular fixture physically near me; she was like a star I wished upon, but not for myself: for her.

And as I watch Charlie Sheen catastrophically exploding through the cosmos, I’m wishing on him. I’m hoping someone out there will stop him on this path toward self-destruction.  I pray that someone is helping him to harness that light for something better, stronger, and more positive for himself and for his family.

Blazes are not always glorious in my book.

Originally published at Smartly.Com

…because freddy mercury should be singing bohemian rhapsody and not elton john or axel rose.

if ignorance is a pet peeve of mine, then you can bet that ignorance about HIV and AIDS goes far, far beyond mere annoyance in my book. as i have known plenty of people who lived and died from the HIV virus — and I have a friend who continues to live with AIDS, probably far beyond what doctors predicted — i have been gobsmacked by the stupidity people have shown toward those with HIV, as if you might catch it by simply breathing the same air.  in the old office where i used to get my monthly IVIG, i had less fear about being around AIDS patients than i did with someone with something actually infectious. it wasn’t like i was going to be having sex while getting my IV — not that i could even figure out how if i even wanted to, of course. (and i’m quite sure none of those patients were interested in me, anyway.)

i can’t believe we’ve hit world aids day 2010 and there still isn’t a cure. there are a lot of advances, thanks to groups like amfAR. still, funding is an issue — i know, where isn’t funding an issue these days. and you might wonder why i care about this disease; i don’t exactly fit the profile of someone who might be engaging in behaviors that might lead to trouble (although no one is ever truly perfectly immune from anything, i believe.) i guess somewhere in the back of my bear-brain, i know that i have a condition where so little is known. there’s no primary immunodeficiency day out there; we don’t have celebrities talking about what it’s like to have a crap immune system. but i feel a kinship with HIV/AIDS folks — they, too, have crap immune systems. theirs is an acquired situation, whereas mine was something i was simply born with (apparently.)

maybe it’s a slightly selfish thing — i figure that maybe, if someone out there figures out how to help those folks, that maybe someday, that research will possibly benefit my children and grandchildren. after all, someone’s going to get my genes.

so i hope you’ll join me in commemorating world aids day 2010. i hope i see a day in my lifetime when they no longer have this commemoration because the disease has a remedy.

and then maybe, we won’t lose people like freddy mercury just because he loved often but possibly not always so well.