Always an Editor

Caution: Merge ahead

2009-02-16T13:31:00.000-08:00

Some of you know that I have two blogs: Making Do, where I post about things that I make, and this one, which is where I post about . . . um . . . everything else. The more I've thought about it, though, the more I've realized that dividing my life up like this doesn't make sense to me. So in the interests of making my life simpler--and in the hopes of posting more frequently--I've decided to merge them.

From now on I'll post only to Making Do. I've chosen that one just because I like the name better. When I have some spare time (which should be in about 2034), I'll look into actually merging the old posts into one blog. But I'll keep this blog up for now so that the links to it will still work.

So if you're looking for me, or just want to see pictures of my cats, come on over to Making Do!

One of those days

2009-02-03T20:01:00.000-08:00

Today has been one of those days. It started at 5:00 this morning when Jamie invited a strange cat in through the cat door and they woke me up with their partying. Later in the morning I broke one of my favorite bowls, part of a set that isn’t made anymore. I burned a finger and a whole batch of croutons. And much of the evening has been spent helping a teary child, overtired and overwhelmed with homework. I’ve accomplished very little of what I set out to do when I got out of bed this morning (the second time, when the alarm went off).

But if—in these days of economic crisis, conflict, and crimes against strangers that were once unimaginable—these are the traumas of my day, then I’m living a pretty blessed life.

The other night I saw something on the news that moved me to tears. Yes, yes, I know I’ve been known to cry at the dump and during sappy scenes in sitcoms, but this really was moving. During a story about Gaza, a reporter stood in front of a large pile of rubble, the remains of a building. And on top of that pile stood a group of school-aged girls playing a clapping game, just like my daughter and her friends do. I could imagine them chanting the Arabic equivalent of “Miss Mary Mack.”

Ever since I’ve had kids, whenever there is some kind of crisis in the world—a war, a natural disaster, a famine—I think of the mothers who are trying to raise their children in those conditions, and of the children whose childhoods are so drastically affected. Seeing those girls making the best of their situation, I felt both sadness and hope.

Eleven years ago

2009-01-20T11:20:00.000-08:00

Eleven years ago last week, we were stricken by the stomach flu, one by one. I was almost eight and a half months pregnant. At the end of the week, my to-do list was pretty much untouched. My hospital bag was not packed. The house was a mess. And, choosing to stay home and throw up instead, I had missed the appointment with my midwife where we were supposed to go over what to expect during labor—things I had learned two and a half years before in prenatal classes but ended up not needing due to an unexpected C-section.

Eleven years ago yesterday, Child One and I went out for our weekly trip to the muffin shop and then to the park. As I watched him run around, his cheeks bright red in the cold, I thought about how he had only two and a half weeks left as an only child. I wondered how his life would change—would it be for the better?

Eleven years ago last night, I felt strange, anxious. I wasn’t worried or upset. It was a physical anxiousness. I was sick again and figured that maybe I wasn’t really over that flu.

Eleven years ago this morning, I called the midwife to reschedule that day’s appointment because I’d been sick during the night and hadn’t slept well. We still had plenty of time to go over labor and delivery, right?

Wrong. Eleven years ago this afternoon, I went into labor. I immediately started doing laundry and tidying up the house (the logic of a mother in labor), and packed my bag.

My midwife came. Child Two was head down, but was facing sideways instead of backwards like she should be. The midwife told us that 90% of babies in this position travel 270 degrees to face the right way. Also, this was my first real labor, since Child One (who was being delivered prematurely due to a diagnosis of intrauterine growth retardation that, thankfully, turned out to be wrong) went into distress while I was still in early labor, and I was whisked to the operating room.

My midwife told us to expect a long night of back labor. She went home to grab a quick dinner, planning to come back in an hour and stay with us through the night until it was time to go to the hospital.

Wrong again. Less than half an hour after she left, and only about two hours after my first contraction, I was suddenly in the pushing stage. Now, I didn’t remember all the details I’d learned in prenatal classes, but I distinctly remembered that there were supposed to be three stages of labor. Somehow, we had skipped the long, drawn-out middle stage altogether, going right from early labor to pushing.

Eleven years ago this evening, the midwife rushed back to our house, examined me again, and gave us the news that we weren’t going to make it to the hospital. An unplanned home birth? After having had a C-section? Yikes. Her partner arrived, all dressed up—she’d left a family dinner to come, because they always did home births together. As a rule, though, they didn’t do home births after C-sections; in fact, this would be their first. But it was either that or take the risk of the baby being born en route.

Our living room was transformed into a delivery room. As I lay on the (new) couch, unable to even make it to the bedroom, my husband found the plastic sheeting the couch had come in to put under me. Every towel in the house was pressed into service (I knew I did that laundry for a reason). A portable incubator and an oxygen tank were brought in from the midwife’s car, just in case. The hospital was alerted and an ambulance was ready to come if my incisions ruptured. Through all the activity and through my less-than-stoic reactions to the pain, the cat slept on a pile of blankets in the corner.

Nothing went wrong. Eleven years ago tonight, Child Two came—on her own terms and at her own time. Eleven years ago tonight, Child One was brought home by friends to meet his sister for the first time and to give her her very first birthday present: a stuffed monkey that he had picked out himself and that today hangs above her bed. And eleven years ago tomorrow morning, I woke up in my own bed with Child Two beside me. My bag still sat at the front door.

From the beginning, Child Two has not been one to run with the crowd. She didn’t care that most babies in her position take the long way around. I can just imagine her thinking, “Hey, this other way is quicker!” And so what if everyone else goes through three stages to get out? Not her.

How fitting, then, that today, eleven years after her dramatic entrance, she chose to wear a shirt that proclaims in huge letters, “BE YOURSELF!” I hope she always will be herself, because she is a truly wonderful self.

Wordless Wednesday #28--Sunflowers

2009-01-14T08:56:00.000-08:00

Taken September 15, 2007, in West Vancouver, BC.

We've had snow on the ground for over four weeks now. My front yard still looks like it's covered in marshmallow sundae topping. The snowbank in front of the house is no longer taller than I am, but it's going to be there for days yet, if not longer. Most of the snow is in the dirty, crusty, been-around-much-too-long stage. And although buried lawns and shrubs are slowly starting to reappear, my neighbourhood is drab and gray. This picture is a reminder of what's to come.

For another one of my Wordless Wednesday photos, see my other blog. For other people's, see wordlesswednesday.com.

Is a cell phone a musical instrument?

2009-01-08T22:19:00.000-08:00

I was planning to write a post today about my plans and non-resolutions for the new year, something reflective and maybe even a little profound. But then I got distracted, spending a good portion of the day sorting out a situation with Child One’s cell phone that was brought about by his love of music.

I’ve written before about the fact that both my kids are very musical. Sometimes their talent borders on the bizarre. For example, a couple of years ago our trusty old vacuum, which was duct-taped and repaired to within an inch of its life, became unusable. The new one is okay, but there’s one thing I hate about it: It emits a horrible noise, a high-pitched squealy kind of noise so awful to my ear that I’m tempted to buy an iPod just so I can wear it while I’m vacuuming.

A few weeks ago I heard Child One squealing along with the vacuum. He told me that he’d figured out that the vacuum made a high E, and now when it’s on, he’ll sing that note and hold it until I want to duct-tape him. Then Child Two told me that she likes to sing along to the vacuum too. What is wrong with these kids?

Child One hasn’t taken piano lessons, but he likes to pick out songs by ear on his sister’s piano. And since we bought him a cell phone in September when he started high school, he’s done the same on his phone. Remember when push-button phones first came on the market (please tell me you’re old enough to remember that) and we all learned to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” by pushing the right sequence of numbers? It’s quite amazing the songs he can get out of that cell phone keypad.

Well, last night he came to us, saying that his phone wasn’t working. After spending quite a lot of time on hold listening to “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” and other great tunes from my early childhood, I finally got through to a support person at the wireless company, who determined that Child One had somehow managed to enter the code that locks his phone’s SIM card. Locks it tight. Or “hard locks” it, as the term apparently goes. Meaning it couldn’t be unlocked and we had to buy a new card for $40.

Here I’d been worried that he’d accidentally call China or Australia or an equally expensive place while figuring out how to play some classic rock tune. I had no idea that he could actually break his phone.

It worked out okay, though. When I got home from getting his phone fixed, I found a message on our machine saying that the $40 parking ticket I got a few weeks ago had been cancelled. Twit that I am, I’d accidentally placed my parking stub upside down on my dashboard, and the parking company had, to my surprise, taken mercy on me when I appealed the ticket. So the money I would have spent fixing my mistake could go to fixing his.

Child One may have inherited his musical ability from his dad, but he definitely inherited his ability to be a twit from me.

Wordless Wednesday #27--Snowy beach

2009-01-07T09:07:00.000-08:00

Taken December 19, 2008, in North Vancouver, BC.

For another one of my Wordless Wednesday photos, see my other blog. For other people's, see wordlesswednesday.com.

Starting the new year with homemade bread

2009-01-01T19:52:00.000-08:00

What could be better on a snowy New Year's Day than warm-from-the-oven bread? Not much, according to Child Two, who is in the kitchen right now cutting herself another piece.

Earlier today I came across a One-Hour French Bread recipe on the Simple, Frugal, Green Co-Op blog. I used to (before kids) make most of our bread, so yeast doesn't scare me one bit. But even if you've never made yeast bread before, try this recipe. It's truly easy.

Photo taken December 24, 2008.

The end of the year

2008-12-31T12:42:00.000-08:00

My goal for the end of the year was to be able to take some time off over my kids’ Christmas break without the constant feeling that I should be working. So November was “Enough trying to do everything at once, already!” month. My priority was work and almost everything else just had to give—hobbies, reading, taking photos, staying in touch with faraway friends. And blogs, both the reading and the writing of (my blog reader has given up trying to keep track of how behind I am, telling me only that I have a total of “1000+” unread posts in the blogs I subscribe to).

There are almost no pictures on my camera between this one

Taken October 25, 2008, in Burnaby, BC.

and this one.

Black bench, white snow. Taken December 19, 2008, in North Vancouver, BC.

Due to the hell-inducing project mentioned in my last post, “Enough trying to do everything at once, already!” month spilled over into December, merging with “Enough Christmas mayhem, already!” We’ve never been a family for consumeristic Christmases, but this year we scaled back yet again. Between work, the cold that never ends (please let it end soon; I’m tired of coughing), the usual slew of Christmas performances to attend, and being snowed in, there just hasn’t been time for as much shopping or for writing so many Christmas cards.

The result of all this is that, for the first time in years, there are no longer several large projects pitching battles for space in my schedule. I’m starting the new year with a reasonable amount of work and a much-improved ability to say no to my clients when I need to. This is one of the most important outcomes of my Year of Living Differently.

Because of the unusual amount of snow we’ve been getting, most of my time off has been spent shovelling, learning how to put chains on the car, and crossing my fingers that we’ll be able to drive to within walking distance of the house whenever we go out, but still—time off! Just like I used to be at the end of every term during my ridiculous number of years in university, I’ve felt a little lost, at loose ends, not sure what to do first.

The intensity of my work over the last couple of months has also made it hard for me to write. Sometimes spending so much energy on other people’s words makes it difficult for me to find my own. And I’ve been going through some adolescent blog-angst, wondering whether I should combine my blogs or even whether I should start blogging again at all.

As the year comes to an end, though, I’m finding my feet. I’ve taken some pictures. I’ve done some knitting. I’ve slept a lot. And now I’m planning for the new year.

Is it hot in here?

2008-10-29T09:21:00.000-07:00

I have not fallen off the face of the earth, although I'm kind of wishing I had. I am working on a project from hell. I can't say anything specific about it, of course. All I can say is that my little office has become an inferno of bad writing that needs to be made good. And like any true hellish form of punishment, it's lasting an eternity. I'm now feverishly trying to get what is supposed to be the last (please, God, let it be the last) round of substantial editing done.

I could swear I just heard Beelzebub laughing from behind the filing cabinet.

I must have done something terrible in a previous life, because I'm paying for it now.

Green Friday--Working with the weather

2008-10-17T17:29:00.000-07:00

The weather and I don’t always get along. I’ve been known to garden in the rain and to stand over a hot stove making jam on the hottest day of the year. Lately, though, I’ve been trying to think of ways that I can work with the weather to decrease the amount of resources that I use.

For example, we’ve always been ones to hang our laundry outside, if we happen to do our laundry on a sunny day. Now I keep an eye on the extended forecast and try to save the laundry for days when I can put it out for at least a few hours. Given that we live in a place with an average of 154.5 days of precipitation a year, this isn’t always possible. And sometimes, through a lack of planning or a spell of bad weather, someone runs out of clean underwear and a load just has to be done no matter what it’s doing outside. But there are some weeks in which the dryer has hardly any work at all and I would guess that we use it maybe 50% of the time we would if we were using it to dry all our laundry.

My office is cold—so cold that my fingers sometimes go numb and it’s hard to type. It doesn’t help that the only thermostat for the whole house is upstairs, where it’s brighter and warmer, and my office is downstairs, where it’s darker and colder. In the past, when it got cold enough that a couple more layers of clothes couldn’t keep me from shivering, I either turned up the heat for the whole house (which I hate to do, since it’s a big waste) or kept a space heater near me all day (which I don’t like much either, since it’s noisy). Now I take my laptop upstairs on cold days. Two added benefits are that (a) on particularly gloomy days, of which we have many, it’s much nicer to be upstairs and (b) I get extra exercise—and generate heat—by running downstairs several times a day for reference books, files, or the chocolate bar I’ve hidden in my desk.

If I’m planning to do some baking, I try to do it on a cold day rather than a warm one. Our oven is a 1970s classic and not very efficient, so it makes sense to have it leaking heat on a cold day instead of when the house is already warm enough. It heats up our tiny kitchen so well that I can do my work at the table and turn the heat down a little bit in the rest of the house.

Child Two and I walk to school whenever we can, but when it’s really raining, we drive. Now that the fall weather is truly here, that’s happening more often. If I have errands to do in that direction, I save them for the days we drive so that I can drop her off at school on the way and not use any extra gas. Errands that are closer to home I save for nicer days and I walk instead of taking the car.

I can’t control the weather. I have to stand at the sidelines at soccer games and cross country meets no matter how hard it’s raining (why can’t my kids pick indoor sports?). But in trying to work with the weather, I’m finding that, in addition to saving some energy, I’m a little more appreciative of the variety we have here. I’m grateful as I hang out the laundry on a sunny day and I enjoy the coziness of a warm kitchen on a rainy one.

Enough, already!--Month eight

2008-10-01T11:32:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am being completely wordy on Wordless Wednesday yet again. It’s the eighth month of my “Enough, already!” project and this month—strange as it may sound—I’ve decided say “Enough reality, already!”

I don’t know if I can explain this clearly, although it makes sense in my own head. It’s based on two concepts I’ve come across in several different places. The first is acting “as if”—the idea is that if you don’t know how to do something, or don’t want to do it, you act as if you can or you want to until you learn how or start enjoying it or get it finished. The second is the idea that your experience of what is going on around you is heavily affected by the filters you see it through, and those filters are based on your past experiences, your relationships with others, and so on. I’ve heard this idea before but lately I’ve been coming across it over and over: online, in magazine articles, in books. I’m taking it as a message from the universe (self-centered, aren’t I, thinking that the universe is sending me messages again?).

I’ve been trying this out to see how I can use it. Take, for example, walking. Not the actual physical act of walking—even though I’m a total klutz and have been known to trip on air, I’m pretty successful at walking most of the time. For the past few years I’ve been wanting to exercise more by going for regular walks. But I don’t have the time. Really, truly, if I compare all the things I have to do with the amount of time in the day, I do not have time to go for walks—I barely have time to go to the bathroom. But since school started, I’ve been acting as if I do have the time and going right ahead and doing it.

I’ve also been spending more time cooking and crafting and gardening. In reality, I don’t have time for them. But I’m doing them anyway and somehow my schedule is shifting to fit them in.

These concepts work in other ways too. In reality, I’m a person who usually heads straight to the cookie jar for a snack. But now I’m acting as if I’m the kind of person who eats some fruit first. In reality, my sewing room is a cluttered mess, a fact that is often enough to stop me from working on a project. But now I’m acting as if I can find what I need—looking until I do and slowly but surely getting things in order as I look.

I’m refusing to accept the reality that I live with psychotic, plant-killing cats. I potted up some cuttings from our never-say-die spider plant and planted seeds for a kitchen herb garden and I will find a way to have plants in my house again (I am staying in touch with reality enough to plant only things that won’t harm the monsters).

I’m also refusing to accept the reality that over the years I’ve become very disorganized. Because I’m acting as if I were the old organized me, I now find myself filing papers instead of piling them on my desk and writing things down instead of trying (and failing) to remember them.

I’m finding that these concepts work well in dealing with people too. If, for example, when I ask my son to take out the garbage, I speak as if I expect him to remember and follow through, he’s more likely to do just that than if I’m thinking “I know he’s going to forget, just like he usually does.” If, when I’m talking to someone I’ve had bad communication patterns with in the past, instead of interpreting this person’s words and actions through the filter I normally use (and reacting accordingly, whether it’s warranted or not) I act as if we are perfectly capable of having a constructive conversation, we are less likely to fall into our old pattern.

So this month I’m going to ignore reality and live in my own happy little world—one in which people are mostly reasonable and cooperative, I’m organized and eat more fruit than cookies, I have time to do the things I love, and, I hope, a few plants escape death by feline.

Guess who came to dinner?

2008-09-22T21:09:00.001-07:00

Carmi’s Thematic Photographic theme of the week is nature and, boy oh boy, did we have some nature in our backyard tonight.

(I’m sitting here laughing at my own joke, which is funny to no one else but me because you all haven’t seen my backyard. My backyard is full of nature. We’ve got a forest back there, with trees that tower over our house and make me nervous when the wind comes up. We’ve got a little creek. We’ve got a tree stump big enough to seat four for a formal dinner. We’ve got bushes and flowers and berries and grass and squirrels and birds and neighborhood cats and wandering dogs and lots and lots of weeds. Considering we live in a metropolitan area, our backyard is a virtual Nature City, which is itself an oxymoron. Okay, I’ll stop now.)

Anyway, tonight we had some extra nature. Child Two and I had just come in the side door (which, as its name would imply, is between the front yard and the back) after her piano lesson when my husband said, “Make sure the door is shut. There’s a bear in the backyard.”

Child Two ran downstairs to the window. I ran upstairs for the camera. Then I heard some kids riding their bikes in front of our house, so I ran out to tell them to go inside until the bear was gone. Then I ran downstairs just as the bear went behind the playhouse and into the forest.

I missed it! And for nothing—those darn kids didn’t go inside anyway. We get evidence of bears in our yard, if you know what I mean (it’s no fun cleaning that up, let me tell you), but this was our first bear sighting in over a year and I didn’t see anything.

A while later, when I went onto the deck to bring the laundry in, I saw that the bear was back. I ran inside for the camera—which, for some ridiculous and unprecedented reason, I had actually put away (when do I ever do that?)—and ran downstairs. This time, I saw him (or her—I’m not sure, as there were no babies around and it’s hard to see the defining bits under all that fur).

Most of the pictures are blurry since I was panting from all that running, and I was shooting through a window in less-than-great light. And most of the picture are of his/her bum as he/she ate the few blackberries on our bushes. And there was a big splotch of something on his/her flank, which, in our benevolence, we’re assuming is mud. But still, here are the best ones.

It's time to fatten up for winter. At this time of year, black bears spend up to 20 hours a day eating, consuming up to 20,000 calories every day. It's slim pickings this year; the berry crops are very small due to a wet spring and summer.

Here you can see part of the forest. By the way, that weed in the foreground is not 20 feet tall. There's a big slope between the house and the bottom part of the yard.

Our visitor followed up his berry dinner with a mouthful of grass for dessert.

We can't help getting excited to see such amazing creatures in our own backyard, even though we know it would be better for them if they didn't live in such close proximity to humans. It's been a very hard summer for the bears; a lack of food has led some to be much bolder than normal and several have been shot. People's ignorance doesn't help them any, either. We hope this one can safely make it through to hibernation.

Don't just sit there!

2008-09-19T11:18:00.000-07:00

Deep vein thrombosis. Pulmonary embolism. Not sexy or funny subjects, but the topic of many news stories this week after the surgeon general put out a call to action to prevent these life-threatening conditions.

You might think this is a problem only for the jet-setting crowd (does anyone actually say jet-setting anymore?). But let me tell you, it’s not. Anyone who stays put for a long time—in an airplane, in a business meeting, sitting in front of a computer—even during the three-hour long The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers—is at risk for developing a blood clot.

I’m going to tell you the story of my blood clot. If you don’t want to read all the way through my verbosity, just take this message to heart: Deep vein thrombosis affects up to 600,000 people in the U.S. every year. One in every 100 of them dies. For untreated DVT, the rate is much higher.

Don’t sit still, people!

Several years ago, as I sat in a crowded classroom for a full-day class, my left leg fell asleep so badly that I wondered what I would do if it didn’t wake up before the class ended. Crawl to my car? Ask a classmate to carry me? Sit there until my husband came to find me?

Two weeks later, I woke up in the early hours of a Saturday with a cramp in that leg. Or at least I thought it was cramp. But it didn’t go away, not that night or the next day or the next.

Since I was on the Pill and had read the little brochure that warns about blood clots, I called my doctor’s office first thing Monday morning. The earliest appointment the receptionist would give me was on Wednesday.

Thinking that it was just a muscle thing and no cause for panic, I tried to get rid of the pain while I waited for the appointment. I stretched. I walked and walked. I massaged my calf.

I drove to and from my all-Saturday class 100 miles away, working the clutch through heavy San Francisco traffic. It’s amazing that I didn’t suffer an embolism right there in the middle of 19th Avenue.

I almost had to beg to get the ultrasound. Due to the illogical rules of our insurance company, the doctor couldn’t order the test to find out if I had a blood clot unless she was almost certain that I had a blood clot. And she wasn’t. I was too young. I didn’t smoke. There was no family history. I hadn’t taken a long flight or suffered a blow to the leg.

I tried logic: This was a life-threatening condition, not the common cold. Eventually she agreed and I got the test that afternoon.

For me, a mom of a kindergartner and a toddler, the ultrasound was like a spa treatment. Lying in a quiet, darkened room as a very handsome technician put goop on my legs, I almost fell asleep. He told me that my doctor would get the results that evening.

The next morning, I called the office and left a message. I called again and again. Finally, at 6:30 pm, after another day of running around and potentially dying, I got a call. The doctor told me to lie down with my leg at a 35-degree angle, right now. Get someone to pick up a prescription for a blood thinner, right now. Go to a special clinic first thing in the morning to learn how to inject myself with a second blood thinner. And for goodness’ sake, move as little as possible.

I’d had that clot for two and a half weeks before I learned that there was indeed a reason to panic. I can only be thankful that it hurt like hell, because for some people the first sign of a clot is collapse.

And so started six months of a scary anticlotting medication. My body needed such a large dose that the nurse practitioner in my doctor’s office said “Holy shit!” when she asked me about it (aren’t they taught that saying “Holy shit” is not a confidence-instilling response?).

I had to watch my diet and other medications carefully to avoid dangerous interactions. I wore a very fashionable Medic-Alert bracelet, so that people would know that I could easily bleed to death, and lovely compression stockings to keep the blood in my legs from pooling. I gave myself shots in the abdomen (and was very grateful for that roll of baby fat still hanging around). I met a lot of great lab technicians as I went for the blood tests that made sure the medication was balanced (daily for the first few months, then every other day, then twice a week, and finally once a week for last few weeks).

I was told to avoid activities that could involve falls, bumps, or other trauma: no horseback riding, bike riding, motorcycle riding, waterskiing. Not so hard. But also no cutting myself, no bumping into things, no falling down (if you know me, you know what a complete klutz I am). I was told to use an electric razor because a regular one was too dangerous. A few weeks in, I got hit hard in the head with a soccer ball and spent a day wondering if my brain was bleeding.

For the first two weeks, until the medication was balanced and the clot was stabilized, I was supposed to remain as motionless as possible, while somehow also driving myself to the hospital, taking care of my kids, working, going to school, and watching for signs of an embolism (chest pain, difficulty breathing, dizziness, falling down dead). I was told that “any movement of your foot or leg can send that clot flying through your veins and into your lungs or brain” (more stellar bedside manner from my medical team). I carefully considered every trip to the bathroom and to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Just how desperate was I for that cup of tea?

I also got to be a pushy self-advocate with a doctor who, going through some issues of her own that eventually led her to take a personal leave, made life-threatening mistakes with my medication, and with a receptionist team who didn’t appreciate my daily calls to the office for blood test results. I had learned hard lessons about advocacy during my first pregnancy and I was more than willing to be “that woman” who called until she got an answer.

Now, over seven years later, I still have post-thrombotic syndrome caused by permanent damage to the vein where the clot was. If I sit on the floor too long, I can feel the blood pool in that vein. My leg often aches; high-impact exercise and yoga cause it to hurt for days (on the bright side, I have a great excuse for not jogging!). I'll never be allowed to take estrogen again, in case it was a factor. I’m at higher risk for developing another clot and any time the pain is particularly bad or long lasting, I start to worry. I can’t sit still for long periods of time, which, because I work at home, means I make frequent trips to the kitchen “to stretch my legs” (= to get a cookie). I constantly nag my kids not to let their extremities go to sleep.

Before I went through this experience, I had no idea of the dangers of sitting still or crossing my legs. If I hadn't been on the Pill at the time, I would probably have ignored the pain, maybe with dire consequences. The moral of this very long story is this: Be aware of the causes and symptoms of deep vein thrombosis, and get up and move around!

Improg word: Euphoria

2008-09-16T11:47:00.000-07:00

Last week’s improg word was euphoria. I waited all week for some euphoria-inducing event to happen so I could write about it. How about getting up at 6:30 on Sunday morning for Child Two’s soccer game? Or maybe getting the dreaded grocery shopping done? Pulling out a huge pile of the morning glory that is not-so-slowly taking over my garden and heading across the lawn toward the blackberries?

Is my life glamorous or what?

As I usually do, being the glam language geek that I am, I looked up the improg word. Here’s what Merriam-Webster has to say:

euphoria (n.): a feeling of well-being or elation, especially one that is groundless, disproportionate to its cause, or inappropriate to one's life situation.

And, as I usually do, I learned something new. I had thought that euphoria was extreme happiness—the kind of thing you experience when you realize that those are your lottery tickets numbers on the TV screen—or the feeling you get from altered-state inducing substances, which I don’t do (anymore). But if you want to be technical about it, jumping up and down when you win the lottery is not true euphoria because it’s completely appropriate.

Now, if you want to talk about happiness disproportionate to its cause—well, that I do experience on a regular basis. I know I’ll feel it tonight, at my first belly dancing class since May. Just being in that room with the noise of the music and everyone’s hip scarves, struggling to do glute squeezes or getting dizzy doing spins or constantly picking up the cane (I don’t dare dance with a sword) that will not stay on my head—I blame it one the silkiness of my hair, of course—is enough to give me a feeling of well-being or elation that some would think is disproportionate to its cause.

I felt it one day last week when, as my mom and I walked to my car after an appointment, we passed a florist’s shop and saw plants covered in baby cucumbers. We each bought one. I felt a disproportionate happiness from the sight of my mom, who is easily embarrassed and much too concerned with what others think of her, walking down the busiest street in town carrying a plant that she could hardly see around (I firmly believe that doing things like this is good for her psyche). And when I brought my own plant home, I euphorically kept going out on my deck to look at it. I am smitten with those baby cukes.

I felt it again yesterday when I checked the Improgging site and saw that last week’s word was still up. Since the Improgging Fool is like that cool teacher who lets you hand in your assignments late, this means that I can keep my perfect improgging score.

Green Friday--One step at a time

2008-09-12T14:11:00.000-07:00

Now that the school year has started, the dreary, rainy, late-summer days have given way to sunny, dry, glorious ones. Of course. That’s life here in Vancouver.

Child Two and I have decided that this year we are going to walk to and from school as much as we can, driving only when we have a very compelling reason to do so, such as needing the car for a bunch of errands or an after-school appointment, having to carry something heavy or fragile, or very bad weather. If the weather is downright awful, however, we’ll be walking because we won’t be able to get the car off our road.

I used to walk everywhere I could. I would bundle my kids in the stroller to go to the grocery store, the library, the fabric store (doesn’t everyone make regular walking trips to the fabric store?), the video place—if it was at all feasible to walk, we would. Then we lived in California for five years, in a neighborhood where the only store within walking distance was 7-11. We couldn’t even walk to school.

Back in B.C., my kids were placed in a school not far from our house, directly uphill (and when I say “uphill,” I really mean “upmountain”). Getting there just about required grappling hooks and climbing ropes or whatever it is that mountain climbers use. I would often scale that slope to pick the kids up in the afternoon, holding tightly onto Child Two’s hand on the way back so she didn’t trip and roll all the way down. Climbing up in the morning was just too much for their short legs.

When that school closed, we moved to one in the next neighborhood over. It’s a longer walk and requires us to go both uphill and downhill each way, with two rather nasty hills on the way there. As with the other school, I often walked there (the hard direction) to pick them up, and on many mornings we parked just over the second bad hill and walked the rest of the way. But this year we agreed to try walking all the way as much as we could.

We decided to do this because of the obvious benefits. By my very rough calculations (made even rougher by the need to convert from imperial to metric—I came to metric late in my childhood and haven’t yet mastered it), if we walk an average of 50% of the time, we’ll save about $100 worth of gas this school year, not to mention reducing the amount of wear and tear on the car and the emissions it’s pumping out.

We’ve added a huge amount of exercise to our week—when we walk in both the morning and afternoon, I’m totalling 80 minutes a day, much of it uphill. We’ve both noticed that those nasty hills are getting easier—we hardly even slow down now.

We’re discovering some unexpected benefits, too. Our morning trip is not the frenzied rush it used to be. No longer am I trying to cram one more thing in before we go. We have to leave on time or we face dire consequences—hurrying up the hills, oh no!

Instead of driving past our neighbors, we’re walking past and saying hello. And, even more importantly to Child Two, we’re getting to know the cats and dogs along our route.

As we huff and puff, we talk about all sorts of things, from the environment to how overscheduled kids are today to what cats think about. When Child Two brings a friend home, the walk is full of laughter. She and her friends have started a new tradition: they find a good rock, kick it between them all the way home, and then put it in a special place in the garden.

On the way home in the morning, I think about what I’m going to be doing that day and find it much easier to focus when I start work. This is one of the things I miss most from my days of walking wherever I could: the transition between one place and another—a time to organize my thoughts, look at my neighbors’ gardens, and just enjoy the quiet.

We’re taking our effort to live in more sustainable way one step at a time. And a lot of what we do out of concern for the earth’s well-being has a big impact on our own as well.

Enough already--Month seven

2008-09-11T21:12:00.000-07:00

The great house decluttering that we started in the summer is progressing—slowly, yes, but progressing nonetheless. This month I’ve decided to declutter by theme instead of by room. We’ve got a lot of paper in this house—books, magazines, patterns, work files, old term papers, kindergarten drawings, scraps with scrawled phone numbers, instruction manuals for things we no longer own. There’s enough paper here to start a serious bonfire (not that I would, since backyard burning is not allowed in our town). My computer, too, is stuffed full of paper of the virtual kind— thousands of old emails, unsorted photos, and outdated files. So this month's “Enough, already!” rallying cry is “Enough information, already!” as I try to keep my head above the piles while I sort, shred, file, give away, and recycle.

Of course, I can’t really say “Enough!” to information. My whole professional life has centered around information and I’m an addict. But what’s the use of collecting knowledge, ideas, and inspiration if it’s all so disorganized that you can’t find those darn instructions for propagating fuchsias or your third cousin’s address or that book (or, in my case, books) on funny word origins when you need them?

Shredding old tax returns is not really my idea of fun. But it’s not all drudgery. Since I can’t give up multitasking entirely, I’m combining this idea with my attempt to make more time for ponytail-requiring activities by going through the humungous file of recipe clippings I’ve been collecting for years and years. I have so many that the file is almost wider than this cat:

Like the general decluttering, this job won't get done in a month. But I'm expecting that by October 1st my recycle bin will be bulging and I'll be well on my way to making better use of the information I decide to keep.

Wordless Wednesday #26--Faded hearts

2008-09-10T10:13:00.001-07:00

Taken February 17, 2008, in Vancouver, BC.

This photo is also being posted for Carmi's Thematic Photographic

theme of the week, faded.

For another one of my Wordless Wednesday photos, see my other blog. For other people's, see wordlesswednesday.com.

Catching up

2008-09-03T21:59:00.000-07:00

I participate in three memes most weeks: improgging, Wordless Wednesday, and Thematic Photographic. Recently though, my meme fulfillment has been spotty. First, we took two trips out of town in just over a week—we were out, we were in very briefly, we were out again.

This was followed by a week of gearing up for the start of the school year and extracurricular activities, which involved much shopping: soccer gear, dance clothes, a flute, school supplies, shoes (how the heck did my son get big enough to require adult size shoes, and why do men’s soccer cleats cost twice as much as boys’? Is there twice as much material in a shoe one size bigger? I don’t think so). . . . The list was as long as my Christmas shopping list, and my credit card bill will be, too. We also squeezed in some outings which we’d meant to do all summer but hadn’t gotten around to.

Now it’s the first week of school, which means hours spent filling out forms (which are, for the most part, exactly the same as the forms I filled out last year, and the year before, and the year before that) and writing cheques. Really, for the form-filling-out, cheque-writing parent, the first week of school is just one big case of writer’s cramp.

I’ve also had to accompany Child One to his high-school orientation (how the heck did he get old enough to be in high school?). Yes, a parent was supposed to go—I didn’t just tag along. I did, however, find myself having a small anxiety attack about what I should wear, until I realized that I was not the one going to school with a bunch of adolescent fashion mavens.

And—oh, joy—soccer season has started. As manager of Child Two’s team, I am busy this week picking up equipment, updating the first aid kit, assigning snack days, emailing parents, printing up more of those forms we all dread filling out, and demanding that parents grip a pen in their now-clawlike hands one more time to write a deposit cheque before I hand them a uniform.

Even in a normal week I have a limited amount of time for blogging—that is, if I want to get my work done without my clients hanging over my virtual shoulder, wondering why the heck I’m writing about random words instead of polishing their prose. And because of that, I sometimes feel hemmed in by these memes. I have something I want to say—but, darn it, it’s Wordless Wednesday so I have to keep my mouth shut. I took a great picture—but darn it, today is the only chance I’ll have all week to post something related to the theme and this picture just doesn’t work. I have a great topic for a blog post—but darn it, how will I ever fit the word kumquat into it?

Now, I know that most people—normal people, those without the horrible drive for that 100% mark that often made me crazy during my ridiculous number of years in university—would say, “I don’t feel like doing that meme this week, so I won’t.” But even if I try to fool myself with such carefree bravado, inside it’s bothering me that I haven’t blogged about the word saving or posted a photo that fits the “poignant” theme.

Then, just like when I was in high school, I get the urge to rebel. This morning I declared, “I will go memeless this week!” (not related at all to going topless, thank goodness). And at first I revelled in the thought of all the non-meme-related things I could write about. I don’t have to write about the word coupon! Or post a water-themed photo! But as the day wore on, I knew that my mind wouldn’t rest until I at least got caught up on those improgging words.

So now I have managed to work the three improgging words I missed into one blog post, restoring my 100% participation rate—that is, unless the Improgging Fool takes marks off for late assignments.

Green Friday--A Safer Beauty Routine

2008-08-29T11:53:00.000-07:00

Most of us use dozens of chemicals on our skin, teeth, and hair every day, without any real knowledge of what they are or how they can affect us or the environment. It’s hard to decipher ingredients lists, if they’re even given, and to figure out which products are safer than others.

It seems that every year we’re told that things we thought were safe actually aren’t. The cosmetics industry is not regulated as strictly as the food industry—neither for its ingredients nor for the accuracy of its claims—and some companies use known carcinogens and other toxic chemicals in their products. Many other ingredients, while not proven to cause health problems, have been associated with them in scientific studies. And for a lot of what we pour, rub, or brush onto ourselves, and then wash down the drain, we just don’t know if they are safe for long-term use.

The Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database, maintained by the Environmental Working Group, can help you evaluate products you use every day: soaps, make-up, shampoos, toothpaste, nail polish, hair color, baby products, and so on. They rate products according to known or suspected hazards, based on databases of government and academic research studies on their ingredients.

You can look up your favorite products and see how they compare to others. You can search for specific brands, fragrance-free products, those with or without certain ingredients, those associated with or not associated with specific health concerns, and those likely or unlikely to contain allergens. You can also find out which companies are testing their products on animals and which have signed the Compact for Safe Cosmetics.

One of the important messages of this website is that we—meaning not just consumers, but scientists and regulators—know very little about the safety of these products. Most ingredients have not been fully tested and we can’t say with any certainty whether or not they are truly safe. But with a little knowledge we can at least limit our exposure to the most worrisome ones.

Wordless Wednesday #25--Why I've been so quiet lately (Trip 2)

2008-08-27T12:42:00.001-07:00

Taken August 21, 2008, in San Francisco.

This photo is also being posted for Carmi's Thematic Photographic theme of the week, colorful.

For another one of my Wordless Wednesday photos, see my other blog. For other people's, see wordlesswednesday.com.

Green Friday on Thursday--Better book buying

2008-08-14T13:25:00.000-07:00

Last week, Green Friday got buried under a mountain of work as I tried meet a deadline. Not only did I get the job done on time, I got it done early. Did you feel the earth momentarily stop spinning on its axis in shock when I sent the files to my client four days before the deadline?

I won’t be able to post tomorrow, so I’m doing Green Friday on Thursday this week.

We’re a family of readers and our house is already full of books. We’re also heavy-duty library users. So any book I actually plunk down my money for—especially new—has to meet certain criteria. It has to be something that will get read more than once, or that we can share with someone else, or that requires writing or drawing in, or that I need for my work, or that we’ll refer back to over and over.

For me, it comes down to this: I don’t want to spend my money or the world’s trees on something I will read once and then stick on a shelf for 20 years (although I think the insulating value of the books we have could save us quite a bit in heating costs if we stacked them all up along the outside walls). If I can borrow a book instead of buying it, I will. If it turns out that I absolutely love it or need to have it on hand, then I’ll buy it, preferably second hand.

When I am going to buy a particular book, I always check first with Better World Books, an online seller that sells both new and used books. One of their goals is to demonstrate that a business can make a profit while having a positive environmental and social impact.

They collect unwanted books from thousands of universities and libraries, many of which would have otherwise ended up in landfills or spent years in storage facilities. They buy carbon offsets to make their shipping carbon neutral. The shelving in their warehouse is reclaimed library shelving.

And they’re devoted to literacy, which, in terms of social causes, is my “thing.” Every sale generates a donation to a literacy organization. On their website they say “So far [since 2002], the company has converted more than 11 million donated books into $4.5 million in funding for literacy and education. In the process, we’ve also diverted more than 6,000 tons of books from landfills. . . . [And] we’ve donated nearly one million books to partner programs around the world.”

Not only that, but their prices on new books are often as low as or lower than other online sellers (at least the ones here in Canada), and they have reasonable shipping costs (free in the States—can you get more reasonable than that?—and $2.97 per book anywhere else). Every time I’ve ordered from them, I’ve been happy with their service.

Please note that I have received no money, free books, credits, or other perks for writing this review (darn!).

I’m always on the lookout for businesses like this. If you know of any, tell me about them!

Wordless Wednesday #24--Pattern in the sand

2008-08-13T10:47:00.000-07:00

Taken February 29, 2008, in North Vancouver, BC.

This photo is also being posted for Carmi's Thematic Photographic theme of the week, patterns.

For another one of my Wordless Wednesday photos, see my other blog. For other people's, see wordlesswednesday.com.

Enough, already!--Month six and Improg word: Sassy

2008-08-07T16:26:00.000-07:00

Isn’t it funny how sometimes certain words or themes will keep popping up, almost as if the universe were whacking you over the head, trying to tell you something very important?

Last month I did a calendar journal in which I cut out a word or two for each day. As the month drew to a close and I looked over my calendar, I realized that my month had been kind of boring. It’s not that it was a bad month or a hard month. It was just a rather serious month, and on many days I was hard pressed to think of anything that defined that day other than work.

One of my favorite days was a Saturday late in the month when, without any forethought, I bought a small mountain of blueberries and made jam for the first time in at least a decade. So by the time the month and my calendar were done, I had already decided that in August I would declare “Enough already!” to seriousness and make at least a little bit of time every day for some kind of simple pleasure. Nothing huge, both because I don’t have time on most days for huge and because I do believe that it’s the small things that make for a happy life.

Then, on Sunday, the second day of “Enough seriousness, already!” month, two of the funnest people in the world came to stay with my mom: an old family friend, who is in her 60s, and her 40-year-old daughter. My mom and I hadn’t seen this friend for over 30 years, nor had we been in close contact with her, and we’d never met her daughter, so we didn’t really know what to expect from this visit. As Child One said, “I expected two ladies to come and sit around Oma’s kitchen table for days. I didn’t expect to have so much fun.”

One of the daughter’s favorite words is sassy, so on Monday, I laughed out loud when I saw that this was the newly posted improg word. Oh, Universe, you’re not subtle with your ways of getting your point across, but you are funny.

Over the last five days, we’ve done all sorts of sassy things, from dancing at a free bluegrass concert to stuffing five people—including my 75-year-old mother—into a photo booth in the mall for a raucous picture-taking episode. I’ve laughed more than I usually laugh in six months—the kind of laughing where your legs go wobbly and you think you just might pee your pants. And despite several late nights due to long conversations and despite more than one trip to Dairy Queen, I’ve felt more rested, relaxed, and healthy than I have since I don’t know when.

I was sad to say goodbye to these friends, who are now on their way home. But I’m determined to keep some of their sassiness in my days from now on. Thanks, Universe, for whacking me over the head and reminding me of when I used to do fun things just for the sheer joy of it. Enough seriousness, already. It’s time for some sassiness.

Thematic Photographic--Signs

2008-08-04T07:34:00.000-07:00

Taken June 13, 2008, in West Vancouver, BC.

Carmi's thematic photographic theme this week is signs. Like Hayley, I collect pictures of signs; I've posted some of them on my blogs (here, here, here, and here). I've posted another thematic photographic entry on Making Do today.

Although I live in a big city, I often see warning signs about wildlife--bears, coyotes, even cougars. But this one was new to me.

Green Friday--Composting

2008-08-01T12:13:00.000-07:00

We’ve composted for years, but it was only recently that I learned (from my kids, who learned it at the environment club at their school) that composting has a major benefit besides reducing the mass of garbage going to landfills and producing wonderful stuff for your garden. As produce and yard waste decomposes in landfills, it gives off methane, a major greenhouse gas. But because composting involves a different decomposition process, no methane is produced.

Some people don’t want to compost because they think it’s stinky, but a smelly compost pile just means that the balance of materials is off. We keep an old garbage can full of dry leaves, dead flowers, old potting soil, and other “brown” materials next to our compost bin and every time we empty the kitchen compost pail, we add approximately the same amount of brown stuff on top. No smell at all.

If you can’t or don’t want to have a composter in your yard, consider vermiculture, or worm composting. We did this when we were living in a rental house. It was easy, fun for the kids (and educational), and helped us keep at least some of our garbage out of the landfill.

I used to be kind of squeamish about worms—due in large part to some boys who lived on our street when I was kid, who liked to chop them up—until I started gardening and realized just how important they are. But worm composting is not at all gross and you won’t end up with worms all over the place (unlike the time I dropped a full container of live crickets in my kitchen when we were frog-sitting for friends).

There are many resources available to learn about composting, and your community, like mine, might offer workshops. Some towns even subsidize the cost of backyard composters or offer them free to residents. Environment Canada and the Composting Council of Canada both have information to help you get started.