Category Archives: Rants

Oct 21 2011

Tits in a Wringer

I’m really sick of hearing about breastfeeding.

Yes, this is completely out of left field, but seriously.  Yes, breast is best and all that, but I’m an adoptive mother and never had to/got to breast feed.  And I’m fine with that.  If anything, I have a completely valid excuse to sidestep the whole issue without personal involvement.

But here’s the thing:  I know people who are so PRO-breastfeeding that they scare the crap out of me.  With some of them, I think they would prefer that bras and shirts be outlawed and every lactating mother in the world walk around like someone from an old issue of National Geographic, tits swinging in the wind and down to their waists, nursing children until the age of ten and doing so in the middle of Mall of America.

On the other hand, I know people so squeamish about breastfeeding that they would be more comfortable growing babies in petri dishes and having them born at the age of nine, fully weaned, and emerge eating solid foods and smoking cigarettes.  You say the word “breast” to these people and they turn white as a sheet and can’t make eye contact with you for six months.

There is a middle ground.  It’s called mind your own damned business.  If you are uncomfortable with public breastfeeding, I really don’t think it’s necessary to make someone nursing their baby go off into a separate wing of a building just to spare your sensibilities.

At the same time, I don’t think it’s really necessary to stage tit-ins at the mall or whip out your boob in front of Uncle Herman just to prove how open-minded you are and how old-fashioned he is.  Breast-feed or don’t.  It’s natural, it’s fine, it’s what God intended.  But if you wouldn’t take your boobs out in front of Uncle Herman without the baby there, then maybe think twice about doing it with the baby there.  And if you WOULD whip the girls out in front of a stranger whether you’re nursing or not….well, that’s a whole different rant.

At the luncheon after my daughter’s baptism, an elderly member of the church congregation asked my niece, who then had an eight month old baby, whether she was still breast-feeding him.  My niece, who had never met this woman, stammered that she had tried but it just hadn’t worked out for them.  Nosy Oldster then proceeded to chew out my niece and tell her, essentially, that she had done the wrong thing and that if she had been a good mother, she would have breast fed her son.  Meanwhile, my niece, whose pregnancy had been difficult and whose son’s birth had been traumatic and scary, began crying and could only be comforted by her husband taking her out of the church and on a prolonged shopping trip to Target.

So really, the whole nipple-Nazi movement has turned me off to the breastfeeding cause.  I have met so many of these women (and even more annoying, MEN) who take up the mantle of breastfeeding and march around stridently telling everyone what’s best for them that I want to punch them right in the chest.  Don’t get me wrong: I don’t have ANYTHING against breastfeeding.  It’s the fanatics I can’t stand.  Same as Christianity:  I like their coach, but I am not a fan of their cheerleaders.

Oct 11 2011

Glove Up! It’s the IRS!

So I know I haven’t mentioned this yet, but we’re being audited by the IRS.

Yes, I know.  This is what happens when your daughter gets head lice seven times and you shake your fist at the sky and yell “What next? Locusts? Frogs?”

And the Lord, he smiteth them with an official “examination” by the IRS. Heh. Examination.  LIke when the doctor stretches on a latex glove and snaps it and turns to you and says “You’re going to feel a little pressure.”  That’s what I think of when I hear that word.  They use it now instead of the word “audit,” and I can’t help but think that this euphemism is just as chill-inducing as the original word.

Anyway, they just want a copy of Rabbit’s adoption decree and proof of special needs adoption status because of the amount of the adoption tax credit.  Oh, and the fact that the social security number we provided for her doesn’t match her name.

Yeah.  We didn’t change her SSN at the time of adoption and it turns out that we were supposed to fill out some forms to change her name on the SSN to her adopted name.  We thought that some of the reams of paperwork we filled out with our adoption attorney included something to take care of that, but apparently it did not.

So we’re STILL waiting on our tax return.  I am pleased to report that so far (knock wood) the people I’ve spoken to at the IRS have been very nice and helpful.  But then again, they haven’t put on the latex gloves yet.

More on this story as it develops.  Maybe.

 

Sep 14 2011

Rub Mercy From Scalp to Soles

Three words to sum up the suckitude of this day:

HEAD LICE AGAIN.

I swear to GOD, her scalp is clean as a whistle every time we have treated her.  No eggs, no nits, no bugs. Treated and combed through every hair, and then every blanket, pillow and sheet washed in hot water and dried to a crisp in the dryer.  Every stuffed animal bagged up for two weeks.  Every rug vacuumed, the sofa sprayed with insecticide, every precaution taken.

Every home remedy tried, every over the counter remedy with the exception of the little comb that is supposed to electrocute the bugs.

When Rabbit told me this morning that she’d found two live lice on a hair in her hairbrush this morning, I literally broke down and wept.  I wept like someone who has found yet another dog inextricably shot dead on the front step.  I wept like someone whose crops have been eaten by locusts.  I wept like someone whose house has been crushed under a toppled redwood tree.

Sisyphus and his rock.  Me and Rabbit’s head lice.  This morning I reached the end of my tether. I called the doctor’s office and asked them for a prescription for whatever they had that was the strongest thing available for this scourge.

They wrote us a prescription for permethrin.  When I picked it up at the Target pharmacy, the pharmacist told me it was the strongest thing available to treat head lice.  I hope so.  Then I read the directions:  ”Massage into skin from scalp to soles of the feet.” Confused, I read further.

Apparently, this medication is most commonly used to treat SCABIES.  Lord have mercy.  Just fix this horrible problem.

This evening, I applied the cream to Rabbit’s freshly shampooed and dried hair. It stayed in for ten minutes.  I found her at the end of ten minutes in PC’s garage/man cave. She was standing in front of him in her nightgown, her hair twisted up into a clip, tears streaming down her face.  PC was telling her “Honey, when you feel bad, you just need to remember to tell yourself ‘This is not my fault.’ You have head lice because lots of kids at your school have head lice.”

She stood there with her chin quivering and a fat tear rolled down her cheek.  ”Okay?” PC said, taking her by the hand.  ”Okay,” she whispered.

They’re in the bathroom right now: Rabbit sitting on the counter, PC patiently sectioning her hair and using the lice comb to go through one tiny section at a time, combing out eggs and freshly killed bugs.  It is nearly 10:00 and we are drained and exhausted.  Our family has been through a lot in recent months but these damned head lice really do feel like the worst thing outside of the loss of human life.  We have been battling this problem off and on for SEVEN MONTHS.

Dammit.

Sep 12 2011

Fridge Frustration

My sister and I spent part of our morning at my office today; being a Monday, there was quite a bit of catching up to do and I had paperwork to take care of, a few calls to make, a visit with my broker, and mail to sort through. She sat in the guest chair in my office reading while I took care of things.

We left after a couple of hours to preview a house for a client, and then had to drive to check on a couple of listings.  Then we went to Trader Joe’s for the groceries we hadn’t gotten yesterday on our mammoth shopping expedition to a local big box grocer.  Olive oil, butter, raisins, Swiss cheese, some Gouda, yogurt and several frozen items for PC and Rabbit to eat while my sister and I are away from the house for four days.

Back at the house, we put away the groceries and ate lunch, and then my sister went to have a short nap.  I did two loads of laundry and hung them out to dry, ran a couple of errands to check on a listing and check on repairs on a house under contract.

When I got home, I reached into the fridge for something cold to drink and discovered that the sodas we’d put in the fridge this morning were not very cold.  Neither was the gallon of milk I’d bought yesterday.  Or the yogurt, cheese, orange juice or apple juice.

The freezer was still freezing, but none of the cold air was getting into the fridge.  So, for the (I’m pretty sure) sixth time in probably five years, I had to empty the freezer and take everything in it to the deep freeze downstairs (so a repairman can get to the freezer motor), and called the home warranty company.

They were excited to inform me that they could have someone out by Friday.  ”Um…no,” I said.  ”I am leaving town Thursday morning and my husband can’t take off work to meet a contractor here.  And it’s my refrigerator.  We need someone tomorrow.”  He assured me (at 5:00 p.m.) that a contractor would call me this evening.  No call so far and as it is nearly 11:00 p.m., I’d say it isn’t going to happen.

So there’s a giant Tupperware bowl of ice in the refrigerator to keep things somewhat cool until I can get more tomorrow for our cooler.  I don’t want to lose $50 or more worth of perishables while I wait for a repairman.

We have a home warranty that costs us roughly $40 a month as sort of an insurance policy so that repair of things like a washer, dryer, stove, fridge, air conditioner, furnace or water heater only costs us the $60 co-pay.   So far, it’s paid for itself every single year. If the item can’t be fixed, or becomes too costly to fix, they say they will replace it.

But why, do you suppose, would a home warranty company continue sending out a repairman to do a $200 repair on an appliance at least SIX TIMES IN A ROW instead of replacing the appliance itself?  I couldn’t tell you, since it defies logic to me.  But I can tell you this: I will never buy a GE refrigerator again. EVER.

Aug 29 2011

Wherein I Confess to Disliking Antique Furniture

In my continuing quest to declutter my house and purge it of all things useless or disliked, I have come to a sobering conclusion:

I do not particularly like antiques.

I consider antiques to be like dogs:  I enjoy when other people have them, I can admire them, even be around them for a while, but they don’t work for me.  I don’t want them in my house.

And by antiques, I am mostly referring to furniture.  I have been on Craigslist lately looking for some pieces for my living room, specifically, a mid-century retro credenza upon which I can put our (eventual, purchased in the future) new television.  What I have in mind is something from the 1950s, Danish modern inspired, light colored.

This? I love.

Every time I come across something of this sort, whether it is a credenza or a desk or a table, I sigh with joy.  I recall the light-colored maple reading tables at the library I frequented as a child.  I think of the clean spare lines of the house I live in and the ranch homes surrounding me, built in the 1950s.

And then I click through to another link on Craigslist and see oppressive, dark, claw-footed furniture from Victorian times.  Or oak side tables, oak iceboxes, oak wardrobes, sideboards, morris chairs, coffee tables.  Oak, oak, oak. God bless it, oak is fine.  My house is filled with over 1,000 square feet of oak hardwood flooring.  But my kitchen cabinets are oak, and here in Nebraska, oak furniture and woodwork and accessories are everywhere.

I’ve walked into houses filled floor to ceiling with nothing but antique oak furniture and have had full on body skeeves or fits of complete depression.  Spending too long in an antique store looking at things that used to belong to other people gives me overwhelming melancholy and an urge to scream or start crying.

Antique rocking chair, from several generations of husband's family, next to antique writing desk with bum leg and affinity for dust.

My living room, since we pulled up the carpet five years ago, has wood floors.  We also have two very dark brown leather armchairs that recline.  Very large, very dark, very impractical.  A sage green sofa.  A dark oak mission-style entertainment center.  Three tall wood bookcases filled with books.  A dark-stained antique oak windsor rocking chair from my husband’s grandparents.  A dark, dark, DARK walnut secretary/writing desk from my husband’s great-great-aunt Mary.   The desk has one leg that keeps coming out so you can’t even bump up against it and we never use it for anything other than display and adding to our extensive collection of dust.

You can begin to see the source of my misery.  We have someone who’d like the chairs when the time comes that we part with them.  We have someone who will take our fourteen year old sofa (a La-Z-Boy sofa that is still in really good shape – note that for future furniture buying resources) if we get a new one.  But we kind of have to keep the family heirlooms.

In our bedroom, we have an antique, HUGE (and, of course, dark) cedar chest that belonged to my husband’s great-great-aunt.  And a 1930s mahogany highboy dresser that we bought in Oklahoma in 1997, representing our very first purchase of a piece of furniture we spent more than $20 on since being married nine years earlier.  It was $250.

I still like it, but I don’t really love it.  And the cedar chest?  That sucker is gigantic and oppressively dark, but full of family stuff.  First chance I get, I’m having it taken down into the basement.  Seriously.

And speaking of the basement, we also have an antique, dark oak wash stand that used to belong to the same aunt who owned the cedar chest and the writing desk.  It’s in the basement next to the spare bed.

What I’m saying is that finally, after 43 years, I’ve discovered that just because someone offers, I don’t have to accept a piece of furniture.  Of course, it’s too late: we have all these pieces of dark, ancient and oppressive furniture and even if I don’t like them, my husband won’t part with them.

Did I mention that we have an enormous oak table in our kitchen/dining room?

Yes, I am complaining about my furniture!  There are people starving all over the world, people without homes. People without furniture.  People without legs.  Furniture without legs.  I get it.

But I declare before my seven faithful readers and God and mankind that starting today, no furniture will enter my home that I don’t choose and love.  No nicknacks, paddywacks, tchotchkes or objects d’art that I look at and say “Meh….okay.”

Furthermore, I will begin the slow and painful process of removing such items from my home, whether it is a giant piece of furniture or the five enormous boxes of miscellaneous fancy glassware that my husband’s grandmother gave us, which have been in boxes, unused, in the basement, for ten years.  Moved there from their spot in boxes in the closet in our old apartment where they sat, untouched, for seven years before that.

Life is too short to be saddled with all these goddamn (sorry) things that people gave us that we don’t use and don’t have room for and really don’t like.  Heirlooms?  Some things are better off as memories, and then given to someone who would really enjoy them, first offered to family and then to someone who would love them.

And so, my husband’s brother and sister will soon be contacted to see if they want a wash stand. Or a cedar chest.  Or a writing desk.

But not the rocking chair.  I actually do love that thing.

Aug 14 2011

Frugal Clothes and Frugal Food: Pain vs. Fun

I went to get Rabbit some school clothes today (since school starts on Tuesday and I have done NO shopping for her, because I am a terrible parent).  I started at our favorite kids’ consignment store and although I am a fan of Christmas, I am not quite ready – in AUGUST – to buy sweaters and snow boots.  Seriously, in the entire store, there was half a rack of really ratty looking short sleeved shirts.

“We buy in season,” the cashier said.

“It’s August!” I protested.

“Well, we expect people to be fall shopping now, not summer.”

I just stared at her and went back to digging through the racks of clothing, ignoring the woman next to me who kept exclaiming over the “Oh my God, look at this cute Mossimo sweater isn’t it darling?”  I realized she was talking to me, and I said “Mossimo is from Target, isn’t it?”  She walked away.

I am a terrible person (who also happens to have raging PMS and a short timeline to buy my daughter a school wardrobe that doesn’t cost a fortune and also manages to not embarrass my daughter).

I picked up two pairs of skinny Old Navy jeans for $3/each and had chosen size 7, since the 6x was Rabbit’s size at the end of the last school year and I presume she grew.  I also got her one of the four short-sleeved shirts in the store, a tunic, a henley shirt, a pleated plaid skirt and a pair of leggings.  And a tankini.

When I got home, I discovered that everything except the tunic was too big for her.

$*(#&%)*_%#!

So tomorrow, when we’re out shoe shopping, I will need to return the clothes that don’t fit and then take Rabbit to find a first-day-of-school dress and probably a few outfits from Old Navy, the most affordable place I can find that isn’t a consignment store full of ski sweaters or a Goodwill store full of pee-soaked hoarders looking for additions to their priceless collections of old magazines, musty shoes and cannister sets.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE:

I decided today to plan out an entire week’s worth of dinner menus based solely on recipes that are comprised almost entirely of foods from Trader Joe’s.  Since Rabbit and I will be on the side of town where our TJs is located, we’ll stop there for supplies. I will try to take pictures and rate each recipe and keep a tally of how much I spend.

The tentative menu:
Monday:  Enchilada Casserole (corn tortillas, green onions, pork carnitas, jalepenos, black olives, cheese and sour cream)

Tuesday: Breakfast for supper (Rabbit’s favorite meal, and one we promised her for dinner on the first day of school.)  Scrambled eggs, Trader Joe’s hash brown patties, and breakfast sausage I got at another store but which are in the freezer, TJs orange juice.

Wednesday:  PC will make pan sauteed tilapia (we have this in the freezer from another store), supplemented by seasoned fresh green beans from TJs and some sort of rice pilaf dish I will pick up at TJs

Thursday:  Chili lime chicken mini-tacos (using corn tortillas from TJs and the Trader Joe’s chili lime chicken burgers, cooked and broken up, served on tortillas with salsa and cheese and sour cream).

Friday:  Homemade pizza (my own dough) with TJs pepperoni and TJs fresh whole milk mozzarella, and another with the mozzarella and artichoke hearts and whatever other TJs ingredients look good at the time.

Saturday: Lunch:  White lightning chili (made with Chicken broth, quinoa, chicken, cannelini beans, pinto beans, and TJs corn and chili salsa).  Serve with homemade rolls.

Saturday:  Dinner:  Seasoned beef tri-tip (if they have it), herb and garlic mashed potatoes, roasted brussels sprouts for Rabbit and me, and some other veg (probably corn) for PC

Sunday Lunch:  leftovers

Sunday: Dinner: still up in the air, but I’ll decide when I find something interesting at Trader Joe’s.

Aug 11 2011

THIS POST PRE-EMPTED BY PESTILENCE

I’m really tempted to drop the all time worst curse word right here in this post.  But I’ll refrain.

I had a nice long post planned out full of reflection, perspective and philosophical thoughts about life, parenting and our place in this world.

Instead, I regret to report that this evening, while getting Rabbit ready for the school open house where she gets to meet her third grade teacher……

I was combing Rabbit’s hair…. and….

Yep.  F***ING HEAD LICE.  AGAIN.

For those keeping track, this journey of magical wonder began in February. FEBRUARY.

This is six months we’ve been battling these little f***ers and I’m at the end of my rope.

THE END OF MY ROPE, I say!

So she’s on the sofa with her hair saturated with Cetaphil clear liquid soap, a shower cap over her hair, and in the morning, I’ll comb through, tiny section by tiny section using two fine toothed combs to remove any eggs and any live goddamn insects (really, I’m sorry, but I have to swear) and spend about an hour doing so while she cries and I cry and then I will wash her hair with coconut shampoo laced with tea tree oil and rinse it with Listerine, and then wash it again.  And then French braid it to keep it from coming into contact with other children’s hair.

And then I still have to go to work, but also wash all her bedding with hot water, run everything through a hot dryer, wash (or throw away) all the throw pillows on the sofa, spray down the sofa with some sort of insecticide….

I have a gift certificate still sitting here for a massage and facial.  I am SO doing that in the next week.

 

Jul 28 2011

I’m Not Strangling You, I’m Hugging Your Carotid With My Thumbs

I’ve been in a state of simmering rage for about three straight days which I’m sure has nothing to do with hormones and is probably attributable to righteous indignation and my unquenchable thirst for justice in several areas, including the following:

1.  Why must people around me constantly BREATHE and TALK and BE HAPPY?

2.  EFFING FIX THE EFFING BUDGET SH*T ALREADY YOU POSING, BLOWN UP, SELF-IMPORTANT, IDIOTIC POLITICAL TURD-BAGS!

3.  No, I haven’t thought about what is for dinner.  I haven’t thought about food, or cooking, or feeding my husband and daughter, or meals, or togetherness or tender thoughts of building a stronger family.  I have thought about thumping you in the middle of the forehead if you were to appear in the bedroom door to ask me anything other than “What would you like me to fix for dinner tonight, O majestic queen of ferocious mood swings?”

4.  The fact that I did not indulge in said forehead thumping shows, I think, admirable restraint on my part and yet, the Nobel Peace Prize remains frustratingly out of my reach.  I blame my detractors, who are legion.

5.  I did not ever in my life think to stow oven mitts in my car with which to grasp the steering wheel at 5:00 on a 100 degree afternoon when I got done at the office and went to pick up my daughter.  So my hands, with first and possibly second degree burns on them, are in no shape to hold the door open to you, lady on the cellphone standing expectantly next to me at the day camp entrance.  We would have remained at that impasse had the polite young father leaving the building not held the door open for both of us seething women standing out in the heat in a wordless, unmoving mental stand-off.

6.  When my daughter sees “Little House on the Prairie” on the DirecTV guide and clicks to the Hallmark channel, could the universe not just once make sure the episode by which she is introduced to the TV version be one even vaguely related to the real stories from the books?  Apparently not, since I walked in to see her watching a grey-haired Michael Landon as Pa helping to save a suicidal young girl from trying to drown herself in a pond after her father died, clutching her to his chest, both of them sobbing dramatically as he strokes her hair and looks up at the sky as if to thank God for giving him carte blanche to ruin American literature with his hair and his directorial artistic license.

7.  Am I really outraged about an episode of “Little House on the Prairie?”

I need to change medications, eat some chocolate, or something.  Have you ever had one of those stretches of days (or weeks?) when the smallest thing has set you off?  Please share so I know I’m not completely out of my mind.