How do we not have the ball?

I've been really enjoying the Patriots this year, but I realize that I am a fair weather fan. I only like it when they win. When they lose, I can't bear to watch. Like everybody else in Boston, I was completely spoiled by last season (until the Superbowl of course). But it was a really fun six months and a really sucky half hour.

Tonight during the Steeler's route of the Pats, I jumped up and began to bathe my children during the second half rather than watch Cassell get stripped again. Since I got a #16 jersey I take it very personally when he doesn't do well. I was chasing the kids around because they were acting out various scenes from the Omen over the course of the game and needed to be watched. I kept coming in during the second half, looking at the TV and asking "How do we not have the ball?" Rich is a very vocal football watcher and I knew from the silence upstairs while the kids splashed and laughed that things weren't going well.

Madness, I know from a woman who wouldn't even let her poor husband watch football in the house until her son was born. I hated it that much. But I'll admit I was wrong. But I doubt I'll ever come around and start watching baseball or basketball. First of all, I just don't have that kind of time. Football is ONCE a WEEK for six months. Baseball and basketball are like every day, sometimes twice a day for three years. Or at least it feels like that.

Thanksgiving was fun. My daughter is in that two year old phase where she is the demon spawn from Hell or so completely adorable that she ought to be making television commericals for fertility treatments. It's quite a roller coaster. She rather enjoys "time outs" and consequently she is rarely phased by them. But they do seem to at least temporarilly stop the behavior that caused them. She'll rip apart a lego tower that her brother had been patiently working on for hours and I can see her in the time out chair almost muttering to herself "totally worth it." I'll be glad when the terrible two's end. I suppose when she's a raging teenager, I'll long for the time when the worst thing she did was to break her brother's heart by destroying his stuff.

My mom and I made six gluten free pies, and they were all fabulous. Eric even ate a little of the chocolate one. Old friends came to visit and some minor dramas ensued, but I don't understand them enough to post about them here.

In general, work has consumed me over the past month. (Hence the dearth of posts) I think things have slowed down a bit, but I was so stressed out that I could not eat. That has never happened to me before. I've had heartbreak induced anorexia. Some idiot would dump me when I was in my 20's and BLAM. I'd loose 10 lbs. My new condition, dubbed stressorexia is not a bad way to loose weight, but it's not my preferred method either. The project I was so stressed about actually went really well. But there were behind the scenes pieces of it that took way to long to fall into place. But most of them did by the end of last week, and for that, I'm grateful.

Working on the House. Again

When we did our big renovation in 2005, we saved about 10k by just roughing in the master bathroom, and another 5 or so k by leaving the master bedroom as one HUGE room instead of cutting it in two and putting the closets in as the final plans called for. At the time, we wanted to get our addition built and cutting a couple major things out of the plan was the difference between being able to do the project at all or putting it off indefinitely.

Now three years later, we're finally ready to do this work. We figured it would cost more than we saved back then, but it's a LOT more, as in more than twice more and we're not really sure what to do about it.

But times are tough, and the contractor we want to use just had a job canceled and will knock the price down a bit if we let him start next week, just to keep his crew working.

Actually, that's fine by us, so I think we will be living in dust and chaos starting at Thanksgiving. So, that's cool, right?

Right?

Obama and Grandmammas

My grandma Pearl would have loved Obama. She was a true liberal and oh so open minded for anybody, let alone somebody who was born in the 1910's. She had an open heart and home for people of all races and sexual orientations and knew how to celebrate the things that make us all different and the same. Like most people who lived through the Great Depression she was frugal to a fault when it came to herself, always paid in cash but was absurdly generous to everybody in the family. They scrimped and saved their whole lives and had a long, very comfortable retirement, first in a condo in Minneapolis and then another in Gulfport Florida.

After the 2004 election I called her in near hysterics and she talked me down. Four years is a tic in a long lifetime she was resigned but knew it would get better. But wherever she is now, I'm sure she's with Obama's grandmother were cheering, hand in hand. I miss her all the time, but particularly when I want to celebrate something like this.

I feel like America is emerging from a long sickness. A Lyme Disease of our collective souls. This moment now provides such a powerful feeling of redemption.

I don't think electing an African American president is going to be a magic bullet against all that is wrong with race relations in this country and the world. But it's a huge step in the right direction. It's a indisputable fact that we have in our hearts when we look into the trusting eyes of our children, be they Jewish, Latino, African American, bi-racial, Asian, or whatever, and tell them "The sky's the limit, my Love. You can be anything you want."

Grandma Pearl, I hope you're reading this. I love you and I miss you and I so wish you were alive to see this.

Waiting for Obama

I'm just so jazzed. We woke up Eric to show him what happened tonight. It won't mean much to him today. But he'll remember that his mom woke him up to show him the birth of a new world.

So, I'm exhausted and I have to be at work at 6:00 AM tomorrow. But I just don't care. I'll just run on adrenaline for the next 24 hours...

So happy.

I'm on Hiatus

Sorry... I just don't think I'll be able to blog until after the election other than this short note.

Halloween was fun. Both kids dressed up as Bob the Builder and we got a ton of candy over at Crescent Street in Cambridge.

So, on November 5 or 6 you can either find me ecstatic or in total despair. It's like waiting to find out if you have a terrible disease or something. "Doctor, do I have McPain Syndrome?"

"I'm sorry Mrs. Sanford, but it will take another week to get your test results back."

"AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!"

Lumpy and Eddie Haskel: A tale of two....

I have this lump on my right breast. It's nothing dangerous, the doctor called it a sebaceous cyst and it kind of gets infected from time to time, and it's a bit unsightly when I'm wearing a bathing suit but it really annoys me. I've renamed my right breast "Lumpy" so of course my left one has become (much to the dismay of my husband) "Eddie Haskel." Once the lump goes away, their names will cease to exist. TMI? Probably.

So, almost a year ago, when it first appeared, I went to the doctor and he sent me to a surgeon. Unfortunately, the appointment fell somewhere during the middle of the week when my entire family got the stomach flu. I did not make the appointment.

So, months later I was visiting the doctor with my daughter (back when she and I had the same doctor) and I showed it to her. She sent me to the Breast Center at the Cambridge Hospital. The Guy-Who-Looks-at-Boobs-for-a-Living told me, I'd have to meet with the Guy-who-pokes-holes-in-boobs-for-a-living for another appointment so he could see it and that would be followed by another appointment where he would remove the lump.

They never called me for that appointment. So, I asked the nurse practitioner about it when I was in for something else at my new doctor and she sent me to a surgeon.

I saw that surgeon and scheduled a time to remove it. I had to reschedule that appointment because I was going to be on vacation and then I scheduled it for today. I got about ten different phonecalls but managed to make it to the appointment.

I was at the reception desk when my cellphone rang. I was having a childcare crisis and I had to leave immediately. ARGH.

So, I rescheduled. We'll see if Lumpy disappears in two weeks.

Working Parents Nightmare: When the School Pickup Fails

My schedule changed due to some childcare swaps this week and my dad was supposed to pick up E from school. I was at home slogging my way through a headache that wouldn't subside and my phone rang.

It was one of E's teachers informing me that nobody had shown up to pick him up.

Ouch.

I yanked miss K out of her nap and drove over to E's school. I expected him to be tearful and recriminating. But he was cheerful, and he hugged me as if I was on time and was ready to bop right out the door. His teacher was kind and understanding. I think I'll buy her some flowers or something.

I was terrified that something had happened to my dad. We had all spoken to him today and he knew he was supposed to call. But he finally called me around four.

He had forgotten and he was devastated. Nothing I could have said would have made him feel any worse. The whole situation was just kind of rotten all around. I forgave him. E was fine. He was fine. By then I was just happy that everybody was OK.

But hopefully he'll have a cell phone soon.

Hopefully.