BC (beloved child the elder) – Page 15

Category: BC (beloved child the elder)

breaking the girl

Posted on January 3, 2008 by wrekehavoc

it has happened yet again. BC loves to go over her buddy ella’s house to play. apparently, it is more fun to go there than for them to come here. why? because ella has a dog. they spend a lot of time playing with the dog, which, for animal-loving BC, is heaven on earth.

BC (AKA the girl who would be a vet) has asked for a dog at least one hundred zillion times. unfortunately, the answer is always the same: i’m allergic. i love animals, too; but when i get allergic reactions to pets, i have trouble breathing. when i have trouble breathing, i often end up with an infection. and the rest, as they say, is history. i do fine visiting most pet people’s houses (unless they have massive animal hair covering everything), but i draw the line at living with a shedder. to her credit, BC has pointed out that there are animal breeds that work better for the allergy sufferers of the world. that well may be, but i have enough health issues to warrant my not adding yet another potential source of joy.

so today, i had to tell her for the umpteenth time: no dog. she was getting a little frustrated with me. the feeling was mutual; and finally, blearyteary-eyed, i said to her: do you really think i feel great about not being able to do certain things because of something i can’t control?

don’t you start crying again, mama. i think she was trying to make me laugh. it didn’t work too well. it’s hard to explain to your child why she can’t have a dog; why she needs a flu shot; why all sorts of things just are, simply because your mom is built the way she’s built: goofy in the mind department and not exactly perfect in the health department.

sigh.

new year's meme

Posted on December 31, 2007 by wrekehavoc

it just seems like a good thing to do.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before? 

start monthly IVIG therapy. i never would believe that i would voluntarily sit for 5+ hours with a needle in my arm every four weeks (for the rest of my life). i hatehateHATE IVs. but you do what you have to do, especially when you’re a mom. and staying alive and healthy is what it’s all about for me now.
take ice skating lessons. i know how to skate, but i never learned, for example, how to stop. i learned other things, too, which led to another question answer…

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? 

i started to until i was derailed by a knee injury, thanks to the new ice skating lessons 😉 but i did lose a little weight. not all that i wanted, but a little. and that’s better than nothing.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? 

nope. not a one.

4. Did anyone close to you die? 

sadly, our little friend mason died. but he lives on in our hearts, and every time we pass key school, we think of him with his cool bike, his batman paraphenalia, and, of course, a soccer ball.

5. What countries did you visit? 

grand cayman, mexico, and the republic of new jersey. oh, and the happiest country in the world, disney world. (does that count?)

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007? 

better health
happier, rested children and spouse
time and focus to write

7. What was your biggest achievement of the year? 

getting a short story published for the very first time!

8. What was your biggest failure? 

allowing BC to linger in a class where she was not only not learning enough but where she was terrorized by a person in authority. i will never forgive myself for this. ever.

9. Did you suffer illness or injury? 

ha ha ha. very funny. besides the usual panoply of sinusitis and bronchitis, let’s see:

a torn PCL
a torn meniscus (both leading me to arthroscopic surgery)
CVID diagnosis
a gallstone
a request by my doctor to elect to have my gallbladder out (this will be a 2008 experience. i can’t have all the fun in one year)
and lest we forget the zillion CT, HIDA, and other scans i had this year, plus endoscopies and the like.

on the bright side, my platelets remained stable the entire year, which is more than i can say for 2006… ;-P
10. What was the best thing you bought? 

hmmm. a year membership to the thomas jefferson community center. the workout equipment is ancient, but the people-watching is priceless.

11. Where did most of your money go? 

chocolate. mortgage. computers. money market funds. probably not in that order.

12. What did you get really, really, really excited about? 

springsteen going back on tour. the who going back on tour.

13. Compared to this time last year, are you:  a) happier or sadder?  b) thinner or fatter?  c) richer or poorer? 

a) happier

b) thinner (but not by much)

c) probably dead even.

14. What do you wish you’d done more of? 

exercise. get my kids to read instead of being read to. spend more time and attention on my kids. write.

15. What do you wish you’d done less of? 

house cleaning. hands effing down.

16. What was the best book you read? 

the tale of despereaux. a children’s book, but an awesome read with BC.

17. What did you want and get? 

tix to see springsteen.

18. What did you want and not get? 

perfect health. i’ll never get that. but i am going to keep trying anyway 😉

19. What kept you sane? 

my friends. my BS. my parents. and even sometimes my kids. see, my kids have a way of driving me crazy, but sometimes, i realize how incredible they are (especially when i see other kids in action.) sort of like my parents and husband, now that i think of it 😉

20. Who did you miss? 

my gram and gramps. but i always miss them. i miss amy and jen-jen, and i never see them. i always miss my family in NJ. always always always.

but they're cousins…

Posted on December 29, 2007 by wrekehavoc

we’ve been having a wonderful visit with my BIL, his wife, and their two DDs, one an extremely sweet girl a few months older than BC and the other a seven-year-old firecracker. they were finally asleep in the living room, the three girls and jools, at their second slumber party of the weekend. last night, BC stayed with them in their hotel room. jools was mad because he couldn’t have a sleepover like the girls. and PRESTO! four kids in the front of my house.

[the night before last, little miss firecracker apparently drove her sister and everyone nuts and ended up sleeping in her mom and dad’s room. she drove her sister crazy enough to make her sleep on a couch! so tonight, i knew we would take no prisoners.]

welcome, as i might say, to auntie wreke’s police state 😉

seriously, though, i had no fears about people getting to bed. see, today, we took them on a walking tour of the National Mall. we walked through FDR’s memorial. we walked through the WWII memorial. we walked through the jefferson memorial. we walked all the way over to mr. lincoln’s place. we did the whole circuit, which, for the uninitiated, is quite a feat, especially if you’re jools and have the 4.5 year old shorty mcshortshort legs to go with it.

after a whiny (jools) cup of hot cocoa and chats about why you shouldn’t touch the water in the fountains (answer: they’re sadly places where homeless people sometimes bathe) and bird shit (all the kids were freaked out about sitting on chairs with tiny blobs of white), we walked back to the car. we had a nice lunch, dropped off my poor BIL, who needed to rest because he has a terrible cold coming on, and spent a few hours letting the kids run around the house while i had a nice chat with my SIL. (BS hid out in the office on the computer.) we then fed the kids and packed everyone in the car for the light show at the national zoo, an incredibly lame light experience. all the lights were sponsored by businesses; all the treats cost ridiculous sums. i don’t know why we had to pay for tickets for this underwhelming extravaganza. i sure hope the national zoo earned some money outta this one.

and then back for brownies and ice cream. BS stopped and bought vanilla ice cream (plus cookies and cream) because the sweet girl doesn’t care for chocolate. why can’t we have chawwwwklit? cried jools, who has been raised by a mama who knows no other flavor. why are there white chocolate chips touching my brownies? cried little miss firecracker, even after i surgically removed them, leaving a faint white (unacceptable) trace. BC, bless her pointed little head, has never met a chocolate product she didn’t like. she ate it all gladly and taught miss firecracker about the wonders of cookies and cream ice cream (the other aforementioned flavor BS actually purchased for himself but which of course ended up with the kids. my poor Beleagured Spouse.) and then bed. a fold-out couch. an aerobed. and a blow-up sleeping bag that jools adores and which is ripping apart.

my sweetgirl niece got homesick and went back to the hotel with my BIL and SIL; BC is sleeping in her room because the living room is apparently too dusty for her. so the talley in the livingroom now stands at jools (in the blow-up sleeping bag) and miss firecracker, who has the entire fold-out-couch to herself. i just hope she doesn’t freak out in the morning when she sees her sister AND her beloved BC are not there with her.

we’ll see.

for jewish girls who've considered suicide when christmas cooking was enuf

Posted on December 23, 2007 by wrekehavoc

with apologies to Ntozake Shange.

some friends are coming over for christmas eve. i’m pretty excited, as i have not yet hosted either family over my house. it’s kind of amusing, really, that the nice jewish girl is hosting a christmas eve ‘do, but i just consider it another occasion for celebration. as i said so sweetly to BS this morning as he was getting cranky because of cleaning duties: get ahold of your holiday spirit, dammit.

it’s clicheed, but it’s true: my dream of christmas day has always been a movie followed by chinese food. for the many years of our marriage, i went without those, deferring instead to BS since this annual ~~trainwreck~~ holiday belongs to him and i wanted it to be as he would want it to be. i love to see his face, all happy and thrilled 🙂

but last year, i got my dream of chinese food: to be clearer, crappy, overpriced, but still chinese food. we were surrounded only by dressed-up chinese people who all seemed to know each other and who ordered stuff emanating from animal parts which i, a borderline vegetarian, probably don’t want to contemplate. this year ~~in jerusalem~~, BC would like to have vietnamese food instead. BS and i (embarrassing history geeks who should no longer be allowed to watch the history channel) have already spent actual time contemplating whether certain southeast asian nations have had significant numbers of christian missionaries invading (thailand? india? cambodia?), as this might determine whether they would actually be open on christmas day. do normal people talk like this? i don’t really know. [note to self: just call the damn vietnamese restaurant tomorrow to find out whether they’re open and forget about seeing whether the history channel has an answer for you. they won’t.]

consequently, i have no earthly idea what one eats on christmas eve beyond the cookies and carrots one’s child has dutifully left out for st. nick. (oh, and by the way, for any of you kids out there reading this — auntie wreke wants you to know that those are only the cookies and carrots that santa and his reindeer left behind. they get kind of full on christmas eve, you know.) so we’re going with modified thanksgiving. i can hardly wait to taste the brined turkey that kellyo is bringing over; and i’m full of thanks that nylonthread’s AJS has something with which to actually carve the bird — and he’s not afraid to use it.

i found a recipe for sugared cranberries. heaven knows why i decided this, but i’m making said cranberries, which apparently create a lovely sugar syrup that’s appropriate for mixing with vodka. i added some orange peel to steep in there — i like my cranberries with orange whenever possible. i’m not entirely sure what the hell to do with this, but kellyo assures me that she does. i think i might welcome that sort of drink after the cleaning and cooking i’ve been doing.

additionally, i’m making ginger-orange carrots (a modified tzimmes, for you red sea pedestrians out there), some sort of garlic mashed potatoes, plain peas (because there will be 6 kids there), hummus, some sort of challah rolls (haven’t decided yet, but i guess i better get on the stick) and dessert. one dessert has turned out well — red velvet cupcakes topped with white chocolate peppermint cream cheese frosting (say that 10 times fast). in fact, the kids helped me decorate many of the cupcakes with lots of colored sugar and frosting, so if people haven’t started out in a diabetic coma, they will definitely end up nearing one.

dessert #2? well, that’s a different story. the gingerbread in question started out life with a different purpose. (a special purpose.) i made gingerbread cupcakes from an online recipe source and was all set to make the lovely frosting to go with it. people swore up and down, 5 stars, amazing recipe. so i made it. only, too bad for me. the cake, while delicious, ended up quite fragile and fell. the batter was quite thin. no way in hades would this stuff stand up to a stiff wind, much less frosting. i had to come to plan b.

or, in the words of my hero, winnie the pooh, think, think, think.

and sha-ZAAM! it came to me. a trifle. when G-d gives you lemons, make lemonade. the cake tastes fine; it just won’t be a pretty thing. i found a recipe and i’m modifying it by using my gingerbread. if nothing else, people might like pumpkin pudding, which tastes fine.

so what have we learned, boys and girls? stick with recipe sources where you can stick it to them via the letters to the editor section, if need be.

and when all else fails,we’ll always have kung pao chicken.

explaining homosexuality to a 9 year old

Posted on December 16, 2007 by wrekehavoc

BS left a Time Magazine on the top of the toilet as he always does. he’s always weeks behind on his quality reading, so this issue must be at least a month or so old. one headline that screams from the cover: Yep, He’s Gay.

BC and i were in the bathroom at the same time, she washing her hands and me drying mine. it was one of those slow-motion moments where i saw her eyes leap to the monosyllabic words, words she can easily read. and i knew hilarity would ensue.

mama, girlfriend said, what does that mean?

what?

“gay” she said. duh, mama.

attempting to be as matter of fact as if i were discussing butter or baseball, i replied, gay is when two people are in love with each other and they are both men or both women.

i saw girlfriend processing this one. she made an uneasy face. i wanted to head it off at the pass.

you know, buzz (one of her nicknames), i added, in this world, you are lucky if you can find someone you love who loves you back. it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a boy or a girl.

that finished it. we were both satisfied.

fin.

wile e. coyote. supergenius.

Posted on December 11, 2007 by wrekehavoc

i suspect i am not the only person out there who wonders whether my brain is completely full of information and incapable of admitting more without letting some of the matter, important or unimportant, go.

i wonder about these things, especially at this time of year, because i simply cannot figure out where things have gone. it is holiday time, and i have officially faked myself out. two of BS’s presents, bought a little while ago, were put away in my usual BS Present Hiding Spot ™. Only, too bad for me, as junie b would say, cos they are now officially M.I.A. the kids often play around my official hiding spot, but BC, who would be on the ball for these sorts of things, has no recollection of seeing said items. and i know i saw them last week when i first wrapped a chanukah present for BS. so i probably put them somewhere else so that they’d be supertopsecretsafe.

boy. i’m so smart. so incredibly, freakishly smart. (grrrr.)

i also noticed that a pair of jeans i bought online are missing. they’ve been languishing in a box in the closet, waiting for me to put them on when i finally admitted that i would be comfy in that size and would be ready to venture forth and get them shortened. they’re missing now, too.

i suspect that jimmy hoffa is out there somewhere, using BS’s presents and wearing my g-ddamned jeans.

my big, fat walt disney world vacation. part 4.

Posted on December 10, 2007 by wrekehavoc

ah, the happiest place on earth.

first, a round-up of some of the happy moments, for those of you who think i hate everything. (and, for the record, i don’t.)

1) BC, age 9, discovering her “favorite” rides at disney: rockin’ rollercoaster, space mountain, and expedition everest. i have to say that the imagineers (another great job title, methinks) have an incredible way of making your wait (and yes, friends, sans a fastpass, you will wait. and sometimes with a fastpass, you will wait.) somewhat entertaining. i especially enjoyed expedition everest’s realistic paraphenalia; it made me actually even more interested in the area and the people of the region. and going on said rides with my kid? priceless 🙂

2) jools, age 4.5, discovering his favorite rides: buzz lightyear, star tours (and yes, i went on this 6 times thanks to little man and memorized the corny jokes of the person who got us situated), the haunted mansion (which broke down while he and i were riding it one NIGHT, right in front of some graves — and he wasn’t scared (though i was a little creeped out) and watching the how-to show on becoming a jedi. (be prepared for the crowd to get crazy when the man running the show highlights his first young female jedi-in-training.) i’ll admit: i love going on buzz lightyear a lot, too. i also think everyone in the family loved mickey’s philharmagic. i think it’s the best of disney’s 3-d shows, even better than the old muppets chestnut. also, test track (note that jools is not afraid of roller coasters, so if your child is, he might not enjoy it as much)

3) we had lovely meals at boma and jiko. the kids were a little perplexed by the food choices in the norwegian restaurant akershus (we’re not from the big scandinavian food choosers), but as that was where the princess lunch was, that’s what we ate. i would recommend people stick to the breakfast if possible, though lunch is ok (just not what i would normally pay that kind of money for 😉

4) as people staying at WDW, we were allowed to send our kids to a childcare center (for extra $ of course). we chose simba’s cub club in the animal kingdom (so that we could have one grownup dinner date.) not a terribly high-tech place, but when we returned to pick the kids up (at 9:30; we’re so lame at staying out late), the kids begged us to let them stay. of course, they were fed a meal they loved of mac and cheese and chicken nuggets, with all the cookies they could stuff; what’s not to like? kids age 4-12 can enjoy this, though they must be potty-trained to do so (we actually saw a couple getting busted — their daughter was in pull-ups. you know it’s not a good sign when you walk into the club and the cast member takes you aside and says: “there’s something we need to talk about.”) $10 an hour per kid. actually comparable to what we pay around here, almost, when you throw in the pizza we always order for the kids and the sitter 😉

5) the parks, especially the magic kingdom, are WILDLY crowded on night when they stay open late. the exception to this for us was when we paid extra for mickey’s christmas party. it was a snap to get on rides that night. little parties and dancing aboundeth that night — my kids danced with goofy, and yes, dear reader, even jaded little me enjoyed that moment. that’s the night when they have the much vaunted holiday parade.

RANT ALERT! (you knew i couldn’t go all the way through in a happy way, didn’t you?)

we used to visit disney when i was little. i’ve sat through a gazillion parades. and even though they’ve always piped in music, the people in the parade used to sing. i’m pretty darn sure of that. so i am wondering why we all sit for hours to watch people lip-synch? i have zero interest in watching people lip-synch. i want actual singing, people. if i want lip-synching, i’ll go watch some MTV awards show.

jools slept through the christmas parade. BC loved it. so i’m just a picky-picky crank.

but you knew that already.

reindeer romp

Posted on December 8, 2007 by wrekehavoc

this morning, in the rainy, icy, snowy early hours of the day, BC ran her first 5k as part of her girls on the run program. girlfriend was a bit frightened before the fact; 1) she invited her school principal to be her buddy since BS and i can’t run with her (yet) — and the dear man accepted; 2) there was a little added pressure because girlfriend ended up as a sort-of poster child for the event, courtesy of the Washington Post; and 3) she actually can’t run all the way through (yet).

BS — who is actually fighting some throaty-coughing thing — took her to the run, as he didn’t want me to risk getting sick out there. and he reported that BC’s principal was as good as his word — she ran, he ran. she walked, he walked. and even though the man is actually a serious runner, he stayed with her through to the finish line. (you bet your butt that man is getting a thank you note and some homemade cookies next week.)

i’m so proud of girlfriend. she finished what she started. (i’ve never started, much less finished, a 5k.) and she wants to keep going in the spring.

you go, girl.

my big, fat walt disney world vacation. part 3.

Posted on December 8, 2007 by wrekehavoc

through trial and error, we’ve learned that it’s sometimes better to permit our kids to revel in certain media experiences rather than prohibit them and create a forbidden fruit phenomenon. we limit, but don’t prohibit, television in our house, for example. and BC, as i’ve mentioned before, is a HUGE high school musical fan. while it’s not music to my ears, i have no problem allowing BC to enjoy this pretty innocuous, fluffy show in all of it’s glory.

so when we learned that there’s a big HSM pep rally at walt disney world, we knew that BC would be dying to see it. and, as luck would have it, i drew the ~~short~~ ~~cursed~~ lucky straw that entitled me to be the parent who would enjoy the show with her. as happens with every show at WDW, if you’re not there early, you won’t get to participate in — or sometimes just to see — the show. (read: you need to in the front row, if not close to it.) so we arrived, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, at 9:00am for the 9:35 show. a cast member (i just love that euphemism, don’t you?) told us to stand behind a line and we’d have a great seat for the show. we were thrilled. well. one of us was; i’ll leave that puzzle to your imagination.

so BC and i stood for 35 minutes in what was bright, 70+ degree sunlight, and chattered. around us, there were kids as young as 3 who were waiting for the show. (one little boy, who was actually 3, was there, complete with his HSM glitter shirt on. his mother told us that this would be his 4th time at the show. the first three times happened the day before.) in fact, seeing boys dressed in HSM shirts was a sort of new phemonenon for me. (most boys around here would rather be impaled than be seen in such garb. not that there’s anything wrong with it, of course.) there was a little girl from new yawk whose parents had apparently bought out the HSM franchise for her listening, viewing, and wearing pleasure. it was a wee bit frightening. (BC loves it, but beyond a CD, she doesn’t really have a lot of HSM paraphenalia.)

we stood. and we stood. and we watched people sit down on the astroturf they’d laid down on the ground for people to sit upon once the HSM float (which serves as the show’s backdrop) comes through. and we watched cast members move them along. meanwhile, parents around me seethed like stage mothers behind a rope. why do those people continue to sit on the astroturf? why don’t the workers MOVE them? apparently, there was much gnashing of teeth. i was a little frightened we were going to have a reenactment of the 1979 Who show, and i was not about to have my kid underfoot for some gabriella wannabe. i was getting kind of nervous. BC, i said, if people get crazy when they drop the rope, just run and sit down on the turf. i will find you, but just be careful.

when the cast members started to move the rope, they pulled it across, as if to lead us to our appointed spots. but people started to push, and i was afraid that BC would be in harm’s way. sensing this, BC slipped under the rope and plopped down on the astroturf. i walked over to her and slid my legs around her so that she was essentially in my lap. she was able to actually get up and dance with the HSM people at a few points, and i was calm enough to ~~nearly enjoy the show~~ be happy that my daughter was beaming contendedly and had not become a permanent part of the pavement.

a lot of the shows at disney essentially reward pushy parents. knowing that, we waited so that we could get decent seats. but because of that, jools didn’t get selected to be a jedi knight (must be in the front row). my sister in law and my brother in law (mercifully) scouted out a curbside spot so that we all could watch the christmas parade; i think they must have stayed there for at least an hour. you waste so much time saving spots and waiting at disney. it must be part of their economic formula, but it brings out the crazies in everyone.

including me.

my big, fat walt disney world vacation. part 1.

Posted on December 6, 2007 by wrekehavoc

and you may ask yourself, why the hell isn’t that boring chick writing much? she usually spews about anything. we’ve had radio silence for days, and that’s simply just not like her to be that considerate by shutting her trap.

well, fear not. i’m not being considerate. my blathering self is back. we just spent a few days in the ~~barmy~~ balmy place known as ~~westworld~~ walt disney world. you know, the happiest place in the world? (dammit, at the rates i paid, you will be happy, and nothing will go wrong, or else!) sorry i didn’t let you know in advance, but i didn’t feel like announcing to potential doers-of-evil that i was vacating my premises for a bit. but we’re back. i suspect that there are several points to rant over, so this may take a few days to get out of my system.

(don’t say you weren’t warned.)

for a stunning twist, we decided to take the autotrain this year. you load your car onto the train, then you sleep through the carolinas and all of their kitschy roadside south of the border signage until VOILA! you’re in scenic sanford. (and when i say scenic, i mean scenic like being on the wrong side of scrub pines and railroad tracks.) this time of year, the autotrain is packed, and i mean packed, TO THE GILLS, with senior citizens on their way to flaaa-rida. dahling. i would say that this trip predominantly included most of the citizenry from the greater new york metropolitan area. our family probably lowered the median age a bit.

you know it’s going to be a fabulous ride when the dining attendants hide the hot cocoa packets because the seniors rip them off. (my kids, in a moment of sweetness i wish i had captured on film, smiled so nicely at the attendant that she gave them two additional packets for later. i guess she figured we weren’t a threat to the stash.) but we were off, and everyone was nice to us once we got past the whole boarding thing. (there were a few alta cockers who i feared might run over us with luggage carts should we have the temerity to attempt to walk before them.) but the older folks who were in our little slice of AMTRAK heaven were mostly nice and didn’t monopolize the bathrooms. one even gave BC a dollar in honor of her birthday, which was sweet (even after BC said no thank you and the lady insisted.) now i just have to train these people to not speak REALLY INCREDIBLY LOUDLY WHEN IT’S 10:00 AT NIGHT AND THEY ARE RIGHT OUTSIDE MY DOOR. myrtle, your hearing aid may blow up if you keep that shit up.

where am i going with this? to disney world, of course, silly.

anyway, once we arrived in sanford, the old folks rallied to the very front of the station, as if their personal sheer will would make their car come out before everyone else’s. all, apparently, except for one family, whose car actually came out first. 45 minutes later, the announcer on the PA was getting really snippy: Eber Family, Car # 405, EBER Family, You really need to get your big asses over here right now and take your car away before we sell it on Ebay for $1! okay, so that’s more what was going on in my little bear brain, but the PA Announcer was not far from me on that, you know.

BC asked an interesting question: mama, why do all of these grandparents drive big SUVs? i couldn’t imagine any of them stepping up so high without requiring surgical intervention, but apparently, they can and they do. i scratched my head. i really don’t know, sweetheart was all i could muster. BC decided that maybe they all have to drive their grandchildren around in carpools. yeah right, darling. in their dreams they are all driving that carpool. then, after two days of kids screaming and dropping cheerios in their formerly-clean interiors, they are begging for mercy.

we went on our honeymoon to disney nearly 18 years ago. we did not decide to have children until 8 years after that, probably because a trip to disney is the finest form of birth control around. that being said, i was now wondering whether i would find seniors scarier than children.