Incongruities

• After years of going to yoga class two or three times a week up until the day before I went into labor, I finally bought a pair of real yoga pants this summer, because the stretch capris I had been wearing for yoga didn’t fit anymore. I have only gone to yoga class once since Zebediah was born almost nine months ago.
• I teach at an institution of higher learning. There is a lot of construction going on right now. In front of one major path that is blocked off, there is a large sign that says:

Pardon our dust.

Rome Wasn’t built in a day.

Neither will State U.

Somebody tried to help by adding a “be” (Neither will State U. be) but this was apparently considered a heinous act of vandalism and was carefully painted over.

• I don’t let Zebediah eat anything that falls on the floor, but he crawls around all day on that same floor and sucks on his thumb or fingers or hand much of the day as well.
• I decided on my choice for the Democratic nominee about an hour before we went to vote in the primary. We also went to the caucus, and now I am an Obama delegate to the county convention.
• I am barely writing anything on this blog, yet today I found myself thinking about setting up a professional blog under my real name.

I Never Write, I Never Call

I obviously haven’t been writing posts. I have a couple thousand unread posts on Bloglines. I wrote my monthly baby update for the family when Zeb was 7 months old, but never got the photos done until it was time to write the 8-month update. I haven’t been writing in my journal or in my update file or on the blog about myself or my son, and they way my memory is these days, I could very well forget any and all of his milestones.  Also, I am way behind on writing  thank-you notes for Z’s gifts. On the other hand, I have managed not to fall behind on grading yet, which is good, even if we are less than a month into the semester (and writing this post when I have papers to grade isn’t going to help me keep up).

We moved more than a month ago, but we are still not unpacked. Every time I tell somebody that, they say something about the boxes they never unpacked that are sitting in the garage after all these years. I’m not talking about those. They are sitting in the garage. I’m talking about my office, my husband’s office, and the living room: in other words, a lot of books. Part of the delay is that we need to buy new bookshelves. Another part is that we want to anchor the bookshelves we have to the wall so that Zebediah does not die a horrible death by pulling over a shelf full of literary theory, or computer science, or science fiction, or fiction-from-the-region-I-study.

On the other hand, we have a new house, with only one story, so I can cross father and / or son falling down the stairs off my list of worries. Also, no more carpets. This was also a TFD-related requirement. I would have thought a soft carpet was better for people with a movement disorder that can cause falls, but I learned in the support group that hard floors are better because it is easier to trip on carpets.

Time for bed, or for grading, or–most likely–for the baby to wake up.

Time for a Checkup

Last night, when writing my paper proposal, I had to take my glasses off in order to see clearly. Also, I apparently could not tell the difference between the bullets icon and the indented quotation icon when I posted at 3:00am.

I’m fairly sure that this has more to do with the deterioration of my lenses than my eyes. Why do I always let somebody convince me to get the anti-glare coating? And didn’t I get some kind of scratch-resistant lens? I am fairly careful with my glasses, but they seem permanently smudged and scratched.

On the other hand, maybe once one needs bifocals, it is a slippery slope and my prescription is no good after a mere year and a half.

The first time an optometrist mentioned bifocals, I was horrified. Also, since it was the inappropriate optometrist, I particularly trust his judgment, so I ignored him. By the summer of 2006, when a different optometrist declared I definitely needed them, I just thought “oh, so that’s why I’ve been having trouble reading.” It hadn’t even occurred to me to hold a magazine farther away to see if it would be easier to read. I had been blaming the glare or the font. When I Googled bifocals, I found out that, at 40, I was right on schedule.

Just Like the Cool Kids

Hey! I have the same soap as Dooce.

And I met my spouse at 35 and married at 37, just like Johnny. (Well, I met him sometime before that, got to know him and started dating when I was 35.)

Making My Life More Difficult

Health Insurance Company: Sent a card for Zebediah Xerxes with the wrong start date. I had to call the benefits office, who called me back to say the company had no idea how they could have made that mistake, and would be sending me a new card. They sent a new card with the same date. (It’s hereditary. When I was a kid, Kaiser kept giving me cards that said I was male.)

My Employer’s New Long Term Care Insurance Company:

1. Sent an acceptance letter to my husband but not to me. I had to call and ask why. Sent me a letter saying I had to fill out a long Evidence of Insurability form. I had to call and remind them that I was only required to fill out the short form that I sent them because I was guaranteed acceptance with the change of carriers.

2. Deducted my premium from my bank account as requested. Sent my husband a bill instead of deducting automatically, because they got the account number wrong, despite us having included a voided check with the application. Had to call to find out what was wrong.

Southwest Airlines:

I bought a ticket for myself and an infant ticket for ZX for our trip to the wedding. They sent email confirmation of his ticket but not mine and according to my online credit card statement, charged me for his ticket but not mine. I called and was told that I do have a seat and have been charged for it, despite indications to the commentary.

These are all calls I had to make after having the baby, on top of my normal telephone sort-of-phobia.

The Gym:

Said they would suspend my membership for a month and stop deducting my monthly fee in June. They charged me in June, but not July, just when I was medically cleared for all physical activity. I haven’t even tried to deal with this yet, since I haven’t worked out the logistics of juggling our gym time(s) and the baby.

Myself:

On first trip to the mall to buy clothes that fit, I drove all the way there before realizing that I had not brought my purse, so I had to drive back home. It’s only 15 minutes away, but this was precious husband-with-the-baby time. In theory, that’s not a problem now that I have a breast pump and Mr. Luo can give the kid a bottle, but Zebediah has been giving him a bit of a hard time when I am gone.

Communication Problems

When we got back from our trip, we encountered a number of communication difficulties, including:

• A message from the childbirth class instructor wondering where we had been the previous week. I had told her at the first class that we would be gone that week, and also sent an email before we left.
• A voice message from a guy in charge of a task that I had volunteered to help with before my trip, wondering if I had gotten any of his recent urgent emails. Last month, he had forgotten to send me the information about my task in time for me to do it before the trip, so I had told him I couldn’t do it and he had said he’d get another volunteer (the deadline was while I was gone, so there was time for somebody else in the group to get it done). He apparently forgot that I wasn’t going to do it and never reassigned it, hence the urgent emails and message. Result: He and I split my task and did it, albeit post-deadline.
• A letter from the Old Gym, informing me that the check I sent had not been in the letter they received. I was 90% sure that the check was in the envelope, because I had checked more than once to be sure. After all, I knew the impact of my irate letter to them would be reduced if I forgot to include the check that I mentioned in the letter. Still, this was one reason I cleaned off my desk, to make sure the check had not somehow gotten out of the envelope and lost itself in my mess. I finally called them and the women with whom I have been corresponding said she had left a message last week with my son apologizing because she had found out that whichever employee opened the letter removed the check before giving her the correspondence. Now, if you work in an office in which the mail you receive is already opened, wouldn’t you follow up to see if somebody had already taken a check out before writing a letter that insists the check did not arrive? Also, if my unborn son has a phone extension in the womb, it did not show up on ultrasound. Given all their other mistakes (which are unbelievable, but which I will elide for the sake of anonymity), I suspect they called the wrong phone number. My husband denies answering the phone and claiming to be my son, for the record.

• A couple of days after getting home, we were supposed to host the monthly meeting of a dance group’s board. It turns out that the meeting had been cancelled, but my husband never got the email about that–somebody called to let him know after he sent a last-minute reminder with directions to our house. (One other person was also out of the loop and showed up.) Well, we clean up on Sundays anyway, and we ate the food we’d prepared as an early dinner.

• One afternoon, while I was out, a woman called for me and asked my husband to have me call my doctor when I got home. He got her to specify which doctor (it was my ob-gyn’s office) and left me the message, but by the time I got home the office was closed. So I called the next morning and left a message on the nurses’ voicemail. And again in the afternoon, because it occurred to me that there might be a problem with the appointments scheduled for the next day, and if so, I’d want to know about it before fasting, getting up early, and driving up there in rush hour. Then, as it got closer to closing time, I called again and waited to talk to the operator instead of punching the numbers for my ob-gyn’s nurses’ line. She thought maybe the office’s schedulers had called me, and transferred me to them. They had a note that they had called me to reschedule me with the nurse practitioner, and transferred me to the nurses to clarify. Where I got voice mail again and left a third message. Then they called me back, and there had been some attempt to reschedule things because of a change in the doctor’s schedule, but that I should come in as planned anyway. By the end of all of this, I was nearly in tears, because this is the sort of thing that gets to me, plus of course I was imagining calling for a medical reason and never getting heard. Of course, the whole point of a “nurses’ triage line” is that they will call back the people with emergency medical issues first, and in the past they have called back much faster. Still, I kept thinking: “they started it” by calling me and asking me to call, so they shouldn’t have kept me hanging.

Note: I believe that last paragraph illustrates everything that is wrong with my story-telling abilities (strongly related to difficulties summarizing things succintly).

If This Keeps Up…

instead of “just relax” or “if you adopt, you’ll get pregnant,” people are going to start annoying their infertile friends and relatives by telling them “I heard that if you do ivf, it won’t work, but then you’ll get pregnant afterwards” or “you’ll have twins, and then get pregnant again naturally.”

Nothing Bad Has Happened Yet (tm getupgrrl). May all the pregnancies go well and end with healthy mothers and babes.

Cars and Seats

We are almost ready to buy a carseat. This would be our first baby-related purchase, which makes sense, since we can’t take the baby home from the hospital without it. I was browsing the fancy baby store near my yoga class and noticed the carseats were on sale, which prompted me to go online to check prices and do some research about whether I really wanted the superfancy carseat, so I would know whether I should rush to take advantage of the sale.

When I looked at the Amazon.com page for this car seat, I thought, “why would it recommend under ‘Better together’ that I buy this car seat along with another carseat (same brand and model, different color)?”

Oh, right. Most couples have two cars. (And some have twins, but despite my what my blog reading might indicate, twins are still not the norm, so I didn’t think of that till later.)

Hmm. How much of a Big Brother is Amazon? If I were coming from a New York City ISP, would it still think I needed two carseats?

Anyway, the fact that we only have to pay to outfit one car with a carseat is one of my justifications for spending the money on the fancy one. The other is safety. Hey, Estelle (a certified Child Passenger Safety Technician) at Faggots on the Third Floor recommends it. Of course, she also says most seats that meet the standards are safe (and don’t get her started on Consumer Reports).

Bottom line- If you buy a seat approved for sale on the US market, and you use that seat properly and according to manufacturer’s guidelines, your child is very safe. If you buy the best seat you can (and I won’t lie, I don’t think there are any seats as safe as Britax), have a professional teach you to install it, use it correctly EVERY time, keep it rear facing as long as possible, and keep your child harnessed as long as possible, your child will very, VERY safe.

Anyway, I have been contemplating the fact that we can afford the fancy carseat. The reviews that gush “isn’t your baby worth it” annoy me, because they don’t seem to acknowledge the privilege involved. As Bruce Schneier keeps reminding us, security involves tradeoffs. Estelle writes about the tradeoff between ease of use and safety in a car seat in her post, but there is also an economic tradeoff. If the tradeoff is between $250 (or, to be fair, the price differential between the very safe seat and the very, VERY safe seat) worth of shoes and a great carseat, then sure, your baby’s safety is worth it, but if the tradeoff is between rent and the fancy seat, you need to pay the rent.

To move on to more superficial matters, we will probably buy the boring brown version. “Onyx” looks much nicer to me. Plus, it would clearly be the choice of Mark Vorkosigan, if he had a little baby, right? Not that I want to emulate Mark in personal matters, but the onyx made me think of the butter bug designs in A Civil Campaign.* Unfortunately, it would probably just get too hot during the summer around here (and by summer I mean anytime it gets over 85 degrees, which is about .) I tried to argue that we shouldn’t deny the kid a flowery pattern just because of his gender, but the flowery pattern was sort of ugly in my opinion, so my argument was halfhearted. So, brown carseat on top of boring beige car upholstery it is, I guess.

This kind of practicality about the colors is, I think, one of the disadvantages of being an older parent. Although, given that I don’t like cars and I don’t like heat and my childhood car memories involve getting carsick every time we drove through the desert, I probably would have been sensitive to the heat issue even in my young, hip (hahaha, I was never hip, though perhaps I was less boring then) days.

(On the subject of gender-appropriate colors, can I just say that it is a good thing that blue is my favorite color, and that I am not that fond of pink, though I like it a lot more now than I did when I was a little girl. Because based on my browsing so far and my reading of blog-rants by parents of small children, it is hard to buy anything that is not blue or pink, so I imagine we will be getting plenty of blue gifts.)

*by Lois McMaster Bujold. Try to ignore the cover. If you’re a fan of the Miles Vorkosigan books, you’ve already read it. If not, don’t start with this one. Read Shards of Honor and Barrayar (republished together as Cordelia’s Honor). Special bonus: lots of Assisted Reproductive Technology.

About Television that I Don’t Watch

Someday, I am going to have to watch 24.* Or maybe I just need to read Heather Havrilesky at Salon more regularly.

So Jack injects his brother with something that makes him feel a lot of pain (from my personal experience, I’m guessing it’s Pitocin), and his brother is moaning and screaming, and instead of keeping his brother focused on his breathing, Jack is bellowing into his ear, “Tell me where McCarthy is! Tell me what you know!” and Ugly Brother is weeping and sweating and I’m thinking he’s got to be at least 4 centimeters dilated by this point, and just when Jack is about to tell him that it’s time to push, Ugly Brother tells him that he was the evil voice on the phone last season, pulling all the strings and screwing with Jack and shooting the Best President Ever in the neck.

Maybe this just caught my eye because we attended our first Bradley childbirth class on Valentine’s Day.

* I saw part of an episode in the first season. From what I hear, since then the show has involved a lot of torture. I’m disturbed by popular culture representations of torture as something that just has to be done, though I can’t comment on 24 in particular, not having seen it.

Helm’s Deep

First, I felt guilty that, unlike other academic bloggers, I didn’t feel guilty about taking it easy over the holidays.

Now, I feel bad that I didn’t manage to accomplish any projects like this candy model of the Battle of Helm’s Deep from The Two Towers.

It’s appropriate that I just found the link on Pharyngula, because Mr. Luo and I spent the evening watching some of the documentary features on our new Lord of the Rings dvd set.

Thanks to nasty weather (so long, warm and sunny, hello 40 degrees and rainy and flooded roads, colder temps and ice possibly to come), we stayed home instead of going out to the music fest today, or even to the gym. My early morning quest for yoga yielded a cancelled class and detours around (different) flooded low points coming and going.