I RUINED "The Wheels on the Bus"

I admit it. I did. I ruined it.

I've never liked that song. It wasn't an old staple for me; in fact, I never heard it until my much younger sister learned it at her preschool or something. Or maybe my mother, who taught preschool for a while, added it to her repertoire at some point. Anyway, by the time I heard "The Wheels on the Bus" I was already far too old to appreciate the song.

It wasn't on my list of songs to sing AwesomeCloud. My own list of songs is a little odd, including such children's classics as I've Been Working on the Railroad, Sister Golden Hair, Boom Boom Pow, and the Chemical Brothers' Block Rockin' Beats. Recently I added Run Run Away by Slade. Well, the cover version by Great Big Sea, which essentially sounds the same, but sped up.

And Do You Know the Muffin Man - another recent addition.

The speech therapist introduced The Wheels on the Bus. She told me he enjoys it and suggested I sing it with him on my own.

Okay. We did so tonight. With the addition of socks. Hey, I was folding laundry. And all of a sudden, the socks on the bus were going swish, swish, swish. And the AwesomeCloud on the bus was doubling over in hysterics, wrapping himself in Daddy's extra-long swishy white tube socks.

The speech therapist won't be at all amused when she starts singing that song again and AwesomeCloud interrupts her to run and get a pair of pendulous socks. Because nobody can practice their speech when they're giggling that hard.

I ruined the song forever. And I'm (not the least bit) sorry.

While waiting for the hurricane

Utility trucks were lined up in the mall parking lot. Groups of people were out taking down screenhouses. And Cloud and I went out shopping for a little something to bring to the cookout at my sister's house in NH tomorrow.

I've got appliances unplugged and flashlights lined up, and I'm thinking about a cookout in NH.

The wind is intermittent, and we've had a taste of rain, but nothing serious so far. In fact, it's actually pretty nice outside. Breezy and cool. My husband is off running an errand and he thought he'd swing by the beach, just to see how it looked. I can't imagine it looks very unusual right now. He said he'd be right back.

I put tubs of water around the hydrangeas to prevent them from being blown off their stalks, and baked corn bread to add to the stash of food we won't need to cook first, in case the power goes out.

All this prep and nothing to show for it yet. Sheesh. The 4-day rain shower two weeks ago was worse than this.

I hope I don't eat my words.

I did taste the cornbread. It was good.

When paperwork attacks

Does anyone else have trouble with the post-adoption paperwork?

I MADE myself do the 6-month report. But the 12-month report is still sitting here, undone. It's all the same questions. But I haven't motivated myself yet. I guess I need to motivate myself now. I don't know why I'm being so unenthusiastic. It's just another homestudy - with our sweetheart social worker who is not the least bit threatening - and a 4-page packet.

*sigh*

I know it's important to meet the deadline. The problem, I suppose, is obvious - Cloud is a member of our family, we all belong together, and it doesn't feel like anything more needs to be said.

Rain, rain, hurricane

Would you still want the rain
if it came in the form of a hurricane?

I was asking myself that question, poetically (I think in rhyme sometimes), yesterday. The answer was Yes. We need the rain, as much as we can get - preferably not all at once, but apparently God didn't ask me to weigh in on his weather plan this year.

I read somewhere that the average global summer temperatures are going to be higher from now on. We'll look back at 2010 and realize it was the last cool summer in memory, and they don't make summers like that anymore.

But I digress.

It's still sunny, but the wind is picking up. Most of the stuff in the yard has been brought in, and the basement has been prepped for flooding. I picked the last tomatoes, and am ready for the garden to be washed away. The woodpile is covered. We have candles. They're now saying that Hurricane Earl will downgrade to a Cat 2 or even a tropical storm, but that's still pretty windy.

I love extreme weather. I love the adrenaline rush. I love operating in survival mode. My every action has purpose.

AwesomeCloud doesn't have much experience with big storms - we've had some long storms, and two or three thunderstorms that he tolerated reasonably well. Losing the power might get his attention. But he tries not to cry if he sees we're not afraid, so maybe he'll follow our example and he'll be all right.

We're not expecting to lose any trees in the yard. I asked the arborist to check for weak trees, and all he found were some weak branches which he then removed. So the house is not in any imminent danger.

Also, we had the trees sprayed for winter moths, and they all look so much healthier now! All that winter moth damage from last year has healed over. Hopefully, in spite of the drought, our oak trees are back to being mighty.

But I can't speak for the trees all along the roads in our neighborhood.

(I am the Lorax! I speak for the trees!)

No no no. What I mean is that we may wake up on Saturday morning and learn that some trees are down on the road.

At least we don't live on the coast. We're on high ground.

I can tell you exactly why poor people are more charitable

Yeah, I'm surfing the internet today.

I found this NYT article: The Charitable-Giving Divide. It addresses Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy and how those cuts will expire soon if the Obama administration doesn't renew them.

Obama's opponents, of course, are trying to turn the issue into another reason to oppose Obama. They say these tax cuts are for YOU. Don't let Obama take away YOUR tax cuts!

Me? Really? Tax cuts for households earning $250,000 or more will affect me... how exactly? Ha ha ha. I guess the government's definition of 'wealthy' is a lot higher than mine. I consider my family wealthy, and our income doesn't even begin to approach $250,000. $250,000 laughs in our income's face. And gives it noogies. Then it pushes our income backward into the mud and saunters off.

But we're still wealthy. Why do I believe this? Because we've been poor, and let me tell you, we're not poor anymore.

And the reason poor people are more charitable than wealthy people? It's because all our friends are poor too. When we give give give, we're keeping our friends and neighbors afloat in a palpable way.

And you know, those statistics don't account for all the unofficial acts of charity poor people perform. Paying the rent for your friend the single mom because she can't... bringing groceries over to a neighbor for free... letting a buddy crash on your couch for a week or a month because otherwise he'd be sleeping on the street.... we've done all that. That was everyday life. You prop your friends up, even if they can't reciprocate, because that's what life is like on the poor side of town.

Wealthy people don't do that, because they don't have to. They don't have friends who need rescuing on a regular basis. If a wealthy person's buddy asks to crash on the couch, the wealthy person has a handy litany of reasons to say no. It puts the kids at risk, it's disruptive, the buddy might steal something, it's too much responsibility.

The poor person doesn't go through all that. Steal something? Um... okay... knock yourself out, I guess. And the kids may be enriched by having the chance to hang out with this interesting new person.

(Plus, free babysitting! Wooo!)

When you live your life like that, it's no problem to extend your sense of charity to organizations that assist the kinds of people that include your friends. Plus churches. And animal rescue leagues. Poor people love rescued animals. Coming home to a cat in your apartment to de-stress with after a long day at a miserable job... yeah... some poor people save up for years for that opportunity.

I knew a guy who took in everyone's abandoned cats and filled his apartment with them, and his family was well below the poverty line. Poor people have callings, too.

Also, wealthy people often have the bulk of their money tied up in investments. So when the next fundraiser comes around and they go to write a check, they're not taking their investments into account. Poor people have no such thing. They look at their last paycheck to see what they can spare.

So the numbers - 2.7% of wealthy families' incomes going to charity vs. 4.2% of poor families' - are a little misleading there. I know this because, as wealthy people, we invest money directly out of our paychecks and don't consider it when looking at our available income.

And we haven't been asked to borrow crash space in years. Well, we did have a guy stay awhile last year, but that wasn't an emergency.

We said yes anyway, though, because, in fact, we kinda missed the old lifestyle.

So. Now that we under-$250,000 folks know that the Bush tax cuts won't affect our tax bills either way, I have to wonder whether the over-$250,000 crowd might consider government-mandated charity a good thing. And perhaps willingly part with their own money, like Jon Stewart famously claimed he was willing to do. (I'd link to the clip from the Daily Show where he says it, but I can't access YouTube videos on this computer.)

Does some of that money go to Early Intervention? Because, as wealthy people, we don't benefit from very many state-run programs (aside from the usual ones that maintain the town), but I've been extremely pleased with Early Intervention. I'd pay for resources like that one, if they were for sale. If the other wealthy people stopped paying for it, I'd hire JoJo privately, except that private commissions are not allowed.

And if I knew any poor families who also needed her services, I might contribute for them, too. But I don't anymore.

Dangerous food

E. coli poisoning in ground beef results in at least three hospitalizations.

Some of the affected batch ended up at BJ's Wholesale locations in MA. That's where we bought our hamburger patties for this summer's cookout.

The batch was dated June 11. We bought ours in late June.

At the cookout, I told one of our guests that I wasn't going to allow Cloud to eat the burgers because of the risk of E. coli. She said, "You don't know there's any E. coli in those burgers."

"And it's a risk I'm not willing to take," I said. "If I eat food tainted with E. coli, nothing much will happen. If he eats it, he could die. No ground beef until he's at least three."

"Not all strains of E. coli are toxic," she said.

"Right, and just like I don't know if there's any E. coli in the meat at all, I likewise don't know what strain it is," I said. "It's a simple case of risk assessment."

It turns out the risk was in fact very high.

Let this be a lesson: never, never, NEVER tell the parent of a young or otherwise vulnerable child they're being too cautious about the child's diet. If they are being too cautious, it's not your problem anyhow. Laugh and blog about them behind their backs if you want. And if they're wise to be cautious, let's hope they don't get their fears confirmed the hard way.

Sigh.

We had leftover raw burgers, which I refroze and recently thawed again, and I was persuaded to cook one for Cloud in order to use it up. If I'd known about the recall, I'd have thrown the leftovers all out instead. Fortunately, everyone here is healthy and fine, but I wish I hadn't compromised my principles on the off-chance that there was an FDA recall warning on that batch of meat.

Fashion toddler

It's amazing when your child does something you hear about other children doing.

Children picking out their own clothes is a big one, apparently. At the parenting workshop, we talked about it frequently. It's a framework for power struggles and for self-sovereignty. It's not just a girl thing - boys do it too. Boys dress as ridiculously as girls do if you leave them to their own choices.

AwesomeCloud's sense of style does not favor stripes, solids, or licensed characters. He prefers cars and generic animals. Lions are good. Anything that roars, or vrooms, gets chosen.

Fortunately he doesn't care which shorts he wears, so I can still dress him to match. Daddy should also try to dress him to match, whenever possible. Two of his pairs of shorts are brown, and I'm sorry about that - but any shirt that's not a primary color looks generally passable with brown shorts.

But anyway.

When he reaches these little trivial milestones, people will sometimes stare blankly at me or pat me on the shoulder and say, "They all do that."

Yes. But. When your child is reasonably intelligent but has universal delays, all milestones come a little bit late, and I feel relieved when he hits them. In this case, I'm glad to learn that he pays attention to small details like the picture on his shirt. Some very intelligent kids never go through this stage, never care what their clothes look like, and that's fine. I'm not worried about them.

I am, however, glad that my child, who has struggled to learn about his world and himself and has lagged developmentally all his life, is taking the time to master these little optional skills.

It's good to be familiar with your wardrobe. It's not terrible to be apathetic to your wardrobe, but if he's showing interest at age 2.5, then it's less likely he'll be mismatching his clothes at age 25.

Whether he ever learns to iron... well... I hate to iron and I avoid it when I can, so that may be a lost cause.

AwesomeCloud at the Irish pub

Today we took AwesomeCloud to an Irish pub. Not to drink Guinness, although the beer bottles interested him and I had to keep leading him away from them. No, we were there to celebrate a major victory for an old son-of-a-friend-of.... okay, he is my husband's mother's friend's son. My husband used to babysit him. I'm pretty sure I met him once, briefly, in passing, when he was much heavier.

His big victory was losing 102 lbs in three months. Pretty amazing.

He looked great, and we're a little sad that my mom-in-law didn't live to celebrate along with us. We're also sad that Mom-in-law never got to meet AwesomeCloud, and I was thinking about that a lot because we were surrounded by the old crew - the celebrant's mom and a few other ladies who'd been around during those difficult last days.

The last Mom-in-law knew, we were still thinking about Vietnam and still assuming we'd adopt a girl.

Anyway, so, we had fun, but there was soooo much waiting. And we had to practice cheering. Cloud had fun for the first three takes, but his stamina soon wore out. Fortunately we were in the back where no one important could see us.

And if you're wondering why a weight-loss hero would be at an Irish pub with all that Irish pub food... well... everyone else was wondering that too. But it turned out they had a great spread of crunchy veggies and healthy wrap sandwiches. We all ate well, and healthy too. And then we went out for donuts. (Yes, we're missing this great opportunity to be inspired toward healthy eating and healthy living. Sorry.)

After a great event comes a great leap

It seems like a pattern. After we take AwesomeCloud to a major event, such as a con, he experiences a developmental leap. He walks better, or climbs, or strings two words together more often. Or he articulates the consonant at the end of words more frequently.

I still wouldn't go so far as to call him "verbal" yet, but he's suddenly gotten a bit closer.

I wonder if there's a connection. Maybe it's neuropsychology. The social stimulation encourages more synaptic connections to form in the brain.

Maybe I'm experiencing the same phenomenon when I come home wanting to draw more and make costumes.

Neuropsychology is cool. If AwesomeCloud decides he wants to study it someday, I won't complain at all. He practices it already, after all. We all do. I know I, for one, gain more insight into myself from neuropsychology than from regular psychology.

That's because regular psychologists pull their ideas out of their... er... posteriors, shall we say. The best of them will readily admit it, too.

Why I am in favor of the new Manhattan Islamic Community Center

I've been meaning to post this for a week. My husband found an article with a really nice map, and I wanted to show it to you, and I may as well write my thoughts about it too.



I got that map from this article on cracked.com. (Credit given where credit is due.)

1) Neighborhoods in Manhattan are very small and crammed together. You have to live there to truly appreciate what that means. Many people who live in the boroughs of NYC hardly have to leave a 4-block radius around their house to get the things they need to live, aside from going to work and maybe visiting an occasional museum.

In other parts of the country, demanding that a mosque not be built within one's entire town might seem reasonable. (If there's any Muslim population at all, it's not, but it may seem reasonable to some people.) But in Manhattan, two to four blocks is the EQUIVALENT of an entire town. A much more diverse town than you're used to. Indians, Pakistanis, and even the occasional Orthodox Jew chat at street corners. Normally mortal enemies are friends in this town. It's a beautiful thing.

If you can't grok that, shut up. Seriously.

2) I'm not a big fan of religions, but if I can respect one, I can respect them all. I respect them warts and all. Catholics are responsible for a large number of deaths via oppression. Protestants too. Read a book about European history or the founding of the US before you go telling me it wasn't the same thing. No, it wasn't the same thing - the scale is different. We Christians of European origin... we pwned. (That means we had a tendency to move in, crush the opposition, obliterate populations, claim land and other resources, and then strut around like we owned the place, because by that time we did.)

But that was a long time ago... no, actually, it wasn't. A couple of piddly centuries. Or less. Hey, the US hasn't passed an equal rights amendment yet, and didn't have a bill protecting the rights of Black Americans until 1964. Our human rights record is really bad.

It hurts sometimes, but protecting the rights of fellow Americans who aren't exactly like us will improve the nation as a whole. That includes protecting their quality of life. If you lived in Manhattan, wouldn't you like to have a community center a couple of blocks from your apartment? Wouldn't you want your teenage kids to go there and play basketball under the supervision of responsible community-oriented adults?

Just because two of the most prominent buildings in the neighborhood were destroyed by terrorists does not mean all the survivors moved away. Or converted to your personal favorite religion. They still live there, they're still Americans or (hopefully legal) immigrants, and they work hard and love their kids.

3) The building in question used to be the Burlington Coat Factory. I love Burlington Coat Factory as much as anyone, but it's not sacred. And it's not going to move back in. Wouldn't you rather live next door to a community center than to an abandoned 13-story building? I bet the Manhattanites would.

4) If I speak up for other people's rights now, maybe they'll support me later. If I ever need it.

Being compassionate is an investment. If you're nice to someone today, maybe you've taken them by surprise and they're still mean to you tomorrow, but by next Tuesday they'll reconsider and decide to accept your friendly gesture.

The NYC Indians and Pakistanis did it.

The rest of us can, too.

My son, the consummate con-goer

We just got back from our first weekend-long con as a family of three, and AwesomeCloud did astonishingly well.

It was a very small con, taking up two hallways' worth of convention halls, and a single elevator up to our hotel room. It was a very easy setup for a two-year-old to memorize, and not a lot of opportunity for him to get lost. The consuite (the room filled with endless free snacks) was a straight shot from the dealer room - if we ever lost sight of Cloud, he was likely to be found in that corridor.

He had cheerful, boundless energy all weekend, with, amazingly, no naps. Fortunately, a few of the other congoers found themselves charmed by him and helped us burn off some of his hyper energy. I really thought he was going to overload, but today he seems like his normal self, so I guess he's not as subject to burnout as I am.

The dealer room was very quiet most of the time, and Cloud was able to run and spin and play in the mostly-empty middle of the room. He won't be able to do that in more crowded shows, so in the future, we'll have to make more effort to lead him away from the table and find fun things for him to do at the con.

Most amazingly, he didn't damage ANY of the merchandise! (He did manhandle a cat minicomic with damp hands, but the book managed to survive unscathed. And I think we sold it later.)

The genre of the day was steampunk. For those of you who are not familiar with steampunk it is Victorian-era fantasy tech - what people dreamed the future would be like 100-odd years ago. There were top hats and goggles, an antique phonograph and a pair of pseudo-hydraulic, copper-springed stilt-boots. There were hoop dresses and Ren-faire dresses with bodices, and even a couple of steampunk bodices - it's fun to mix genres! Wear what you've got! The woman in the Dahlek dress got applause wherever she went.

Pi-con attracts a lot of women. I was thinking about BlogHer a little, and all the preening that I've heard goes on there, and all the preening that went on at Pi-Con too. The woman in the green satin hoop skirt dress must have preened quite a lot, although she told me the dress was designed to get into and out of very easily. (It's not so authentic that way.)

Now I'm all into the idea of costuming again. What did little boys wear in the Victorian age? And I'm wondering about getting a leather aviator cap, with the flaps. I'm such a dreamer! Always wanting to start the next novel project, and I haven't even finished the giant squid yet. Of course, costuming always makes me want to get in shape, even though I was slimmer than 75% of the other people there, so now I'm thinking of starting the Prodigy workout again. (The Prodigy workout is me dancing to the music of The Prodigy. It's like clubbing, but without the alcohol, people, DJ, funky lights, or admission fee.)

I should start networking, writing to all the wonderful people I talked to, but I can't remember their names. Eh. Guess I'll do laundry instead. And draw something.

Minions #3

The book is here. Wow. See this book, I've been working on it for four years. Very slowly, obviously - a single 31-page comic book does not take four years to complete if you're working diligently.

I had some down periods and one rather major disruption.

But it's done. And this weekend we debut it at 5Pi-Con, a local con that's mostly about writing but they branch out a bit to include comics, webcomics, costuming, music, and that sort of thing.

It should be good. I remember it as a nice little show, and Tom Smith is the musical guest this year. He's very funny.

Getting the books has made me start to wax philosophical about accomplishment as a general concept. Do you ever stop and say to yourself, "I want to accomplish something small but nifty!"? Do you think of something to do or make, and then roll up your sleeves and get to work with hardly a plan in mind? Do you end up with a bunch of unfinished little projects packed into boxes in the basement? Do you care?

I have the unfinished projects in boxes, but I don't care. I may finish some someday, or not. I've made peace with my urge to start things, my momentary desire to accomplish something that's not strong enough to see the accomplishment through.

I've finished a few. The trip to Arizona was that type of project. There are some craft items bumping around that fit the bill, too. So I don't peg myself as "a person who never finishes anything."

I just don't finish everything. And sometimes I finish it years later, after letting it sit in a box or a sketchbook for a long, long time.

It's kind of like houseplants. I've killed more houseplants than most people own in their lifetimes. But I have a very green thumb. How do I come to this conclusion? Sheer volume. The volume of houseplants I'm working with results in a large number of individual deaths. In fact, sometimes I kill them on purpose if the volume gets too high and I can't give them away fast enough. I can't kill a jade; the jade just grows and grows and covers my bay windowsill. So I kill the delicate orchid that's on its last legs anyway and hasn't flowered in two years.

I don't care. I can get another orchid anytime. I'm running a jade farm, apparently, not an orchid farm.

Same thing with just-because projects. The more I start, the more I finish, because of volume.

I picked up the crochet needle again after sending the book to the printer, and started something new. That must be why. I'm feeling the itch to accomplish something again. It'll be just a little thing, though, and I'm using this time to ponder my next big project, which I've already started years ago but I need some time to embrace it again with my mind.

It's a graphic novel. I've penciled up to page 36 already but altogether it'll have about 80 pages. So. Taking a crochet break, spending the weekend pitching Minions For Hire, and then it'll be time to hunker down and really work. Really really.