John Edwards dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination for President today which means that, yet again, "my guy" isn't going to win. My track record sucks. I can't recall ever voting for the winner in the primaries (Dennis Kucinich in '04, Bill Bradley in '00, I think I voted for Paul Tsongas in '92, and I think I might have voted for Paul Simon in '88 or maybe I missed that vote because I was away at college and not together enough to get an absentee ballot). The bottom line: my support is the kiss of death. Or I remain too far out on the fringe. Still.
Will I ever see the day when a candidate can stand up and say "we need to do something about poverty, we need to provide universal healthcare, we need to fight against corporatist interests," and have the vast majority of people support that person? I don't know. Edwards' failure to gain any momentum at all is disheartening. I suppose that I should feel good that we have evolved enough as a society that the last two Democrats standing are the woman and the person of color, but I need a day or two to mourn Edwards' departure before I can gain any other perspective. Then there will be plenty of time for me to rally around Obama -- the guy does inspire me when he speaks, and his capacity for leadership (what the nation "yearns for" as the NYT noted in an editorial yesterday) cannot be overstated. But for now, I'm on the outside looking in. Again.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Sick Family Robinson
As alluded to in my previous post, this kid's been illin' for the past week, and it hasn't been a lonely experience. Eliza's nose has been running nonstop for weeks, and she's the healthiest person in the family.
It all started way back when, in a simpler time, on a day called Thursday the 17th. Max came home early from school, and I came home early from work to be with him (Cathleen had to leave to attend to an emergency that mercifully turned out not to be emergent). I took Max's temperature, he had a fever of at least 101.7, and he was asleep in bed by 5:30. By the next morning his fever was gone.
Saturday night Cathleen and I went out to the movies (There Will Be Blood -- Daniel Day Lewis, as advertised, was brilliant and he will no doubt win the Oscar, but the last 20 minutes of the movie had me shaking my head...I get the entire point of the movie, but Plainview's descent into a farcical monster at the end was, pacewise, such a radical departure from the rest of the movie that it left a bad taste in my mouth.). We were supposed to go out to dinner too, but we went straight home because Cathleen wasn't feeling well. By later that night she had a fever which didn't fully disappear for another three days.
I took the kids myself to Alani's fourth birthday party on Sunday while Cathleen remained at home in bed. She almost never gets sick and so I was surprised that she would be this sick and yet I, the pale, wan sickly kid, would have emerged unscathed. By nightfall on Monday, however, I was registering 101.7 on the thermometer.
I had a fever. Cathleen had a fever. This situation was further complicated by the fact that we didn't have heat in our apartment that day either. Our apartment and Sophie and Joseph's apartment were both without heat; the basement and the first floor had heat. Our plumbers quickly diagnosed the problem as frozen pipes! They spent about 40 minutes applying a blowtorch to the heating pipes in the bedrooms in our apartment before giving up on it for the day. They would return on Tuesday with their pipe-thawing equipment (which was in use on another job). We put an electric heater in the kids room, and buried our fevered selves under our comforter. Mercifully, the plumbers got the heat back on by midday Tuesday and, because Cathleen and I were both passed out in our bed when their work was done, we temporarily cut out on the $650 repair bill!
Beyond the fever, and an I-feel-like-I've-been-run-over-by-a-truck feeling, I was also experiencing these really severe stomach cramps any time I put solid food into my stomach -- so severe that I was feeling it in my back, as if I was having back labor. So bizarre, the way my GI tract just throws up a white flag anytime the least bit of trouble presents itself to the rest of my body. In any event, I'm sick as a dog, and basically not eating food for three straight days. And Cathleen is sick. And there's these two little kids running around in our apartment with this expectation that we're still going to parent them! Fortunately we had babysitting for Eliza during the days, at which time Max was also in school. Cathleen and I were literally tag-teaming it on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, with one of us passed out in the bedroom for an hour and the other tending to the kids, and then swapping when circumstances demanded it. On Wednesday, as my fever was subsiding, my nose turned into a faucet; even though it hadn't been runny at all for the previous two days, now it was so leaky that at times I couldn't get a tissue up there fast enough. It was like I had some freakishly mutating plague.
Fortunately, Cathleen mended sufficiently by Thursday that she could carry the load, and by Friday (my fourth straight day of missing work...I have no idea when I last did that, not even when I had two surgeries within six days of each other back in '04) I was able to contribute significantly, largely abetted by the fact that I ate my first actual meal that day. Today I'm feeling closer to normal, though I've got a cough and my stomach doesn't quite feel 100%. Cathleen has a seriously badass cough, reminiscent of one she couldn't shake for weeks a couple of years ago.
All the while, we've mused that Max had escaped with one night of fever, and here we were with something approximating the flu. Tonight Max had a slight fever and he threw up in his sleep, the poor thing.
I wish that there was something a bit deeper or more philosophical about this blog entry, but there isn't. We are some sad specimens in these parts.
It all started way back when, in a simpler time, on a day called Thursday the 17th. Max came home early from school, and I came home early from work to be with him (Cathleen had to leave to attend to an emergency that mercifully turned out not to be emergent). I took Max's temperature, he had a fever of at least 101.7, and he was asleep in bed by 5:30. By the next morning his fever was gone.
Saturday night Cathleen and I went out to the movies (There Will Be Blood -- Daniel Day Lewis, as advertised, was brilliant and he will no doubt win the Oscar, but the last 20 minutes of the movie had me shaking my head...I get the entire point of the movie, but Plainview's descent into a farcical monster at the end was, pacewise, such a radical departure from the rest of the movie that it left a bad taste in my mouth.). We were supposed to go out to dinner too, but we went straight home because Cathleen wasn't feeling well. By later that night she had a fever which didn't fully disappear for another three days.
I took the kids myself to Alani's fourth birthday party on Sunday while Cathleen remained at home in bed. She almost never gets sick and so I was surprised that she would be this sick and yet I, the pale, wan sickly kid, would have emerged unscathed. By nightfall on Monday, however, I was registering 101.7 on the thermometer.
I had a fever. Cathleen had a fever. This situation was further complicated by the fact that we didn't have heat in our apartment that day either. Our apartment and Sophie and Joseph's apartment were both without heat; the basement and the first floor had heat. Our plumbers quickly diagnosed the problem as frozen pipes! They spent about 40 minutes applying a blowtorch to the heating pipes in the bedrooms in our apartment before giving up on it for the day. They would return on Tuesday with their pipe-thawing equipment (which was in use on another job). We put an electric heater in the kids room, and buried our fevered selves under our comforter. Mercifully, the plumbers got the heat back on by midday Tuesday and, because Cathleen and I were both passed out in our bed when their work was done, we temporarily cut out on the $650 repair bill!
Beyond the fever, and an I-feel-like-I've-been-run-over-by-a-truck feeling, I was also experiencing these really severe stomach cramps any time I put solid food into my stomach -- so severe that I was feeling it in my back, as if I was having back labor. So bizarre, the way my GI tract just throws up a white flag anytime the least bit of trouble presents itself to the rest of my body. In any event, I'm sick as a dog, and basically not eating food for three straight days. And Cathleen is sick. And there's these two little kids running around in our apartment with this expectation that we're still going to parent them! Fortunately we had babysitting for Eliza during the days, at which time Max was also in school. Cathleen and I were literally tag-teaming it on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, with one of us passed out in the bedroom for an hour and the other tending to the kids, and then swapping when circumstances demanded it. On Wednesday, as my fever was subsiding, my nose turned into a faucet; even though it hadn't been runny at all for the previous two days, now it was so leaky that at times I couldn't get a tissue up there fast enough. It was like I had some freakishly mutating plague.
Fortunately, Cathleen mended sufficiently by Thursday that she could carry the load, and by Friday (my fourth straight day of missing work...I have no idea when I last did that, not even when I had two surgeries within six days of each other back in '04) I was able to contribute significantly, largely abetted by the fact that I ate my first actual meal that day. Today I'm feeling closer to normal, though I've got a cough and my stomach doesn't quite feel 100%. Cathleen has a seriously badass cough, reminiscent of one she couldn't shake for weeks a couple of years ago.
All the while, we've mused that Max had escaped with one night of fever, and here we were with something approximating the flu. Tonight Max had a slight fever and he threw up in his sleep, the poor thing.
I wish that there was something a bit deeper or more philosophical about this blog entry, but there isn't. We are some sad specimens in these parts.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Amaz-on-ing
Friday, January 18, 2008
My favorite weanie
I used to make fun of late-weaning babies. It was a hobby of mine. I'd stand on the corner and mock the 16-month-old who looked recently breast-fed.
And then I had a daughter who was still demanding "nursey" from her mother at bedtime as the days ticked down towards her second birthday. Three weeks to go before I had a two-year-old La Leche poster child! Talk about a crisis of self-loathing!
But I put the kids to bed on Wednesday and Thursday night sans lactating mother, and tonight we decided to see what would happen. At first we were going to try switching who read books to whom, but Max is a stickler for form, and he insisted that I read to him, as has been the course for almost two straight years now. Cathleen read to Eliza and, when we were all done with books and stories, deposited her into her crib. No protest from the girl, and she was asleep within a short time. And tomorrow night we're heading to the movies (the movies!), with a babysitter handling bedtime duty.
It's not official yet, but we appear to have reached the point where Cathleen has become expendable.
And then I had a daughter who was still demanding "nursey" from her mother at bedtime as the days ticked down towards her second birthday. Three weeks to go before I had a two-year-old La Leche poster child! Talk about a crisis of self-loathing!
But I put the kids to bed on Wednesday and Thursday night sans lactating mother, and tonight we decided to see what would happen. At first we were going to try switching who read books to whom, but Max is a stickler for form, and he insisted that I read to him, as has been the course for almost two straight years now. Cathleen read to Eliza and, when we were all done with books and stories, deposited her into her crib. No protest from the girl, and she was asleep within a short time. And tomorrow night we're heading to the movies (the movies!), with a babysitter handling bedtime duty.
It's not official yet, but we appear to have reached the point where Cathleen has become expendable.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Slipping update
In glancing back at my posts over the past couple of months (as scant as they have been), I am stunned that I have not written more about the progress made in the publication of "Slipping."
First, right before Thanksgiving, Cathleen received in the mail her first advance copy of the book. It was remarkable, holding the book in my hand, staring at the cover, flipping through the pages and seeing "cathleen davitt bell" at the top of each page. The advance copy is just a paperback, and so it's a bit less than what the real deal will feel like, but I found myself just picking it up and feeling it several times over the first couple of days. We brought it to Bloomfield with us, of course, to show everyone. I couldn't wait for Cathleen to drop her cool to show it off, so I took it out to show to Sophie and Claudia, the latter of whom promptly burst into tears. "She really did it, didn't she?" she asked. I kind of think that's how all of us who have been rooting for her for so long feel right about now.
On the night after Thanksgiving, we sat around in Claudia and Walter's livingroom after the kids were in bed, and Cathleen read the first three chapters of the book out loud to us. Beyond revised bits and pieces that Cathleen had asked me to look at over the past year or so, I hadn't actually looked at the text since I first read her initial completed draft about three years ago, and so the actual prose had become a bit of an abstraction for me. So listening to it again, almost as if for the first time, was so refreshing because it is so damn well-written. For example, she would never use "so" three times in a sentence.
Then, just before we left for Bloomfield again for Christmas, Cathleen received a copy of Bloomsbury Children's Books' spring catalogue. Bloomsbury, it appears, is intent on promoting "Slipping." You look at the back cover of the catalogue, the cover of "Slipping" is one of four pictured. You look at the Table of Contents inside, the cover of "Slipping" is again featured. You turn to page 16, you see the two-page spread for the book. Bloomsbury done good by "Slipping" so far.
Not to beat the word exciting to death, but it is very exciting. I walk by Posman Books in Grand Central every day, and I half expect to see "Slipping" in the window already. Calm down, rick, calm down. Six months to go still.
First, right before Thanksgiving, Cathleen received in the mail her first advance copy of the book. It was remarkable, holding the book in my hand, staring at the cover, flipping through the pages and seeing "cathleen davitt bell" at the top of each page. The advance copy is just a paperback, and so it's a bit less than what the real deal will feel like, but I found myself just picking it up and feeling it several times over the first couple of days. We brought it to Bloomfield with us, of course, to show everyone. I couldn't wait for Cathleen to drop her cool to show it off, so I took it out to show to Sophie and Claudia, the latter of whom promptly burst into tears. "She really did it, didn't she?" she asked. I kind of think that's how all of us who have been rooting for her for so long feel right about now.
On the night after Thanksgiving, we sat around in Claudia and Walter's livingroom after the kids were in bed, and Cathleen read the first three chapters of the book out loud to us. Beyond revised bits and pieces that Cathleen had asked me to look at over the past year or so, I hadn't actually looked at the text since I first read her initial completed draft about three years ago, and so the actual prose had become a bit of an abstraction for me. So listening to it again, almost as if for the first time, was so refreshing because it is so damn well-written. For example, she would never use "so" three times in a sentence.
Then, just before we left for Bloomfield again for Christmas, Cathleen received a copy of Bloomsbury Children's Books' spring catalogue. Bloomsbury, it appears, is intent on promoting "Slipping." You look at the back cover of the catalogue, the cover of "Slipping" is one of four pictured. You look at the Table of Contents inside, the cover of "Slipping" is again featured. You turn to page 16, you see the two-page spread for the book. Bloomsbury done good by "Slipping" so far.
Not to beat the word exciting to death, but it is very exciting. I walk by Posman Books in Grand Central every day, and I half expect to see "Slipping" in the window already. Calm down, rick, calm down. Six months to go still.
Sometimes work is hard
This morning I had to do a hospital visit with a client. Her mother and social worker had been trying to get me to visit her for a couple of weeks in order to help her execute a Designation of Standby Guardianship. It's a form that we complete for our clients, which they sign, that grants guardianship powers over the client's children to a designated person if the client ever becomes incapacitated or deceased. The short form that we fill out provides a 60-day grant of guardianship powers (once there is a triggering event), and then if permanent guardianship powers are needed, you have to go to court. I had been scheduled to visit with the client before New Years, but then her mother canceled, and we rescheduled for today.
There she was in her hospital bed, stick-thin and drifting in and out of sleep. I learned, upon entering the room, that she was blind. When awake, she appeared to me to be lucid enough -- we had a significantly clear enough conversation about the guardianship designation that I felt completely comfortable in having her sign off on the designation. But I needed her to sign five other intake forms as well (retainer, client rights and responsibilities, HIV disclosure release, general release, medical release), and by the time she got to the fourth or fifth signature, she was too weak to write out an approximation of her entire name. By the last form, she scribbled a barely-recognizable first initial. I can only assume that she will be gone within a month. She is probably in her early 30s and her daughter, for whom she was designating a standby guardian, is only 10.
What do you say when concluding a meeting like that? Take care? I hope you feel better? I went with "nice meeting you," and reassured myself that she was pretty much asleep by that point.
There she was in her hospital bed, stick-thin and drifting in and out of sleep. I learned, upon entering the room, that she was blind. When awake, she appeared to me to be lucid enough -- we had a significantly clear enough conversation about the guardianship designation that I felt completely comfortable in having her sign off on the designation. But I needed her to sign five other intake forms as well (retainer, client rights and responsibilities, HIV disclosure release, general release, medical release), and by the time she got to the fourth or fifth signature, she was too weak to write out an approximation of her entire name. By the last form, she scribbled a barely-recognizable first initial. I can only assume that she will be gone within a month. She is probably in her early 30s and her daughter, for whom she was designating a standby guardian, is only 10.
What do you say when concluding a meeting like that? Take care? I hope you feel better? I went with "nice meeting you," and reassured myself that she was pretty much asleep by that point.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
She just wants to have fun
We went out to dinner on Saturday night at The Smoke Joint in Fort Greene, one of our favorite local eateries, and when I say our, I'm talking about all four of us. We walked over there, the four of us holding hands together for the better part of the trip. Once inside, we ordered our food and grabbed a table on the glass-enclosed porch in the front. Rack of ribs, bbq beans, mac 'n' cheese, grilled corn on the cob, and a cold bottle of Three Philosophers...my kind of dinner. But halfway into it, there is Eliza, standing in her high-chair, a cheek-to-cheek smile barely concealing a mouthful of corn, dancing away to the reggae that is blaring over the speakers. When I asked her to please sit down, she stopped for a second, looked at me as if I was high, politely said "no," and started dancing away again, knees bending up and down, arms waving in the air.
I may not know how to parent this one, but damn if I'm still not smiling about that entire scene.
I may not know how to parent this one, but damn if I'm still not smiling about that entire scene.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Still Buggin Out in '08
It is getting to the point where I can barely remember life before bedbugs. Or when I didn't tend towards hyperbolic pronouncements, with a penchant for overdramatization and wistful bouts of self pity.
The bedbugs, folks, are still with us.
The exterminators came back to our apartment on the Friday after Christmas because I had seen a bug crawling across Max's pillow (in our room) and had received bites on the night of the 26th. We had left for Yorktown on Thursday, so Sophie graciously greeted the exterminator (this time it was Jeff) and led him to our room. I spoke with him on the phone, and he indicated to me that he had been told he was coming for a mice extermination, so although he had some Bedlam in his truck, he normally would have wanted to drill holes in our walls but lacked his drill. Oh well. He completely redid our room, from spraying the perimeter to the various parts of our bookshelves and dressers. He told Sophie that he used an entire canister of Bedlam, despite the EPA's apparent recommendation not to do so. Great?
We then went through a week and a half of bug-free living. We vowed not to unpack our clothing from the plastic bags until I had been bite-free for three weeks, but we felt in our hearts that it was only a matter of days before we would be able to declare a tenative victory.
Then, this past Monday night, after I had read Max his books and told him his bedtime story, I noticed that the top of my right wrist was feeling a little itchy. I looked down and saw three small little bumps. No way. Impossible. I stared at them some more. Within minutes they had developed into distinct little hives. I was so dumbstruck that I couldn't figure out what had happened, but when I told Cathleen, she instantly concluded that the bugs had made it into the kids' room. The bites were on the exact hand that I was resting on Max's bed as I told him his bedtime story. I was bitten three successive times, while awake, while recounting "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" to my son.
You've got to hand it to the bedbugs. They are some serious little mothers. Objectively, I have to admire their elusiveness and evolutionary capacity to persist. On the other hand, I have not felt this level of annoyance, frustration and hopelessness since the Bush administration. I mean, when the exterminators give you a 15% discount because "you've been having a hard time," you know you are in the shit.
The exterminator returned this Thursday (this time we had Dave!). He completely sprayed the kids' room and our room (including drilling a few small holes at the base of our wall and injecting insecticide into the wall). While Cathleen prepped our bedroom that morning (disassemble bed, empty ziploc bags out of dresser drawers, disassemble bookshelves), she saw a bedbug on our bed's headboard. That thing -- the headboard -- had been leaning against our bedroom wall ever since, in an effort to eliminate a favorite harborage spot, we had unbolted it from the bed's mainframe a month ago. The headboard is padded and covered with a cloth material, and if there was a bug crawling on it, then it was likely that there were more inside the actual headboard. That night we encased the entire headboard in plastic (two contractor bags and a lot of ducktape), and then last night we did the same to the padded sides of our bed frame. I am investigating steam-cleaning options (heat is an effective bug/larvae/egg killer), because it is either that, keep the things wrapped in black plastic and ducktape for more than a year, or throw out the bed. We've bagged up all of the books in the kids' bedroom but rather than freeze them for 2+ weeks as we did our books, we're going to search through them page by page for signs of bugs or eggs. We can't do bedtime all that well for 2+ weeks without the books. Thursday night we slept in the basement, but returned to the fold last night. No bites or bug sightings for one night and counting...
The bedbugs, folks, are still with us.
The exterminators came back to our apartment on the Friday after Christmas because I had seen a bug crawling across Max's pillow (in our room) and had received bites on the night of the 26th. We had left for Yorktown on Thursday, so Sophie graciously greeted the exterminator (this time it was Jeff) and led him to our room. I spoke with him on the phone, and he indicated to me that he had been told he was coming for a mice extermination, so although he had some Bedlam in his truck, he normally would have wanted to drill holes in our walls but lacked his drill. Oh well. He completely redid our room, from spraying the perimeter to the various parts of our bookshelves and dressers. He told Sophie that he used an entire canister of Bedlam, despite the EPA's apparent recommendation not to do so. Great?
We then went through a week and a half of bug-free living. We vowed not to unpack our clothing from the plastic bags until I had been bite-free for three weeks, but we felt in our hearts that it was only a matter of days before we would be able to declare a tenative victory.
Then, this past Monday night, after I had read Max his books and told him his bedtime story, I noticed that the top of my right wrist was feeling a little itchy. I looked down and saw three small little bumps. No way. Impossible. I stared at them some more. Within minutes they had developed into distinct little hives. I was so dumbstruck that I couldn't figure out what had happened, but when I told Cathleen, she instantly concluded that the bugs had made it into the kids' room. The bites were on the exact hand that I was resting on Max's bed as I told him his bedtime story. I was bitten three successive times, while awake, while recounting "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" to my son.
You've got to hand it to the bedbugs. They are some serious little mothers. Objectively, I have to admire their elusiveness and evolutionary capacity to persist. On the other hand, I have not felt this level of annoyance, frustration and hopelessness since the Bush administration. I mean, when the exterminators give you a 15% discount because "you've been having a hard time," you know you are in the shit.
The exterminator returned this Thursday (this time we had Dave!). He completely sprayed the kids' room and our room (including drilling a few small holes at the base of our wall and injecting insecticide into the wall). While Cathleen prepped our bedroom that morning (disassemble bed, empty ziploc bags out of dresser drawers, disassemble bookshelves), she saw a bedbug on our bed's headboard. That thing -- the headboard -- had been leaning against our bedroom wall ever since, in an effort to eliminate a favorite harborage spot, we had unbolted it from the bed's mainframe a month ago. The headboard is padded and covered with a cloth material, and if there was a bug crawling on it, then it was likely that there were more inside the actual headboard. That night we encased the entire headboard in plastic (two contractor bags and a lot of ducktape), and then last night we did the same to the padded sides of our bed frame. I am investigating steam-cleaning options (heat is an effective bug/larvae/egg killer), because it is either that, keep the things wrapped in black plastic and ducktape for more than a year, or throw out the bed. We've bagged up all of the books in the kids' bedroom but rather than freeze them for 2+ weeks as we did our books, we're going to search through them page by page for signs of bugs or eggs. We can't do bedtime all that well for 2+ weeks without the books. Thursday night we slept in the basement, but returned to the fold last night. No bites or bug sightings for one night and counting...
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