My Little Taz

My son ran circles around me this week.  From the computer desk (aka the dining room table) to the grocery store, he’s been going through another whirlwind stage.  This stage rears its ugly head every six months or so, and it generally entails sleeping issues at night and simulating a tornado during waking hours.

A new touch he’s added to the firestorm is screaming.  To express just about every emotion he has now, he’s decided he will scream in a pitch that will shatter glass and surely drive my neighbors to call the cops on me one of these days.  I was having some trouble with him hitting at one point, and after about a million useless time outs, I think I corrected the problem when I told him if he needed to hit, he could hit the couch or a pillow, just not people or breakable objects.  So now in addition to the screaming, we have pounding on the table.

He’s usually pretty well trained to stay off my computer, as long as it’s a safe distance from the edge of the table and there’s no chair nearby to tempt him to climb up, but for some reason, when my husband puts his computer anywhere near mine, the baby becomes completely obsessed with getting his hands on a keyboard.  Needless to say, both computers have been camped out on the table all week, and I’ve spent, on average, every 60 seconds or so either shooing him away or searching for websites that will keep him distracted. 

And of course there’s the throwing.  I’m constantly dodging heavy and often fragile objects, or heavy objects being hurled at fragile objects.  Sometimes the only thing that saves him from being locked in the closet (joking of course) is how stinking cute he is when he’s misbehaving.  Like when he pulls everything out of the freezer looking for the ice cream cake that grandpa left behind and demands, “Baby have some cake in the mouth!  Put it on my plate.  I need cake on my plate so Baby can put cake in the mouth!” 

Or when he refuses to eat anything but bread for dinner, and tries to calmly reason, “Baby have some bread.  Baby have some bread, have some dinner.  Baby have some bread, have some diner in the belly.  Fill the belly with some bread,”  and he goes through this whole spiel with a look on his face like he’s delivering a dissertation.

His new favorite words are, “Shut up,” “Hey!” and the occasional “Son of a bitch!”  My husband blames me for that last one, and while I am not proud, it is probably true.  Sometimes you don’t really realize what slips out of your mouth in front of your kids until they start repeating it back to you.

And finally, there’s the misbehaving in public.  Our last weekly Walmart trip took extra long because, money being a little tight this week, I spent 20 minutes an item comparing labels and prices and trying to squeeze every last penny out of the shopping list.  The baby protested my efforts by standing up in the shopping cart until I relented and took him down, at which point he sneakily began snagging items off the spice rack and rolling them under the bottom shelf.  When he realized I was onto him, he hastily grabbed as many spices off the shelf as he could and flung them under with the rest of the pile.  I probably should have just scurried around the corner before anyone else noticed, but me being, well, me, I got down on my hands and knees on the filthy floor of Walmart .

I would have put the baby back in the shopping cart while I cleaned up the mess, but naturally the shopping cart I grabbed had a broken buckle.  I did notice this right away when I grabbed the cart, but I foolishly thought to myself, “It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need the buckle.” So there I was, trying to retrieve as many spices as I could with one hand while attempting to restrain my son with the other, all because I was too lazy to grab another cart.  I finally gave up the battle when it became clear he would continue to roll more spices under the shelf faster than I could retrieve them.

The perfect end to that evening was coming home to discover the dishwasher appeared to be broken.  As I was emptying all the dishes, I noticed that they looked clean but not quite rinsed.  I had the same problem earlier in the week, but I thought I fixed it by refilling the rinsing agent.  I called my sister who is basically a mechanical genius and knows how to fix everything.  She had no  clue what the problem could be.  She suggested I check the filter in the bottom of the dishwasher to make sure it wasn’t clogged.  So after emptying all the dishes, I’ll pulled out the rack and discovered a huge puddle of water at the bottom of the dishwasher. 

I immediately knew what was wrong, but just to be sure, I closed the door and hit the power button.  Sure enough, there was still 90 minutes left on the cycle.  I called my sister back.

“It appears the problem is my son,” I told her.  For all the times the little rascal has turned the dishwasher on when he wasn’t supposed to, I don’t think he’s ever turned it off in the middle of a cycle before.  So after giving my sister a good laugh, I hung up the phone and proceeded to re-load the dishwasher with all the barely clean dishes I just put away.

To people without kids, this might all sound like a nightmare, but for those of us who have been blessed with parenthood, there is nothing more satisfying than realizing you’ve been outsmarted by your clever 2 year old.  The highlight of my day is calling my husband and saying, “Guess what your son did this time.”  Don’t get me wrong—some days I think my head is going to pop right off because my child is running circles around me and it’s making me dizzy.  But there is no sight on the planet that tugs at me more than his mischievous smile.  There is no person who teaches me more about myself, who challenges me to do better, to be better.  In short, it’s not that it’s all worth the torture; it’s that the torture is the reward.

How We’re Wired: From Soldier to Daddy

It was about this time last year when we discovered our son was probably allergic to penicillin.  It started with a small hive that developed on his face around lunch time.  I didn’t think too much of it when I put him down for his afternoon nap, but only about an hour into it, he woke up crying in a pitch that put my mommy instincts on high alert.  When I got him on the changing table and pulled off his pants, his poor little legs were completely covered in hives like I’ve never seen before. 

I’ve been prone to hives my whole life, but I never saw anything quite like this.  He was so blotchy and swollen, I wasn’t sure what the hell it was.  He had just gotten over an earache and had actually been off the antibiotic for a day or two, so an allergic reaction to penicillin was the furthest thing from my mind.  The mysterious rash also coincided with the arrival of our new furry pet sugar gliders, so I was leaning more toward some kind of animal allergy. 
Then, as my mind was racing, it occurred to me that the sugar gliders are a kind of exotic animal, and the “Scammers-R-Us” dog and pony show we bought them from were totally shady.  My mind flashed back to the kind of horror stories you used to hear in college from the students who signed up for Parasitic Biology—some guy comes back from safari in Africa with a rash, and the next thing you know, worms are crawling out of his skin.  You know, the kind of stuff you might see on Monsters Inside Me.
So I picked up the phone and called my husband, the former Army combat medic.  “I don’t know what’s wrong.  He has some crazy rash all over his legs, and he feels like he’s burning up.  He’s screaming bloody murder.”  My husband told me to hold tight—he was coming home right away.  He only works five minutes down the road, but by now the rash had spread all over my son’s body, and he was clearly in pain.  Even if we decided to take him to the hospital, it was a good 15 minute drive at least.  I was pretty positive if tarantulas weren’t about to come crawling out of my baby’s skin,  he was going to go into anaphylactic shock on the car ride there, and then what would we do? 
I made an executive decision.  I wasn’t screwing around.  I dialed 9-1-1.  Yup, you read that right.  I dialed 9-1-1.  I told them I didn’t know if it was an actual emergency, but I thought I might need an ambulance to bring the baby to the hospital, just in case he stopped breathing on the way there.  Needless to say, my husband arrived just a minute or two before the paramedics, and by the time they walked through the door, my son had stopped screaming and the rash was, well, still a rash.  No tarantulas.  No throat swollen shut.  Just a really itchy baby. 
After the paramedics left, my husband made a new rule that I was not allowed to call an ambulance without getting his approval first.  The pediatrician thought it was absolutely hysterical that I’ve been to war but got so shook up over a bad case of hives.  “Somebody call 9-1-1!  My baby’s got a rash!”  he teased.  When he finally stopped laughing, he said he thought the whole episode was very telling of how we are wired as parents and how powerful our protective instincts are. 
“They’re our world,” he sympathized.  “Everything’s different when it’s your child.”
It turns out that every once in a while, the baby still breaks out in hives, although not quite as bad as the first time he scared me to death.  A mosquito bit him on the eyebrow this summer, and the little guy’s eye totally swelled shut for a day.  Yesterday something—we’re not sure if it was a spider or a mosquito—bit him on the neck, and he started growing a second head.  My husband thought maybe we should call the doctor, but I persuaded him to let me try some Benadryl first.
Several hours later, I found my husband holding my son on his lap in the rocking chair, thermometer in hand.  We have one of those very cool thermometers that you can hold right up to his forehead and get a read.  But now, my husband was holding it up to my son’s neck.  This was the second time he tried taking the temperature of the bug bite. 
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“It’s still 110 degrees,” he said, looking at me with the pouty face that comes over him when he’s concerned about our son.
“The bug bite?”
“Yeah.”
I asked him why he kept trying to take the temperature of the bite, and he said that’s how you can tell if there’s an immune response or an infection.
“You wouldn’t even be able to do that if we didn’t have that kind of thermometer,” I said.
He looked at me with his puppy dog eyes, which just made me love him even more—every time I see our son reduce him to a six year old.
“No, but they would do it if we took him to the emergency room,” he replied.  I shot him a look of near consternation.  Before walking away, I told him,
“Put the baby down.  Put the thermometer away.”
And I guess that’s just how we’re wired.

The Fallen Heroes Mayor Bloomberg Left Behind

In these days leading up to the 10th anniversary of September 11th, I've been mulling over in my head what--and whether--to write here about what I experienced on that horrific day and the weeks that followed. Over the last 10 years, I've made countless attempts to tell that story, but the task overwhelms me, and I usually just end up abandoning the draft. Someday I will probably write a book because there is just too much to say for one small blog post; however, I cannot remain silent about the headlines I woke up to on the T.V. this morning: Mayor Bloomberg Says There's Not Enough Room For First Responders And Firefighters To Attend Memorial Services On 9-11.
My husband said it best: holding a 9-11 memorial service without the firefighters is like dedicating the Vietnam Memorial without the soldiers. It is so mind boggling, infuriating and outrageous to me, I am almost rendered speechless.
I know that every American's experience of 9-11 is uniquely personal. I know that all Americans, not just New Yorkers or those at the Pentagon, were attacked on that day. But for the New Yorkers who witnessed the horror in person, and lived and breathed the aftermath, there is one devastating memory we all share: the enshrined firehouses.
When closed off areas of lower Manhattan slowly began to open up again, you couldn't walk through a neighborhood without noticing the firehouse doors covered with flowers and candle wax. Entire firehouses were shut down, completely wiped out because their firefighters ran into the towers and never came back out. These firehouses were wallpapered with children's drawings and cartoons of firetrucks with messages that read things like, "I love you daddy," and "Thank you. You are our heroes."
I once heard someone who was not from New York ask, callously, "Are they really heroes? I mean, it's sad, but weren't they just doing their jobs?"
Even if you can ignore the fact that there is an element of heroism inherent in just signing on for a job that requires you put your life on the line every time you set out to do it, the answer to that question is still an emphatic Yes, they are heroes. These individuals--the police and firefighters alike--went so far above and beyond what was required and expected, they were no longer just doing their jobs when they died. First responders ran into the towers as they were being ordered to get out. They ignored calls for evacuation from their captains and chiefs and gave up their lives trying to save just one last person, refusing to abandoned those who couldn't get out. If they don't deserve to be called heroes, no one does.
A few days after the towers fell, I rode home on the subway sitting across from what seemed like a giant man at the time. I remember thinking he was a police officer. I don't remember if he had a badge on his belt, or if he just looked like a plain-clothes cop, but I definitely had the impression he was NYPD. He was a strong looking black man with a commanding presence. As I sat directly across from this man, he suddenly put his face in his hands and began sobbing like no one was there. I think the train was full, but it felt like we were the only two passengers in the world. I knew what this man had witnessed, experienced and endured was more than what any human being could be expected to bear. And I sat there helpless, knowing there was nothing in the world I could do to ease his pain.
It is incomprehensible to me that there could be any kind of 10th anniversary memorial service without the first responders present. The memory of the firefighters and the policemen who gave their lives on September 11, 2001 need to be honored alongside the civilians who perished that day. The only thing I have to say to Mayor Bloomberg is, What the hell are you thinking?
...
The following link is to a very moving piece written by the brother of one of the fallen firefighters:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904716604576546661793655324.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

On the Road Again

We've hit the road and are headed for the heartland once again, this time to celebrate something quite special.  My husband's great grandmother is turning 100 this week, and it happens to be on the 10th anniversary of 9-11.  That's right folks.  Great Grandma was born on Septembber 11, 1911.  

September 11th was the most profoundly life-changing event I ever experienced, so there is something poignant, and I hope cathartic, about celebrating the centenial anniversary of a birth that coincides with the decade anniversary of something so tragic. But I don't want to focus on September 11th right now.  I'm sure in the days leading up to 9-11, I will have  more to say, but right now, I'm trying to embrace the sense of relief that usually accompanies the first day of hitting the road.

The week leading up to a road trip is always hectic, but the lead up to this trip has been so eventful it has my head spinning. In addition to making soap, getting stitches out, doing five loads of laundry in two days, making sure all the bills were paid up, and doing all the running around and "we come bearing gifts" pre-trip shopping, we tried to squeeze in some family outings while the weather was still nice and we still had a generous, on-call, free babysitter in town (aka grandma).  

The backdrop to all this running around was an unusual series of natural disasters completely uncharacteristic of Upstate New York, to include one earthquake, a hurricane, and an F1 tornado, all in the last two weeks. I'm growing increasingly concerned that the end of the world as we know it is, in fact, approaching, and I'm just hoping that New York doesn't get swallowed up by the ocean or blown off the map by a meteor shower while we're away.  I'd really like to have a home to come home to.

While I was busy tying up loose ends before our trip, dad headed back down south on schedule.  Mom decided to extend her stay to help  my sister out before leaving for the wiinter.  The day before he left, dad decided to crank the heat at about five in the morning, as if to make one final rebellious statement against all the warm blooded people in the house who still have their circulation. So I woke up  early, restless and hot under my covers (yes, it is still August, even in New York).  

I shuffled into the kitchen where I found dad's b.b gun resting against the wall, which told me he was tormenting the poor squirrels who raid the bird feeder again.  I picked up the rifle and aimed it out the back door, into the woods, which I  frequently use as a clearing barrel these days.  I pulled the trigger.  A b.b darted out, confirming that dad had left the unfriendly toy gun lying around loaded and pumped--something he insists he never does.  

Moments later, my son came running cheerfully out of his room yelling "Morning Papa! Half a donut Papa?" and despite the never-ending hazards, I was grateful my son has had the opportunity to spend as many summers as he has with his grandparents.  Of course I'm equally grateful for the roof over our heads, which is why I usually just bite  my tongue and keep my eyes open for baby land mines.  

Dad was up and out before any of us were awake the next morning, and I felt pretty sad when I got the baby out of the crib, and there was no Papa sitting in the Lazy Boy for him to run out to.  Sure it was nice to walk out into the living room and not feel assaulted by some booby-trap inadvertently left for my child to discover, but it was kinda lonely to be the first ones up and about in the  house too.  

No sooner did dad's trip home end did ours begin, and here we are, on the road again.  Road trips can drag on forever, and the older I get, the more painful it is to sit in place for too long, but all that being said, there is something unmistakably liberating about hitting the road.  After all the stress of a year filled with surgeries, a summer spent waiting on a job to come through, and still not having a place of our own to call home, you could say we're looking forward to this particular trip as much as we are to arriving at our destination.

Chaz Bono Dancing With The Stars

The morning shows were abuzz today about the uproar over Chaz Bono being cast as one of the new contestants on Dancing With The Stars.  Chaz happens to be a transsexual.  I suppose this is a good opportunity for me to mention my sister also happens to be a transsexual.  She used to be my brother.  Now she's my sister.  And I'm not talking about some cute pretty gay guy who puts on a wig and a pair of heels and passes for a woman anyway.  I'm talking about a straight cowboy who people used to call a Patrick Swayze lookalike who one day got up the courage to tell the world that he thought he was a woman trapped inside a man's body.

My sister's life has been fraught with suicide attempts, drug addiction, and trips in and out of the hospital for depression.  For years she hid who she felt she really was for fear of becoming an outcast.  The funny thing is, everyone who gets the opportunity to talk to her for more than a minute loves her.  I mean everyone.  I mean the Harley guys at the biker bar.  I mean the Army guys who were my husband's groomsmen in our wedding.  I mean the rednecks who are totally freaked out by her, but for one reason or another end up talking to her, and the next thing you know, the world's a slightly better place cause some guy woke up a little less hateful the next morning.  But like I said, that's the people who give themselves a chance to meet her.

People who don't give themselves that chance, however, are a different story.  She's been heckled, snickered and stared at, and she can't find a job to save her life.  I think the people who interview her like her well enough, but they are afraid their customers or other employees won't.  The situation has gotten so bad, my mother has made it her full time job to find my sister a job.  She's sent away and signed up for every work-from-home scam in the universe.  The only promising one was stuffing envelopes.  But my mom forgot my sister has a phobia of mail.  Seriously.  I'm not joking.  One of my sister's trips to the hospital was for a breakdown that was the result of being months behind on her bills because she piles her mail out of sight.  She can't bring herself to open it.  She might be able to handle stuffing it, but we'll never know because the whole package of crap she's supposed to put into envelopes arrives by--you guessed it--mail.  Yeah, my sister has issues.  But that's kind of my point.

Ironically another headline they haven't been able to stop talking about in the news this week is "Should ugly people be protected from discrimination?"  I'm not suggesting for a second that my sister is ugly.  But oddly, just because she looks good doesn't mean people can't tell she hasn't always been a woman.  The only surgery she's had has been on her body, not her face.  She has naturally high cheekbones any woman would die for, but she also has a more prominent eyebrow ridge than most women.  In a nutshell, she's pretty--but you can still tell.  And for all the talk of how hard it is to get a job when you're ugly--and you do learn all about the countless studies on this subject, believe it or not, in social psychology 101--I argue that it's still easier to get a job when you're ugly than when you're transgendered.  People aren't made uncomfortable by ugly.  Ugly isn't perceived as a choice.  People feel sorry for ugly.

CNN's American Morning Facebook page is being flooded with angry viewers who are threatening to boycott Dancing With The Stars because they are outraged Chaz Bono will be on the show.  Most of these people have stated they are "sick of the media promoting the gay and lesbian agenda."  Many of them can't even say poor Chaz's name without following it with the word "freak."  I think it's interesting that in the midst of all the hoopla, everyone claims to be upset about the "gay and lesbian agenda," as if the fact that Chaz's transgendered status is secondary.  

I don't remember any controversy over the handful of gay contestants that have been on the show in the past.  For all the controversy over gay marriage and gay lifestyle issues in general, I haven't heard the word "freak" tossed around in decades.  It seems that we have come to a point in our society where, regardless of one's views on homosexuality, people have in recent years had the good sense and decency to keep such venomous and hateful language out of the discourse.  Transgendered individuals are often lumped in with the gay and lesbian community as if they are all the same, but I think the public outrage of Chaz shows they are still treated very different.  While homosexuals have made great strides in being accepted--if not "tolerated" by those who disapprove--in mainstream society, transgendered people are still very much outcast and shunned by the world at large.

Don't get me wrong.  I understand the fundamental difference between the LGBT community and other protected classes is behavior.  I also understand that most people who fall under the LGBT umbrella feel they were born with their preference or identity, but generally it is the choice to fulfill the identity, rather than the identity itself, that generates the controversy.  This is a legitimate distinction to make when debating matters of legislation or policy.  It's an even more important point to consider when asking the highly controversial question, Should homosexuality and transgender identity be treated as mental health issues or simply accepted for what they are?  But the distinction is not really relevant when it is used to justify cruelty toward consenting adults who aren't infringing on anyone else's rights. 

To all those outraged folks who identified themselves as Christians and have used the phrases "freak," "unacceptable," "shouldn't be tolerated," etc., I would like to suggest you go back to church and listen a little more carefully.  Last time I attended mass, I was told it's God's job to judge, not mine.  I'm not suggesting you have to agree with Chaz's decision to undergo surgery, or support any kind of legislation or policy regarding marriage or adoption or whatever, but like it or not, transgendered people exist.  If you really believe the appropriate response is to outcast them, or ignore them, or to keep them off our television sets, than all I can say is that your cruelty doesn't strike me as being very Christian at all.  

Musings On Iraq: How Saddam Destroyed An Eco-System And Its People In The Southern Marshes Of Iraq

I don't want to turn this blog into a list of links, but this is an excellent article on a topic few people have ever heard anything about.  As with all matters related to Saddam, it continues to demonstrate the lengths that he was willing to go to and the devastation he was willing to bring about in order to crush any and all opposition to his regime.  There is something incredibly poignant about the fact that he was willing to destroy the very cradle of civilization in order to achieve his goals:

Musings On Iraq: How Saddam Destroyed An Eco-System And Its People In The Southern Marshes Of Iraq

Female Engagement - An FP Special Photo Feature | Foreign Policy

The photographer captured some great shots here of female soldiers on the PB and outside the wire:

Female Engagement - An FP Special Photo Feature | Foreign Policy:

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