Stuff that drives me nuts

I am a creature of habit, when I become attached to something it stays with me for a really long time; case in point, I have a stuffed bunny that’s been sleeping in my bed for thirty-five years. I am a faithful consumer. If I like a product, I’ll keep buying it. I have the exact same gap t-shirt in 45 different colors, I’ll be very upset if they decide to stop producing it. 

I’ve been a loving and ardent windows user for most of my technological life. I remember when I got my first notebook, I was a junior in high school. I needed something to write essays and opted for a Toshiba notebook rather than a word processor (yes, I’m that old) this is how long I’ve been using windows, practically since before windows became “Windows”. Of course, I should have known something was amiss in my life because my very first computer was an apple, back when apple’s logo was cute and multicolored. I was ten years old, it was a desktop, it probably cost more than a car and had less functionality than a toaster. It used floppy disks. My brother and I used it solely to play a game based on the Olympics, all I remember is the characters were almost stick-like figures and you had to slalom down a ski slope, or throw javelins, or pole-vault, stuff like that. So this week, after being a faithful windows user for nigh on two decades, I have gone back to my roots and bought myself a MacBook Air. 

It’s light as, well, air (aptly named) and thin as paper (almost). It’s pretty user friendly and I’m not noticing any major differences or difficulties. I was already in love with the iphone and ipad so it seemed like a logical next step. I haven’t yet transferred everything from my pc, so I get to say a long and heartfelt goodbye. There is just one thing that consistently drives me bananas, the lack of a “canc” key. In place of the “canc” key they put the computers on/off key. I use the “canc” key A LOT, so I really miss it, and I see no earthly reason not to put it in. So, Steve, before stepping down, can you do something about that please? Cause I keep turning off my damn computer as I’m typing this. Thanks.

Virtual Coffee {1}

I’m trying something new today…. Amy over at Lucky number 13 has a weekly linkup called Virtual Coffee, and this week I decided to give it a shot. So for today, let’s pretend we’re meeting up for coffee…

If we were really having coffee today, I’d tell you that I’ve been so tired lately, though the kids are finally sleeping through the night most nights. I’d tell you that I think I’m tired all the time cause I can’t make my brain shut up for even five minutes. I’m always thinking, thinking, thinking but it’s like a dog chasing its tail cause I’m not getting anywhere. If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I just need to relax, but I don’t know how anymore. The anxiety is always there, the undercurrent of my life.

But then I’d shake it off, and I’d ask you how you like this banana bread I made today, it’s nice and moist isn’t it? The secret is to add sour cream, you know. And then we’d sip our coffee quietly for a minute and I’d start thinking that life is what it is and there’s no point in worrying about what may or may not happen, all we can do is live the life we’re given. If we were having coffee today, I’d ask you how you’re doing, what’s new with you? And you’d tell me about your life lately, even the unimportant things, because you know that sometimes we just need to be allowed to sit quietly and listen to others. And I’d finish my coffee, and reach for the pot and I’d let your voice soothe me as I start on my second cup.

Decisions, decisions

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who commented and wrote me on the last post. We went to Milan on Thursday for a second opinion on the husband’s treatment and reading your comments totally made our day, and distracted us from the crazy, insane traffic of a big city. Seriously, you can tell you’ve become totally provincial when you can’t stand traffic and honking and no parking. We have lost our edge, we simply aren’t aggressive enough to live in a big city anymore, we have gotten soft. Let’s blame it on the children, shall we, and move on.

Anyway, my intention is not to keep you on pins and needles so here’s a little update, along with a lesson on recurring leukemia, this blog is nothing if not informative. As I mentioned briefly in Tick, Tock, the Husband has to have yet another transplant and there are two kinds of transplant he can have at this point, from cord blood stem cells or from a next of kin. The hospital here in our tiny rural town is apparently quite “avant garde” as it does the so called intra-bone cord blood transfusion which is relatively new (which goes to show that choosing to live out in the country is not all bad), but we went to the renown San Rafaele Hospital in Milan, where they do the allogeneic transplant from a next of kin, to speak to the head of Hematology there just to keep all our bases covered. (just some trivia: apparently the husband can’t have another transplant from a third party donor because the leukemia recurred too soon and the commission that regulates transplant won’t approve it.)

What we’ve consistently been told is that there don’t appear to be any significant advantages of one type of transplant over the other in our case, some hospitals choose to do one type cause they like the odds of that one others choose the other type for the same reason, but there is no scientific data that tips the scale. Great, we thought, cause doctors consistently sitting on the fence really make us feel better. The conundrum of course remains of how to make an informed decision when we have neither the time nor the patience (nor, frankly the inclination) to go out and get ourselves a medical degree and specialization in hematology. So, in the absence of cold hard facts we have decided to follow the totally arbitrary decision making tool of our gut feeling. (We are nothing if not resourceful). 
So we decided to interpret “the signs”. The signs did not bode well for moving to Milan when both the husband and I had a hissy fit at the new exit from the highway that had us do a figure eight (I kid you not) to merge into the city traffic, the negative trend continued when it took us 45 minutes to cover the 500mt that separated us from the hospital, which, along with the barely breathable smoggy air and the complete lack of any sort of road signage to direct us to our destination threatened to send us over the edge. Then, when the doctor said that in his highly qualified medical opinion he saw no reason why we should suffer the stress of a move we interpreted it as a pretty definite sign that moving to the City was not in our futures (yay!), the clincher of course was when he also admitted that his big and mighty department had already set into motion the necessary procedures to start doing the intra bone technique that our little country hospital is already doing. So basically, 1-0 for the small town hospital.

Satire aside, of course we would move in a heartbeat in the hope of a better, longer term, remission for the husband, but the idea of being able to face this already trying period within the confines of all our respective comfort zones is certainly a relief. We are still waiting from feedback from another hematologist oncologist in Houston (we really are covering ALL our bases), but for now it appears that we will be staying here.

For those of you who are interested, the plan is for the husband to go through just one round of chemo that “mimics radiation therapy” (in the words of our doc, I have no clue what it means) and then have the cord blood transplant directly into the bone via a minimally invasive operation. His total hospital time should be no longer than about a month, after which all we can d is hope and pray that the marrow does it’s damn job this time.

As an aside to those of you that knew us when we lived in Milan and loved it, can you believe we’re actually happy we get to stay here rather than moving back? That despite my ever increasing complaints about the snow in the winter, along with the shoveling, the muck, the wet muddy boots in the house, the smell of manure in the spring and summer, the damn tractors and or cyclists taking up the entire one lane country roads and the total and complete lack of refinement, I have indeed learned to love the fact that the longest I’ve had to wait for a parking space is 10 minutes and that’s because parking further than 20mt from my intended destination is simply unacceptable, that traffic means 4 cars and a tractor, or possibly some cows crossing the road, that it takes me 10 minutes to get to the hospital… you get the picture.

I have indeed been countrified.

Horrified?

Hello, I love you, won't you tell me your name?

Dear readers,

Today I decided to dedicate a few lines to all y’all out there reading this.
There are more of you than I ever imagined would come to read my blog, and some from countries where I know for a fact that I have no family members or friends, so this is a heartfelt thank you for reading my words. For those of you who want news of the husband, there is none now, when there is I’ll post on it, promise.
First and foremost, a moment of gratitude to all of you who’ve done this:

Thank you for liking me on facebook and reposting my posts on your page, thanks for tweeting my posts and sharing with your friends, thanks for reading my words and commenting, on here, on fb and via email, in short, thanks for participating in my life.

This is going to be a tough time for us, but I’m not going to make this a “woe is me” blog, so if you find me still occasionally posting on totally random things don’t worry, I probably won’t be doped up on acids (they’re the ones that make you euphoric, aren’t they?), it’s just that life, though despairingly depressing at times, is also wonderful and exciting and I believe we need to capture that aspect more than ever when we’re facing challenges. One of the wonderful things in life, I’ve found, is blogging. It allows me to share my feelings, my thoughts, it allows me to rant and to express myself and unlike the journal of old, I actually get feedback and feedback is great. (well, it can suck too but one must always take the bad with the good, right?) At this point, all of you veterans of the blogging world know where I’m going with this, cause this is in fact a thinly veiled de-lurking post. Lurkers are those reader that come and don’t comment, cause well, let’s be honest most of the time you don’t have time to comment or possibly you’ve got nothing to say, which is just fine, cause I’m supposed to entertain you and not the other way around. But as the title of this post says, Hello, I love you (and I love the fact that you’re reading me at all) won’t you tell me your name?

So, today, just this once, if you’ve got time and are so inclined, leave me a line, say hello. I would really like to meet you!

Now, if only I could figure out how to put in an email subscription…

p.s. if you don't recognize what the title to this post refers to, you're too young to be reading this blog!

Tick, Tock

I’ve been sitting here in front of the computer for a while trying to write this post and I just couldn’t decide what tone I wanted to give it. Do I feel ironic? Sarcastic? Do I want to make light of an intense situation by trying to be funny? Or maybe I want to be poignant, and possibly elicit a few tears? I can’t decide. Mostly because the main thing I’m feeling right now is disbelief.

The leukemia is back. There, I said it. I actually toyed with the idea of titling this post Leukemia Loves Us, but then realized that would’ve just been silly, or sad. I guess I haven’t processed this news yet so I’ll stick with a matter of fact tone, how ‘bout that?

The husband had a bone marrow biopsy about a month ago and they told us he had about 2% anomalous cells (cancer cells), so they abruptly took him off the immune suppressants to stimulate his bone marrow into action so his immune system could take care of these cells (apparently this is what a healthy immune system does). And that’s where we were when I left for Brazil. They redid the biopsy about a week ago and he now has about 10% anomalous cells. So basically not only is his brand spanking new immune system not doing a damn thing about these cells, they are actually so comfortable and at home in his body that they are happily reproducing. Just reproducing away, left, right and center. Lucky cells! (and that went from trying to be funny to sarcastic real fast!)

So now we have to make some decisions real fast, like the clock is running fast, like hurry up and decide already fast. We’ve got a couple of treatment options, both of them involving a transplant, just different types of transplants and we’ve got to get everything done in about a month. So basically, no pressure at all. We realized he’ll be having the second transplant at almost exactly a year from the first transplant. This has nothing to do with anything, we just thought it ironic.

That’s it for today, just some news. I can confidently predict some pretty pissed off posts in the near future though, just as soon as the implications hit. So stay tuned! Or, more logically, run for the hills as fast you can, that’s what I’d do!

A day at the beach, a ladybug and a fireman

Saturday was an amazingly relaxing day, so I thought I’d share a few pictures.

We’ve been having some pretty crazy weather lately, some days it’s spring, then it snows for two days, then it rains and the snow melts and it’s spring again, then it snows and, well, you get the picture. So after a relatively trying week, what with all the vomit, and the girl starting daycare (more on that soon), everybody was on edge and a day at the beach was just what the doctor ordered. Plus, our schizo weather decided it was spring again, so we jumped on the bandwagon! Or on the minivan so to speak. We spent the day in Varigotti, a tiny beach town in Liguria. There’s an awful lot of pictures of my children, but really, what did you expect?!

Oh, and as usual with the picture posts, click to continue reading!

Happiest face ever

Now tell me if this doesn't make you smile:

Happy Sunday!

Traveling with kids, a few handy tips

I figured today was as good a day as any to post a few tips on travelling with kids. First off there are some great websites out there that give informed, expert advice on this very subject and a simple “traveling with kids” search will take you right to them, I strongly suggest you do this because you really get a lot of useful information from them.  I, on the other hand, will proceed in my usual fashion of giving you a few totally inane tips, gathered from nothing more than my own personal experience. So nothing expert about it at all. But, hey, someone, somewhere, may find them useful or interesting (ideally useful and interesting, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves) so here goes:

1.    Be a pain in the patootie.

Whether you reserve your flight, train ticket, hotel or whatever, online or through a travel agent ask all and any questions you may have, even if the answer seems obvious. If it’s important to you, get the information, preferably in writing. Let me give you a practical example: say you’re flying with a child under 2 years of age and you don’t want to buy their ticket, since you may have the option to take them on as a “lap child” (more on why I think you shouldn’t later, but whatever, that’s just my opinion), and say you’re flying internationally or just on a really long flight where one would assume you get the little baby crib that they stick to the wall of the bulkhead seats so you don’t go crazy insane holding a kid in your arms for thirteen hours straight, well don’t assume.

Call the airline and double check that the crib is available. Get them to write you an email. Make sure you understand that you want it. Ask what the weight limit is, cause there is one, so don’t assume just because your kid is under two he’ll fit, more than likely if he’s over 6 months he won’t. Go figure. And when you get to the gate, repeat the above process. Trust me. This also applies if, for example you need to reserve a special meal, or need help with your luggage, have any sort of disability, are travelling with large or irregularly shaped luggage or (heaven forbid) pets.

Don’t take anything for granted, you’ll be happier when you know ahead of time how limited your options actually are.

2.    Be blind, deaf and dumb

If you’re travelling with children your chances of encountering embarrassing situations is directly related to the number of children you are travelling with and rises exponentially depending on the time of day, size of airport (train station, bus depot, whatever) and period of the year that you’re travelling in. If you’re flying there are two sure-fire moments when you will want to shoot yourself in the head and die a bloody, dramatic death: airport security and boarding. These are  the two moments that will open your eyes as to how many assholes there actually are in the world, because you will be wrestling your child from the stroller while simultaneously removing your shoes, belt, sunglasses (bra, iud and quite possibly your soul), and loading your purse, diaper bag, carry-on on the conveyor belt, closing the stroller  and holding your pants up as you keep your toddler from running away and/or your baby in your arms, and nary a soul will lend you a hand. In fact, I’m willing to bet that everyone in line behind you is huffing, puffing and complaining that their flight is leaving whereas you, clearly, are just there for the fun. So I say, don’t get flustered. Be blind to their glares and do your thing calmly and methodically so you don’t end up with your pants round your ankles since you had to take your belt off, be deaf to their complaints, your kid’s screaming in your ear will help with that, and keep your passport and boarding pass between your teeth, your hands are busy anyway and this way you’ll avoid telling everyone around you to eff off. Also, wear flip flops, the indignity of going through security barefoot will be too much for you to bear.

3.    Pretend you are a vending machine

Bring food, lots of it. Snacks for your kids. Snacks for you. And please don’t be ridiculous by trying to think of healthy snacks give your kids chips and yourself chocolate. They’ll find it highly entertaining and you will need the comfort. Also, who the hell has time to peel carrots before a long trip anyway? Remember a hungry kid is a grumpy kid and flights are always delayed! Also, you’ll rarely find milk on airplanes, keep that in mind if you’ve got a small child.

4.    Bring toys, don’t buy out toys r us

You do need entertainment for your kids, but you also need to be able to carry it. Don’t bring anything that’s too small, like little cars, or legos, you’ll lose them. Stickers are great, crayons (not markers), and a magazine with lots of pictures. Remember most planes now have the little individual screens where they can watch cartoons and play games and stuff. (but confirm this before leaving, if they don’t, go out and buy yourself an ipad. You’ll thank me later.)

5.    Relax

It may not sound like it from the previous points  but the more relaxed you are about the whole experience, the happier everyone will be. And remember, the plane does indeed land after a relatively short span of time, so no matter how bad things get it’ll all be over soon. That’s your new mantra, by the way. Also, you’ll likely never see any of the people you’re traveling with again so who cares what they’re thinking, plus think of all the wrinkles they’ll get from giving you the evil eye.

6.    Some things are very different

If the last time you travelled as a child was in the 80’s and 90’s let me point out a few things that are different: there no longer is enough room between the rows for a child to lie down on the floor and sleep; you are no longer allowed to see the cockpit (I know, this is incredibly sad, as this was the number one form of entertainment when we were little); kids rarely get those great fun packets to play with from the airline (you remember, with the colored pencils and the little stuffed airplane); this last one isn’t at all related, but an adult and a child are a really tight fit in an airplane bathroom, so make sure you have a plan as to what to do with your kid in the event that you have to pee if you’re travelling alone and/or with more than one child.

And lastly, as promised, why I think you shouldn’t fly with a lap child. Turbulence. Let’s say that 90 times out of 100 you only experience minor turbulence, there’s still that teeny, tiny ten percent chance that you may experience slightly more energetic turbulence. On a long haul flight I guarantee that you won’t have the presence of mind to be hanging on tightly enough to your kid throughout the whole flight. So your kid could get hurt. It’s a small chance, sure, though slightly higher if you’re crossing an ocean. But if you pay for a seat (usually you pay 50% of the ticket cost for a child under two) you can bring your carseat and strap the kid in. Your child will sleep more comfortably, you won’t have to hold him for the entire trip, and you may actually manage to get a sip of that inflight drink. Just ask yourself this, you’re probably spending a few grand for the trip anyway is a couple more hundred saved really worth your child banging his head on the overhead carryon bins if turbulence does hit?

Now, do you have any travel tips? Please share!!

Super Dad

I had one of those 24 hour stomach bugs today, which basically means that starting at 5am to 2pm the toilet bowl and I got really up close and personal. Thankfully, it was a short-lived love affair, we just aren’t that compatible. The remaining time till now was spent lamenting our relationship in bed in alternately a cold sweat and writhing pain. Predictably, I got sick on the nanny’s day off so the husband had to step up to the plate and take one for the team. And I must say, times like these make me really glad I decided to reproduce with him specifically, he was brilliant. I honestly thought he was going to run screaming from the house by mid-morning (that’s when all the poopy diapers hit), but not only did he remain calm and collected he managed to arrange snacks, change diapers, entertain, wrangle, calm tantrums and “I miss mommy” tear-fests, feed a healthy lunch, put down for a nap all pretty much on schedule and with minimal prompting from the sickbed.  He’s now feeding them dinner, hot dogs (not my first choice but who am I to complain and get this… sautéed carrots).

And it’s not like he’s had much practice, I mean, he was pretty hands-on with the boy but then after the illness he just hadn’t had the energy and as many of you well know, two kids don’t require twice the energy as one, they require tenfold the energy as one.

So this is a brief post so I can congratulate myself on picking the right guy.

Oh, right… and to thank him for a job well done and for letting me be sick in peace.

Parenting, cigarettes and a fifteen year old

I realized that the previous post about my Dad got published on the 28^th, whereas it was meant to come out on the 27^th, his birthday. So, to atone, I thought I’d share a little anecdote from my youth.

As many of my peers I started smoking in my teens, as an act of rebelliousness, freedom, maturity or something to that effect. We thought we were the height of cool sneaking a smoke behind the annex building in high school. How we thought we were being sneaky when as a group of six or seven we walked into a classroom reeking of a speakeasy from the 30’s, I have no idea. In any case, despite all of our stealth tactics my mom clued in on what I was doing when I was fifteen and confronted me with a pack of cigarettes she had found, possibly hidden beneath my mattress or some other totally secure location like that.

Amazingly, she didn’t immediately blow her top as was to be expected, she gave me a devious smile and said and I quote “you are to tell your father when he gets home”. Gulp. Yikes. I definitely would have preferred a screaming mother to disappointing my father, but there was nothing for it but to wait until he got home, at eight, it was three thirty… I was looking forward to four and a half hours of angst. Great punishment by the way, Mom.

So my Dad walks in the door, and I was hovering at the top of the stairs and call him up to my room cause I had something to tell him. I was obviously nervous. He started getting obviously nervous, possibly wondering what the hell could have happened to cause the laden atmosphere at home. The tension was palpable. So I hand him the pack of Marlboro reds my mom had found, minus half the contents that I had much more expertly hidden in the battery compartment of my “boom box”. As an aside, it was the early nineties, and there was no minimum age to buy cigarettes in Texas though the next year they passed a law that you had to be seventeen to buy them, I was sixteen. Though surprisingly, that didn’t stop me smoking either.

Anyway, he’s looking confusedly at the cigarette pack and I whisper “Mom found out I smoke, occasionally, rarely, at parties, don’t get mad, she said I had to tell you.”

And my Dad bursts out laughing. Laughing. In relief. Because in retrospect I imagine we had managed to so freak him out with our little scene that he must have thought I was pregnant, or getting married with a biker from Fresno, or got a tattoo or possibly all three. The occasional cigarette? He could live with that. (Also, he smoked, so you know pots and kettles.)

This was without a doubt a massive lapse in parenting judgment, but from then on I secretly thought my Dad was the coolest. Except for when he wouldn’t let me go out, then he was a dictatorial tyrant with no heart.