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she blinded me with science

Posted on February 28, 2008 by wrekehavoc

BC has a big science test today. we’ve been reading about the sun, the moon, the tides, matter, molecules, and atoms. she even drew me the little H2O drawing that we did in beginning chemistry. in 10th grade.

BC is in third grade.

i love the way the teacher writes out a plan of attack for studying. each day, we have been studying from a sheet; and each day, we add a little more, then a little more, then a little more. i hope this sort of thing rubs off on madam, as she clearly doesn’t seem to be a person who wants to study because, to quote her, i know this stuff already, mama.

it’s nice to be doogie howser, but you still need to study, darling.

girlfriend seems to be heavily interested in science these days. i’m secretly glad of this, as i somehow never got jazzed much about it. (in fact, i must say that i have probably learned as much about earth and rotation and revolution in this little study exercise as she has.) her TV faves include untold stories of the ER, diagnosis X, and of course my personal fave, trauma: life in the ER — with occasional interruptions from the shows about people having babies, which she likes, too.

while i am secretly glad that it moves her away from some of the crappy cartoons she is prone to watching, i often wonder whether i should be more concerned. girlfriend doesn’t care about watching actual bloody surgeries. and she gets irritated when i start to weep, especially when we watched these two egyptian twins get detached from each other’s brains.

yesterday, we watched a show where a western NJ boy (yes, of course, all magical things happen in NJ) got med-evac’d to UMDNJ in scenic newark because he sawed off two fingers in shop class (moral: mamas don’t let your babies grow up and take shop class.) i couldn’t watch as the kid showed his hands. girlfriend watched with keen interest.

mama, she always reminds me, if you can’t handle it, you should really leave the room. later, she asked me what the words in front of the show meant.

oh, i replied, you mean “viewer discretion is advised”?

yep.

uh, viewer discretion advised means i should use MY discretion over YOUR viewing time, sister.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IlHgbOWj4o

guilty pleasure monday: venus and mars/rockshow (wings)

Posted on February 25, 2008December 11, 2014 by wrekehavoc

it’s no secret i love the beatles, and i am ashamed very little by them (ok, so qualifiers include the entire magical mystery tour movie (motto: we’re stoned, and we don’t even care if the Queen knows it) and their worst song ever, mr. moonlight.) it must be apparent — one of the major search terms that brings people to wreke land is paul mccartney. and i cut wings a lot of slack. after all, i decided i would marry macca when i was 4; and i didn’t really switch favorite beatle allegiance to john until i was well into adulthood. i heart paul. and i still do.

(paul, if you’re listening: i’ll sign a pre-nup! really!)

anyway, i grew up with wings; since the beatles didn’t tour, it was about as close as i could get… i would wait with bated breath until the latest albums would come out, as late as 1980 before i began to wonder why i was still listening to stuff that older folks liked. i still think band on the run is a solid work; but i must confess that i also adore venus and mars, a loopy LP that i think paul clearly wrote with huge stadium concerts in mind. and the single venus and mars/rockshow totally caters to that idea. sure, there are adorably whimsical lyrics elsewhere on the album which i frequently quote when i am talking about my BS; and letting go is a killer song.

but rockshow is exactly what my 11 year old, never-been-to-a-rock-show self thought that rock shows must be like: loud and energetic and exciting… which they have been, though not always. there have been shows where i wondered why the artist even showed. (there have even been shows where i pondered whether the artist onstage was, in fact, a cardboard cutout propped on the stage. but i digress…)

i was a bit chagrined when i saw sir paul for the first (and only) time in 1993. i thought he was rather hammy: look at me, the cute one, i could sit here and fart and you’d cheer. it made me a bit angry at the time, especially since i had spent a lot of money for tickets that were waaaaaay in the back of RFK stadium. but since he lost his wife and then subsequently started getting screwed over by his second wife, i’ve softened a lot.

(if you’re out there, paul, i promise, i won’t marry you for the money. just let me hear you every day and that will be enough.)

guilty pleasure monday: p. y. t. (michael jackson)

Posted on February 18, 2008 by wrekehavoc

guilty pleasure monday, dubbed today g. p. m. in honor of my next honoree, michael jackson, and his early 80’s hit p. y. t.

oh please. if you’re over the age of about 39, you danced to this at least 10 times if you had a life back in the day. you know you did. and i did, too, at all those stupid fraternity parties i went to when i was a freshman who didn’t know that there was intelligent life out there beyond campus. yep, those delightful parties where it was 1000 degrees inside a small place where everyone was dancing? where stupid people like me drank the jim jones punch because we thought it was the non-alcoholic alternative?

and p.y.t. was one of the songs i remember from that time. of course, it has a more positive memory — a memory of times when we drove in my friend debbie’s car (she was the only one of my frosh friends i could recall who had a car) over the rickenbacker over to crandon park, where we would sit on the beach — and study! yes, i was that much of a dork to actually study on the beach at key biscayne. and better still — my friends studied, too!

yes: develop skin cancer AND develop your mind, all at the same time. it’s genius.

but i liked the song, enough to let my aforementioned friend debbie convince me to spend $30 dollars — 30 WHOLE dollars — to see michael and his brothers perform at the orange bowl. back then, $30 for a ticket was highway robbery. and i did it. what do i remember about that show? mostly a young african american lady screaming in my ear for what seemed like forever: MICHAEL, MICHAEL, I LOVE YOU, MICHAEL!

sometimes, i hear it in my dreams.

and considering the show they put on that day, it’s actually better that i remember her.

michael went downhill for me after that — i don’t think i really ever recovered much past ben, anyway — but man, i must admit — i didn’t own thriller — i am not one of the gazillion people who bought it and made it the best-selling album ever — but i sure wanted to borrow it and tape it.

which i never actually did, now that i think of it…

girlfriend

Posted on February 14, 2008 by wrekehavoc

dearest BS,

i’m probably going to be hooked up to an IV while you’re reading this, doing my best to stay awake during my 5-6 hour monthly marathon of IVIG goodness for my CVID. not exactly a romantic way to spend the bulk of valentine’s day, but on the other hand, it’s my best present i can give to you: more time with me. see, i know i’m just the perfect wife.

my cooking skills are impeccable.

my plumbing and laundering skills are astonishing.

and what’s more, i’m just the best. mother. ever.

how did you ever get so damn lucky? now if only i could actually purchase, er, i mean, if only santa was a mind-reader and could get you the presents you wanted, we’d be all set. hey — give santa a break and a clue next year, k?

in the meantime, i’m doing my best to be healthy so that i can be the bane of your existence for as long as i can be.

please do the same.

love,

your girlfriend

p.s. the comic book guy lets the girl drive the car to safety. just pointing it out. he’s in the car; she’s driving. what an idea!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgo6dFWY6sE&rel=1

guilty pleasure monday: the wall (kansas)

Posted on February 11, 2008 by wrekehavoc

the grammys (tagline: we only reward artists after they’re dead, irrelevant, or past their best work) have inspired me. i’m thinking it is time for a theme, at least until i get bored with the idea 😉

so welcome to the inaugural post of guilty pleasure monday, where i’ll talk about a song i love, a song i listen to at times when i think no one is around, a song i might sing at the top of my lungs except for the fact that BS will look at me with that face that says you know, i thought you were cool once, but you’re just one giant sap.

so today’s gem: the wall by that prog rock band kansas. you know, the ones who gave us point of know return and carry on wayward son? oh, and the one my mother refers to as the all-time, #1 depressing song, dust in the wind?

and yes, i did sing this at the top of my lungs at one time in my life. i absolutely identified with the idea that there was a wall that i had to overcome; a wall of being who i wanted to be and not who everyone else thought i should be. yes, the stuff that 19 year olds everywhere feel; only instead of going punk like every other self-respecting person of my era, i dug deeper into prog rock. (i don’t think punk ever made it to miami.)

anyway, back to the top-of-my-lungs-singing bit. fortunately, when i was doing it, i was enclosed in a soundproof booth at the university of miami (motto: the harvard of the south), witnessed only by my best mate murph, a person who still admits publicly that she’s my friend in spite of the fact that i’m a dork and made her listen to me sing and play piano back in the day. so, back in that noisy day, i attended UM for two years. you should know that while it has earned its rep as suntan u, UM truly has an amazing music school, which boasts a zillion great musicians — pat metheny, for one. and it reserved its pi-anos, housed in little glass soundproof closets, for said music school kids.

of which i was not.

i did find a very nice guy in the music school, a man who i have since googled and have found that he plays professionally in a jazz duo with his significant other. and this adorable man, who at age 20 looked like an older version of christopher robin, let me borrow his university photo ID every time i wanted to play. it’s a credit to the people at the front desk that never did they ponder why i didn’t have short, light brown hair, or wasn’t a boy, for that matter. they just let me go.

and one of the first things i would sing and play at the VERY TIPPY TOP OF MY LUNGS was the wall. not the we don’t need no education wall. the dark and silent barrier between all i am and all i ever hope to be wall.

i still love this song, even though i probably have since written graffiti, removed chunks, and finally leaped over that wall. metaphorically speaking, of course. all things that would probably disturb the song’s author, who has since become a born-again christian. but i digress.

(did i mention that murph is still my friend some 25 years later? in spite of my dorkiness?)

strange brew

Posted on February 8, 2008 by wrekehavoc

my musically-inclined friend philfree tagged me with a meme: six random habits or quirks about me. i tend to be quirky by definition, so its just sooooo hard to pick six without someone attempting to have me commited. but i’ll try.

1) i am right handed. i bat lefty. this is due to some tomfoolery, courtesy of my two older brothers. (thanks a lot, guys.)
2) i like to wear black. a lot. BC always asks me to break out of my fashion rut. but i say, hey, it’s easy to match when all you wear is black. it’s slimming, it’s fashionable in that bored new yorker sort of way. and it’s what i do. when you see me wearing pink and white, it’s probably best to head for the hills. i’m having a breakdown.
3) i watched I Love the 80s while in labor with jools. it just seemed like the thing to do at the time. i made it all the way up to the 1987 episode before the dude decided to appear. i still have yet to watch 1988 and 1989. not that those years mattered much.

4) during 8th grade, i served as the disk jockey for the disco club at school. yes, kids, while i quietly seethed because i would have preferred listening to the police (a band none of my friends had heard of in 1979), i spun classics like we are family, le freak and of course, everything from saturday night fever that i could hardly stomach. (in other words, more bee gees than human beings ought to be allowed to experience in one year.) yep. all that while having to watch my intermediate school french teacher waddle around on calves the size of wisconsin, teaching kids how to do the hustle. yep. good. times.

5) i love chocolate and consider it an important part of my training table. i love dark chocolate best, especially the 85% cocoa or the type with cacao nibs. it may be too bitter for other people, but i eat it. i like to pretend i am eating it for the flavenoids. chocolate = health food! (a girl can dream.)

6) sometimes, when i am driving by the perfectly-coiffed, perfectly-perfect moms at my daughter’s school, i will dig up some ramones or black flag or dead kennedys, roll down the window, and blast it.

i. am. that. juvenile.

Tagging:

mamma mia

pillowbook

and

everyoneisdoinit

i lost on jeopardy. baby.

Posted on January 18, 2008 by wrekehavoc

inspired by testosterone zone and her recent experiences on jeopardy! (YAY!), i will one day explain this picture and formally tell the tale of my 4 games of fun. that’s right. 4 games. with HUGE, early 1990s earrings, to boot.

but i won’t do it today. i’ll just be a major tease, cos i can’t write much when i have an IV in my arm, yasee.

i may be a product of the new jersey public education system all the way through graduate school, but by G-d, i learned a thing or two.

(before i had kids, of course.)

message to my girl (and boy)

Posted on January 14, 2008 by wrekehavoc

this one’s for you, kids. this one and this one, too.

no matter how you try, there will be days when you cannot keep the permanently-brave mommy facade up. maybe your day has just been a series of idiotic, unbelievable events that continue to pile-up in that way that some days do, like a never-ending car crash. or maybe you’re just not feeling well — you’re exhausted in a way that only other people who have a condition on top of parenthood can really understand. maybe you’re just tired of dealing with a never-ending panoply of wankers.

today was a combo of all three. and then some.

by the time the afternoon rolled around, i knew i needed to get some sleep or i would burst into a flood of tears. i picked up BC from school, told her to do her homework, and then, if she felt like it, she could curl up with me in my bed and we could watch something together. she dutifully did her work, consulting me on a few word patterns, and then we settled in to finish the 1949 version of little women (you know, the movie i had originally intended for us to watch before BC decided to pick jesus camp instead? — oh, and by the way — we’re also working on a Nova about intelligent design. that’s a laff riot, too.)

not even june allyson’s terminal perkiness or elizabeth taylor’s frightful look as a blonde could keep me awake. i dozed off until the very end of the movie. i knew the story, though, and i wasn’t sure how madame would take it when one of the characters (SPOILER ALERT!) kicks the bucket. but she was fine.

later in the evening, the sadness hit. sad. sad. sad. buzz, i said, thanks so much for hanging with me. i’m sorry, but sometimes, i suck as a mom.

oh mama, she replied, you don’t suck. you’re the best mom in the whole world!

and jools, sitting nearby, chimed in, you’re the best mama because you like to play with us! that child may not listen when i address him sometimes, but i’m always amazed at the strategic moments when his ears are open.

somehow, the clouds of the day lifted. it was an ordinary evening: BC disliking my culinary endeavor, jools wanting me to give him a bath instead of BS, stories a go-go, and then nighttime chats before bed. but there’s something so wonderful about the ordinariness of the evening, especially with little people who seem to reach me when no one else can.

doledrum

Posted on January 7, 2008 by wrekehavoc

oh, no. don’t go down to doledrum.

yesterday, i was in a foul, foul mood. i was getting a nose and ear infection. while in conversation with BS, i had a random nosebleed, which made me burst into tears (i don’t really have nosebleeds, and the last time i had a big ol’ burster was when my platelets were in the toilet. the proverbial damn broke, and there was nothing to stop the bleeding. it was scary.) my platelets can’t possibly be in the toilet, though, as i got some terrific numbers back last week on them. time for that deep breath…

anyhow, the icing on the cake: i dealt with an hysterical son who didn’t want to go to sunday school and who felt like i wasn’t listening to him even though i told him countless times i was (repeating his words, even), but that the answer was still the same. you try to teach your children to use their words, and they do. but then, there’s lesson #2 — sometimes, you use your words, but it doesn’t mean you will get the desired result.

believe me, i hated hebrew school. hatedhatedHATED it. the best part was running races in the front before class and hiding out in the toilets. which i did. all through third grade. cos the teacher and her long, pointy, chewed-on nails terrified me. but after being bat mitzvah’d, i felt like i had accomplished something. i had learned something. i want that for my kids. i don’t care if the very next day after the bat/bar mitzvah, BC decides to become a hare krishna and jools decides to become a satan worshiper. halleluyah to both of them. but i just want to share a little of their culture with them. after all, you can’t reject it if you ain’t got it in the first place, right?

jools ended up having a wonderful time at hebrew school. he made me a cardboard tree in honor of tu bishvat and planted a little parsley seedling (the dirt kind of shifted upside down on the car ride home, so we’ll see whether there’s any parsley for the seder.) he told me that trees give us air. maybe i need to stand closer to a tree and breathe in, as it drives me insane that this child has the short-term memory of dory from finding nemo. he always has a great time, but then he forgets and carries on for the next time. and i just don’t know how to get him to remember.

ah well. the day improved. i raced with jools and played in the backyard with both kids. BC asked if we could finally make the pinecone feeder treats for the birds, the project i’ve been stalling on. see, normally, i cringe thinking about the mess this project (peanut butter and bird seeds, anyone?) would make. but i thought, aw hell. let the kid take the lead. you’re not doing a very good job with your day, so maybe this will improve things. and it did, with us covered in peanut buttery-seedy goodness. oh well. have sink and broom; will travel.

then, after we hung the pinecones in the tree, i took a deep breath again and let jools out on the street under BC’s watchful gaze. i have a hard time letting the kids out without supervising them. (it’s so different from when i was a kid and i would just leave the house and roam the neighborhood without anyone worrying i would end up in a bad place.) the two were going to see whether anyone wanted to come out and ride scooters on our dead-end street. after ten minutes of angst, i looked outside to see 6 kids, two parents, and a dog. in short, my kids started a little impromptu neighborhood scooter party. which i joined. (BC even was permitted to walk said dog. she shoots, she scores!)

my kids nearly send me down the proverbial rabbit hole sometimes, but they always know how to find me there and pull me out.

i just have to open my mind and let them.

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.