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Whew! Got the shots

My daughters got the first of their two H1N1 shots in school yesterday.

I didn’t realize how anxious I was about H1N1 until my daughters came home from school with Band-Aids on their little shoulders and I felt a weight lift off my shoulders.

When the news of the virus first hit, I tried to stay calm and to think that all the excitement about the virus was just media hype.  Just recently, though, I read a post in my favorite New York Times blog (the blog is called Well) and learned that doctors “are seeing a lot of infections with a virus against which children have no immunity, and which has already caused more deaths in children under 5 than we would see in years of regular seasonal flu.”

After reading the above, I started to get a little nervous, especially since one of my daughters has asthma and the other has reactive airways.  The daughter with asthma is prone to pneumonia.  She’s been in the hospital twice for pneumonia, and believe me, it’s no picnic.  She pulled through it fine both times, but it’s still very scary.

So as soon as the vaccine became available in our school district, you better believe I signed my daughters up.

I know folks are concerned about the small amount of mercury in the shot.  I am concerned too. But I have a different attitude about these kinds of things since I had cancer.

Our environment is poisoned, our planet is poisoned, our bodies are poisoned.  I do not believe that we can escape it for the time being.  I believe that we can only pick lesser evils at this point; for example, I try to eat organic when I can because it’s the lesser of two evils.  But, as far as the mercury in the shot, well, I can pick between the small amount of mercury in the shot or the whopping dose of very, very powerful steroids my daughter will have to take if she gets pneumonia again.

The steroids rip her stomach up, giving her stomach aches, and then they make her aggressive for a few nasty days.  Once, to my horror, my daughter — hepped up on steroids after another bout with pneumonia — clocked her sister a good one on the jaw in the pediatrician’s office.  I was naturally mortified and tried to explain to the doctor that my daughter didn’t usually punch her sister unprovoked.  He looked unimpressed and simply said, “I call it ‘Roid Rage. It’s a very real thing.”

You bet your sweet patootie it’s real.  Which would you choose?  To me, it’s a no-brainer.  We’ll take the shots, thank you very much.

A little mercury in the shots, yeesh.  I can only imagine what’s in our tap water.

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Ahhh, Maine

Last year around this time, I was finishing up chemotherapy and trying to think of ways to explain to my children that soon, I’d be going to the hospital for surgery.  Practically everyone I knew was going on some sort of lovely vacation.  But we weren’t going anywhere, of course.

I tried not to feel sorry for myself.  I am well aware that there are many, many people everywhere who cannot afford food or housing, let alone a vacation.

Last year, though, struggling through cancer made me feel so far away from my family and old friends.  I adore my California friends, and ironically, their unyielding support and love made me realize just *how* far away I was from my East Coast folks, many of whom I have barely interacted with for 12 years.  

There was a specific moment one day last spring, when I was in the midst of chemo treatments — I looked out of the window of my apartment, and I saw the fire raging in the San Gabriel mountains above our town, not so close that I feared that we’d have to run for our lives, but certainly close enough where I feared for my asthmatic daughter.  

Watching those giant flames lick up over the ridge that separated the wilderness from civilization, I thought to my bald self: “I’m from Philadelphia.  I’m done with this.”  Luckily enough, it timed out so more info

that my husband was also ready to return to our roots, and here we are today — living on the East Coast.

One of the benefits of living on the East Coast is that we are closer to Maine, where my grandfather owns a cottage about halfway between Ellsworth and Bar Harbor.  I have been going there for nearly 40 years, since I was a very little girl.  My heart and soul grew up there, I’m quite sure, on the rocky beach below my grandparents’ house, where I was allowed to play for hours and hours, collecting rocks and sea glass.

At night, my sister and our summer friends would play poker for toothpicks, and we’d do a bunch of nothing, just as children should do in the summer.

I yearned desperately for Maine when I was undergoing chemo.  

After two weeks of crazed unpacking at our new home in Pennsylvania, we left to come up here to Maine for a dear friend’s wedding, and I have gotten to see my daughters romp on the beach as they collect treasures.  They met a couple of friends this morning and did a bunch of nothing with them, just as children should do in the summer.

It’s so good to be here, hanging out with old friends and watching my girls send out flexible tentacles to the beach, the wildflowers, the lobster buoys, the old farmhouses, the glorious sunset.

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OK, so I’m sitting here

For the second time in my life as a mom, my little girls have asked for me to let them put themselves to sleep like big girls.

So I read to them, got out of bed, turned off the light, turned on some lullabies, kissed them, told them I love them, tucked them in and slipped out of the room.

For the second night in a row, they feel asleep almost immediately.

Now I’m blogging, but just before that, I was just sitting here, staring into space.  I should be grateful that I have the night to myself, but I am in shock and not sure what to do with my time.  I should probably be going through files or packing boxes, but I feel disoriented.

We have always put our girls to sleep by reading them a story and then cuddling with them until they fall asleep.  Only then do we sneak out.  Lots of times, doing this makes me so tired that I end up just going to bed.

Sometimes, it made me crazed that I almost never had the evenings to myself.  My husband offered to put the girls to bed, but since I work out of the home full time, I really like bedtime so that I can spend time with the girls and read them stories.  I just wished that I had the energy after that to stay up and hang out with my husband and do other stuff, but so often I just don’t.

But then my friend Sandy told me to enjoy the bedtimes, that soon enough they would be a thing of the past.  So, I made peace with the fact that I just wouldn’t have the nights to myself for a while.

And now, here I am with a night to myself, and I just don’t know what to do with it.  I just want to snuggle with my girls, but at the same time I am so proud of them for wanting — and asking for — some independence.

I honestly can’t believe how fast they’re growing up.

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Adieu, sweet prince

Today we said goodbye to a family friend, the beloved dog of one of my closest friends.


Sweet Sam

We don’t have a pet.  We had some fishies for awhile, but we found it impossible to keep the tank clean. That, and Mr. Hubs doesn’t like to read directions or signage, and he inadvertently got a suckerfish that was actually for a tank double the size of ours.  The beast grew to the size of one of Mr. Hubs’ shoes and did nothing but suck the paint off all the tank decorations and crap long streams of skinny poo all over the tank, all the time.  Plus it scared the bejesus out of me, the thought that one day I’d lift the tank to sprinkle fish flakes in there, and I’d see the suckerfish, with its head sticking out of the water.  I imagined that I’d look close to see that the thing was finally growing land-lungs.

(Here, I pause to shudder as I recollect the horrible suckerfish.)

So I told Mr. Hubs to take care of things humanely, and when I came home one day, the problem was taken care of, and I don’t know anything more than that.

Our girls are true animal lovers, and we’ve told them that one day we’ll live somewhere where we can have a proper dog or cat.

In the meantime, they fell in love with my friend’s dog, a sweet, handsome yellow Labrador, a real prince.  He was always a perfect gentleman with my girls, a perfect dog for little girls to pet and to stuff with dog treats and to pester in that way that only little kids can pester a dog.  My family told me that I used to pester Walter, my grandparents’ yellow lab, just the same way, and he never flinched or complained.

After my heartbroken friend told me the news this afternoon, I thought about how we’d break the news to Dinah and Djuna.  I called my sister and asked her for the name of two children’s books about death, figuring I’d pick them up at the bookstore on the way home.  She read them to her son when we had a death in the family back in 2006, and I keep meaning to ask her for the titles …  But she was at work and didn’t know the titles off-hand and said she’d get them to me tomorrow.

So, we had to wing it.  I hope we did OK.

We told Dinah and Djuna just what my friend wanted us to tell them, that Sam just got so old that his body gave out.  They were very sad about it, and it broke my heart to have to tell them and to see them cry.  After a little while, they asked for Daddy to print out pictures of Sam for them to color so they could make my friend a card.  They colored dog pictures for the better part of the evening.

Today, on the day we lost Sam, we discovered that the pumpkin seeds are growing.  These aren’t just any pumpkin seeds.  These are seeds my girls planted a week ago, during our pumpkin carving afternoon, with my friend’s help.  The seeds are planted in an impossible spot beneath a fence, but my daughters were so excited about the whole project that they called it their “secret pumpkin patch.”


Giant, gooey pumpkin innards, and lots of seeds!


Planting the secret pumpkin patch under a fence.


Cleaning up

One of those impossible seeds has sprouted into a mighty seedling.  We think it is in honor of sweet, sweet Sam that the secret pumpkin patch has sprung to life.

Seems fitting, somehow.

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Whazzat?! Whazzat?!

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

Now, my family doesn’t believe in the Great Pumpkin, exactly, but we do love to watch the Peanuts cartoon about Linus and his undying faith in the Great Pumpkin.  (My favorite moment in all of cartoondom is when Linus is in the pumpkin patch keeping vigil for the appearance of the Great Pumpkin.  When Snoopy rises up, a silhouette in the darkness, Linus’ hair stands up on end as he is overcome and cries out, “Whazzat?!  Whazzat?!” just before he collapses in a faint.)

All I can say is that we must have a pretty sincere pumpkin patch, because the Great Pumpkin came to our house last night.

It’s all because of Auntie Dawn.

Let me explain.

Dinah came to me on Thursday morning and said, “I wonder what the Great Pumpkin will bring me as I sleep tonight.”

I said, “But Dinah, the other day you said you didn’t believe in the Great Pumpkin.”

She said, “But AUNTIE DAWN sent us something from the Great Pumpkin, and now I believe.” (Auntie Dawn, my husband’s twin sister, sent the girls cards and stickers and Halloween bracelets made by her oldest daughter.)

So, I want to publicly thank Auntie Dawn for restoring my daughters’ faith in the Great Pumpkin (and for making us scurry out to get Halloween presents so that we don’t disappoint our daughters on Halloween morning, that most blessed of all mornings).

The hubs (who told me yesterday, after reading my post, told me, “It’s Mr. Hubs to you”) went out and bought our daughters a little something, a couple of pets from the Littlest Pet Shop collection (another tradition we can thank Auntie Dawn for).  He put the new pets in the middle of the coffee table, innocently there among the pets left there last night.

The girls were so excited about Halloween that they came into our bedroom to climb in with us (and to horrify us with their little icicle feets) at 5:30 am.  They were absolutely wriggling, unable to fall back asleep.  But then Mr. Hubs put a fan on for a little white noise, and they collapsed back into sleep until it was time to get up and go downstairs to see if the Great Pumpkin had visited.

He had.

Here’s to the Great Pumpkin (and Auntie Dawn)!  Happy Halloween!

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Me and Obama, takin’ a walk

I was getting dressed for work, and my 5-year-old daughter came to me, holding a drawing. I asked her what it was of, and she said, “It’s me and Obama, takin’ a walk.”

I looked at the drawing, and those curved legs and big smiles and said, “Yes, I can see that now.  Of course.  You and Obama, taking a walk.”

Since the hubs and I have been watching more TV than usual in the last few weeks, I started explaining the election to my daughters.  I’m so glad I have done this because it’s been the source of some funny and memorable moments, not the least of which was the illustration above.

When we first told the girls about the election and informed them that Daddy and Mommy will be voting for Obama, Djuna kept making gagging sounds whenever she would see a McCain sign.  The sounds grew increasingly dramatic as the days passed and included wilder and wilder gesticulation.

So, we had a talk about how people believe different things and just because Mommy and Daddy want Obama to be president, that doesn’t mean that we have to make a big show of distaste when we see a McCain sign.  We talked about how the McCain signs belong to our neighbors and that we need to act neighborly, even if we don’t agree about who should be president.

The true test of this was when a McCain supporter across from my daughters’ school put out awesome Halloween decorations, including a giant purple and black blow up spider.

You could see their 5-year-old brains ticking, sort of like a robot in some sci-fi movie, when their eyes look like typewriter carriages going back and forth, necks ticking, just a little, from left to right as if they were reading something across the front of their robot cerebral cortexes: “This does not compute, this does not compute.  A McCain supporter with cool Halloween decorations.  Does not compute.”

Djuna really struggled with this.  And suddenly, the gagging sounds stopped.  Now, when we pass by that house, we merely comment wistfully on the McCain sign and then spend time really discussing the variety of decorations.

Another morning on the way to school, Dinah kept looking at all the Obama signs and saying that that house must be Kimmie’s house (not her real name).  I asked Dinah why she thought that, and she explained that Kimmie has an Obama sign in front of her house.  Knowing that my daughters have never been to Kimmie’s house, I was really confused.

“Dinah, how do you know that Kimmie’s house has an Obama sign in front of it?”

Dinah responded, “She told us.”

The idea that my daughters are hanging around the playground or maybe in the line for the water fountain, discussing the election with their Kindergarten compadres cracks me up completely.

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Watching my wedding clothes as they are dragged on the floor

My husband was desperately trying to meet a deadline this morning, so I got my daughters to play upstairs while I did some badly-needed clothes weeding.  He had the downstairs to himself, nice and quiet so he could concentrate on his work.

At some point, while scooting hangers from side to side in the closet, I remembered that I have been promising my girls that we’d look at my wedding clothes and that they could try them on.

Without too much trouble, I found the gorgeous cape that a close friend made for me to wear over my wedding outfit (a white close-fitting sweater with gold thread woven throughout and a creamy white floor-length trumpet-flare skirt, both very simple pieces by Nicole Miller).  The cape is creamy white velvet, with a deep red satin lining.  The red is the color of garnets, my birth stone.

My dear friend Nancy had worn a cape when she got married, and I had loved it.  Also, I thought a cape blowing in the wind would be very romantic.  Dwayne and I were married in Carmel, CA, on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Djuna tried on the cape first.  Before I could say anything, she lifted up her hand — with the cape on top of it — to wipe her nose.  I winced.  But I didn’t say anything about it because she looked so excited to be wearing the cape she’s only seen in pictures up to now.  I told her to go down and show her father.

She headed down the stairs to show Daddy, and I stood watching her and the cape, my pretty, pretty cape, as it dragged on the floor behind her.  Then she came back upstairs to give the cape to her sister so she could drag the cape behind her on the stairs.

Remembering that my own mother used her wedding veil — to my grandmother’s horror — to make a mosquito netting for my fancy English pram, I watched Dinah sashay down the stairs to show Daddy the cape, and I figured, well, what else are wedding clothes for, for goodness’ sake?

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I actually made roll-out Halloween sugar cookies! (Gluten-free, no less)

Having a couple of Play-Doh fans for kids has meant promises to make cookies, the kind where you roll out the dough and use cookie cutters.  The kind I’ve never made before.  The kind everyone knows is a mess!

To boot, I need to make them gluten-free because one of my daughters has a gluten intolerance.

I looked around for a gluten-free sugar cookie mix, but I haven’t been able to find one.  So, I went to the fabulous Gluten-Free Girl blog and found her roll-out sugar cookie recipe and adapted it.  (Adapted it?!  I can’t even believe that I adapted a recipe.  Who am I?  Who have I become? But I did it.  We basically succeeded with our cookies, but what I *really* did was inadvertently discover a pretty good recipe for gluten-free shortbread.  More on that in a minute.  First, the cute pictures.)


Mixing Halloween-colored frosting


Here are some cookies, all rolled out, ready to bake!


We did it!

I originally thought that maybe we’d share these cookies with some of my friends at work.  But, after a bona fide licking party: licking fingers, licking knives, even licking the container holding the sugar sprinkles … once I even caught Djuna rolling the rolling pin uuuuppp and dowwwnnnn her clothes.  There were some sneezes and coughs thrown in for extra flavor.

So I decided, maybe I’d better not share the wealth this time.  Everyone will thank me for it.

The recipe I adapted from Gluten-Free Girl came out delicious and flaky, just like shortbread, really.  But it was hard to frost. The pumpkin-shaped cookies fared well, but anything with arms or legs, like the ghosts and cats, suffered casualties — multiple appendage loss, to be exact.  The cookies were just too delicate.

I followed Shauna Ahern’s recipe amounts exactly (note: in the comments section of Shauna’s recipe, Shauna added a note about not beating the shortening too much).

I used Whole Foods’ 365 Gluten Free All Purpose Baking Mix (it already has thickeners in it, so I didn’t add xanthan gum … but I might reconsider adding some next time).  Also, instead of 1/2 lb. of margarine and 1/2 lb. of butter, I used 1 lb. of Plugra style butter because I read somewhere or other that there is more fat in this kind of butter, and I thought it might help strengthen the dough.  I think this was a mistake from the sugar cookie point of view, but if you want gluten-free shortbread, this is the way to do it.

But I’m proud of myself for adapting a recipe — it’s probably the most daring adaptation I’ve ever tried, except for that time that my friend Allison and I tried to make cookies without a recipe when we were 10.  Of course, that was at Grandma’s house, where you could get away with experiments like that.
After our Halloween cookie adventure, we were exhausted, but the project was a blast, and I can’t wait to do it again with a new adaptation of the recipe and Thanksgiving-shaped cookie cutters!

P.S. I recommend listening to Jack Johnson’s soundtrack for the movie Curious George as you frost.  Lovely.

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Lemon be the one

Like everybody, we love to listen to music in the car. Two of our favorite story CDs are Seal Maiden and Gift of the Tortoise. Both are excellent CDs, very musical, with captivating stories full of powerful images that fire up Dinah’s and Djuna’s imaginations.

We listen to great music, too. We love Dan Zanes’ CD Catch That Train and we also love Jazz for Kids: Sing, Clap, Wiggle and Shake. And if you know anything at all about my husband, you won’t be surprised to hear that he has already started teaching our daughters about the Beatles. It’s obligatory.

The favorite song of the moment then shows up when the girls are swinging at the park. A few weeks ago, Dinah and Djuna were all about Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds — at top volume.

Lately, my husband has been playing the Carpenters in the car. Dinah, especially, is completely enchanted with them and is learning the lyrics to every song.

So now, Dinah’s swinging song of choice is Rainy Days and Mondays. Picture an adorable, blonde 4-year-old girl-child soaring on a swing, feet practically touching the sky, singing Rainy Days and Mondays. Every time she gets to the chorus, “Rainy days and Mondays al-ways get me-e down,” I crack up. It’s so funny to see a sweet, happy child singing about having the blues.

This morning, they were practicing the words to Let Me Be The One. They were having a great time singing LOUD in the car, and then continued singing even after we got out and started walking toward the day camp sign-in.

Djuna’s version of the chorus to Let Me Be The One is “Lemon be the one.”

So that’s what is running through my head this morning as I sit with Dwayne at Zephyr, an awesome local coffee shop: Lemon be the one.

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Thoughts on clowns

We had mixed feelings about it, but last night we went with some friends to the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus at the Staples Center to see their new show “Over the Top.”

Mainly, I was concerned about giving my daughters a lifetime of nightmares from the clowns, which I found creepy and most un-funny when I was little. Also, I was wondering how I’d feel about the performing wild animals.

But we decided that the circus is a valuable cultural experience, so we coughed up the ticket price (and the convenience charges) and went.

As it turned out, we had to cross a PETA picket line to get in, and I felt terrible. One of the PETA activists gave Dinah and Djuna some stickers that read: “I’m an ele-friend. Circuses are no fun for animals.” My daughters said, “Oh, thank you!” and wore the stickers into the show.

My friends, the circus is not what it used to be. A bag of cotton candy is $12, a box of popcorn is $7 (and, uh, parking was $20). The toys and souvenirs didn’t really inspire my 4-year-old daughters, and if you can’t inspire a couple of eager 4-year-olds to want a circus souvenir, something is wrong. There were no peanuts or any cool circus candy (except for all-day suckers they sold when you were leaving at 10 p.m.) We did buy the girls a little stuffed toy, but the biggest hit the morning after was actually the most economical thing we got — coloring books for 4 bucks.

Moreover, the show is not the Greatest Show on Earth, as it is billed. Overall, it was a satisfactory presentation. Pretty good, but not great. Maybe I am just hankering for my childhood, when my grandparents took my sister and I to an old fashioned circus where everyone walked to the big top, which sat out in the middle of a big grassy field. I remember circus treats and circus smells and all the wonkiness of people working hard to entertain you in the dead heat of summer, with those fat, lazy Maine mosquitoes hunkering everywhere in the humidity. Now, THAT’S a circus.

First of all, last night’s ringmaster’s script was dull, with a running gag where the clowns kept stealing the guy’s hat, you know, the ringmaster’s hat that makes HIM the ringmaster because of its symbolic significance. It didn’t feel like there was enough of the traditional ringmaster banter, like “Laaa-deees and gennnntlemen, IN the center ring, witness the death-defying feats of the one-and-only Spaaaaa-deee-neeee!” There was some of it, but not enough to make it feel like a real circus. By the end of the show, I wanted to steal his hat too.

I was also not a fan of the quasi S & M section, where the dancers had bike handles coming out of their costumes at the hips. Call me a prude, but that was just plain odd.

I really liked the trained dogs and the pretty white ponies with purple feathers on their heads — seeing domesticated animals perform was actually fun. These animals appeared healthy and happy, especially the dogs. The dogs had these gleaming coats and engaged in a joyful performance where they ran at breakneck speed through an obstacle course and caught Frisbees. But watching wild animals perform — like a tiger jumping on its hind legs or an elephant laying on its side — was just icky and weird.

The traditional acts, like the high flying acts, were pretty good. Also, there was a neat act where the acrobats jumped and did tricks on these giant inner-tube things that were turned on their sides.

But the real hit of the show, we all thought, was Tom Doughtery, the lead clown. He was excellent! I honestly have never really seen a clown I liked, but I found myself genuinely laughing at his antics. My daughters loved him too and talked about him all the way home. They understood his gags and his storylines. I was pleasantly surprised.

The finale of the show was pretty, with black lights and huge fluorescent flowers.

The best moment, though, was not even in the show. When clown Tom’s toupee flew off during a gag, revealing his bald head, my electrified daughter Dinah shrieked across the aisle at top volume: “MAMA! Clown Tom is bald JUST LIKE YOU ARE!”

We all laughed so hard that our own toupees flew off. Coming to the circus was a good idea after all.