Snap the Hell Out of It, Bridgett

I cleaned the kitchen.

I set up the Advent calendar.

I hung the Christmas wreath on the front door.

I ate some lunch.

I reminded Neuro at Glennon that they needed to call me. Nicely. I like the receptionist.

Leo went down for a nap.

I turned on Pandora, to my "Jazzy Christmas" station. It is busy reorganizing my brain while I catch up on Between the Sycamores (more fall photos on there) and try to stop being so effing melodramatic.

Truly.

From Utah Vestibule

What I posted Friday (actually today but it's dated Friday). Perhaps in a few days I will start talking about something else. Who knows?

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She made it 22 months. Twenty two borrowed months. Leo's whole lifetime, just about.

I lay her down on the bed, on the polka-dotted sheet, and she drools, all the saliva she was choking on. She jerks a bit more, but not long. Her eyes are closed and I know she's not there.

My heart doesn't even skip. Suddenly I have ice water in my veins and I don't know how that happened. 22 months ago I couldn't even make the words come out of my mouth on the phone with 911.

She calms down. The fire engine is outside and the younger in-laws are letting the EMT in the front door. I smooth her hair, her perfect golden brown hair. She breathes. The man in navy with all the gear comes to the top of the stairs and starts talking to me. I respond to him, but I keep looking at her face. My God, she's gorgeous. Her nose is so perfect, her eyebrows look like she has them done. The shape of her mouth. My six year old has just had a seizure and all I can think about is how angelic she looks. Like I've caught a glimpse of something I don't notice every day when she's healthy. How do I miss this? How do I not see it?

And my heart is at peace more than it should be, I keep telling myself. I shouldn't be ok with this. I should be worried and sad and upset and all verklempt. But I'm not. I put on a bit of a show, I drink some coffee, I hope for but do not expect a fever spike to come. It doesn't, and while my brain has to wrap itself around this new wrinkle, while I do start the mental games and the bargaining, I don't do so bad.

Knowledge helps, I know, but other than that, it was sort of out of my hands in a very comforting way. This has nothing to do with me. It has nothing to do with Maeve. I can't get her into rehab or clean my house better or move to a dryer climate. This is who she is and where she is and for the first time in her life, I saw her as Maeve. Not just my daughter Maeve or Sophia's sister Maeve or Baby Maeve or any of that. She had arrived. It took a seizure but now I see her.

The hits just keep coming.

My brother and his wife just got some very hard news. I don't think I should say more. But there's a lot that is not good right now.

No, the nurse at neuro never called back. I'm giving her until tomorrow.

Maeve is fine. The school was totally cool with things and the director has experience with seizures. And she's fine. Still fine.

I just found out that my belief that epilepsy ran in my family turns out to be a lie. I had always listed an aunt, and uncle, and a great-great-grandmother with epilepsy. Well, it turns out:

a. the uncle had a brain tumor as a child. Yes, he has epilepsy, but it's due to a brain tumor.

b. the aunt had a head injury that led to two seizures. Yes, she technically has epilepsy (I don't think she's had a repeat in 30 years) but it's due to a head injury.

c. my grandfather's grandmother got hit by a trolley and then had recurrent seizures the rest of her life. Yes, she had epilepsy, but it was due to a a trolley (I keep thinking of Mr. Rogers).

So, while it is quite true that my family has a predisposition to seizures (perhaps a "low seizure threshold"), none of my instances are unprovoked/idiopathic like Maeve's seizure seems to be.

I need a flipping vacation. A silent retreat. Who was it who said pain is God's megaphone?

But upon further reflection, all is remarkably well. Truly. I hate waiting and I hate not knowing, but not knowing, it turns out, is sometimes the best we can hope for.

Lady J

I believe God gives you things in your life to wear down your rough edges. If you like things neat and tidy, you marry someone who doesn't care. If you like to sleep in, you get a good job that makes you wake up at 4 in the morning. Sure, not everything works that way, but in one area of my life (many, but one that occurs to me today) this is complete truth.

I like things settled. On the Meyers-Briggs personality test, I'm an ENFJ. I used to think that Extrovert-Introvert was the most important difference between people, but it isn't. I have friends who are both and it's never an issue. And the Feeling-Thinking axis isn't that important as long as you know where you are coming from. I make emotional decisions, but I can train myself to make logical ones. I'm comfortable doing that. I can speak both languages. The Intuition (N) vs Perception axis is a little more tricky--it has to do with how one approaches the world and takes in knowledge, but most of my friends (and husband) are N's as well so, again, it hasn't really been an issue.

But J-P, which is Judging vs Perceiving? That one is a doozy for me. On the scale of -10 to 10, I'm all the way at 10 for J. Completely J. What does that mean? It means I like things settled. I like knowing what's coming. I like having a tidy little list. A schedule. I don't like things to be up in the air. I don't like surprises and I don't like impulsive things. Or people, really.

That's the good side, really. I think most people could see that having a plan, a schedule, a calendar, a list are all reasonable ideas. Organized. But on the other hand? The underside? I would have to admit that I would rather have bad news that is definite than good news that is a maybe. I'd rather know, whatever it is, than wait and see. I like teachers to level with me. Don't tell me that Sophia might have some dyslexic tendencies. Make a decision and tell me what I need to do. Don't let it ride. Just make up your mind or I will for you.

And this Maeve thing, this seizure thing. I want to know, and I want to know right now. I want the nurse to call me and tell me. Tell me something. Either that it is ok to wait until May barring more seizures, or that I need to have her come in and have all the tests redone and everything analyzed. Tell me now.

And Maeve's brain? This two year waiting period and thinking we're ok? That's bull. There's a streak a mile wide inside my soul that just wants to know. Is it epilepsy or is it a fluke? Can we fast-forward please 10 years into the future and just tell me how it turns out? I do this with movies, TV shows, and books--it doesn't take away from my enjoyment of the story if i know the ending. In fact, I can enjoy it more knowing how it will turn out.

But that's not how life works. Even if she's cleared for take off by the nurse (WHENEVER SHE CALLS TODAY), we will spend the rest of Maeve's childhood waiting and seeing. And in fact, everyone's childhood is spent waiting and seeing. No one is in the clear. No one makes it out of this life alive. Experience happens. We have no way of knowing what's around the corner. Stay awake and have your wicks trimmed because you are going to need your lamp before the night is over.

My brain needs to know. But God isn't letting me know. I can do all the research in the world but none if it matters if the EEG is bad. Or none of it matters if the EEG is good. I cannot prepare more than I have prepared. And I send Maeve to school in the morning with the assumption that all will be well.

I knew, before I was a parent, that it wouldn't be easy. I knew that things would happen, that kids would get hurt or would hurt me or would make stupid decisions and date the wrong boys and flunk chemistry because they got lazy and learn to drive and have trouble with friends and get sick and probably go to the ER late in the night and all that. I KNEW all that because I wasn't born 32 years old. I have a memory and I know what life is.

But I didn't know, and really still don't comprehend completely, how much risk was involved. How uncomfortable I would be with risk and with not knowing. And how very much that was going to happen every single day of being a parent. It is probably not just parenting, it is probably inherent in adulthood, actually, but this is how I've experienced the discomfort of not having it all done already.

I had no clue how much not knowing I was going to wind up doing. There is so much I don't know, good and bad, and I can't know it. I cannot flip to the last page of Maeve's Childhood and see how it turns out. I can only know what has happened already. And it make me weak in the knees.

And tomorrow I won't know.

And the next day. And the next. And next summer. And six years from now. I will continue to not know.

It is killing me.

But it's a little easier each time I have something else I can't know. I look back at the season of not knowing in winter-spring '09 and I remember how I felt for two months. I remember not being able to catch my breath, of feeling like I couldn't breathe. For two months. This time, there is much I already know. So the new unknowables are small in number if not in size.

In this life, we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, while in the next we will see it face-to-face. Perhaps I will be able to look back and see myself sitting here, not knowing, and have the last page of the mystery in my hand. I wonder if I'll think to send some good thoughts my way. Because while I sit here tightrope walking without a net, I could use some reassurance.

Hell, I could use some knowledge, I mean, if I'm asking for things. But I'll have to settle for reassurance. Go clean the kitchen and wait for the phone to ring and wait and wait and wait and finally look up and realize I've stopped needing to consciously wait. That I can just be.

But that will take a lot more not knowing.

Conlocutio for a moment

It's one of my retired blogs. A daily conversation. Here would have been today's if I were still doing it:

"Hi, my daughter had a febrile seizure in January '09 and over the weekend she just had an unprovoked one."

"Hmm," says the receptionist. "No fever, even afterward?"

"Nope." We go on to get the nuts and bolts done--name, birthdate, phone number and so forth. That we hadn't gone to the hospital, that we were in rural Illinois, that she bounced back, that things seemed fine now.

"We saw her in April 2009," she reads off her computer screen. A long pause and then she sighs. "Dr. V. is booked until late May, although she could see the nurse practitioner in late February."

"Well, we liked Dr. V.," I start, thinking about how reassuring she was. "I am not that worried, I mean, if she had another seizure, that would change things, but," I trail off. "We're not emotionally invested in her or something--we saw her one time."

She's typing. I have to fill the silence.

"Another thing that occurred to my husband is that she was playing all day on new carpet that still smells new, you know, still has new carpet fumes. And then she slept in that room. And I know I woke up with a headache after one night sleeping up there."

"Really?" she asks, interested. No more typing. "I'll make a note of that. How about I have the nurse call you today? She can call you and see if May is ok or if we need to see Maeve earlier."

"So can I schedule the MRI and EEG with you, or?"

"Actually, wait for the nurse. We might not need one or both of them."

I have nothing to say for a moment. Huh?

"She'll look at Maeve's file and decide based on her tests from before and so forth."

"Ok?" I say tentatively.

"If she has another seizure, of course, you need to call back and that changes things, but otherwise, the nurse will call you and we'll go from there."

"Ok," I say less tentatively. "Will she call in the next few days?"

"Oh, I think they try to call the same day. It's still early. It should be today."

"Ok then," I say one more time. "Thanks for all your help."

Moral of the story: My emergency is not your emergency.

Little girl think it over one time

Every Gray Hair On My Head

We went to Cairo for Thanksgiving and it was fine. Fine. Whatever. It was a big time with 30 people and then followed by the crabbiest trivial pursuit game ever (Mike's aunt kept referring to our team as the "brainiacs" and hers as "the normal people"--our team was Mike, his brothers, their wives, and me, vs. folks like Mike's cousin the veterinarian. Yeah...). Anyway, it was amusing. Cousins stayed over and watched movies upstairs and everyone crashed and all was well. We didn't have anything to do until 11 on Friday morning when we were getting a family photo done over in Mounds (or Mounds City, one of those). So my alarm went off at 8:45 and I just kind of lay there in bed not doing anything.

And then about 10 minutes later my sister-in-law Christy is screaming my name.

Because Maeve is having a seizure.

It was weird. Christy is, understandably, panicking, and Maeve is having a generalized (tonic-clonic--used to be called grand mal) seizure in her arms. She's choking. I take her, lay her down on the bed on her side, let all the saliva drool out of her throat, and, when Mary Helen appears behind me, say yes, I think we need to call 911.

It stops fast, less than 2 minutes total I would say, and she's out like a light. My heart rate hasn't even increased. It was so weird. It was like I instinctively just knew what to do and there we were and Maeve had a seizure and yeah, well. I know everyone else around me wasn't feeling that, though. The firefighter came upstairs and took her vitals and everything was ok and we waited for the ambulance. I didn't want to take her to Cape, the day after Thanksgiving in the ER (we would still be there in the waiting room, I believe). I told the paramedics as much when they came upstairs. Not in a forceful way. Just, "this is how I feel about this." Her vitals were good and she was semi-responsive to our voices. She rested, I signed away services (I could call back anytime, they told me, and if she had another seizure, I was certainly going to do just that).

She came around pretty fast compared to her other seizure. Had some orange and a few sips of water. Then she slept for an hour or so. We rescheduled the photography thing for 6 pm. And I started praying for the huge fever spike like last time.

It never came. She got up and played with cousins and was perfectly fine. Everything was hunky dory and I had to start reorganizing my brain from "she's having a febrile seizure" to "she's having a SEIZURE."

Febrile seizures, see, are benign. They stop around age 6 or so and don't turn into adult epilepsy. You don't treat them with anti-epileptic drugs. You just watch for fevers. Her last fever was febrile--the fever came second, so it isn't a classic one, but the pediatric epileptologist agreed with that diagnosis.

So this could be considered her first unprovoked seizure or her second, depending on how you view the first. And I won't bore you with the mental games I've been playing the last 24 hours. I reread my entry from the day we saw Dr. Vashist and I'm hopeful. It's been 22 months since her other seizure. In my mind, I think it's worth waiting and seeing. Yeah, sure, if she has another next week, then we're off to the races, but from what I've read, well, now I'm boring you with my head games. My goal is to try to avoid putting her on anti-epileptic drugs during childhood if at all possible. Vashist, well, this is what she does. I think I trust her, and we'll have to see. I'm calling Monday.

Mike's hunch is that the new carpeting in the attic here caused her problems--it already caused breathing problems for her on our last visit. At first I just kind of sighed and played along--they slept downstairs last night, for instance, but now I'm not so sure. I know off-gassing causes headaches and dizziness and so forth. Anyway. It's something to mention. I mean, if she's got a low seizure threshold to begin with? There is so much we don't know about brains.

So the day went on just fine until Leo figured out how to unscrew child safety cap on my thyroid medication. So that was a call to poison control (it was no big thing--he could have taken 100 times what my dosage is before it would be toxic).

Yeah. Good times.

I walked downstairs to call poison control and muttered to one of my sisters-in-law that Mike and I were like a traveling birth control commercial.

Happy Holidays.

The rest of the day was so lovely. The photography session was great fun; afterward we went to Bill and Sheila's new house, which is so nice and new and has a breakfast nook and nobody's mistakes to cover up and repair. AND SHE HAD BOURBON SLUSH. So it was a good end of the evening. That and a trivial pursuit game with no crabbiness back at the house with girls vs. boys.

I've done my reading, I'm ready for Dr. Vashist, I think it's all going to be ok. But damn. That Maeve is every gray hair on my head.

Happy Fibonacci Day

It's 11/23. What are you doing at 5:08:13?

(photo creative commons, Wikipedia file)

Ten on Tuesday: 10 Things I Love About Thanksgiving

I like this holiday. Some reasons, most amalgams of Thanksgivings of old, not necessarily what's coming in two days.

1. Cooking at church Thanksgiving morning. It is my favorite thing. We warm up food, cut pies, serve 120 meals for the homebound, drink wine, have fun. I love it.

2. Traveling. I also like to travel for Thanksgiving. There isn't the same burden upon this holiday as Christmas has.

3. Pumpkin pie. I love pumpkin pie. As an added bonus, it isn't the worst pie you can eat. It does contain pumpkin (I cook my own, strain, puree, and adjust recipe). The worst pie you can eat? Pecan. Lucky for me, it hurts my teeth. I just avoid it.

4. Not shopping on Friday. I used to. I used to get up and do it, either with my inlaws, or long ago, with my family. Not anymore. I am lazy the next day.

5. At my parents' house, Thanksgiving night (Christmas eve sometimes stands in for this too) means loud games. We play pictionary or apples to apples or other party kind of games. And just get louder and louder.

6. It's the beginning of bourbon slush season.

7. Coffee, leftover pie, and leftover turkey and dressing with gravy for breakfast on Friday.

8. Having no responsibilities. Since it's not at my house, I'm not in charge. I am usually in charge of most anything in my life, but not Thanksgiving. Sure, I might put together some deviled eggs or mash some potatoes, but I'm not in charge.

9. Walking on Thanksgiving day afternoon through dry leaves, a little on the tired side from the warm house and the meal and the kids.

10. Thinking of the things I'm thankful for. Not the obvious ones like my family, my health, etc., but little things. Like LED flashlights and Pandora internet radio and gingko leaves.

Comments

I'm able to publish about 80% of my comments and I can't figure out why the other few I just get errors for. So if you've commented here or anywhere recently and wonder why I'm not posting them, it isn't personal. I keep trying...

Busy weekend

This was an intensely busy weekend. It was Illinois shotgun season (Deer season) and Mike left Thursday morning to go be a part of that. And here's what I did:

1. Decorated church in a harvest theme and set up the giving tree in back.

2. Taught art

3. Got kids fed and bathed and put to bed Thursday

4. Worked on church banners

5. Got kids up too early (my alarm had a mix up and didn't read my mind when I pushed buttons and pushed the wrong ones and then it was an hour ahead and fuzzy thinking, anyway, it worked out) on Friday, to school

6. Cleaned the whole dang house except the guest room and about half of my room--I changed sheets and cleared the floor of laundry but didn't really clean it.

7. Did copious amounts of laundry

8. Went to the grocery store twice

9. Hosted mah jongg at my house which turned into one of the best nights I've had in months.

10. But drank too much and, shamefully, paid for it late in the night and then early, too early, on Saturday morning

11. Still got Maeve to tae kwon do and back home. Dragging my butt around, but patiently.

12. Gathered things up and went to a thanksgiving get together.

13. Decided it was too much to try to get to a friend's chili supper, wisely, and instead met friends at my house for cards and chocolate covered pretzels.

14. Recleaned the house, finished banner #3 of 4 (technically #5 of 6).

15. Raked the front yard

16. Took trash and recycling out

17. Made dinner, fed kids, started baths

18. Played a bit of Little Big World with the girls

19. Chatted with neighbors in the warm dusky light of November

20. Caught up on my blogs

Now I'm going to get Maeve out of the tub and put Leo in it. Have Sophia shower off (Everyone has leaves in hair). Trim nails, brush out hair, read stories, put folks to bed. Before that list ends, Mike should be home (he just called from the road) and I can get back to sewing. I will sleep well tonight.

Autocorrect

Damn You Autocorrect is my favorite new timewaster. Thanks Not Mary Poppins!

In which I tire of people who are incessantly cheerful

This is about girl scouting again.

I'm, at least for the moment, a girl scout blogger--if they read this they might revoke that.

I am not an incessantly cheerful person.

I don't know why, but incessantly cheerful, cheer-leady kind of folks? They make me crazy.

On the blog there is me, several staff members, and a leader who is so enthusiastic about the journeys it makes me go blind to read her posts.

Ok, I'm overstating it.

I've decided to not do the journeys with my girls until and unless they want to earn their silver and gold awards. Next year as juniors, we're doing our own thing. Giving the "new" badge program a chance (I guess). Going camping. Shooting arrows. Going on field trips. Not, I repeat, NOT doing workbook work.

Or any of that, as Sophia puts it, "Miss Michelle stuff" referring to the counselor at her school last year who led character education programs. Sophia, while cheerful, sees right through that kind of BS too.

This other leader posted about her experiences helping leaders find ways to make the journeys work for them. The mere fact that we have to FIND WAYS TO MAKE THE JOURNEYS WORK means they don't work. But what made me want to stab the computer desk with a pocket knife was when she said how she "chuckled to herself" when one leader asked a question about this or that journey. The implication that she has figured it all out and oh, these benighted little leaders who are afraid of change, aw, how sweet.

GAH.

So I posted (and was published) about how I'm just not going there. About what I was doing instead.

I don't know if it was in response to my "bah, journeys, this is the better way" post, but she posted a few days ago a short little "the third time's a charm!" post about the next journey that's coming out in December and how great it will be. How if we have shied away from the journeys, please please give this one a try. Why is the third time a charm? Her last sentence was:

"It is a great honor as a leader to be given the privilege of empowering young ladies through their own discoveries of themselves."

Oh. For. The. Love. Of. Mike.

I am such a bitch. My fingers just die on the keyboard trying to explain how very very tired I get of so many words she's used there: great honor, privilege, EMPOWERING.

I went and took a sneak preview look at this journey, which was generously funded by a soap company. It's called "It's your story, Tell it!" and the sneak preview page for the junior workbook is all Miss Michelle stuff. It's a cartoon of a purple cloak. A purple cloak of self esteem and confidence. Girls are supposed to write things on the cloak that make them confident, etc.

You've got to be kidding me! Yeah, Sophia and her friends want to spend their meeting times doing this. Riiiiight. Or would they rather...learn how to make or do something, go see something new, or help someone out. Shoot arrows at a target. Learn Morse code. Go geocaching. Do a skit. Make jam.

Give me a break. Third time is not a charm. And being happy about mediocre programming doesn't make it good.

I'm sitting out the pep rally again, it's like high school all over.

Birds

Yesterday at my girl scout meeting I taught the girls how to use a field guide. We used obscure looking photos of some birds (like sparrows) so they could have some frustration (which is what field guides are for), but also some easier ones like wood duck and a female cardinal.

My goal there is to spark interest. I'm going to bring my guides when we go places, just in case.

Today I noticed a female cardinal and a couple of robins and juncos scratching in the leaves, so I went out and scattered safflower seed (the squirrels don't eat it and they like it fair enough--not the juncos, probably, but the bigger birds do). And I noticed a female cardinal chirping danger sounds into my garden cage, which has its door open because there isn't anything to protect now that we've had a freeze. I always hope that birds will go in and eat various leftover things, and they do. The downside is that they also get confused and can't find the door.

I approach and see the LBJs in the cage (little brown jobbies, birds I can't recognize in a glance, they're just little and brown). But as I step in and slowly move to the back, forcing them to find the door in the front, I recognize them: winter wren (with the appealing Latin name troglodytes troglodytes, which always makes me think of "he's a man's man.", as if it were a troglodyte's troglodyte), and the other is the elusive white throated sparrow.

I've never actually seen one. I hear them singing in April, just this brief window of Oh sweet Canada. But there it was, trapped in my garden cage, its striped head and tiny yellow spot by its eye. I wished in vain for my phone or my camera, but no. But I looked at him and he looked at me (in panic) just as he figured out where the door was (the wren had already wriggled through the chicken wire). Flew up to the low branches of the magnolia tree and then away.

For all intensive purposes

THIS is my new favorite misheard phrase: "for all intensive purposes" instead of the correct "for all intents and purposes."

It replaces "It's a doggie-dog world."

What's stuck in my head

I don't like your tweed, sir. Steampunk rap. HAHAHAHA.

Waiting

The top is done--this is the Presbyterian Advent Quilt #1: Waiting. This photo isn't the whole banner, just what is lying on top of the guest bed--it's about 3x6 total. It will be quilted during naptime tomorrow.

Ten on Tuesday: 10 dream vacations

This is more Ann's forte than min (or Mali's, obviously), but I'll try, even with my benighted parochialism. I will change it, to trips we hope or plan to take in the future.

1. Hawaii: Maeve wants to go to Hawaii so bad. Mike not so much, but I'm warming up to the idea.

2. Northeast: probably to coincide with Rhinebeck some year. Go see New England in the autumn.

3. Northwest: Mike wants to visit Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks and all points near there.

4. Southwest: When Leo is old enough to remember, basically, the four corners area.

5. Big Sur/San Francisco/etc: we can't get enough of this.

6. Washington, DC. Again, when kids are old enough.

7. Western Ireland: I'm always interested in where we are from, and so I also have:

8. Northern Italy (and Rome)

9. Northern Germany

10. and Scotland

But those first six, and probably so many other smaller trips, especially anything involving national parks, will happen before any of those bottom ones. I'm of the opinion that I'm not taking children overseas until they really soak in what the US has to offer them. Now, Mike and I, sure, whenever we can!

What I just posted at GSEM

I don't know if it will be approved. But this is what I just wrote (and Gail, there is more from my conversation):


Journeys. The elephant in the living room. For a long time I felt like I was being needlessly cynically and put-upon, that it was just my fear of change. Then this summer, knowing I was going to have to bite the bullet and ntroduce them anyway, I decided to take a look at a daisy journey, since my younger daughter would be starting daisies in the fall.

I had looked at brownie and junior journeys, but knowing I had time and liking the way things were going, I ignored them. But I picked up the daisy leader guide and started flipping through. It seemed ok. Really. Too scripted for my taste, but I could see how I could use it. I could envision a set of 6 meetings or so, centered around a common theme. I liked the "daisy garden" idea and I thought to myself, "what was I so afraid of?"

Two of the things I'd read about how the journeys came about involved increasing membership, especially in urban areas, and having a more consistent girl experience. I knew the second was completely valid--so much depends on your leader and her enthusiasm, tolerance for paperwork, interests, and goals. It would be a hard one to change, though, because training can only do so much. You would need to move to an almost scripted program: in kindergarten you cover these things, in 4th grade you do this and that, and so forth. I have heard from friends who are boy scout volunteers that this is more like the boy scout program, that it is pretty consistent in comparison to girl scouts. But I liked the freedom--a close friend was a leader for a few years until her daughter joined my troop, and she focused on careers and safety; I was always more interested in the outdoors and crafts. But as my girls got older, I let them make the decisions and guide the planning (which means a yearly trip to the City Museum, a place that makes me break out in hives but they love it). But you do have to have some sense about you to be a leader who can guide girls until they can guide themselves. You have to know how to use GS resources and classes and training in order to do the things they want to do. And often you have to do things you might not have wanted.

From what I saw of the journeys, even standing there in the shop glancing over the daisy leader's guide, I could see the consistency of outcomes. I could see what they were going for.

So I stood there and browsed and then saw references to work girls should be doing in their journey books. I looked back at the shelf and found them, slim workbooks designed to be one-per-girl consumables. And I have to admit I kind of flipped out. So much for trying to entice urban girls, many of whom can't afford the $12 membership fee to even join girl scouts. I thought about all the other things we could do with the money we'd need to buy 12 of these workbooks for my daisy troop (a daisy troop based in a montessori school with no workbooks present).

That's when I decided I needed to find another way. I know, there are work-arounds. I know, there is scholarship money. I could probably make a bunch of copies or be creative in other ways. I know all these things. I know there are creative people who do wonderful things with journeys and I applaud them. And I'm not leaving--I'm not throwing my hands up and walking away from girl scouting. I also know that many, many people who volunteer for girl scouts are upset with these journeys, for so many reasons, and I won't spend the time to sit and complain because it's easy to stand against something.

Instead, I've decided what I'm going to do. What I'm going to stand for and do and how I will draw my girls into a positive girl scouting experience.

1. I won't be tossing my books come next autumn when they're phased out. I have books dating back to the 1940s on my shelves and they are all good resources. My favorite is the 1953 Intermediate Girl Scout Handbook. When my juniors earned their wildlife badge, I wasn't impressed enough with the current guidelines, so we drew them from this book. And they learned something.

2. I won't be purchasing workbooks for my daisy troop. I'm going to take out my brownie leader's guide and draw on my experiences of being a first grade teacher (I am a once-and-future teacher). We will do a canned food drive and caroling in December. We will sell cookies in January. We will go on field trips and learn the girl scout law and sing songs and go on a day trip to the country.

3. I won't be purchasing workbooks for my junior troop. I won't hide the journeys from them, since they are juniors, and I'll borrow a guide from the resource center. If they want to give it a try, we'll give it a try (next year: this year is pretty much set due to our bronze award). Over half my girls come from a montessori school where child-led learning is the name of the game. They picked their bronze award project and have planned out the year. I can't see them going for a scripted workbook-based system, but if they do, we'll give it a try. But we won't buy workbooks because one of my girls pays for things from her allowance (in quarters); another's mom keeps her home when things cost money, even though I've talked to her time and again about not worrying about such things, please, that's what troop funds are for; and several other families (including my co-leader Clarity) are on tight budgets. I'd rather spend troop funds on experiences.

4. I will continue to work within the system as best I can to give my girls the kind of experience that matches my goals for girl scouting: experiences girls can't get in school, at home, or on the playground. I will take small watercraft training so we can canoe when we want and not just when there's another troop at camp with the adults we need. I will fill my little green card up with certifications, and use them. I will go to neighborhood meetings and help my other leaders at my school as TO. I will be a part of girl scouting and stay hopeful.

My junior troop has grown each year it's been in existence. It's an urban troop of girls who do not have access to camping and wilderness education via other outlets. Girl Scouting allows me to use their framework and bring these things, and so many others, to girls whose lives would be smaller without scouting. If GSUSA wants to know how to draw in urban girls, maybe they should come talk to me and Clarity. Something we're doing is catching on. And what we do, most of all, is go off-script. It may not provide a "consistent girl outcome" but why should we make ours worse to match everyone else's?

Some Good News

Eight good things right now:

1. There's an anime store in Crestwood. It's called Animeggroll and it's family run and cute as a button and the girls spent all their money there today.

2. My mother-in-law sent me some money for my birthday that's been burning a hole in my pocket so I decided to get a few new pairs of jeans because I have 3 pair and hate one of them. So I did. I found two pair I liked. And guess what: I dropped a size in a year. Not anything dramatic, but good trend!

3. Clear koolaid tastes just as good as koolaid with dye. All koolaid should be clear.

4. RCIA, while heavy, was good today.

5. We saw Megamind on Friday and it was really quite fun.

6. Leo said Mom today. Hit my chest and said Mom. He's also saying thank you (dank) again.

7. I had an awesome conversation with Janet last night about Girl Scout Journeys and the future of scouting and the state of it right now. (She works for them). It was so good. I'm ready to do more. I need to head over there and blog.

8. Took a head-clearing bike ride in Forest Park this evening and stopped at their way cool playground (I mean, for pre-fab playgrounds these days) to let Maeve and Leo burn off steam. The path has changed and I like it. Very rambling.

Here we go again

So I've been thinking about it for a while, but now I'm finally there. I think it takes parents a while; it has, at least, always taken me a while. Sophia's dyslexia took me a year to say "yeah, we'd better have her tested." I put up with her obvious speech problems for several months before finally asking my friend Kate (Maeve's godmother) to take a look: language processing disorder diagnosis comin' right up.

There's nothing wrong with Maeve that a good swift grounding to her room won't cure, of course.

But then there's Leo. Leo, who can jump and run and climb and walk (not crawl) up and down the steps. Leo who makes eye contact and smiles and follows directions like "take this into the kitchen and throw it away" and plays coy and points at pictures in the book when he's read to. Leo who loves to play with other kids and imitates me and acts age-appropriately defiant and understands everything I'm saying.

Leo has a 6 word spoken vocabulary: no, dad, go, da (a general assent kind of word), allgone (yes, it's two words but it's really just one) and uh-oh. That's it. Six. He's nearly 22 months old and at this point in Maeve's language development she was telling me I was a "bad mom for changing the radio station" and that she loved me because I smelled so nice (like noodles, that time). Seriously. He's not in the same league as that, I mean, yeah, but he has fewer words than Sophia had at this age as well--although hers were impossible to understand and frustrating for everyone, she at least was trying.

And from what I can tell, it's either "he's a late talker and he'll be fine in a year or so" or "he's a late talker and with proper speech and language therapy he'll be fine by the time he goes to kindergarten." I'm not worried that he's developmentally disabled or has autism or hearing impairments or anything like that. This is a language delay, hopefully pure and simple. And last night I decided it was time to do something about it. I sat behind a 2 way mirror in the basement of the education building at SLU for 2 school years with Sophia; I can do it again. Scottish Rite won't test him until he's two; my pediatrician was off today and so the nurse will call me back on Monday with more information after they talk.

If it ain't one thing, it's another, isn't it always so.

Ian and Bishop Fiorenza

I went to high school in Houston, to a small co-ed Catholic school originally ran by the O.Carms (I often thought of it as an Irish family, the O'Carms). It was on a grungy side of the city; there were bullet holes in the front doors. But I was valedictorian and had a good time there.

My brother Ian started his freshman year the autumn after I graduated and headed up to SLU. He was following me, and I know certain folks, like my Russian teacher, wer disappointed by Part Two. But there were new folks who took to him just fine, like the new campus minister who made sure he got confirmed while he was there. And rooked him into serving at mass.

I had been an altar server, part of the first wave of girls, in 7th and 8th grade; then we moved to Georgia where that was unheard of, and by the time I got to Houston, I can't tell you if girls were serving or not. I'm thinking not, but I can't think of any of my male classmates serving either. It was always underclassmen when I was there (my junior and senior year only--we moved to Houston when I was 16).

But Ian served at mass with his friends. They were even chosen to serve when the bishop came to our school for a visit. When I was there, we usually were visited by an auxilliary bishop, Enrique San Pedro, and in fact my class gave him an honorary diploma because he often preached that not finishing high school was one of his deepest regrets. He was a Jesuit and did just fine (I read that he's in the process of being beatified, but I don't know how that's going), but he mentioned this again and again. We rarely saw Bishop Fiorenza, but San Pedro was given a promotion to become the bishop of Brownsville and left Houston right before my senior year of high school, so Ian's high school years were blessed by Fiorenza.

Compared to San Pedro, Fiorenza had a soft handshake and boring homilies. When I sat through mass with him, it was like watching it on TV. So I didn't really bother to engage. But Ian served mass when he came to our school, and got to know him better than I would have. I will say that he had pledged to the O'Carms that he would keep my high school open, and that he did. Once he retired, it was right on the chopping block for the new bishop. So I guess I owe him that much.

But back to Ian. Sometimes he just says things that make me shake my head at him. And we got into this discussion of eating contests. You know, how many pies, how many hot dogs, and so forth. And he mentioned that back in high school, he and the other servers used to have (unconsecrated) host eating contests. They'd try to see how many in a minute, or how many in your mouth at one time.

"Oh Ian," I sigh when he tells me things like this. I could envision Steve and John Paul and those other guys stuffing their mouths with those dry communion wafers until they couldn't chew anymore. He elaborates, with sound effects and pantomime, how many and how fast. I'm laughing and then there's a pause in the conversation.

"Once when the bishop came--"

"You did not!" I interrupt.

"That Bishop Fiorenza? Now he could eat some host."

Free Day

Water main break over at the school (near the school? I don't really have a good grasp of "water main" and how main it is--water was pouring down their street, though, when I went to drop kids off).

Girls are upstairs listening to a Robin Hood book on CD (my goodness, my recorded kids' books were on vinyl...). Leo is playing in their room because they don't have any reason to exclude him (friends are at their schools, for instance). So I'm drinking coffee and getting ready to go sew. The quilt top for my sister Colleen is perhaps my favorite of the Christmas set. And I say that with several left to finish--but this one is good. Pictures later after I put the border on.

In other news? I picked my green tomatoes last night and I'm going to chop them with the tomatillos from the CSA and all these dang salsa peppers and make more salsa verde.

I'm dehydrating the rest of my garlic (the "rest of my garlic" means enough garlic to get us through until scape season, or maybe later than that, even--and we're big garlic folks). Garlic grows wild in my yard, an heirloom variety called Osage that is native to this area. It's a hard neck variety with a very nice flavor but it does not keep as well as other garlics, from my experience. But dehydrated, it will last through the next century without losing flavor (I soak it before I use it). I've considered pickling it, but that would change it too much and it would be a different thing. I could freeze it...this is just easiest for me.

I have three cats, as you know, and the most elderly of them (not the oldest, since he's the same age as Hickory) has taken to a certain spot in the middle of the living room to relieve himself. He did this in the middle of dinner last night, left a nice steamy pile right there in front of us. So I've gotten the enzyme stuff that has worked in the past and he's now confined to the bathroom upstairs, which is no punishment, since that's where his food, water, and (used to be) preferred litter box is, as well as Mike's closet with dark corners to sit in. It's the size of a small bedroom, plus the closet. He's fine.

And lastly, I've got the plans started for my next blog post-Utah Vestibule. UV ends after Christmas and this one will start in mid to late January. It's called "Ease In Fullness", which is a quilting/sewing term. It's going to be my crafty blog. And homemaking/cooking/canning/whatever else I do all damned day. This will be blog #10 for me, nicely compartmentalized into topic and length (usually a year). The only one I've done so far that I haven't just loved (I have no ego problems, nope) is South City Souvenirs. I was going for something there that never really panned out.

I case you hadn't noticed the other two active blogs over on the side bar, Utah Vestibule, which is coming to a close, is a year in the life of the parish I belong to--my life, that is, not some sort of omniscient view. And Between the Sycamores is about life on my block. Lots of kids and photos and hoo-ha. Those are daily blogs, each for a year, although I tend to run a few days behind. Like now.

Ok, on to the sewing. More blogging later.

Recent Comments

I was going to write an update on stuff going on here, but I thought I'd simply cut and paste some of the comments I've left on other folks' blogs lately.

Kaylen, my sister-in-law, writes over at Happy Notions, and recently posted about Halloween costumes. I wrote: Cute.I'm planning to be something from Katamari Damacy next year. I don't know if it'll be the prince or one of the cousins...

Ann, who also does Ten on Tuesday, wrote an eerily similar post to mine. I wrote: Great minds think alike. Or at least mostly.

Bad Mansard wrote, a little way back, about annoying city offices, mostly about bad spelling and outright lies at the parking garage downtown. And I wrote: Amen. Streets doesn't like my street...but refuse and forestry and parks and all those other orange truck folk are awesome (streets are too, with the cleaning and repair, and they were fun when they came to resurface, but we had this snafu with the corner property thingy...). And if you contact the mayor's office about a dead tree that you've been given the run around over, forestry gets moving!!

Lisa at Clearview wrote about 5 staples that are always in her pantry, and I responded: Rice: I do it all with medium grain. Everything. Hot sauce: rooster sauce! I can't do it but Mike loves it. Yes on the olive oil, yes on beans. I freeze my own sauce without salt or, duh, corn syrup, and "doctor" it in the pan. But we do a lot of canned tomatoes too.

Farmgirl wrote about going to go vote, and I added: already voted here in st. louis. hoping we don't totally screw up our state!!!!

Which of course totally happened.

Tom at Rock Eddy posted photographs of decaying buildings in Maries County, MO, which always sends shivers up my spine: Every time you post photos like this I wonder about the house my grandmother lived in--I have no idea where, although I might be able to triangulate its position with census records. I know it had a log cabin in the back and they'd added on to the front with a more weather-tight structure. I know it was on a hill overlooking a creek, but isn't everything out there? They moved to Marshall when she was 9, after her brother drowned in that creek on the way home from school.

Indigo Bunting wrote about being a poll worker yesterday in Vermont ("Next Year, In Vermont" is my motto, you know). It was all so lovely. And I wrote: That’s a beautiful set of images, town dump and all. I love the freeman’s oath. We don’t have anything so…honest and free…in Missouri. They don’t ask for my address; they mispronounce my last name and forget the alphabet and I pull out my license even though I’m not supposed to have to do that, and then they still can’t find me and I point to my husband’s name right there, right there on the page, and they jerk the book away from my finger. And then say, “oh, here you are,” like I’ve been hiding on purpose.

And Helen, back from her lovely trip, well, she wrote this amazing entry. And I could only respond with: I love you.My biggest question (I have so many): are you using hyperbole, or is witchcraft actually a crime in Canada? Midterm elections suck.

That's not all I've had to say--a long conversation, of sorts, about Catholicism with a non-Catholic blog friend (I love ecumenism); sighing at Mali's "a life in 10 dishes" series, with nothing I could possibly add; wondering where some people go and hoping others return. This is what blogging has done for me, in the end. Made me think.

Define

I don't like to be caught using words I don't know for certain. I don't mind talking casually, but when I put anything down on paper, I like to be at least mostly correct. So I use the define: function on google a lot. The last four:

plebeian
schlub
pervasive
languid

We've done a major reboot recently, so I don't have a more complete list, but others I know I've checked include:

mise en place
dystopic
shearwater
lieu
feiseanna
amicable
croque monsieur
plantar fasciitis
anagnorisis
bogan
inordinate
maird
in media res
petard
sandwich board
en masse
sotto voce
reconnaissance
benighted
patina
decimated

Some are just to check the spelling in case Blogger has it wrong, but often it's to make sure I don't use the word in a not quite correct way. I would hate to embarrass myself...

Ten on Tuesday: 10 ways to simplify your life (well, 14)

Even though it's tempting to write things like "sell your children" and "move to a desert island", I will try to write something more realistic...

1. Say no. It isn't always nice, but it is a good way to keep things simple. Fundraisers, volunteering at church and school, kids' sports teams, extra stuff at work, neighborhood, charities, boards, events: they add up.

2. Limit your kids to one or two activities outside of school. Maeve takes tae kwon do. That's it (I don't count piano for either girl because (a) I make them do it, and (b) it happens at my house). Sophia has Irish dance and a play right now. I do break this rule with girl scouting, and I pay for it, trust me.

3. Dry things that need ironing on a line in the breeze whenever possible. This fluffs fabric and means I just touch up with an iron instead of do the whole thing. I don't mind hanging laundry; I HATE ironing.

4. Keep things in the place where they are used. Hair barrettes should be where girls' hair gets done (the bathroom), not upstairs in their room. Everything required to make coffee is right by the coffee maker. Stamps, envelopes, and address labels are all together. Cleaning supplies for the bathroom are in each bathroom, not under the kitchen sink. And so forth. I break this rule with ironing--the board is stored in the guest room, the iron is in the bathroom closet, the hangers are everywhere, and I do the task in the library where the computer (netflix) is. Hence, while I like the chance to watch things and get something done at the same time, I hate ironing.

5. Use the crock pot whenever possible. Really. Many evenings I am busy (I'm bad at #1 and #2) but I'm also cheap and not interested in paying for ready-to-eat meals or having my family eat out. Insanity. So I make dinner when I have time, which is at 10 in the morning. Deer stew, enchilada casserole, beans of all sorts, a roast, a turkey breast--lots of things can be done in a crock pot and then served with a salad or something easy on the side. Dinner is tasty, cheap, and ready when it's time.

6. Keep a loose menu in your head for the week. It doesn't mean you have to have beans on Monday (crock pot) and spaghetti on Tuesday and so forth, but if you know you have garlic sausage in the freezer, a package of deer meat, 4 sweet potatoes, fresh shiitake mushrooms, and so forth, you can build on that. As the week progresses (my grocery week begins on Wednesday), it gets less fresh and more staple-based, but I rarely throw anything out unless it's an ancient leftover.

7. Have everything ready for morning the night before. Girls' uniforms, lunchbox/bento pieces, phone charged, and so forth. I don't make lunches ahead of time, but everything is ready to go. I could do more, I'm sure, but when I have everything mise en place for morning, I can put it together.

8. Limit errands. I could go to Target every day. Really. But I don't. I go once a week, sometimes once every two weeks or every 10 days or so. And other errands I try to squeeze into Irish dance night, when I'm out in the Land of Big Box Stores and can get a bunch of stuff done at once. For instance, last Tuesday, getting ready for Maeve's birthday party and Halloween, I went to Marshall's, St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store, Target, one of those Halloween warehouse places, and Trader Joes. So I didn't have to do those things with kids in tow. Leo has more predictable days and my kids don't spend their lives in the car.

9. Keep a calendar religiously. Mine is still handwritten but I'm slowly switching over to phone. I will still keep a handwritten calendar at home because I'm a reluctant but happy user of technology.

10. Wear a uniform. I know, dork that I am. My girls wear uniforms to school and it makes mornings easy. Leo is always in overalls. And at the beginning of this summer, I decided to make the switch over as well. I spent the summer in denim capris and black t-shirts. Life was so easy. I've moved on to jeans and black t-shirts, some of them long-sleeved, sometimes with a cardigan on top, but it's still basically a uniform. I never search for what to wear anymore. I just put it on and go. No, I don't wear black t-shirts to weddings or other events, I do dress up, but for every day use, I do. Also related to this, I buy one kind of sock for each girl and for Mike; I wear smartwool socks myself. And I have one brand of bra. The girls have playclothes that aren't "uniform", of course, but they are where most of my laundry time happens, frankly. Figuring out whose sweatshirt, whose skirt, and so forth. But I won't make them wear a uniform for down time.

I actually have a few others:
11. Easy-care yard: I have perennials and grass that doesn't grow fast. I rarely mow and I don't do much yardwork. I certainly don't rake leaves until there's a threat of snow (nothing worse than trying to build a snowman full of old leaves). My yard is kid-friendly and isn't going to win any awards, ever, but it passes my hoosier test most of the time. I would hate it if too much of my time and energy went to my yard. Now, I am busy with a few big projects that need to be done, but my day-to-day is pretty limited.

12. Learn to sew. Sometimes this makes life more complicated, yes, but for instance, Halloween was pretty easy and cheap this year. I didn't buy any patterns, either, because I'm good enough at basics to not need them for a basic black skirt, a cape, and a cloak. Sewing also means you can repair things like buttons and hems and winklehawk tears and so forth. It also means that you break rule #1 and volunteer to use this skill, but you could always hide it...

13. Don't have a dog. I miss Dara, but it's been about a year now and I am loving my dog-free lifestyle. I don't have to worry about someone to care for her when we're gone for a weekend. I don't have to let her out and back in and out and back in. And the fur situation is a lot easier. Now, my geriatric cat is starting to annoy me, but he's still way easier than a dog (and the two adult cats with no health issues are practically a non-issue).

14. This one will probably annoy folks, but I'll say it anyway: live in the city. I spend so much less time in the car than I did when I lived in the suburbs of Houston. I don't have to drive everywhere, and when I do drive, it isn't far (except for Irish dance...). I never get caught in mysterious traffic jams, since the city is a grid, not an arterial system. Yes, there are hassles with city life, but I will still say it's simpler. Greener, too, for the most part, than suburban life. My house off-gassed a long time ago. Dumpsters mean never having to remember to take the trash out to the curb; alleys mean all your utility work is behind you. A trip to the art museum isn't a trek. If I do need to get out to the county for something, I'm a short hop to all the interstates: 44, 40, 70, and 55 all meet within a three or four minute drive from my house. My church is 10 blocks away, my kids' school is also 10 blocks away. And, because we bought our house before the housing boom and in a neighborhood that hadn't completely gentrified, my mortgage is teensy and I have almost 3000 square feet. Yes, my house will liquify when the New Madrid Fault finally wakes up, but until that time, it's low-maintenance brick, real plaster, 10 foot ceilings, stained glass, five-foot wide windows in front, a 6 foot clawfoot tub. For pennies. And you cannot beat my neighbors. I dare you.