Aah, it all becomes clear now...

From the NYTimes about the unseen, long-term effects of binge-drinking (italics are mine):

On a microscopic level, Dr. Crews has shown that heavy binge-drinking in rats diminishes the genesis of nerve cells, shrinks the development of the branchlike connections between brain cells and contributes to neuronal cell death. The binges activate an inflammatory response in rat brains rather than a pure regrowth of normal neuronal cells. Even after longstanding sobriety this inflammatory response translates into a tendency to stay the course, a diminished capacity for relearning and maladaptive decision-making.

I wonder who this makes me think of... hmmm....

More Heave-Ho, Less Ho-Ho

Since I can't bear to dissect the fact that I spent a good 6 hours of today working on presents for others (I knitted, bought, wrapped, packaged, carded, addressed and mailed... for SIX stinkin' hours!), I will supply you with some joyful distraction and some things that have given me a chuckle in the past few days.

1) This web site for snow blowers. I got a good giggle out of the copy on this one. "The snow will shiver in fear, not you!" Uh-huh. Go out there and show that snow who's boss. Er... or just finish clearing the path, you over-testosteroned dolt-freak!

2) Oh. My. God. Nothing says Christmas cheer like this. Make sure to watch the video clip. Hey, don't blame me. I wasn't out there looking for that special gift for the hunting enthusiast in my life!

3) "What they did to us was hard-core. Man, was that scene rough." A review of the earliest episodes of Sesame Street, now available on DVD. Elmo is DEFINITELY prozacky. Read on.

4) Slimey Worm's MySpace page. Yup. A 38-year-old male living in Oscar's Trash Can. Notice the "friends"... Some people have way too much time on their hands! (Though if you ever see a copy of the book "Slimey to the Moon" snag it for me... I'll pay you back!) ;)

5) This gal kicks some major butt (see above comic)

Happy Holidays, y'all!

Too fine a point

Not sure where to start this, so I guess I'll start with the drive. Tonight, amidst the falling snow, I left my house, husband tucking present-crazed child into bed, mother and stepfather watching television in the basement. At almost 9:00 on a Thursday evening with two inches down in the last hours upon the almost foot of snow on the ground, did I really need to be out driving?

A girlfriend of mine is out of town for a few days and I promised her that I'd go by her house and pick up her mail and any packages that might have been dropped there. In fact, even when she goes out of town for only a couple of days, I always volunteer to do it. And I don't mind doing it. Somehow, perhaps, by visiting her house while she's gone I feel like I'm tending the friendship or visiting just a little.

Anyhow, as I drove into her neighborhood, I noticed a young man walking on the other side of the road. I was struck by such jealousy (though jealousy isn't the word)-- I wanted to be him. Suddenly I could read this stranger's gait and I knew: He's young, he's working something out as he slices through the snow. Sometimes you just need to escape into an outside where you can march the stupidity out of yourself and your thinking.

As I pulled into my friend's driveway, I noticed three hulking boxes which looked like elephants trying t0 "hide" behind the fake doric columns of her front porch. They looked so insipid! And somehow so sweet as well, like they were trying so hard.

I feel like that often myself, especially around my son. I am so filled with love for him, I could just be him. Then I remove myself and say this is the adult voice I use and the sensible thing I say to make sure you're safe and know boundaries all the while thinking Ha! If he only knew how we are all just pretending.

I loaded the awkward boxes into the back of my car, quickly rearranging my daily detritus (grocery freezer bag, pair of son's rubber frog boots only worn inside the house) and tossing them on top. Haphazard, but out of the snow. Not so silly and alone on the porch at least.

On the way back, I started to drive even more slowly, more deliberately. And I'm not sure it was out of a sense of safety, but rather, as though my wheels were working through something for me. I realized that I was listening to a classical piece that siphened me into it, and everything I saw was an extension of that listening, that movement of the car, the music. The snow is piled in drifts reflecting tangerine-colored light from the streetlights. All somehow so cozy and perfect and piled it seemed out of a movie, or a thought about winter, not actual winter itself.

Passing all the strung-up lights, the white deer were silhouetted and illuminated at once as they grazed upon the snow-wrapped yards. Dwarf pines swathed in frenetic dancing lights looked like little overdressed chihuahuas, blinking to themselves in that nervous way. All this man-made love and the snow arranging themselves together, working it out.

And that, perhaps, is exactly it. Working it out is beautiful and human and sometimes forced. And sometimes loveliness and grace just happens to settle up upon it-- upon the intention and the ritual and the routes of dailiness. Grace upon work. Work in the hopes of grace.

More! More! More!

There's a point at the end of Sesame Street where Slimy the Worm, bedecked in a sleeping cap (when did we stop using those?) implores to Oscar the Grouch: "Read more, read more! Read more Trash!" Oscar replies, "N0, Slimy. That was enough excitement for such a small worm. We'll read more tomorrow!"

Now when my son starts whining at us for something (yes, much of the time, books, but other stuff, too), we call him Slimy. "More, more, more!" we croon. It always makes him laugh. Now he's starting to use this mantra as well, and his two-year-old approximation of Slimy's voice, whenever he whines. Somehow it makes the whining more fun for both of us.

Now that it's getting dark out so early, we are often driving after dark, when Christmas lights are in their full bloom. He's in the back yelling, "More Christmas lights! More lights!" and I have to point them out to him as we pass. To tell the truth, I like looking at the lights, too. It's one of the least conflicted feelings I have about the season which is upon us.

***

I was somewhat dumbfounded by this rant on Slate.com by Christopher Hitchens, the notorious God-hater. I mean, I can understand the instinct to want strict separation of church and state. No government-sponsored Christmas trees or holiday programs or whatnot. I, personally, am not offended by them, but do acknowledge the criticism that they can be seen as endorsement of one religion over another.

Still, this guy really strikes me as joyless. And that's about the harshest thing I can say about anyone. He seems like a miserable human being. And his arguments, while some of them are not altogether without merit, are mirthless and unhuman.

Well, now he's taking potshots at Hanukkah. Not that I should be surprised, but I am taken aback. I wonder if it's because in general, I think public criticism of anything Jewish or even mildly Jewish is usually pounced upon and torn apart by the media. And while I think that some of that instinct is perhaps a little overdone (especially when it comes to legitimate criticism of Israeli policies or politics), I am also adamantly opposed to protecting hate speech. Period. That's why I could never join the ACLU.

Now, mind you, I know that this opinion is a controversial one. "Where do you draw the line?" people ask. Truth is, I'm not sure. But a line does have to be drawn somewhere for the health of our society, and it behooves us to think about this issue and debate it.

Anyhow, whether or not this rant constitutes hate speech (which I think it doesn't), it is still shocking and disconcerting. After reading it I felt horrible. Just horrible. Partially because I felt that he used an arithmetic which is not humane in its logic.

Then I found this response and felt better about the world again. Yes, thinking and feeling and knowing. Not to be warm and fuzzy about it, but looking for the light isn't that bad.

More light! Want more, MORE!

MamaH has not approved this ad

...but she still thinks it's freakin' funny. Good thing Huckabees is too conservative to get elected. At least he's making a joke of himself in more ways than one!

'Tis the season...

Let the games begin!

Ahem, let me rephrase that. As of November 1st: Let the games begin!

If you're confused, that is a true sign of your mental and fiscal health. You see, November 1st is the day that all things Halloween go in the bargain bin and wide swathes of nearly every store automatically pop up with tinsel, trimmings and light-diode-impregnated fake northern spruces.

Aah, the joys of the season that starts too soon, lasts too long, and drives the folks who work retail into lifetime Christmas music haters. Or is it "holiday" music haters?

Yes, as you can see, there is serious debate going on about whether the Wisconsin State "holiday tree" (dubbed so in the 1980's in a conniption of political correctness) should be renamed the "Christmas tree". Serious debate. Did I say that already?

Well, speaking as a resident Jew, I can plead... PLEASE return it to being the Christmas tree. Holiday tree is just ludicrous. Unless, that is, some wild roaming sect of Jews actually does have a penchant for felling small trees and bedecking them with oil lamps or candles. If there is such a case, my bad. Otherwise, let's just take down the whole ruse of egalitarianism. Trees have nothing to do with Hanukkah, nor to my knowledge, with Kwanzaa.

Then, go ahead and put up a menorah, or a kwanzaa candle thing, and maybe a festivus pole for good measure. (Festivus-- what an awesome stroke of comic genius!) Just don't waste our time pretending that the 50,000-pound elephant in the room is not indeed a towering elephant. In a whispered tone: We know about Christmas. It's OK. You can have that. Just don't expect us to decorate it with stars of david and play dreidel beneath it.

***

OK, on from the substantive debate. Now it's time for the real meaning of this holiday, er, christmas, er, shopping season... prezzies! Lots of 'em!

Including these dumb presents and these all-time most dangerous presents. Yep, they're real, folks. Reminds me of the cornballer from Arrested Development.

***

Yes, that's about as substantive as it gets these days... I've been running around trying to get everything done, knitting everything I can get my hands on (gee, can't guess if that's displaced mothering instinct, can we?) and almost ran a stop sign the other day (no kid in car... keep your pants on!) because I had a very surreal Luis Bunuel kind of image in my head of knitting eyelashes. Very strange. Perhaps a few too many lattes in the pot?

100% More Cheese

OK, OK...

Let me just lick off my fingers from these natural Cheetos (No preservatives, No artificial flavors, No artificial colors) and type a couple of minutes....

Yes, the glamor life in the intervening month or so (or longer?) since my last little snippet has trodden by and I've had only the impulse to write, never the follow-through or the subject matter, for that matter.

Life has just been strings of little whack-a-doodle details with no coherent storylines and it sort of reminds me of an episode of the show "Dirty Jobs" on the Discovery Channel. I saw one the other week when my husband was out of town about conch farmers who have to go out and harvest kelp to feed to the conch. They scoot out on this little dinky motorboat and haul all this slimy, long, rope-like kelp onto the boat and have to cut it with sharp knives (that stuff is actually amazingly strong). Does this sound like a good idea? Wielding sharp knives on a wet, slippery boat? One of the cameramen ends up puking.

Anyhow, nothing nearly as risky, but perhaps as dumb. My 2 1/2-year-0ld son had to have eye surgery and was on all sorts of drops and steriods. I believe this was the beginning of my downfall, because in order to keep him content (and from rubbing his eye all the time), we coaxed him into short bouts of mania with new toys, stickers, books, even the odd blue lollipop or two. It's been more than a month where I have had to physically catch him and hold him down for 5 eyedrops a day (during the day mostly by myself). And let me tell you, that ain't fun. Not woeful, just not fun.

Let's see now... Umm... There's been the fact that my son is 2 1/2 and thinks defiance is uproariously funny... that's been a good one. Then there has been the cold that has been passed along and has taken up residence at the farthest crevice of my sinus system (sort of like the solar system without any of the cache) and makes anyone who talks to me on the phone want to immediately get off because it's too obnoxious and/or painful to listen to me snort and snuff through the conversation.

Plus, the only freelance job I've had in a while is a five-hour whopper writing copy about acrylic bathtubs. Now with 100% new American acrylic!

Yes, all these things. And not knowing what to do with my life (how is it that everyone is doing something important with a capital "i" and I'm knitting an itchy scarf and eating "natural" Cheetos at 1pm?) and also not knowing if I will have another child (bigger, scarier, let's-not-go-there-because-it-could-get-messy).

Yup. The world of meaning, knock- knock- knockin' down my (OH-- mustn't forget... Oh crap. Whatever it is, I forgot it). Door?

Hello?

How do you say "Ass-in-nine"?

A little late night nugget for your reading pleasure:

Bush's copy of his UN speech was accidentally posted on the Web, along with "idiot-proof" phonetic spellings. How do you say, "Doh!"?

Cue the Angels!

This has been a beastly week, but at least there's some redemption in the world: Apparently the New York Times has made all of its internet content free. Yes, that's right. Free.

I was one of the suckers who paid the $49.95/year to have access to all the blogs and goodies the NYTimes hid behind its little Times Select icons until this summer when I decided I would use that $49.95 to buy myself a cute bracelet in Germany. So much for my intellectual prowess...

Still, now I can freely graze among the lilies. You can, too. Go check it out.

***

And, in other news, my toddler managed to give himself a gigantic goose egg on his forehead sunday night. He attended preschool Monday morning wearing his bike helmet (to stave off further possible injury on the playground).

Classy.

And apparently they blew the shofar on Monday for the kids to hear. Now he's obsessed. He runs around saying, "Shofar outside! Woman blow it!" Today he came home with a decorated paper-plate facsimile of the shofar and even tried to take it to bed with him. Cue the angels, indeed!

Tendering Words

One of the things that I'm amazed about with my son at this age is what he does, thinks and says when he's playing by himself.

This afternoon, as our iTunes picked an interesting mix of Vivaldi, REM, Keb Mo', Ray Charles and Coolio (yes, Coolio), my toddler guy was playing contentedly by himself.

At one point I heard him say, "helmet guy, we share with our friends!"

Last week, after he awoke from his nap, everything was cool. "Cool helmet, helmet guy!"

Today, he kept referring to himself as "Sweet boy."

You see, it's almost impossible for me at this point to have an independent thought from my son. I'm so enraptured with his language development that apparently I've turned into the parrot.


***

...And some sad news in the parrot world: Alex, the grey parrot, is no longer amongst the living.

He was, according to his obit, one of the world's most developed bird-brains: He knew over 100 words.

Apparently, the night before he died, when "his" researcher put him back in his cage, he said, "You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.”

Papa Guy

I've been quite a stress kitten lately. I'll admit it. As my husband prepares to teach his first graduate class and simultaneously is falling prey to the rigors of organic lawn care, I have been minding the home front and trying to figure out what the hell to do with my toddler. Truth be told, my ideas usually run out around Thursday. And, with the end-of-summer hole (no swimming lessons or playgroups) to fill in the desperate blanks, I've been fit to be tied.

But enough about that. Bitching ain't going to solve it. Instead, I want to talk about why I am going to go down in the pantheon of bad (but inventive) moms. Why, you ask?

Well, with my verbal dexterity underchallenged as a stay-at-home-mom, I've resorted to playing small linguistic tricks on my son.

For instance, take last week. My husband was obsessed with the lawn. He thinks we have grubs, which are hatching into Japanese beetles and eating up our plants and planning the demise of our lawn ecosystem. Since using pesticides are out of the question (and, no irony here) I am in agreement with that, we have to find another way to get rid of the grub-a-dub-dubs. Enter the beneficial nematode. A boon to the lawn-obsessed, this little microscopic critter (which supposedly resembles a worm when you get one close enough to see) seeks out the grubs and eats them. Yum! Now that's some good Grub!

So, aforementioned husband waffles back and forth. Do we order them? D0 we not order them? Enough to cover our lawn will cost $50. For those of you keeping track, $50 buys you 50 million beneficial nematodes from the Internet. Finally, after much back-and-forth, he decides to order them. They show up a day later, packaged in a white styrofoam cooler which needs to go directly into the fridge. (I bet you're not eating at my house after you heard that!)

So, given the huge amount of care and interest the beneficial nematode has inspired in our house, I decide to tell my son that papa is getting nematodes. Can you say nematodes? "Nee-man-toes!" Shakes his head knowingly. I ask, "Do you know what nematodes are?" "Yup!" he says cheerily, shaking his head. I left it at that. As long as he thinks he knows what they are, who am I to spoil it with the actual (and perhaps icky) explanation?

Since my little chatterbox is actually an old chatterbox with a skipping record, it has been taken up into his vocabulary stew. It is not unusual to hear a string of words like this one: "Helmet guy goes up there up the ladder nematode. Jet engines!"

And, upon overhearing a conversation I had on the phone with someone last week, he has also picked up another little ditty. Someone we know just found out that they have two spleens. No matter how funny that may sound, it apparently isn't very funny if you're that person. Two spleens-- not so fun. So when I heard it, I said in a loud voice, "He has TWO SPLEENS?" and started laughing hysterically. Suddenly, my son was orbiting the couch at great velocity yelling "Two SPEENS!"

To make matters that much worse, I have two languages to mess around with. ONCE, mind you, months and months ago, when my son pointed to a picture of a parrot in one of his books, I told him that the German word for parrot was papagei. Then I thought to myself, giggled, and said it as two words: PAPA GUY... which is apt, for my -guy obsessed child ("Where helmet guy go?" "Guy over there and up a ladder!") And, ever the little parrot, he's stuck on repeat.

Where Mama go? To hell, apparently. Mama go where she not warp minds of small children.

Stories

The past couple of days I've fallen asleep while telling my son a bedtime/naptime story. Picture me laying on the floor (beige carpet-- awful suburban plague), me sticking my hand through the slots to hold my son's hand. (The command comes from behind the blanket: "Mama, hold the hand!") and so I do. It's a concession. A weakness, perhaps. Still, it seems a godsend to have him fall asleep behind the bars of the crib as compared to the wild late-night air mattress surfing that he practiced while we were in Germany. So, I'll throw him a bone.

And truth be told, the storytelling does me good. It's like those beginning creative writing workshop exercises where you get to pick disparate words or phrases out of a hat and have to craft something out of them.

Only mostly what you got from those exercises was a bunch of crap with maybe a funny line or two. (Don't apply for the poet-laureate position just yet...)

Yet somehow, despite the common constraints, dictated by a 2 1/2-year-old with certain predelictions, shall we say, to "Papa, Max and Elmo with helmets on!" or "Helmet guys!" or "Duffy train driver and ice cream truck!", it's amazing the amount of variety I've mined.

Take for example, my masterpiece from last week, "Papa, Max and Elmo take two modes of transportation (helmets on, for safety, of course) to visit the Helmet Guy Convention". Now that was a finely crafted piece of oral literature. And there are other favorites (of mine, not of his-- I can safely say that my stories put him to sleep. Does that count as being "good"?) Like when my son got to take his nap in the back of a dump truck while the "helmet guy" drove him to sleep, or when the firemen had to come and pump out our flooded backyard (we woke up to ducks swimming around in it!)

But, perhaps like all good children's stories, there are certain predictabilities (see the aforementioned child falling asleep portion of the program). However, I am apparently too good of a hypnotist. Telling the stories is so relaxing to me that I have woken up drooling, with carpet-rash over half of my face. This afternoon when I awoke after an hour, I was still holding my son's hand, and I couldn't feel most of my arm because it was asleep.

Aaah, love. Is it terrible to say that I am good at this thing love? That I am good at talking? (Consult any elementary-school report card for confirmation).

The other night I had a dream that I had to take over teaching my husband's class when he went on a trip. I remember: I was overcome with joy!

And I remember why, I suppose. When I most loved teaching, I got to tell stories. In them, we were all awake. We learned things. Them and I. Completely engaged in love.

Dispatch from Abroad

Greetings from the land of the bizarro keyboard. It's been a year since I've typed on one of these, and it shows. A tutorial: y and z are switched. The @ symbol is hidden on the 'l' key and only accessible by hitting the alt key simultaneously. Then there's the beautiful ü, ö, ä with their little follow-the-dancing balls breaking up the monotony of the normal asdf jkl;. It's more like asdf jklö. Even these (non)sense combinations are an order of sorts. A discipline which fingers forget and remember again just long enough to forget. A constant deja vu.

§§§

And just the same, it's amazing to me how much knowledge is stuck inside of me, leaping to the surface as if it were there all the time (it was). Yesterday we had some friends over and they were talking about the moving sidewalks in the Paris underground. Instead of the conveyor-belt technology used in most airports, they are apparently comprised of many cylinders which propel you the minute you step on them. There are two lanes- slow and fast, and the fast one accelerates you at impressive speed. Our friends said that no matter how prepared you are for it mentally, it still comes as a physical surprise. Something about all those small cylinders causing such momentum seems as though it can't be true.

I wish that for the three years I lived here, I had kept a blog. I can only imagine what things I had said as I return to the thoughts, walking down the streets. It would be interesting to see the persistence of perception or the slight kant as if walking up a slight incline. Today, here. Three years, a decade from now, head cocked a little to the side.

§§§

Before leaving home, my husband and I both had a feeling we did not want to leave. We weren't ready to come. There's always so much in motion that it's hard to feel like it's possible (even preferable?) to leave it, stop-motion. Perhaps we crave a more episodic handling of our exposition. This is the point in the plot where we wind things up. Although we live in simultaneousness as a point of being (breathing AND looking AND thinking AND biting nails), our minds trick us into thinking that it is not so. Focus and selection is an amazing coping skill.

Yet when we arrived, our arrival was immediate. Here is our bank. There is where I always bought the plums (much better than the stand right next to it) and money is money, not some computation of this is how much? (If you've looked at the value of the Euro recently, you'll know how dangerous of an automatism this is!)

At the same time, life at home is whole and constant, even without us this period of time. The fruit flies that swarm around half-eaten bananas here are the same that are digesting our compost at home. The process (though unseeable: when will our compost finally yield DIRT, for God's sakes?) is ongoing.

§§§

I can tell you where I am now because I do this blog anonymously. Therefore I am not worried that you will go to my house, foil my security system and steal my dirt. I can tell you where I am, but never who I am. That's the riddle that keeps life rolling forward.

Makin' it hard out here for a pimp

So I'm not a joiner. I'll admit that much. Never really toyed with the idea of joining a sorority (they're just for pretty girls, and I'm pretty and smart, or so the rationale goes). Never, never wanted to be friends with everyone I met. Nor do I expect to be liked by everyone. That would require me to actually talk to all people, which I have always viewed as an acute waste of time and energy.

Elitist, perhaps. Protectionist definitely.

Still, I apparently every once and a while feel the need to ride the preverbial mechanical bull of social organizing. I was president of my women's club in Germany (smart women, mind you!) and now I've taken on neighborhood organizing. Apparently, I am a glutton for punishment. Still, it seems to me that especially in the burbs like where I live, it's important to know your neighbors.

It's especially important to know your neighbors if you live down the street from a pimp/drug dealer.

So, I suppose my organizing bug is a fair part survival instinct. Still, it always seemed to me to work better with the carrot than the stick. So I decided to organize a 4th of July picnic for the neighborhood. I delivered flyers in every mailbox (even the pimp's!), I bought foamcore and made signs. I even bought american flags, for God's sakes, and streamers, and patriotic tablecloths. Not something that this mama would ever really do. I'm just not the "garden flag" type.

Anyhow, out of 60 houses, 12 showed up (including us). It was certainly an interesting group. We have lots of diversity for such a small, relatively new neighborhood in what I consider to be a relatively white, American state. We had our older paranoid gossip couple (the woman totally reminds me of Lynette's babysitter on Desperate Housewives), we had our good christian family with four daughters (I think the woman was taken aback when I hinted that we were Jewish. Bizarro).

Yet, I couldn't help but feel let down that there weren't more people there. It felt as though the whole neighborhood was posing like those monkeys "See no Evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." Suffice it to say, no pimps or even neighbors of pimps showed up.

***

My husband and I have had many discussions on how to get people motivated to care, and look out for each other. We have this (call it idealistic) thought that the more people know each other, the more uncomfortable it will be for the pimps.

I've even had fantasies of surreptitiously delivering welcome packets of flowers and brownies to the pimp's mailbox. If caught, I could simply shrug and say I wanted them to feel welcome in the neighborhood (of course hoping for the exact opposite effect). These people want to operate with a fair amount of anonymity. The less you allow them that, the more likely it is, perhaps, that they will move elsewhere.

That having been said, my husband wants me in no way, shape or form to be leaving baked goods in the pimp's mailbox. Still, I love the fantasy of it.

***

Do you out there have any ideas of what might work for us? How has your neighborhood worked on building community? Have you dealt with any safety concerns or difficult neighbors? Any good (or even off-the-wall fun) ideas on how to go about fostering community and at the same time making the pimps feel unwelcome?

Write to me. Otherwise, I might be driven to greater lengths of social gregariousness. And we wouldn't want it to come to that now, would we?

Methinks that Booty Smelleth Not So Fresh...

And the recalls keep coming, folks. Just a day after being warned to throw away ANY toothpaste made in China, hospitals and mental wards are finding hordes of tubes of the possibly toxic goo.

Then comes the news that the FDA is banning certain kinds of fish from being imported from China unless they can prove that they are NOT contaminated with: Carcinogens, Illegal antibiotics, Unidentifiable "filth" and/or Salmonella. Yum. And, via the NYTimes, I found out that the US apparently gets almost 80% of its seafood from China. Yikes. Back away from that fish stick!

And, if all that isn't wacko enough, they're now saying that Veggie Booty (snack of choice for the Toddler set) is causing a rolling outbreak of Salmonella in kids across the country. Is nothing sacred?! Where else are our kids going to get their fill of rice flour puffs dusted with broccoli and kale?

While I have always sort of giggled under my breath at moms who think that Veggie Booty actually counts as a vegetable (I actually overheard someone saying, "If my kid didn't eat Veggie Booty, I don't know HOW we'd get him to eat his veggies!") I still think it can have its place as a (relatively) innocuous treat on occasion. No longer. I am livid that last week at playgroup I could have been feeding my friends' kids (and my own) Salmonella Puffs.

***

Today my son was insistent that he wanted to go to the "train store", a local toy store where they have four different train and vehicle tables in a small space. I have to say that I still feel uneasy about the Thomas the Tank Engine thing. Even though the company theoretically has the whole lead issue under control with their recall, I'm still uncomfortable having my son play with the Thomas toys.

***

I think I saw a bumper sticker once that read something to the effect of "It's not paranoia if they really are following you." However, if your paranoid behavior does land you in the loony bin, don't brush your teeth or eat the shrimp. That'll teach them a lesson.

PB kids, and I'm not talkin' Pottery Barn here

I read an alarming article today in the NYTimes about the case of the Consumer Product Safety Board (CPSB)-- the government group that's supposed to make sure that consumer products are, well, as the name suggests, SAFE for consumer use.

Now, anyone who has kids can tell you the pandemonium that has broken out amongst parents about the latest recall action of twenty-some-odd Thomas the Tank Engine pieces. They can probably tell you which pieces are affected and why: Lead (chemical symbol Pb) found in the red and yellow paint.

What most of these parents don't know, however, is that despite the fact that recalls of consumer items (and, scarily enough, many many toys) has seen a huge increase in the past years, the CPSB is actually less and less able to do its job because of cuts in funding. Witness this:

In the last two years, the staff of the consumer product commission has been cut by more than 10 percent, leaving fewer regulators to monitor the safety of the growing flood of imports.

Some consumer advocates say that such staff cuts under the Bush administration have made the commission a lax regulator. The commission, for example, acknowledged in a recent budget document that “because of resource limitations,” it was planning next year to curtail its efforts aimed at preventing children from drowning in swimming pools and bathtubs.

Yikes. I hate to sound like one of those anti-foreign harpies, but given recent events with all sorts of whacked-out shit showing up in products proudly Made In China (Now! With Extra Little Oversight!), I am seriously in a quandary.

Even many of my favorite toymakers, including European firms, are outsourcing their work to China. China seems to be either unable or unwilling to police itself. (Heck, if we can't manage to do it, either, how can we expect them to?)

And, given the fact that so much manufacturing and production has moved to China, it seems foolhearty to think that A)We can avoid all products made in China and that B)Despite recent events, that all Chinese-produced things are inherently tainted. There is just a huge unknown.

However, it's appalling that we have to wait for kids or parents to start noticing lead poisining or choking hazards in order to have something actually done about it because of a lack of resources and oversight.

One thought: Perhaps it's past time to start holding stores accountable for selling these products. If retailers hear that their consumers are p.o.'d because they stock items that could potentially kill or critically injure their children or themselves, perhaps retailers will be more responsible consumers, themselves.

How's that for a moral to the story, Thomas? Peep peep!

Foiled Again

This will have to be quick, as a plaintive "Paaaaa-paaaaaa" escaped from underneath my son's door, and the babble is beginning to trickle.

I have officially joined the ranks of the Security Moms, having successfully allowed the Security People to bore holes through my doors and install cat-insensitive motion detectors and very sensitive glass breaks throughout the house. I am now officially ready to accidentally set off my own home security system at any time that is inconvenient to me or my sleeping toddler. Let the fun begin!

And speaking of defenses, I read this awesome article about captchas (see visual above), those wacky little letter/number puzzles that web sites use to authenticate that you are, indeed, a human. Apparently they are getting easier and easier for computers to solve, and harder and harder for humans to solve. Which means that the security mavens have to invent even more interesting ways to tell humans from their malice-seeking technological counterparts.

And, in closing, a remark on the frailty of human perception, brought to you by the letter X:

Yesterday I heard various stories of people cracking up. It seems the coo-coo bird has been hovering ravenous over distant relatives, family friends and old neighbors. And it seems, somehow, whether you describe people as "functioning" paranoids or alcoholics or mourners, "functioning" is really only cushioning that you give yourself to not feel as though people are one step away from falling into the abyss. Because if they are only one step away, are we only two steps, maybe three at most? Enough to give anyone vertigo.

Still, I must think of my alarm here, poised and ready to serve (or perhaps, rather, to swerve?) Safety sounds permanent, but is really an incomplete thought better left unfinished. Too much else interesting going on in the world to be worried about your boundaries, lest you inscribe them too tightly and then there you sit. The abyss-- in a dot.

Reinventing the Wheel

There's nothing like raising a child-- watching it progress from a squirmy little bundle of nerve endings and crying to a thinking, talking, plotting human being-- to recharge your wonder and frustration in the world.

One of the most bizarre realizations I remember having was when my son was about 10 months old and started showing a clear preference for anything with wheels. Why wheels?, I thought. (Is this mystery, perhaps, etched on the Y chromosome?)

Since then, we've gone through love affairs with every be-wheeled thing that touches the earth with its magical orbs. Each has been named, counted, described. Routes have been altered to see the absolute most of them we can see in a given drive.

Yet their magic is difficult for me to feel vicariously, the same way, for instance, I revel in every new word and word combination expressed. (This weekend he woke up insisting "Book store. Book store." Boy are we in trouble!)

Yet the image above, taken from this wonderful article from the NYTimes (where else), captures for me the amazement of wheels. This article talks about a design show in NY which is focused on low-cost design solutions to some of the world's most pressing problems. It features this water containter, in the shape of a wheel, which can be pulled even by a young child.

Hallelujah.

What a beautiful form! What a beautiful function!

I would like to start a practice where I take maybe one hour a week to generate new ideas. I invite you to join me. They could be ideas from your own realm of work, or they can be far afield. Take one hour a week (doesn't friday seem the best day for this?) to actively daydream and see what you come up with.

More to come...

Open Wide

I normally feel the weight of the world on my shoulders just as a regular precaution. This week, it's enough to keep me even busier.

You see, just before my husband left for a conference in Alaska (of all places!), he found out in a casual conversation with our neighbor over lawnmowing that apparently our teensy little neighborhood is home to not one, but two houses of ill-repute (of the red-light variety) and one suspected drug dealer.

Now, I cannot attest to the veracity of the claims. However, I certainly know that people had their panties in a gather a while ago because someone got a laptop stolen from their car. (For the record, the car was unlocked and parked on the street at the time. Doh!)

At any rate, apparently there has also been a car stolen, multiple car break-ins, and an as yet uncorroborated account of a neighbor hearing someone in her house.

Still, true or not, it can scare the living daylights out of you.

My husband is known to all of our friends as a safety fiend. I think if my son would suffer no ill feelings from other children because of it, my husband might have him walk around in full protective headgear.

Yet we are both of the conviction that oftentimes even talking about "security" (as in, say, the "homeland" variety) makes people feel, ironically, unsafe. We scoffed at the folks who felt unsafe without a security system out here.

AND, we are now installing a security system. It can be hooked up to the fire alarms so that the fire station is called instantly. There are panic buttons and all sorts of things that can keep you safe (though thinking about them makes you feel unsafe).

Still, I wonder. Safety itself is one thing. Feeling safe, parodoxically, is a state of mind that is not always related to actual safety (and in fact, is sometimes diametrically opposed to safety. Why else would women stay with their abusers, etc.?)

Perhaps we need to study the idea of a fair amount of preparedness with a large dose of denial. How does that sound?

***

In the meantime, there's all sorts of change going on. The semester has ended and our dear babysitter has graduated and been let out into the wild to change the world as she sees it. In her stead, her roommate, sorority sister and elementary ed. major has taken her place.

With such singing credentials, I should be on the moon. Yet I was still nervous today when I left her here. Even though last week when she visited I saw my son through the window give her a big hug. (And where does he get off hugging women he hardly knows and saying no to me?)

Of course, everything went fine. When I came home, everything was in order and my son barely noticed I was back. He hugged the new babysitter three or four times with verve.

I was thinking about my nervousness as I was doing my errands. I guess change is just like that. Sometimes with things that have to do with my son (like his first swimming lessons alone, and in this case) I am nervous for him. He ends up doing fine. I'm the one who is having the problem with change, because I am anticipating it. I am rehearsing what I have to do to intercede on his behalf. My motherly nature causes me to pace the floors in my mind. And the babe sleeps quieter than ever, tired and satisfied by his conquests.

***

And in our final installment, I bring you the latest in food news.

Apparently (though I didn't hear the gruesome details firsthand and I am glad I didn't), a baby died recently because its parents kept it on a vegan diet. Their idea of "vegan" meant giving the baby regular soy milk and applesauce. It goes without saying that this is an absolute perversion of thought. Why wouldn't mother's milk (the most natural thing in the world) be acceptable as baby food? Just thinking about this bizarre case makes me want to get up and punch someone.

I mean, I'm all for animal rights and humane treatment of animals. During college I was even a vegetarian for a while. Partially because of conviction, partially because I was always a veggie and carb lover. But veganism itself is an absolute extreme position to take (and, in my eyes, an unhealthful one.) My only calming thought is that perhaps the baby's parents were themselves so self-imposed malnourished that they couldn't think straight. This Op-Ed from the NYTimes expresses sentiments about this case much more eloquently than I can.

And, just in case you were looking for toothpaste with that "extra special something," look no further than China. Under the brand name "Mr. Cool", a chinese company was producing and exporting toothpaste that contained diethylene glycol, known to most of us as a poisonous component of antifreeze.

What's more, this toothpaste has shown up in at least three countries under some other names and toothpastes marketed specifically for children.

***

Perhaps the question is... is the old adage true: "The second you become comfortable on a ladder is the one right before you fall." Or does fear beget mostly only fear?

We'll see you in the next round of "Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Pimp!"

The weather with you

I've always felt particularly attuned to the weather. Today it's absolutely pouring gobs and gobs from the sky, and I feel relieved. Somehow, I've always felt that crappy weather gives you the excuse to let down your guard and just BE for a while. When I lived in particularly sunny places (Arizona, Colorado) I always felt like I was living in some sort of strange suspended animation. Perhaps like butterflies feel-- their wings reach an optimum temperature and then they start flying-- are compelled to fly-- by their appetites, not necessarily their desires.

The past two weekends I've been furiously busy feting (missing the carat above the 'e' but don't know how to make it) two toddlers and a cousin. Not that I get to feel some Oh woe is me. Love moves us to action when we perhaps otherwise would be the slug. Still, as much as I love people, love creating the environment where people get together and laugh and trade barbs, I also need the shut-down. Anyone who tries to have a conversation with me on the telephone while my son is napping can attest to my need to slip into that trance-like state. I can range from snippy to sleepy to disinterested to ornery. I bristle at any mention of being productive or accomplishing specific tasks.

I've alternately never quite understood my Dr. Jekyll/Mrs. Hyde personality and yet celebrated it. I can be no other. Just like a playful juxtaposition of motifs, it's how I keep my edge.

Mostly I am discomforted by my huge range of personal quirks when they are embodied in other people-- specifically, friends. My friends range from the very earthy to the very intellectual to the sharp dressers and professional shoppers. I can find myself at home with people in multiple combinations of these qualities. I more fear what happens when physically I get them all together.

This past weekend, spurred on by Toddler Birthday Number 2 (my own toddler this time), I dropped the perverbial mechitzah and allowed the species to intermingle. And doing so told me more about myself than it did about them, oddly enough.

Primarily, it made me think about the expectations I have about myself and what my comfort zone is.

I love new, beautiful, highly-designed things. Yet I also love and crave things that are deals, that are old and used, that have a history.

I feel most comfortable when I look "put together", yet I always want to have at least one thing that jars just a little bit, be it a little strange match or a pop of color. I never want to look trendy or overdone.

I want to be taken seriously and seen as an intellectual, yet I love potty humor and People magazine. I want to be simultaneously earthy and above it all.

All of which means some sort of a balance. Unfortunately (or fortunately, not sure which) life and feelings don't work just "in the middle". Life is all across the spectrum, and we're along for the ride. Sort of like the weather, I suppose. When there's too much sun, you need a dose of rain. So much external, you need the internal pulling you back in.

That balance also isn't always elegant. It makes me think of all those wonderful two-word film titles...: "Bread and Tulips" (wonderful film!), "Strawberry and Chocolate". Perhaps for my life, a more appropriate title would be the contents of my plastic bag this morning as I emerged from the Bavaria Sausage Company store on one of my frequent Teutonic binges: Chocolate and Sausages. Forecast: more of the same.