Thought for today

I think, really, that I should be awarded some sort of prize package every time I refrain from saying "Oh for f*ck's sake!" at work.

Lest I take myself too seriously

Yeah, nothing brings you back to Earth like having to scream out the back door, "Girls! TELL me you are not naked in that pool! There will be NO skinny-dipping! You hear me???"

Followed by the guys next door yelling, "Aw, Maaaaaan!"



Oy. And vey.

Damn sneaky emotions...can't have anything nice

This change in our status, from a one-child household to a two-child household, has been a positive one overall. The girls seem to be getting along well, there has been a 70% increase in daily giggling, chores are getting done, beds are (sometimes) made, and so far no one has engaged in fisticuffs of any sort. I’m calling it a victory so far. Yay for us. ;)

Watching K engage with a sister for the first time has unearthed a few of my own demons, however, and I’m faced with having to decide what to do next.

My sister, T, has not communicated with any member of our family for nearly six years now. (Actually, I should amend that – when my mother broke her leg about two years ago, I called her cell phone. She did not answer it, of course, but did call me back later. Once she ascertained that Mom was not going to die and that I had things under control, she hung up. The conversation lasted five minutes. I haven’t heard a word since, despite repeated attempts to call and write her.)

T has some powerful demons. I sometimes – often, actually – wish she would let us help her fight them, but those offers have been left on the table, untouched.

It is strange, at this stage of my life, to essentially be an only child again. At times it feels overwhelming. I wonder how to handle things like my mom’s rapidly deteriorating health – I want her to move into our house, so I can help care for her. She insists on staying at her own home, 20 miles away, where there are no first-floor bathrooms. I am at a loss whether to push much harder, for her own good, to bring her here, or if I should let it go for now, with the nagging feeling that eventually a true disaster will strike and she’ll either be here or in a nursing home. I am captive to the multiple push-pulls of caring for two generations and working a job outside the house…which incidentally needs a coat of paint. The house, not my job.

I worry about T, and wonder if I should reach out to her more aggressively. My attempts to reach her have been alternately ignored or slapped away. I wonder if my role is supposed to be to push her hard enough to make her angry, accept the lashing out as a step toward her recovery. And then I worry that, if I push too hard, she'll just go deeper underground and won't reach out to any of us -- ever. I try to just let her know what is happening; to leave emails or voicemails, but there's never a response...I'm not even sure if her email address is still valid.

But if when things go terribly wrong, and mom ends up in trouble, or something happens to another family member, I know I will hear all about how I should have tried harder to let her know what was happening here.

Which leads to a confession: there’s a part of me that is afraid, deep down, that T won’t be there to help even if I DO let her know, and I just don’t want to be disappointed again. Yes; she has her own weight to bear, but her lifetime pattern of exempting herself from any real interaction (at least with her family) is starting to harden me a bit. Honestly, I don’t like feeling that way, but I find I can’t see my way past it.

I used to have a sister who was my best friend. Adolescence was a strain, but there was a part of me that was sure, ultimately, that by the time we were in our forties, we could be sharing cups of coffee on Saturday mornings, and sharing the joys and struggle of our live, and lending a hand to each other when we needed it.

I’m realizing that those Saturday mornings probably won’t ever happen, that the sister I thought I would have again some day has been lost along the way, and like a mother whose son has gone missing in war, I'll have to accept that loss without a chance to grieve it.

It’s taken watching my girls start to become sisters to fully realize what I’ve lost, and I’m not sure how to move forward from here.

I just know I miss my sister.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

No. For anyone who is wondering, no; I am not pregnant. And I will hunt down and kill anyone who, upon reading the title, thought I was pregnant and reacted by clapping their hands with glee. I'm 44 years old, ferchrissakes.

This week, we added a new member to our family.

I've alluded before that we are in the process of becoming foster parents.

We've talked about this for years -- we have a beautiful daughter and were never able to have another. She is a joy and a wonder, but we always felt like we were short-changing her by not giving her someone who would be by her side as we got older, to be there to call when she's 30 and needs to say, "Is it just me, or has our mother finally gone completely off the deep end?"

And yet, something always got in the way of us moving forward. We would provide some respite care from time to time for other friends who are in the system - the screening is less intense for respite care parents. But we suffered from a certain inertia about this process for a long time, for reasons I haven't quite been able to identify.

Then, on Valentine's Day, a young lady entered our lives. And in that moment, everything changed.

"Daisy Mae" (not her real name, obviously) was, at first glance, everything we didn't want in a child. 14 years old, worldly beyond most college students, she has three sisters and a local family with more issues than I care to enumerate here. But this sweet-natured, intelligent, artistically-gifted child stole our hearts from the first time she walked into our home. When we closed the door the first time she left our house, S looked and me and said, "Do you want me to call her caseworker tomorrow?". I burst into tears and said, "yes".

Since then we have gone through nearly 100 hours of classes and screenings, had every inch of this house inspected and prodded, updated, renovated and fire-proofed. Daisy has been here, most weekends and sometimes for a few days during the week, since February. She has formed a fast friendship with K, learned how to tease S and me, re-arranged entire sections of the house, cooked some wonderful meals, and fallen asleep in my arms more than once. And this week, the State finally said she could come and stay here. Forever.

Last night she looked at me and asked, "Are you going to adopt me?"

"Of course we're going to adopt you," I said, "we've already talked about that. Remember?"

"I know. But I just wanted to hear you say it again. Nobody's ever said Yes before."

I love you, Baby. And we can't wait to be your Forever Family.

I'm still alive. Kind of.

Yeah; I know I haven't blogged in about 6 weeks, and now I'm coming back with...


...a lame meme. Well, this one comes courtesy of Alison, by way of the Winter Palace. So it can't suck too bad, right?

Promise to have real content (and some important news) over the weekend. Stay tuned


The rules:
1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.4) Optional extra: Post a comment here, linking to your results.


The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:
1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile**
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

** OK, it was Alligator. I think it still counts, as 'gators are crocodilians

So I kinda have to laugh when I notice that I have eaten both snake and crocodile, but haven't had a Big Mac meal or Spam. I had to Google several of these (for example, I never thought kaolin was anything but cosmetic clay. ) I have also determined that about 80% of the things I haven't had are things that I don't think I ever want to eat. Ever.

Enjoy!

I'm officially a Luddite

I logged onto the school system website today to check out what tomorrow's lunch would be, and I noticed they had the plans for the new middle school posted for us to review. Yippee! The old building (originally the high school and built in the early 50s) is a real hole and I was hoping that they would get this new building open before the Bug starts middle school.

When I studied it more carefully, though I was aghast to see a critical component missing. I called Mr. Bean.

"What's wrong with these people?? They've planned out a school with a huge media center but no library! How are these kids supposed to learn without ready access to a library??? What a stupid place to cut corners!"

Mr Bean answered me as carefully as he could.

"Honey...um...the 'Media Center' is the library."

"Well, that's just screwed up! Why the heck don't they just call it the library??"

"Well, sweetie, the thing is that there's probably more information on non-print media in there now than there is in books. 'Library' kinda isn't an up-to-date term anymore."

"Well, I don't want to be 'up to date'! I want a 'Library' and I want there to be books in it!"

"I understand, Granny. Change is hard. After I make your tea and get you your meds, would you like me to call them and complain?"

(pause)

"I hate you."

Soap Box!!

Wow...sorry for the length of that last post. This is what happens when I don't blog enough!

;)

Blog Neglect

Phone the authorities. I haven't fed my blog for an entire month!

I think Alison talked about this not too long ago...sometimes, there is so much going on that you just don't have time to stop and write it all down. Things happen, and I think, 'I should blog this', and then three days later when I catch my breath, it just doesn't seem so interesting anymore, or I can't remember what point I wanted to make.

I was so proud and happy to see Connie Culp come forward this week and start to tell her story.

I want to comment on so many aspects of this story, because Connie's story teaches us so many lessons about who we are as a society: How she was injured and the question of our ready access to firearms, what her husband's behavior tells us about our still Neanderthal attitudes about violence directed at women, the shared outrage of a vocal few about how we shouldn't "play God", and the ongoing debate about access to healthcare in America.

I have a lot to say about the first few points, but today, I'm thinking generally about the last point, as I'm finalizing plans to hold a three-day conference about quality measurement in healthcare.

The Connie Culp story is germane to this discussion, because while there is no doubt that the accomplishment of face transplant is a huge step forward in surgical excellence, the real story here is about humanitarian compassion and quality of life. How do we treat our fellow humans who have sustained incredible suffering and help them to be -- and feel -- whole again? It's a question that many of us face daily in working on technologies to re-build soldiers who are coming back from the wars overseas and that we confront in deciding who deserves to be the next Connie Culp.

But we also confront it, daily, in smaller and less public ways: Will insurance pay for breast re-construction for women who have undergone a mastectomy? How much function is is necessary in a prosthesis for a Medicaid patient or a veteran? Are the needs of those individuals quantitatively and qualitatively different than the needs of a company executive with top-line health coverage? These seem like dollars and cents questions, when we stand on the outside and look in. But if you are the mastectomy patient or the Vietnam vet who is missing a hand, they are very real, day-to-day questions that affect function, productivity and self-worth. And the answers we as a society finally come to will say more about our values and our commitment to equality than any overseas humanitarian mission or any war we fight in the name of democracy and freedom.

I was having coffee with Maria Siemionow this morning. Most of you know her as the surgeon who led Connie Culp's face transplant team. What most people don't know about her is that face transplant is not the real transformative technology she's working on. Don't get me wrong; it's cool. And if you are one of her patients, it's life-changing. But her real contribution to society will be in her development of new therapies that have the very real possibility of eliminating immunosuppression drugs for all transplant patients. Sometimes, I have to give voice to my frustration that the real "change the world" work that she is doing might forever be overshadowed by this single moment of fame. Because her "change the world" technology isn't going to sell a lot of drugs or ad time on major networks. But it will make a definite change in the quality of life for the nearly 29,000 solid organ transplant patients in the US each year, and will mean life over death for the 56,000 patients who die each year, while awaiting a matched donor.

And yet, with all that, I have an easier time getting her funding to transplant an individual face than I do funding her immune technologies. it's not that I don't want to fund face transplants. Believe me; I've met enough patients in the last few years who break my heart daily, that I want to see a way clear to help heal each and every one of them. But I also want us to think about the common good, which sometimes means that the money we spend to develop yet another anti-cholesterol drug might be better spent to provide regular preventative health care to at risk populations.

As a society, we need to make the decision that humane and compassionate treatment of each and every member is a higher priority than deciding who is entitled and who is not. Only when we have prioritized our common good ahead of our special interests and the "moral judgements" of our vocal minorities will be genuinely fulfill the the rhetoric that we broadcast to the rest of the world, touting our 'freedom' and our supposed 'moral high ground'. When genuine quality of life for each and every citizen is our objective, we will find that our health care is not only better, but it will likely be cheaper and more sustainable as well.

Contemplations upon a packet of wax beans

The season of growth is again upon us.

Today it is snowing, but in contrast to the never-ending slogging that is January in Cleveland, I know that this snow will be gone in a day or two at most. I don’t mind snow as much when I am watching the maple trees bloom outside my window and the jonquils I planted in that little pot on my desk are starting to bloom. You can’t fool me, Mother Nature. It’s spring.

The weekend was spent, in large part, engaged in preparations for this year’s garden. We garden cooperatively with the neighbors in our little cul-de-sac. If we were in Los Angeles, they’d call us a commune and we’d be trendy. As it is, we’re in semi-rural Ohio, and it’s called being neighborly.

This is the third year of our little experiment in cooperative gardening, and I feel like we’ve really hit our stride. Where before, we’d each have our tiny patch with a couple tomato plants, some peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, and a bean plant or two, we’re now bordering on agri-business, with each yard being assigned plantings based on what has grown best the past two years. This year, I started several dozen seeds of each of various peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers, we have dug asparagus trenches in each yard (don’t know who will win the Asparagus Queen title among us), Lori has about 100 leeks in her yard, and Theresa has completely out-done herself with five different varieties of legumes. To that, we add melons, pumpkins, squash, herbs, okra (Lori did okra; I’m not sure who she thinks is going to eat it all, but I’ll let her have her fantasy), and a half-dozen other favorites that each family loves in their own way.

There’s nothing I can say about the satisfaction of growing your own food that Barbara Kingsolver hasn’t expressed more eloquently than I ever could. I’ll just say that on this snowy April afternoon, I’m dreaming of the smell of sun-warmed July earth and pasta sauce stirring on an outdoor camp stove, prepared from vegetables picked off their stems or pulled from the ground minutes before. Of starting dinner planning each week by sending the girls out into the neighborhood to see what’s ripe. Of Saturday afternoons spent with a hoe and a rake, accompanied by kibitzing neighbors who arrive with beer and laughter to “help”.

My girlfriend, Christy, often (only half-) jokes about how we will all survive if the world “goes Jericho”. I’d like to think we’d do pretty well in our little neighborhood. But in the meantime, we’re just eating better, and on less money, than we ever have and I’m grateful.

Zucchini, anyone?

Perspective

Some of you know that Mr. Bean and I are in the process of becoming licensed foster parents, so that we can adopt a local teenager (“Daisy Mae”) who has stolen the hearts of both of us, and K to boot.

We have to complete 60 hours of classes, and our home study, and our physicals, our fire marshal inspection, CPR and First Aid training, background checks, finger prints and a full psych evaluation. And we have to buy a new bed and carpet for her room.

Is it worth it?

On Sunday, I was at the neighbor’s house where Daisy lives right now. Her foster mom, Lori, and I were planning this year’s gardens: I get the tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and other crops that need the wetter, more fertile soil of our floodplain garden site. Lori would grow beans, peas, corn and other crops that probably need a bit drier soil.

At some point, Daisy wandered through the room. Grabbing an apple off the counter, she looked at me. “Um…so…what are you guys having for dinner?”

“The carnivores are having steak; I have a piece of salmon.”

“I love steak. Have I mentioned that I love steak?” She grinned and hopped from foot to foot.

“Would you like to some for dinner?” I looked at Lori, “You wanna send her over for dinner?”

“What?” said Lori, “and miss out on hearing her complain about my cooking??” She winked.

Daisy giggled and hopped up. “I’ll get my shoes.”

Daisy arrived with a box of hair color in her hand. “Maybe after dinner, could you help me color my hair?”

Two hours later, dinner was prepared and eaten. Dishes were done. Daisy and the Bug were curled up together on the couch, watching Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Daisy was falling asleep. Mr. Bean was already snoring.

I looked down at the strawberry blond hair peeking out of the blanket, “You’re not comfy, are you?”

Daisy laughed and stretched a bit. “Can we color my hair later this week? We’re cozy.”

I’m sure, five years from now, that I’ll be able to count these moments on one hand. But these moments remind me why we’re taking all these classes and switching our lives around. It’s so we can make a difference for her.

It’s so she can make a difference for us.

And yeah; it's worth it.