Only to say that because of menstrual irregularities that are probably perimenopausal I had a horrible, incredibly painful test  and have to wait 7 days for the results of the biopsy.

My doctor says it is "almost certain" that nothing is wrong and that the likelihood that I am fine is 99 percent.

It's the "almost" and that other 1 percent that are making me sick to my stomach and fearful beyond fearful.

I have to go on a road trip with my family on Tuesday. I have to celebrate my birthday with my parents and family on Wednesday. I have to celebrate Thanksgiving with them all and then sit there on Friday, waiting for the phone call to tell me my results.

And I can't let the kids know. I'm not sure I even want my mother to know.

I can't talk about this any more.

Dear Parents of Toddlers:

If it's a bright sunny day in November, just cold enough for a jacket, and you've got an active 18 month old little boy--or girl, how about taking them to the park?

Why bring them into my small story room with nothing for them to play with so that they spend their time banging on the wall, reaching for the blinds or pulling on the doorknob? Or running round the room in circles or tumbling on the floor?

Let them play outdoors, get some fresh air and sunshine. You can sit on the bench, drink your coffee,keep one eye on them and talk to the other moms and nannies, which is what you really want to do after all.

They'll nap better. And when they're relaxed and not so hyper this afternoon, you could play some of the same games I was playing this morning.

At home, where you can do "Ring Around the Rosie" 15 times if they want to. Or sing ALL the verses of "Wheels on the Bus" and make up a few new ones of your own.

They'd be happier. You'd be happier. And I'd be happier.
Because I love your kids and I hate to see them cooped up with me when it's not where they want to be on a bright Tuesday morning.

Sincerely,
The Library Lady

SC loves to take the leftovers of this for school lunches. The original recipe came from the "Desperation Dinner" ladies years ago, but my version is even simpler than theirs because I use a bag of frozen veggies rather than chopping anything. The water cooks the veggies and with the fat from the sausage, there's no need for any additional oil.

We use sweet turkey sausage but you could use the hot version too--if it was just me and the Man eating this I would myself.

Radiatore are little ruffled pasta chunks--Wegmans sells them as "ruffles" and we buy them every time we pass through Pennsylvania at an Amish supermarket. If you can't get them, rotini type pasta is the best possible substitute.

This is so easy, it barely needs a recipe:

Turkey Sausage, Peppers and Pasta

1 package turkey sausage (sweet or hot)
1 package frozen "pepper stir fry mix" (onions and peppers)
1 pound pasta--preferably radiatore or rotini

Cook the pasta according to package directions while the sausage/vegetable mix is cooking.

Put the frozen vegetables in a large, non-stick skillet. Break up the peppers and onions with your hands into smaller pieces.
Cook the vegetables on medium heat. As they defrost in the pan, remove the sausage from the casings.
As the vegetables begin to sizzle, start adding small crumbled pieces of the sausage. Keep adding them, stirring and turning the vegetables and the meat until the meat is just about cooked through.
Put the lid on the pan, reduce the heat to low and let it cook about 5 minutes more.

Top the pasta with the sausage/vegetable mix. Top with parmesan if you like.

The reference library on duty upstairs came down to tell us she'd tossed a guy out for watching inappropriate stuff on the Internet.

"It's just swimsuit models," he told her.
It wasn't just what they weren't wearing. It was the WHIPS. And what they were doing with the whips...

I am baking challah tonight by hand-- no mixer, no machine, because I needed to get my hands in the dough for therapy.

I had a garbled phone messagecall (our phones are out of wack) from a mom who was upset about my behavior when she came in w/her 18 month old. I was pissed at that moment because the room was a mess AND someone had let their child tear a book and left the book lying there. So I probably was more brusque with them about things than I should have been.

The call was garbled, so I can't call the mom back. But I did let my boss know. He gets things and if she calls him, he'll handle it for me. And if I see the mom again and recognize her I'll be my usual self--I mean, MOST people who come in think I'm pretty nice.

I  picked up the message while dealing with a story hour that was smaller than usual, where the kids pretty well sat there silently--I hate that. AND one of my all time pain in the neck brats showed up after not being around for about a year. His mom has spoiled him rotten and if he comes to story hour again I am going to insist that he either sits in the room w/the other kids--with his mom elsewhere--or that he doesn't come to that program at all!

AND I am trying to help a lady who cares for a 5 year old girl after school who apparently lives in the nearby housing project and basically has NO acquaintance with books.  Truthfully I am more interested in helping this lady and this child than I am in the other two I tangled with today--but I'll help them all however I can as best as I can.

Meanwhile my house is clean, the bread dough is rising, and I am going to order a pizza and look forward to the smell of bread wafting through my house all night!

I have a fantasy--and don't worry, it's not THAT sort of fantasy
It's to have a lovely, GROWN-UP house.

It's gotten to the point where I hate walking into Ikea. All those lovely, bright livable looking rooms--not fussy, just comfortable and functional. That's all I want. 

I mean, I'm going to be 48 come the end of the month. Shouldn't I have a living room that LOOKS like a living room? I know we have basically one large open area downstairs--just a wall that closes off the kitchen a bit--but we could have a sitting area, a dining area,something like that?

Instead we have bookcases. Bookcases and more bookcases. They cover the walls of the dining area and extend into the living room part of the room. There are more in the corner.

They're not nice, tidy cases--though doors do cover the bottom halves of a few of them. Oh, no, they have are full of books and have more books stacked on the books sideways. The corner unit has big rolls of paper sticking out of it. There are more books on top of the cases--and the cases already reach close to the ceiling.

They're full of reference books of every kind--tons of Eyewitness books. Books on graphic arts. Books on history. Books on technology. Books on science. You know, the sort of books we have at the LIBRARY? The place where I WORK?

In the spaces where there are no bookcases there are cabinets. Full of videotapes that should have long ago been replaced by DVDs--though there are plenty of those too. Never mind that we have a Netflix subscription that the Man never uses. Never mind that he scarcely ever WATCHES what he has. He won't part with them.

Our large futon sofa is half blocked because the ottoman that was SUPPOSED to hold newspapers for recycling is stuffed full of other magazines and papers--the Man's clippings . And there are boxes stacked next to the ottoman, and other stuff next to the boxes. Suffice it to say that Mama Bella the cat has her own private corner of the sofa and none of us can sit there even if we wanted to!

The book madness continues upstairs in our bedroom, where my own few bookcases are blocked by piles of books he has on the floor. and where the two bookcases he has are blocked by the multiple toolboxes he has stacked by his closet. And he can't get into his closet--no matter because the clothes he wears are stacked on top of his overflowing bureau.

Get the picture? It's not quite the Collyer Brothers, but it's close. And I can't do a thing about it.

All of this, BTW, doesn't allow for boxes and boxes of books he has in a storage space that is costing us a good $200 bucks a month--$2400 a year.  My husband has hundreds of books that he will never read, never use. Thousands of dollars worth of books--books almost always bought used, but still bought and sitting unused.

When he does weed his books--almost never--he takes them to the used bookstore, gets credit and--of course, buys more books!

What really concerns me is that this is not teaching our girls good housekeeping habits for that day when they go out into the world. They have grown up in this chaos and they have never had enough storage space of their own. Oh, they each have their own room, but SC's bookcases are full of my old kids books--no room in my own room because of the Man's stuff, and one of the closets in JR's room and several corners are full of other gear of the Man's.
I did mention the various military bags and gear? The boxes of model planes and cars? His drafting things--unused for the most part for the last 20 years...

Plus, the Man recycles everything that can be recycles. He delights in scrounging things from the condo dump--which is fine if we need them. But if we don't need them, he keeps them to give to other people. He won't use Craig's List or FreeCycle--he wants to give them to people he KNOWS!

Ack!

He needs a house of his own in truth. There's no room in our house for the rest of us.
And nagging him to do anything about it gets very little results, except that he gets pissed at me.

He's selfish about it. Surprising in someone who gives so generously to so many people in so many ways--he's the first to offer to help in just about any situation.

Mostly, I'm stuck with this. But there is one bright light in my chaotic home life. Her name is Reyna.

I haven't met Reyna, but she is the lady who now comes to clean house for me twice a month.
Her predecessor, Alma, never did as much as she was supposed to do. She got things clean, but no more.
So when Alma couldn't come and the company sent Reyna it was a revelation.

She MOVES things to clean the counters. I realized she'd reached up to clean my kitchen windowsill ledge where the plants are--not easy to do. As is making the girls' loft beds--I don't even do that. But Reyna does.

A lot of people don't like having someone in to clean because they have to "clean up" so that they can clean. But that's just why I LOVE having someone come in.

I clear all the surfaces. I hang things up, toss things out. I make the girls pick up things off the floor in their rooms. I try to clear paths so that the cleanable areas ARE cleanable.

And I will come home tonight to a shining kitchen, a sanitary beyond sanitary bathroom. Cat hair free floors and furniture--at least for a few hours.

It's not the house of my dreams by any means. But it will be warm and cozy and CLEAN, and my whole family will be there. I'll take it.

And Reyna is SO getting a huge bonus come December!

I wasn't blogging yet in the fall of 2002, but if I had been, I know I would have been writing about the"D.C. Sniper". And I'll never forget it.

I'll never forget dropping SC off at school every day, watching the kids hurry in as police patrols stood by.
I'll never forget how JR's preschool couldn't play in the playground through the beautiful fall weather.
I'll never forget what a scary experience it was just to go to the supermarket or the gas station.
How coming home at night, I'd feel a rush of relief that we were all there safe and sound for another day.

The snipers were caught just before Halloween.We usually don't get a lot of trick-or-treaters at our house--we're at the top of a staircase and people can't see my decorations. But that Halloween, we had plenty of trick-or-treaters.

We were celebrating that we were free again to enjoy the smallest, simplest pleasures of life. The sort that you don't miss until they are no longer there.

I remember it all vividly. And yet, I do not rejoice that Tuesday night John Allen Muhammad will be put to death.

I think that the folks that call themselves "pro-life" should call themselves "pro-UNBORN life" if they wanted to be truthful about it. So many of them care deeply for the unborn children, but cheer when a grown, living adult is put to death for a crime.

I don't want Muhammad to die. I want him to sit there in that prison for the rest of his life. Bereft of all the small pleasures of life.

The chance to go shopping. The chance to take a drive in your car.
The chance to watch your children walk safely into their school, to watch them grow and thrive and celebrate Halloween and Christmas and the last day of school and all the days in between.

I would like to see him live his life to a ripe old age without all the things that make life so sweet.
And I cannot take pleasure in his death.

I just saw a book on the reserve cart at the library titled "Diaper Free By 3"
And once again I wondered: "WHY?"

What is the obsession about toilet training at an early age?

I know diapers are costly. I know diapers are a pain in the neck. I know it's not fun handling pee and poop.
But is it any more pleasant to handle it on your rugs or on your kids clothing?

It's a heckuva lot easier to deal with a diaper change when traveling than it is with a kid who needs to be held on the toilet--especially if the rest rooms are less than shiny bright clean.

It's a lot easier to clean up your child at a diaper change than it is to deal with an accident in their pants.
Easier to check and see if they're wet rather than having to ask every 30 seconds "do you need to go potty?"

Kids who "train" late are just as smart as kids who train early. There's less of a power struggle in an older kid. There's better communication.

if your kid truly has bladder/bowel control, excellent communication skills and really WANT to do so at age 2, fine. Go for it. But as the mom of two (reasonably intelligent) girls trained AFTER age 3 who had NO accidents once they had learned, I say this to the rest of you.

Stop obsessing. And stick with the diapers.

Virginia is WEIRD. We have incredible wealth and the most grinding of poverty. Areas of rich diversity and other areas where folks still don't seem to have heard that the South lost the "War of Northern Aggression".

I've lived here 21 years. The first election I voted in was the one in which George Bush #1 took Virginia easily. The first election where the Presidential candidate I voted for won Virginia was 2008.

So I'm not surprised that we're going to get another nasty conservative Republican jackass for the next four years in this state.

But it didn't have to be so.

The fact is, that the same voters who were galvanized by the Obama campaign, who were dazzled by being part of such a charismatic movement, were bored by Creigh Deeds. 

They didn't see themselves as part of history. They didn't see any entertainment in it. There was no "Deeds Girl", no fabulous "Yes, We Can" slogan. No massive movement on Facebook or MySpace.

So instead of spending a few minutes to vote yesterday, they went home to watch something incredibly deep that they'd TIVOed--perhaps the latest episode of "Dancing With the Stars", or to Twitter about their latest bowel movement, or to wail on their blogs about how all the instant change they expected after Obama got into office hasn;t happened.

The Republicans are NOT Obama's worst enemy. 
The indifferent, apathetic, short attention spanned Democrats and Independants who have not stood up over the past year and shouted to the heavens  as one voice their indignation over what has been going on up on Capitol Hill and on the airwaves are what are doing us in.

We've seen teabaggers interrupting town hall meetings and marching on D.C. Where are the counter-demonstrations?

Where are the masses marching to say "We WANT health care. We WANT support for the unemployed and we want the fat cats of the banks and Wall Street to BECOME the unemployed--and without any golden parachutes either"?

They're home, in the words of the #1 song I hated: "Waiting for the world to change"

Nice going, folks.

Perhaps I AM meaner and stricter than all the mothers around here. Quite possible from what I've seen.

But when I take you and Mr Wonderful to the mall and instead of staying there, you take the Metro into DC and "go for a walk" around the monuments, what do you expect?

I was all prepared to let you go with him to DC and go to the Newseum. It's just that you didn't have your plans in place early enough, and getting at 2PM to a museum that costs $13 admission and closes at 5PM was not a good plan.

And I had point blank said you couldn't just wander around. You needed somewhere to go when making a trip like that for the first time. And we needed to know where you were!

SC, you violated our trust. You want more freedom, but you can't be trusted to do as you're told and to not do things we've told you not to do.

And it's got nothing to do with the fact that you were with Mr Wonderful, though you think that explains everything on both sides. I'd be just as pissed if you'd done this with any of your female friends!

So you're not going to be taking any more weekend trips with the boy. You're not going to the movies, or anywhere out of the neighborhood, even if there is "nothing to do" around here.

Hope you had a great time, baby. Because it's going to have to last you until your 15th birthday in February. I'm not even sure I'm going to let you see him outside of school.

Damnit, I wish your Nanay was here to help me on this. But my guess is that she's cheering me on, wherever she is.

I know you're mad at me. I can deal with it. Because I'm thinking of what I need to do to raise you to be a responsible, thinking adult.

And I love you with all my heart--more than you will ever know.

Mom