I’m a generalist, or maybe just undecided.
The good thing about going to a New Year’s Eve party hosted by friends from Northern Celtic Nation is that most of the people there will know all the verses of Auld Lang Syne.
On the other hand, that means it will take a lot longer to sing it.
“Princess cat, the Goddess cat is not for hitting. The scratching post is for hitting. Here, let me show you the scratching post.”
She doesn’t listen, of course, but she doesn’t listen to “stop that!” either.
At the recommendation of Moxie and getupgrrl, I read Haim Ginott’s Between Parent and Child. I figure, since I talk to the cats all the time anyway, I might as well practice the kinds of communication he suggests. (And before I moved in with the cats, I talked to myself a lot. I don’t think I’ll be one of those new mothers who finds it unnatural to talk to babies who don’t understand what I’m saying yet.)
I am not going to even try to write little reviews of all the parenting books I have been reading because:
1. I’m not a parent! If all goes well between now and June, I will be, but who knows what could go wrong before then (well, I know, because I read blogs. That’s another post.) So, instead, go read Moxie’s or Linda’s or your favorite blogger’s recommendations.
2. Writing reviews is a small part of my job, and if I am going to do something that is just like work, I have other priorities.
I will say this: I took a look at the original 1969 edition of Ginott’s book that was in my university’s library, and if I didn’t revere Moxie so much, I might not have gone ahead with plans to buy the new edition. The revised edition advocates the same basic theories, but I found it more palatable since it didn’t include (for example) the suggestions to teach children by doing nice feminine housework with the girls and guy stuff with the boys.
It was interesting to me to read Ginott’s section of parental praise, because it helped me understand why my parents’ praise did not always make me feel better at all (and I’m thinking of when I was in college.)
I might get How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk for Mr. Luo. He found Ginott’s tone off-putting, even in the revised edition, and decided one chapter was enough. So far, I’ve only skimmed How to Talk in the bookstore. Faber and Mazlish promote Ginott’s theories, but it seems a little less pedantic. Plus, they include cartoons.
1. I got tired of having so many “uncategorized” posts, so I added the category “life, the universe, and everything,” but I forgot that WordPress uses commas to separate multiple categories, so now I have three new categories: “life,” “the universe,” and “everything”. Oh, and I haven’t looked up how to alter or delete categories.
2. After stumbling upon a particulary mean blog, I decided to join Karen’s “Kind Blog” list. I was very proud of myself for getting the button in the right place, complete with image. Then I realized that there was no link in the button, so I have to re-do it. For the record, the Kind Blog page is here.
I was about to post this:
The local Social Security office sent Mr. Luo a letter with a temporary password. He is suppposed to convert it to a password of his choosing within a month.
Must be to help him check the status of his application, right? Although I seem to remember they already sent him a password for that…
On page two of the letter it specifies that the password is to check benefits and can only be used after he has received notice that benefits have been approved. Of course, that probably won’t happen for another four months, at least, acccording to the estimate (not a promise, just a projection) that they gave us when he applied.
But a few days later, we got the notice that Social Security had approved his benefits, starting in February (which, at 6 months after he lost his job, is the earliest he is eligible for the benefits).
Let’s hear it for hard-working and efficient government workers!
Apparently, Dr. Respectful’s letter was authoritative enough that the Social Security people decided not to bother sending Mr. Luo to one of their doctors, which must have sped up the process considerably.
There is no net financial benefit to us from these benefits, since the private disability insurance benefits will be reduced. However, applying for Social Security was a requirement of the private policy. (Also, in two years, he will be eligible for Medicare). Anyway, I hope that all the recent local applicants who desperately need their Social Security money also had their benefits approved expeditiously.
For your information, all these benefits are taxable, depending on family income.
All is well with the chromosomes. The AFP test was also normal. Whew.
We still have to wait for the results of the genetic test for That F*ing Disease, probably until the end of January. They have to culture the cells for a couple of weeks before doing the test, which then takes another two or three weeks. (This is one of the reasons the pgd was so expensive–that lab had to test for the TFD mutation within a couple of days with only one cell to work on.) I am trying not even to think about the TFD test, and reminding myself it is just a backup check on the pgd, which has such a small error rate in itself.
When we did the amnio, they recommended coming back for a complete anatomy scan at 18-20 weeks. That is the same ultrasound my ob-gyn does at 20 weeks, so I scheduled it with his sonographers, though it will be 21 weeks by then.
We are supposed to get our amnio results (not the TFD test, just the regular amnio tests) today. If I don’t hear by 4 my time (it is 3:30 now), I will call them.
It’s just that last time I called them, I cried. They said on 12/13 that it would be 8 days. The handout they gave us said 7-10 calendar days. Oh, and they also said something about another test that would be ready in 3 days. So I waited, and called 12/22, because it was past 8 days, and 10 days would be Saturday. No results yet, so we would have to wait till after the holiday weekend. And that three-day result-someone must have been talking about a test that they did not actually do for us, because we didn’t have anything done that would have results that soon.
I also cried talking to the phone company last Friday. Basically the same reason. Don’t tell me to expect something if you aren’t going to deliver, especially not repeatedly as the phone company has done.
UPDATE: And don’t tell me you’ll call with results Tuesday morning if your office doesn’t reopen until Wednesday.
Still working on handling uncertainty with equanimity. IVF was a good teacher, but apparently I need more practice.
We’ve got a tree! We bought it on Friday and put our white and blue lights and three Christmas ornaments on it. I think it looks great. Mr. Luo also put some of the ornaments that go along with the 12-inch tall plastic tree onto the real tree, but I think that is just wrong.
What I learned from buying a tree on 12/22. Fewer options ( a bunch of the lots had already shut down) but the people selling the trees were very eager to negotiate prices. As in offering us ever-lower prices without our asking for them.
Before we went out to buy the tree, I remembered I had one more Christmas cd besides the Messiah and the Burns Sisters’ Tradition that I had been listening to in the car. I won’t mention the title, to preserve privacy and avoid Google-ability, but it is punk-ish Christmas carols and stories and includes guest appearances by my father singing three songs. Badly. (My father is a poet, not a musician, but the punk rock folks love him.) When he gave me the cd, he included a copy of a review from the local paper that focuses on his contribution to the album, and particularly mentions his singing “terrifyingly” outside his vocal range. Anyway, this cd kept Mr. Luo entertained almost long enough to get the tree and pick up the present for our landlady without losing patience.
We are having tamales for dinner tonight. I love the idea of a tamales-making party, but I have no energy this year, and they are so readily available where I live now that we just bought ours (some from the store and some from a restaurant). Tomorrow, the plan is to go to dim sum for brunch. Mr. Luo is cooking a pot roast for dinner.
We set up the dvd player only briefly hindered by the old tv’s lack of proper jacks to connect to the new player. In fact, this problem gave us an excuse to go to Fry’s; we’d been trying to think of one, but hadn’t really needed anything from them until we had to get the converters and cables this week. Somehow, it turned out that we also needed a copy of Sim City 4. Mr. Luo reports that it is “cool” but “buggy”. For the record, just connecting the dvd player to the vcr and the vcr to the tv did not work well-funny colors and wavy images when we did a dry run with Love Actually.
We may start watching Lord of the Rings tonight, unless I fall asleep before we get started. We watched some of the documentary extras to make sure the connection worked. In preparation for this occasion, I recently read the novel for the eighteenth time.
We also celebrated the day before Christmas by
1. Making gingerbread, but with insufficient molasses (substituting maple syrup worked well)
2. Doing our weekly grocery shopping. (Sunday is our shopping day when we don’t get it done on Saturday, and we didn’t. )
3. Torturing Administering 240 cc of subcutaneous fluids to the Goddess cat.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
Happy Winter Solstice to all, especially if you are someplace dark. They days will get longer! (Until then, lightboxes are good.)
I’ve been reading this as it has moved from the academic women’s blogs I read to the mothers in academia to the mothers outside of academia. I think I saw it first at See Jane Compute and most recently at Snickollet.
The rules:
- Harken back to your archives.
- Collect the first sentence you wrote every month for the whole year.
- Entertain us.
I’ve only been blogging since August, so here is not quite half a year of firsts.
August: I have been writing elegant introductions in my head, but nothing profound enough to post.
September: Yesterday, I was so tired that I walked to the subway station and then realized I was not up to going anywhere.
October: Though Orthomom’s post on preimplantation genetic diagnosis I found a piece in Slate on pgd, “Better than Sex: The Growing Practice of Embryo Eugenics” by William Saletan.
November: We had one group of trick-or-treaters.
December: (the first two sentences were dated Dec. 1 but posted Nov. 30, at least in my time zone. I got a little grouchy about that because of NaBloPoMo.)
1. I had my second official ob appointment today.
2. 14w1d was November 30, and it was posted Nov. 30, and in fact it is still Nov. 30 here.
3. (The one actually written in Dec.) Mr. Luo is re-reading Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver.
So, an introduction, a post about my medical tourism in NYC, pgd, pregnancy, and a bit of home life.
The ivf-pgd to pregnancy trajectory is what I had hoped for, but not really expected, when I started writing this blog.
Back in August, I would have anticipated seeing more posts about my work by the end of the year, but the absence reflects my progress in that area, unfortunately.
Whenever I write a post about something like finding good schools for the Chocolate Chip, I feel like I should include some kind of disclaimer to the effect that I am well aware that the Ch.Ch. might not make it that far. Even if I didn’t know my own risk factors, I read enough blogs to know about amniocentesis results that include phrases like “incompatible with life,” late losses, babies that don’t come home from the NICU and so on.
I worry that someone might read this and think I am foolishly carefree, or be hurt by my seeming assumption that things will turn out well, especially if things didn’t turn out well for her.
Our own amnio results aren’t back yet, so we are on another threshold that might determine whether this continues to be a happy good-news blog or the record of someone dealing with bad news.
