Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Saturday, October 30, 2004 Welcome Home Trash and I had plans today. We were going to spend a little time reading the instruction manuals on the various pieces of baby equipment we've received in the past few weeks. We'd practice getting the baby seat in and out of the car. We'd learn how to use the diaper disposal system, a sleek plastic cylinder that apparently contains a singularity or something. Maybe I'd finish my substitute Gilmore Girls recap for TWoP. There was a chance M. Tiny was going home from the hospital as soon as Wednesday, and we wanted to take a day to get ready. You know, just in case. He's been early before, after all. We were at the hospital for about five minutes when we got the news that he was going home today. Cue the mad dashing around, packing up three weeks' accumulated detritus from the hospital room, the food from the fridge in the family lounge, a quick parenting class that didn't last too long by virtue of us having learned all of it during the past two and a half weeks, and we walked out of the NICU with our new son. Out of the hospital, out of St. Paul, and into his new home. So I don't really have time to post a full-length entry today. I will though. Maybe when he goes off to school. posted by M. Giant 4:21 PM 13 comments 13 Comments:
Ok! Take a big cleansing breath now - You can do this! Oh, what an exciting time you are embarking upon. Best of luck to you three and don't worry about us - we'll just hang out and wait for whatever crumbs you can throw our way.
By Oh. My. GAWD. I'm so excited for you - and for Trash - and for M.Tiny - and I only know you from reading! I'm all teary just thinking about how supremely blessed that boy is going to be in his new home. Every good wish ...
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Congrats! I'd start saving for college now. The way this parenting thing is going, he may very well start rapidly skipping grades and end up in college in about seven years. :-) Have fun!!
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congrats!
By That is awesome, I am really happy for you. Congratulations.
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The internet is such a strange place. I don't know you at all beyond the written word, will likely never meet you in the flesh, and yet, I am insanely happy for you, so much that I squealed when I saw the news.
By Congratulations! I'm so happy for you all, and your family will have a lovely Halloween!
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OMG! Congratulations! Nothing like everything happening at once, huh?
By I'm so very excited for you guys. I'm excited to read all about your adventures in parenting!! But I completely understand if your posting is less frequent. I hope you have time to read those manuals now. Yeah, right!
By Yay yay yay yay!!! Congratulations on your new boss!!!
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You're in for a whirlwind ride! I'm here to tell you that it gets better - my first baby was a 33 week-er. Stayed in the NICU for 10 days - seemed like so much longer at the time!
By Is it creepy or heartwarming that so many people who don't know you are cheering for y'all? Add me to that list anyway. Go M. Tiny!
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I did early voting last week, and I'm sick sick sick of politics.
By Wednesday, October 27, 2004 Humpblog (10/27/04) Update on M. Tiny's status: he passed a car seat test, and the MMR thing turned out so well that they unhooked him from all of his monitors. We can actually carry him all the way over to the other side of his hospital room now. Only the feeding is left. Once he gets three consistent days of empty bottles under his belt, he comes home with us. I don't know what we're going to do with all the time we're going to save by not having to drive to and from St. Paul all the time. Heck, we'll probably be able to free up our schedule enough to raise a child. * * * I've got a gig in downtown Minneapolis this month, for the first time in ten years. The building I'm working in wasn't even there last time I had a downtown job. And back then, I worked nights so parking was a lot cheaper. After a few days of regular parking rates, I wondered how anyone can afford to work downtown. Then a few days ago, on my way into work, I spotted something wonderful. Just outside of downtown proper, there's a street that's been under construction all summer. This street had no meters, no parking restrictions, and, most remarkably, no cars parked at the curb. I remedied that situation toot-sweet and walked the five blocks to work, congratulating myself on figuring out a way to save myself a steep parking fee and have an excuse to get a little exercise at the same time. I arrived a little later the following morning. A few cars were parked on the street, but there was still a spot for me. I walked the five blocks and three car lengths to my work, calculating that the time I was spending walking to work from this somewhat distant spot was saving me parking fees in well in excess of my hourly wage. At the end of the day I walked back to my car as far as I could in the Skyway (Minneapolis's Habitrail for humans) because I figured I'd need a partial indoor route for days when it's cold and/or rainy. And also to shake off any people who might be shadowing me to learn about my sweet parking spot. When I arrived at my car, I discovered that my world had turned upside down during my work day. A line of parking meters had sprung up from the sidewalk as far as the eye could see. Complete with signs proclaiming a four-hour limit. The word EXPIRED flashed mockingly at me from the curb. At least I hadn't been towed or even tagged, because, after all, it had been perfectly legal to park there when I'd done so. I felt a twinge of grief as I pulled away from the curb and my parking spot that was literally too good to be true for any length of time. There wasn't another unmetered stretch of curbside for another half-mile from my building. Looks like I'll be investigating the marvels of the mass transit system. * * * I brought my lunch to work today. It was a dish of leftover chicken-and-rice dish that Trash's mom made for us when she was staying with us this past week. I nuked it in the break room, brought it back to my desk, and immediately dumped the entire contents upside down into my keyboard. When people online tell you that you owe them a new keyboard, they are lying. If I can successfully clean a half-liter of chicken and rice goulash off, from between, and out from under my qwertys, your keyboard can certainly survive the occasional Pepsi spray. First I tipped the keyboard upside down over the trash bin. I wasn't about to eat that stuff. Your average keyboard is probably filthier than the floor of the nearest public privy. Then I popped the individual keys off and wiped the goo from between their beds. Then I dumped the keys into a glass of water and dishwasher detergent and shook them around, rinsed them, dried them, and reapplied them. Good as new. Better, in fact, because now the keyboard is clean enough to eat off of. Ironic, that. * * * Orca is all out of the antibiotics we were giving her, but the wheezing didn't go away. So back to the vet she went for a chest X-ray. I'm proud to say that Orca's lungs are in splendid shape for a cat her age. I saw the films myself. Her lungs aren't the problem. Her herpes is. "What?" I asked the vet. The vet had inquired whether Orca had been under any stress lately. I could honestly say that aside from our constant absence due to being at the NICU all the time, the house getting rearranged to accommodate a new resident, two recent trips to the vet, and a week of enduring an eyedropper full of antibiotics in her mouth twice a day, Orca wasn't under any stress at all. But it seems that some cats are exposed to the herpes virus when very young—in this case, before we even got her—and the virus may remain dormant in their systems for years, until they reach a certain age and find themselves under stress, which can open the door to the virus manifesting itself as an upper respiratory infection. Which is what appears to have happened. The vet prescribed a quarter tablet of an amino acid called lysine twice a day. Which sucks, because she has a much easier time spitting that out. posted by M. Giant 7:41 PM 17 comments 17 Comments:
Our 12 year old cat developed feline herpes. It manifested itself in the form of eye tumors. Once he started on the lysine, he got much better. So, I'm sure Orca will be breathing much better in no time.
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You know, I just really think it's pathetic when people let their cats run around and hang out with unsavories, and then try to blame society when said cats come home with social diseases.
By Hey, are you working anywhere near the Warehouse District? 'Cause that's where I work, and there's some free parking I know of that I can hip you to if you like. I work nights, though, so I'm pretty spoiled with all the free parking, but I'll share some. ;-) --kjaspy
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I'm opposite the warehouse district on the Foshay side of town so if the previous poster can't help you I will certainly try. Of course, I've also got the 'spoiled by working nights' thing going but I can't let you pay full price.
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My younger kitty came to me with a bad case of feline herpes as a kitten. The lysine does help-- it improves the immune system. I invested in a small mortar and pestal from a drug store, crushed the pills and mixed them with her canned food. Actually, I doubled the dose and mixed it with both of my cats' food-- it won't hurt Strat.
By Rapid Park. On the corner of 5th St. and 3rd Ave N. The most that you'll ever pay, even if your car is there for eight hours, is $4. I'm not sure where you're working, but it may be a hike wherever it is. However, now that we have our new flashy light rail system, you could probably take that.
By On a tip from my grandmother, I take lysine to clear up canker sores. Does that mean they're really feline herpes? Sick.
By Regarding crushing pills: I have a horse who several times a year gives me the treat of dosing him with antibiotics. We're talking 17 huge pills morning and night. Forget the mortar and pestle - get a cheap coffee grinder, do the whole bottle at once and then scoop out the powder to mix.
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Just a quick note from a 'birth Aunt' of M. Tiny....
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Since I know you quite well and Trash too. I told Trash I am learning more about things by reading your blog because she's to busy to fill everyone in.
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Me (birth Aunt) again...
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Hey M. Giant, try the Hiawatha line if it's at all convenient to your work location! It's on time (so far), comfortable (if a little bright- oh, but that's after the bar), and fast. Plus its still a novelty! How fun to ride a train into downtown. And- it costs the same as the bus- $1.00 during non-rush, $1.50 during rush hour.
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Dear birth aunt -- and birth mom (if you read this) -- oh heck, dear entire birth family --
By My cat was sneezing and coughing, and the vet said he had herpies, as well. Do you think that Snoop and Orca have been hanging out together behind the 7-11?
By How do you take the keys off your keyboard?
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Let me get in on the lovefest here. I've known M.G&T for almost 10 years now. They rock. A word to M.Tiny, from one superlucky adopted kid to another: Dude. As far as Coolest.Parents.Ever goes, you hit the JACKPOT.
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Yay, Lawre! Wow, if she's known them for 10 years, then I must have... wow. How long ago was 8th grade, anyhow?
By Monday, October 25, 2004 Status Report
M. Tiny’s still in the hospital, and it looks like he’ll be there for a little while longer. Sometimes they tell us two weeks, sometimes they tell us seven to ten days. It’s already been two weeks, so theoretically we could be at the halfway point. It’s pretty much up to him.
There are four criteria for letting a preemie go home from the hospital. They are as follows:
One: The ability to maintain a steady body temperature. He graduated from the incubator more than a week ago, and now he spends a lot of time sleeping with a hat on, wrapped up in blankets tighter than a burrito from Chipotle. He has a routine that he goes through every three hours: taking his temperature, changing his diaper, a listen through the stethoscope, and a feeding. By far his least favorite part of this is the temperature. He absolutely hates having the thermometer jammed in there.
I think he’d actually prefer it if we stuck it up his ass.
For some reason, he gets really irritated when we take his temperature via the armpit. I think it’s just because he doesn’t like having his elbow pinned against his side for the time it takes to get a reading. By contrast, when a nurse collected a "butt culture"—which involved poking a cotton swab up his fundament—he took it with total equanimity. But on the other hand, there’s a big difference between riding a Q-Tip and riding a thermometer.
Or so I’m told. Status: Complete.
Two: The car seat test. I don’t remember car seats being such a big deal when I was little. In fact, I remember my two-year old cousin riding standing up in the front seat of the car. The fact that that same cousin is now married and pregnant should give you some idea how long ago that was.
These days, you’re not even allowed to bring a baby home unless you have a suitable car seat. And the baby has to be tested in it.
I thought making M. Tiny undergo a test for the car seat was a little unrealistic. I mean, really, how often are we going to require him to fasten himself in it? Hardly ever. Then Trash explained that it’s really the seat that’s being tested, and we do the strapping in. That made a lot more sense. But then I got the alarming visual of what that test might entail; would we strap him in and then attempt to tip him out? Is it an automatic failure if inverting the seat dumps him on the floor just one time, or do they make us try for two out of three? Then Trash explained about how they just look at where the straps go across his body, and I abandoned my plan of smuggling him out in a laundry sack so as to spare him the ordeal I’d imagined.
As it turns out, Trash’s grandma got us just about the best newborn car seat you can buy. It’s got the highest safety rating, the best restraints, the toughest construction, everything. I’d sit in it myself. But M. Tiny is too small for it, at least for now. We’re just going to have to get an interim car seat until he grows into the newborn one. Unless he grows into it before he’s allowed to leave, which would probably require us to stick ice cubes under his armpits before we take his temperature. Status: On hold.
Three: Consistently finishing bottles for three days. Right now, every three hours, he gets forty-some cc’s of formula in his belly one way or the other. If he’s awake enough, we’ll start with the bottle. Full-term babies are generally born knowing what to do with a nipple. That’s the sort of thing that’s supposed to get hard-wired into their brains during the thirty-fourth or thirty-fifth week of gestation. Which is where M. Tiny would be now if his gestation hadn’t ended two weeks ago. So we need to sort of train him.
It’s difficult to train someone to do something when he doesn’t understand a word of English, or indeed a word of any language on Earth.
At first we were all cuddly and attentive and encouraging during his feedings. He loved the attention and the love and the snuggling, but he wasn’t making much progress. Now we balance him on one forearm and practically ignore him so he can concentrate on his job, which is eating. Tonight when he decided he was finished, he only had seven cc’s left.
As I may have mentioned before, the portion of the feeding that doesn’t get sucked in through his mouth gets forced in through a tube that goes up his nose. Now, I’ve been to some restaurants where they’re a little aggressive with the dessert cart, but this is ridiculous. Status: In progress, and at the very least, three days out.
Four: Demonstrated independence from the heart-rate and respiration monitors. There’s a screen over his bed that used to monitor his pulse, breathing, and blood-oxidation level. The latter got too boring, always hanging around the ideal numbers of 99 and 100, so he got unplugged from that. He’s still got the other two.
Before a patient is released from the NICU, he or she is hooked up to an instrument called an MMR or something. This basically records every moment of the EKG and respiration monitors for twenty-four hours. What the doctors look for on the record is a total lack of things like apnea, asystole, tachychardia, myocardial infarctions, and other things that set off automatic alarms. The MMR test is typically done one to three days before the patient’s release. M. Tiny isn’t that close to the exit yet, but his readings tend to be pretty steady so the nurse practitioner decided to let him take a crack at it, just to see how he’d do. He got plugged into it this afternoon. We were instructed not to disturb him any more than necessary, in order to prevent spikes in the readings.
Tonight, my quiet, sweet-natured boy had his first totally unprovoked temper tantrum, working himself up into a state of unexplained rage while I sat by his crib reading to him. He took his first "super-gulp" during a feeding, a not uncommon phenomenon whereby babies apparently get tired of eating and breathing at the same time and decide to see how long they can concentrate on just the former. And he pulled that feeding tube partway out of his nose, requiring the nurse to slip it back in and retape it to his face, always a favorite experience for him. Status: Almost certainly in need of a do-over.
So it could be a while. It could be a couple of whiles. A lot of it is up to him. He sets the pace. I just hope he decides to come home soon.
Today’s best search phrase: "The Pieter Vanden Hogan Band." That’s totally the name of my next side project. posted by M. Giant 9:33 PM 8 comments 8 Comments:You're really right about car seat stuff being different now. With all the unsafe car riding, dangerous playground equipment and whatnot, it's amazing any of us born before 1980 actually survived.
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I think the issue is he just doesn't understand yet that his own room at home is even nicer than the NICU over at Our Lady of Perpetual Physical Plant Improvement.
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M. Tiny: So young but already so in control of his parents' lives.
By Love reading about M. Tiny's goings ons. My little one (now 6 months old) was born 5 weeks early and underwent the carseat test. In our NICU the baby gets strapped in there with the blood oxygen monitor thing hooked up. She had to sit there for however long the car trip home was going to be just to make sure her breathing was okay. I guess with their floppy heads (actually is it the neck that is floppy?) they can end up pitched forward a bit and reduce their ability to breath efficiently. Luckily she passed and we were able to take her home. I remember thinking she was pretty good sized until I saw her in that carseat. She was looked about 50% smaller than real life. It was kind of funny and sad at the same time. Luckily she slept through the whole thing so she couldn't see my expression. She also had to be gavage fed. We got really good at trying to take her picture from the side in order to avoid having the big ol' tube in the photo. Woo hoo, preemie fun! Anyway, congrats to you and Trash!
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That armpit-temperature thing is apparently common to most newborns. I noticed that my newborn (who was born basically on time and average sized) also threw a complete hissyfit every time they took her temperature under her arm, but had no problem with a thermometer in her butt. I asked the nurse what that was all about, and she said they all seem to react that way. Her theory was what you suggested--that they just hate having an arm pinned down like that--and that they're just too little to notice the rectal thermometer...yet.
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My son got sent home from his stay in the NICU with what became known as the Damned Apnea Monitor. Most preemies are sent home with one, and it's this contrraption about the size and weight of a medium purse filled with bricks, only with more wires. Anyway, any time my son would sneeze or cough or have gas, the Damned Apnea Monitor would blare louder than 1,000 car alarms. They make them that loud so that you can can hear them from another room, but holy moly. I found I could go from a dead sleep to six feet in the air horizontally when the Damned Apnea Monitor would go off.
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When I work in the pediatric section of the emergency room, every patient has to have a temperature taken. With kids under the age of 3, there's only one reliable way to do that -- and it is not very polite. It's also my job. I sometimes wonder how many TC-area kids will grow up to become subconsciously uneasy around bald white guys, knowing only that it's vaguely butt-related... but not knowing why.
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My sister in law gave birth to nephew elder at 8 am - she went home w/ child at 11pm the same day. We did not know she was going home. We drove from Manhattan to Brooklyn w/ a newborn in his very hurtin mom's arms in the backseat of a car. It was pouring and possibly hailing. Needless to say, we were driving very very slow. and when nephew #2 we were prepared w/ a carseat.
By Saturday, October 23, 2004 Yep, Still a Dad M. Tiny is over a week and a half old now, and he’s only going to get older. I find myself spending a lot more time thinking about parenting, now that I am one. I’m ambivalent about what I know is to come. On the one hand I look forward to when he’s old enough to walk around and get himself to school and not have poo scooped out of his pants for him a couple of times a day and be fully cognizant of what a loser I am. And on the other hand, I’m not sure I ever want these days to end, the days when he’s not yet tipping the scales at five pounds and can’t quite lift his own head and is completely dependent upon us for everything. I do know that if by some horrible fluke the future ends up being a combination of those two situations, somebody’s going to have some ‘splainin’ to do. Now that I’m a dad, I keep thinking about the other dad I know best, i.e., mine. By the time he was my age, he had three kids. I have memories of him when he was my age. Thank God nobody seems to expect me to have things as together today as he seemed to back then. I also remember mom when she was my age, and younger. She used to talk kiddingly about growing up in "the olden days," which made me think of a world that looked like Little House on the Prairie, except in black and white, when it was really probably more like Happy Days, although further out in the sticks. In a few years I’ll be talking about growing up in my own "the olden days" that looked like That 70’s Show, and M. Tiny will hear that and visualize, I don’t know, Xena or something. Hard to believe that Happy Days was on closer to the time it was set than the present day. I am old. Not as old as my parents, obviously, but old nonetheless. One encouraging thing is that up until a week and a half ago, I was constantly getting older than my eventual child. Now that’s stopped. Now I’ll always be thirty-four years and ten months older than my son. The relationship between our ages is fixed. No longer must I wonder whether I’ll still be in my thirties when he goes off to school, or if I’ll be the only septuagenarian at little league games, or if he’ll move out of the house before I’m a hundred. Obviously that last one still depends heavily on where the economy goes from here, but the odds are declining a little more slowly. I realize this is boring. I’m even boring myself. But it’s inevitable. Parents get boring. Just ask their kids. Why fight it? Seriously, I’m constantly thinking about how time stretches out before and after me in new ways, now that I’m no longer the youngest generation in my immediate family. When I was lying in the back of the ambulance the other night, waiting to die, I thought, Well, at least the line will continue without me. Except my brain was all fucked up so it ended up coming out more like Shim sham it refrigerator pelican seven and of glow. Which, to be honest, probably translates back as Oh, fuck, I’m going to die. But still. I don’t know. Maybe I figured that trying to get all philosophical for an entry would be more interesting than what I really want to write about, which is how amazed I am that someone who’s only been on earth for eleven days can already be getting a personality. They change fast at this age, you know. Eleven days ago he was a blob of protoplasm in a Plexiglas tank, his head misshapen from its journey down the birth canal so that from some angles he looked like an H.R. Giger creature. He didn’t object to having his eyes covered because he still wasn’t used to the concept of sight (let alone the concept of objecting to things). And now that same wee human is focusing on our faces, vocalizing to communicate, and spitting formula at us to let us know he’s full. The undifferentiated blob of ten days ago is gone forever. Again, barring some horrible fluke. I’ve heard parents say that their kids do something new every day, and I’m starting to believe them. It’s looking like a couple of more weeks before he gets to come home, and thanks to help from a lot of people, we’re more prepared than we were. But there’s still a lot to do. For instance, now that I’m a dad I have to redesign this page with Family Circus fonts and characters, and I have no idea how long that’s going to take me. Today’s best search phrase: "Trash Burger King Television Pity." I think they’re actually looking for this. posted by M. Giant 6:10 PM 5 comments 5 Comments:
Boring? I don't think so.
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Not boring at all, I hope you keep us updated with how the little person is doing and what it'ss like to be a father.
By I have to confirm that you are most certainly not boring. I LOVE reading about this journey you guys are going through. It gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling!
By i don't know you or your family, but most days i feel like i have a connection with you, b/c of the way you write. please don't ever think that you are boring. possibly b/c i want a family of my own, but i laugh and cry and worry and have evil grins right along with you.
By So sorry to hear about the migraine! Keep us posted on M. Tiny's progress. Your Auntie 5280.
By Wednesday, October 20, 2004 My Brain Hurts Everybody knows about the actor’s nightmare, where you’re out on stage and you don’t know any of your lines. That’s nothing, because a) that actor is eventually going to be off of that stage, and b), most actors are, by and large, pussies. Take a moment, if you will, to imagine the writer’s nightmare. I don’t have to imagine it, because I’ve lived it. Let me take a moment to set the stage, if I may use that expression without spooking any thespians who may be reading. About eight or ten years ago, I had a migraine. This wasn’t the kind of migraine that consisted entirely of a headache, although I understand those suck plenty as well. This was a migraine that came with a few neurological glitches. I couldn’t connect names or faces in my head for a while. It went away later that day, much to the relief of that really hot chick in my house. So when I started feeling a slight sense of mental disconnection on the way home from M. Tiny’s hospital room this past Sunday night, I had a suspicion as to what was coming, although I hoped I’d be able to catch it in time. As soon as I got home I took some aspirin and went to bed. (Zen Viking, who works in an emergency room, later told me that these kinds of stories always have the part where the guy takes some aspirin and goes to bed.) Around midnight I was awakened by major cranial pain. I went downstairs to where Trash was using the computer, and tried to tell her what was going on. "My head space frog work gold plant," I explained. "What?" Trash said. "I was nose from but collar Spider-Man blender," I reiterated. After that it quickly stopped being funny. 34-year old men can have strokes and aneurysms, right? I would have asked someone that night, but my question would have come out sounding like "Ever blue the star the from with not over thing the." Trash made a couple of phone calls and the next thing I knew, my living room was filled with firemen and paramedics, putting an oxygen mask over my face and asking me questions, none of which I could answer, because every time I opened my mouth nothing came out but gibberish. It was English gibberish, with recognizable English words, but they weren’t in the right order or even the right sentences. My speech center had gone completely pear-shaped, but my mouth was still stringing together random words beyond my control. Do you ever have a dream where you’re reading? Do you ever try to really concentrate on what you’re dreaming that you’re reading, and find that it doesn’t make a lick of sense? That was the kind of language that I was pouring forth. It was like everything I said was being instantly run through a couple dozen iterations of Babel Fish and then back to English before it reached my tongue. Now it's kind of funny. Kind of silly, kind of goofy, kind of "oh, drat my luck." Sundy night, it was fucking terrifying. A few minutes later, I was in the back of the ambulance, trying my very hardest to answer the paramedic’s questions. Maybe the oxygen gave me a jolt, because I was able to enunciate bits of information that had been in my head for twenty years or more: my name, my date of birth, my Social Security number, and an upsettingly relevant Monty Python quote: "My brain hurts." I spent most of the rest of the ride to the emergency room trying to answer the question as to whether I take any medications. "Anarchy," I said. I tried again, repeatedly. "Energy…Synergy…Angry…Injury…" Once I finally succeeded in getting the word "allergy" out, purely by trial and error, I kept saying it until I’d been wheeled into the ER and wired up to a bunch of machines. Trash sat next to my gurney, holding my hand and telling me it would be okay, that I was already better than I had been before the ambulance came for me. I tried not to cry more than I already was. I wondered what would happen to me, to Trash, to M. Tiny, and to me some more, if I were now in the midst of some stroke that was permanently destroying the speech center of my brain. "My words," I wailed to the ever-patient Trash, "I need my words!" Then the drugs came down my IV tube and I got very sleepy. At some point there was a CT scan—my first ever—and I remember being glad that they didn’t slide me all the way into the tube, because I didn’t think I was up for it. I also wasn’t up for another two hours of lying on a gurney in a curtain area while waiting for the doctor to come back with the films, but that’s what I got anyway. It’s a testament to how uncomfortable it is to sleep on a gurney that it’s practically impossible even while doped to the gills. I had a better nap in the front seat of the car on the way home. By the time the doctor got back to assure me that my brain appeared normal (if a little overdeveloped), the worst was over, although I kept calling Methodist Hospital "Madison" in the aftermath of my microphone—microwave—migraine. We would have looked in on M. Tiny while we were there, but he was at a different hospital. Trash drove me home, and I was undressed and in bed practically before she had the front door closed behind us. I slept in the next morning, and barely got to M. Tiny’s hospital room in time to be there with Trash for his 1:00 p.m. feeding. I looked down my little guy, crashed out in his Plexiglas bassinette, and I realized that I had a new understanding of what it’s like to be helpless in a hospital, fully dependent on others for your basic needs, attached to wires that monitor your vital signs in real time. The thought of him constantly being as miserable as I was on Sunday night, and not even able to complain about it, breaks my heart. But then it’s time to change his diaper and I see that he can complain just fine when he wants to. In Trash’s hair, if necessary. As for my brain, it’s back to its normal level of performance. The day after felt like kind of a hangover, either from the headache or the drugs, but there seem to be no permanent aftereffects. They’re so not worried about me that my follow-up appointment with Neurology is next month. It looks like I either had a migraine or a TIE. ("Transient Ischemic Event," or "brain-fart.") Both of which suck during the experience, but which have the upside of being both temporary and highly unlikely to recur. But, God? If this is some message from you, telling me to quit wasting my talent? Try to be a little less subtle, okay? Today’s best search phrase: "Square superhero centerpieces." Did you know that M. Tiny was born within two days of Christopher Reeve’s death? You know, just in case you believe in reincarnation or anything. posted by M. Giant 8:02 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:
You didn't say if they explained this to you, but what you experienced is called aphasia; the specific characteristics suggest the aphasia type called "anomia". It's *customarily* caused by physical lesions in the speech centres of the brain, but if that were the case in this instance it wouldn't go away.
By Oh my goodness! Are you feeling better? I bet Trash went nuts. I hope the whole family improves soon.
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I have also had horrific migraines, regularly over the last 8 years. And mine also come with that vocabulary disconnection. (And blindness, flashy lights, projectile vomiting, mental chatter, acute pain - all the symptoms that one can get with migraines, in fact.)
By It sounds like a terrifying experience! I, too, think that losing my words/language would have to be one of my worst nightmares. I remember reading fiction writer Jean Stafford's biography, and how, during the last years of her life, following a debilitating stroke, she completely lost her language abilities, and how painful it was to read, and how I felt as if I couldn't really imagine a worse fate for a writer. I'm so glad to hear that the brain fart has passed, however, and that you're feeling better. Also, a belated congratulations on M. Tiny who is delightful and amazing!
By Monday, October 18, 2004 Little Creatures M. Tiny is doing well, for a human whose birth date is still supposed to be six weeks in the future. Strat is doing well, for a diabetic cat who is getting injections from the next-door neighbors while his people are spending all their time at the hospital. Which leaves one other cat, Orca, who never likes to be left out of anything. She can’t stand rejection unless she’s the one doing it. When we got home Friday night, she was wheezing like a small, fuzzy asthmatic. Our original plan had been to sleep in on Saturday morning before going to the hospital, perhaps as late as the decadent hour of nine a.m., but Orca’s breathing convinced us she should go to the vet first thing in the morning. Unless she stopped it by then, because she has had ill-timed hypochondriac episodes in the past. Morning came around, Strat got his insulin shot, and Orca was still breathing like she’d just learned how. The vet’s office six blocks away didn’t have an opening for her, so they sent us to another clinic a couple of miles away. A funny thing about Orca: she doesn’t meow any more. Her vocalizing dropped off a couple of years ago. We figured it was because she was just tired of projecting her voice, because she was back in full volume when I drove her to her dental appointment last February. So she could make a respectable racket if she was scared enough. We just didn’t think it was worth it to traumatize her by periodically boxing her up and driving her around just to hear what she had to say. Trash and I thought we’d all be happier just to let her grunt and huff her way around the house; she didn’t have to get worked up into a state of mortal panic, and we could make fun of her. But then, yesterday morning, there was no panicked yowling from Orca in the car. Just panicked grunting and huffing, which I didn’t really feel like making fun of. After I got her into the examination room and pried her out of her cat carrier, she stood on the very edge of the metal table with her entire length pressed against me for protection, going "eh" over and over again. I thought about that lump under her skin at the back of her neck, the one we found and had checked a few years ago, that hadn’t moved or grown at all ever since, but might now have subcutaneous tentacles wrapped around her brain. I thought about her relative silence, her new wheezing and occasional coughing, and as the vet came in and put her stethoscope to various bits of Orca’s anatomy, I waited for her to say, "throat cancer." I felt like the worst cat-dad in the world, terrified that one of our kitties might never get to meet our son. It’s not throat cancer. Orca has an upper respiratory infection. The vet prescribed a course of antibiotics to clear it up. She also suggested a chest x-ray that morning to make sure it’s nothing more serious, but that would have taken a couple of hours and Trash and I needed to get to the human hospital. So we put it off until one day this week, on the theory that if the antibiotics clear it up, the x-ray won’t be necessary anyhow. Since we were there, I also asked about the lack of vocalization. The vet explained that that was probably due to throat cancer. No, not really. It’s just that some cats, when they reach a certain age, experience changes in their vocal folds that prevent them from meowing properly. Which is kind of sad to me, because she really used to enjoy bitching about things to us, and now she can pretty much only bitch to herself. So now we have the premature baby, the diabetic cat, and the cat with the upper respiratory infection. Thank God for all the friends and relatives who are ready and willing to help us out with everything that’s going on. Except maybe for stabbing Strat with a steel needle and squirting medicine down Orca’s throat with an eyedropper, and even that first one is something the neighbors are able to fill in on. But we don’t have time for all of this indefinitely, which means Orca has to quit smoking, like, right now. P.S. And this is nothing compared to what happened to me last night. I’ll tell that story in the next entry, and consider myself lucky that I’m able to. Today’s best search phrase: "Xena sealed boxes of card serious 6." Wow, I didn’t know seriousness went that high. posted by M. Giant 8:13 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Friday, October 15, 2004 Peek-a-boo, NICU (Thursday night) As I write this in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for later posting, my wife is sitting in a chair next to me and holding our soon-to-be-adopted son. He’s allowed out of his incubator for longer periods now, which seems to be just fine with him. Yesterday we had him out just once for a shorter time, and then he had to go back in the tank when his temperature got too low. Now his internal thermostat works well enough that being wrapped up next to a warm adult body is sufficient to keep him warm. Much to his, and my wife’s, complete lack of distress. And earlier, mine. Trash had to go into the office for a while and I was here alone with him for the afternoon. He hadn’t yet been out today, so I asked if I could hold him after his 4:00 feeding. "You can hold him during his feeding," the nurse offered. Sold! So we snuggled up in the same chair that M. Tiny and Trash are occupying now, while a syringe slowly forced 25 cc’s of formula into his stomach through a tube that runs up his nose all the way to his esophagus. He slept peacefully in my arms as this happened. I will never complain about airplane food again. I too dozed off in the chair. I woke up when the nurse came in to ask me about circumcision. I opined that that was a fairly personal question, but she defused the situation by explaining that she was talking about M. Tiny. Whose eyes, by the way, had popped open at the first mention of the C-word. Trash was quite bitter that I not only got to hold him in her absence, but that we had essentially taken a nap together and he stayed with me for upwards of two hours. I told her about how I placed him back in his Isolette™, carefully arranging his various tubes, wires and pillows, including sticking the EKG lead back on him when the electrode peeled itself off his chest. I also replaced his eye mask. Did I not explain about the eye mask? It’s quite common, you see, for premature infants to experience jaundice due to an overabundance of something in their bloodstream called bilirubin. The hospital shines mild ultraviolet light on them for extended periods of time to alter the bilirubin into something that the liver can more easily handle. The light would also damage unprotected baby eyes, so he has to wear a soft foam-rubber mask over his eyes that makes him look even more like an alien. He doesn’t much care for it. I can tell because he keeps trying to pull it off his face. Not three days old, and already with a rebellious streak. But he didn't stir this time when the nurse came in later and whispered in his ear, "circumcision!" (Friday night) I’m tired of writing. I’m tired, period. Pictures now. 
Our very first picture of M. Tiny. I was still trying to work out how to take a picture with the digital camera without using flash. By the way, covering the flashbulb with your finger? Doesn’t work. 
Ten hours old, and possibly having second thoughts. This is everyone’s first of many lessons about where the grass is always greener, and yet so many of us never learn it. 
Under the "bili lights." There’s also a luminous "bili blanket" underneath him. I think we got him out of there before it made him permanently tanorexic. Check out the funky eyewear, the ultraviolet lights, the pacifier—it’s baby’s first rave! 
"Look at me! I’m crazy eyemask baby! Won’t you give me some candy?" That’s enough pictures for now, because it’s after midnight and we’re heading back over to the hospital first thing in the morning. You know how they say there’s something new every day? That’s even more true for preemies. Today he ate from a bottle for the first time. He kept making this weird Jon Stewart face: "Mmmm, yes…fortified formula…ooooh, how I love it…mmmm." Any kid who’s emulating Jon Stewart in his first week of life is going to do just fine around here. posted by M. Giant 11:08 PM 12 comments 12 Comments:
Cute!
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He's beautiful!
By M. Tiny is gorgeous!
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Why wouldn't I give candy to someone known as crazy eyemask baby? Best. Superhero. Ever.
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Not dissin' Jon Stewart or anything, but M. Tiny has him beat in the charm and looks departments already. ;-)
By Congrats! He is just peachie!
By Congratulations! Such a beautiful baby, alien Jon Stewart impersonator qualities and all. What a lucky baby, and what lucky parents you are!
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Congratulations! There is nothing like the NICU to make you realize how lucky you are. My nephew was in there for a month after he was born in late november two years ago, and by some miracle able to go home just before Christmas. With the love M.Tiny has in his life, I am sure miracles will happen for him, too. Make sure to grab as many of those hospital pacifiers as you can, he won't want any other kind now!
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He is so adorable.
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TechnoTiny! Awesome!
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M. Tiny is too adorable for words. Which is why I don't have any words other than, "Adorable!"
By Congratulations on M Tiny! I hope that his stay in the hospital is as short as possible and that you can take him home soon. Last month, when my daughter was born, she was kept half a day longer than I was so they could keep an eye on her minor jaundice. A few extra hours seemed like forever to us not to have her at home; I can only imagine how impatient you must be to get M. Tiny out of there. All the best to you and Mommy Trash, and baby strength vibes to M. Tiny.
By Tuesday, October 12, 2004 Scheduling Issues Last Friday, while Trash was at work, I took on the huge project of moving my home-office desk and computer equipment out of the "study," thereby making it a "nursery." It took me pretty much the whole afternoon to relocate all my files and papers, dismantle my computer setup, partially disassemble my desk so it would fit through the door, move everything, and rewire all the Ethernet cables to where they needed to be. We hadn’t planned to do it just yet, but I wanted to get it finished that day, as a pleasant little surprise for Trash. She was indeed impressed when she got home and saw that I had taken care of this, weeks ahead of schedule. I mean, really, our son’s due date is in late November, but it never hurts to be ahead of the game. Because, you know, sometimes babies have their own schedules about this kind of thing. As was brought quite forcefully home to us last night when M. Tiny was born. Yes, I said born. BORN! Yesterday afternoon, about seven weeks before the official due date and only nineteen days after we found out we’d been chosen as adoptive parents in the first place, the birth father called to tell me that the birth mother was having contractions. They tried to stop them at the hospital, but M. Tiny was pretty insistent on coming out right then, and we dispatched a small army of friends and relatives on various emergency baby-prep missions. See, even though we’ve been getting all this great stuff for the baby from friends, relatives, and you readers, there are a few essentials that weren’t quite covered yet. Like a place for the baby to sleep, or more than a few things for him to wear, or a car seat to drive him home in, or one single, solitary diaper. Or, while we were at it, another six weeks or so for Trash and I to come to terms with just exactly what we’d gotten ourselves into. But it doesn’t look like we’re getting that last one. The next twelve hours were exciting and terrifying and surreal (up to and including writing and posting the regularly scheduled Monday night entry) , but at least we got to be home during them. We had to be home, in case the phone rang. Which it did, all night. As did both of our cell phones, after we instructed people to call them instead of our land line in order to keep the latter clear for the inevitable news. When a phone rings between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m., it generally means either that someone has died, or the opposite. People were very happy to hear it was the latter when Trash and I made our respective calls. The birth parents invited us to come to the hospital this morning, which we did. And we met our little guy. He’s surprisingly large, considering how early he was. He weighed four pounds, thirteen ounces (2.2 kg) at birth and measures over 18 inches (47.6 cm), which makes his birth mom pretty relieved that he didn’t go full-term. His current home is a plexiglass (perspex) incubator, and there are numerous wires running between him and various pieces of monitoring equipment which put me in mind of the Borg (Cybermen), and I think that’s all the translating I need to do for non-U.S. readers for today. He’s spending most of his time sleeping on his stomach in the NICU, because his lungs aren’t fully developed yet. He’s not on a breathing tube or even one of those nose-hose thingies, but his pipes aren’t up to a lusty newborn howl yet. Instead, a few times an hour, his forehead crinkles and his eyes open up to just the barest squint and his EKG reading spikes from the 140s to the 170s and he lets out a tremulous noise that sounds like he’s singing through the whirling blades of an electric fan. “If that’s as loud as he’s ever going to get, we’ll be fine,” I told Trash. She knew I was kidding. He has a mass of wavy dark hair. He also has an overlapping mass of wavy blond hair. I posited that perhaps he is a metrosexual. And then we came home to try and finish getting the nursery ready. Thanks to a number of wonderful people, we’re in a lot better shape, baby-gear-wise, than we were thirty-six hours ago. We still have a little ways to go, but it’s okay because M. Tiny will be staying in the hospital for at least a little while longer, until he’s big and strong enough to come home. I assured the hospital staff that I wouldn’t make him drive, but they remained insistent that he’s not ready to leave yet. So I’m a dad now. Trash is a mom. My folks are grandparents for the first time. My sisters are aunts—in fact, DeBitch the Elder just got married this past Saturday, and when she comes home from her honeymoon she’ll get the news that she became a wife and an aunt in the same week. The preparations here have been quite forcefully kicked into high gear, and we should have time to pull everything off. We’ve washed loads of tiny clothes in Dreft™, and now the washing machine smells like a baby whenever we open it. I’m fixing the drawers in the nursery dresser so they can be opened with one arm while the other is filled with a small human. We’re stocking the nursery with the stuff that wonderful people have supplied for us. And we have a little more time. Of course, we’re going to be spending as much of that time as possible in the hospital with our new son, so if the baby books aren’t alphabetized by author when he moves in, we hope he’ll understand. Did I mention I’m a dad? posted by M. Giant 6:59 PM 39 comments 39 Comments:
Congratulations! Best of luck to you and Trash for becoming parents (even if it was quicker than you were expecting). Looking forward to hearing all about your newest member of the family.
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Awesome! Congratulations! :-D
By Oh! Oh! M. Tiny has arrived! Congratulations, and best of luck, and oh, I'm just so happy for you!
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holy crap! so exciting!!
By Oh, that is the most fantastic news! I hope M. Tiny stays healthy and comes home soon. Congratulations to the new parents!
By That is fabulous! Congratulation, M.Giant, Trash and M. Tiny!
By How excellent! How exciting! Congratulations -- the whirlwind has only just begun :~}
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Autercakes should be firing me your address so I may mail off Ye Boxe Of Stuff.
By Congratulations! I'm so very excited for you!
By I hope you guys are ready! Congratulations!!
By Heartfelt congratulations, and I wish your new family all happiness.
By Congratulations! That is such great news. Hope the little guy is OK and gets to come home soon.
By Woo-hoo! Congratulations, M. Giant and Trash, and Welcome Home, M. Tiny. (from thatgrrrl.diaryland.com)
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Congratulations to you and Trash! It's so exciting. Best of luck to you all!
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Hearty congratulations!
By Congratulations on your new little blessing! The three of you will make a wonderful family.
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Congratulations!
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Congratulations M.Giant and Trash! Welcome, M.Tiny!
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YAAAAAY! Congratulations, and we love you!
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Yayy!
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That's excellent news! Welcome, M.Tiny!
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You will learn a lot about "baby's own timetable" in the weeks and months ahead. Sentences like "But he *just* pooped!" will be the norm.
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Oh! That is so wonderful!! Congratulations to you and Trash, and congrats to M.Tiny for getting such great parents!
By Awww...what a wonderful surprise!! Congratulations MomTrash and DadGiant, and welcome to the world, little M.Tiny!
By Awww. Congratulations! You know, even if you don't get the baby supplies set up in time, don't worry. As my mom tells it, I spent the first two weeks of my life sleeping in a dresser drawer. Just remember to leave the drawer open, and the baby will be fine. :)
By So, SO exciting to read your stories of high-speed parenthood. Huge congratulations to M. Giant and Trash, huge Internet smooches of welcome to M. Tiny. (Oh, and pats to the kitties: don't worry, the tiny human makes a lot of noise, but eventually it drops food all over the place too--pretty handy.)
By Wow: congratulations! My best wishes on M. Tiny's good health. And I will now officially chill on the Sugar Cookie Contest front.
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Congrats!
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Congratulations on the little guy!
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CONGRATS to the new bestest parents on the planet!!! Cannot wait to hear all about the induction of M. Tiny into the House of Velcrometer.
By What you guys are doing is one of the most amazing things two people can do. M.Tiny is so very lucky. As an adopted child myself, I know just how lucky he is. I hope he grows to be as proud of the profoundly loving thing you two have done for him as everyone here is. Congratulations to all of you.
By Aw, your post made me cry! I have five months to go, but the moral of the story is that it's never too early to clear out the office. Maybe my husband and I should get cracking. Congratulations and best of luck!
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Holy Crap! Welcome, M. Tiny! And congrats, mom & dad! I was 2 lbs 13 oz when I was born and turned out just fine. M. Tiny will be home turning your lives blissfully upside down before you know it.
By Oh you guys, that's wonderful. I wish only the best for your new family, all 5 of you (can't forget the cats!) and I am now off to buy something from your registry. I had intended to wait until it was closer to the due date, but I guess M. Tiny beat me to it!
By As a long time American reader but now in Paris (France, not Texas, please). I hope I am the first to wish a European congrats to you all. All my best wishes and you know what? If he is a metrosexual, you'll never have to worry about fashion advice or skin care products. Trust me, for people that live in MN (and I did) that is a huge plus.
By Congratulations and good luck with everything!
By That's wonderful! Congrats to you, Trash, M. Tiny!
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My theory is M. Tiny just found out who his new family would be and couldn't wait any longer. That's probably why I popped out THREE MONTHS early.
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Welcome M. Tiny!!! Congrats M. Giant and Trash! How exciting!!!
By Monday, October 11, 2004 Flying High Trash never flew until the year we got married. Notice I don’t say she was never on a plane. She was on a plane once, when she was a teenager, until she panicked and had to be removed. It wasn’t until her early twenties that she actually managed to stay on board an aircraft all the way through takeoff. And landing, just in case you’re worried that this entry is going to end really badly. Trash’s first flight was with me, and we were on our way to Orlando to experience David Foster Wallace’s proverbial supposedly fun thing we’ll never do again. We booked tickets on a January cruise back in the spring, and Trash had spent most of the intervening months stressing out about flying. I should say that Trash has no fear of flying whatsoever. She has experienced bouts of concern that she was going to be unable to stop herself from elbowing a seatmate who was trying to put his feet under the seat in front of Trash, but that's about it. This has not always been the case. There was one particular summer afternoon when she called me from work in a state of high dudgeon. It seems she had come up with a plan to get through it, and she was explaining this very plan to her coworker. She had not yet shared her plan with me, which will become abundantly apparent in just a moment. “So, I think I’ve figured it out,” Trash said. “What I’m going to do is, after the plane takes off and everyone else has taken off their parachutes, I’m just going to leave mine on. Fine, laugh. I know I’ll look like a dork, but I don’t care. I’m leaving my parachute on and I don’t care what anyone else thinks.” The dudgeon ensued almost immediately. “Why didn’t you tell me we don’t get parachutes!?” she screamed at me down the phone line. Sad to say, I really didn’t have an answer for her. “You mean I’m going to get on an airplane and they’re not going to give me a parachute at all?” Our cruise was hanging by a thread. She probably would have insisted on canceling it had she found a single sympathetic party to her particular tale of woe. A few weeks later, she came up with a backup plan. “I’m going to sit right in front of the wing,” she told me, “and when I get sucked out, I’m going to grab onto it.” “You’re just going to get sucked into the engine,” I informed her matter-of-factly. We weren’t yet married, so I didn’t know then what I know now about when to shut up. Her second backup plan was to try to wangle herself a tour of the airport and an airplane, in hopes that knowledge would dispel fear. But they didn’t allow that even before 9/11/91. But that was still better than her third backup plan, which involved billowy clothes and an umbrella. She finally hit upon a winner when she went to the doctor to explain her situation. She asked the doctor, “Can you teach me some breathing exercises or meditation techniques? I just need a little help keeping calm.” She then went on to explain her previous plans, and why they hadn’t worked out. She’d just finished the second one when the doctor stopped her. “I’m just going to write you a prescription,” she said. Trash protested. “I was kind of hoping to do this non-medically.” “I’m just going to write you a prescription.” She got the prescription filled, we got married, and a few months later she took one of the pills the morning of our flight. She doesn’t remember much about that day. She pretty much slept through the first afternoon and evening of the cruise. I do remember her asking me to get her some milk from the flight attendant. I said I’d ask later. “If you loved me, you’d ask now,” argued my doped-to-the-gills wife. Again, I didn’t have an answer to that. I asked the flight attendant for some milk. “We’ll be serving beverages after takeoff,” the attendant explained. Fair enough. Some time later, Trash was telling this story to someone who knew a little about medication. This person asked what Trash had taken, and Trash told her. The friend’s jaw dropped. “They gave me a placebo?” Trash said, offended. “I knew it.” “No,” the friend said, “that’s what they give schizophrenics during seizures.” Trash got the good stuff without even realizing it. I’m pretty sure it was the parachute story that did it. Today’s best search phrase: “Pictures of my ladder and me.” Dude, take your own pictures with your ladder. I don’t do ladder photography. posted by M. Giant 9:28 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:
I'd post this to the correct entry, but I fear it might get overlooked.
By Wednesday, October 06, 2004 Humpblog (10/6/04) My friends and I watched a two-hour TV pilot. It was about a ragtag group of plane crash survivors. The ensemble cast included, among others, a teen idol and an actor with a certain degree of geek cred. As they explored what at first seemed like a tropical paradise, it became apparent that something paranormal and unexplained was afoot on this mysterious landmass. And it sucked. I’m talking, of course, about a cheap-ass TV movie called The Presence, starring Gary Graham from the Alien Nation series and Kathy Ireland. We saw it in the video store when we were looking for terrible horror movies to watch one weekend afternoon several years ago. See, the way Kraftmatik and The Krank watch bad horror movies is they pick who’s going to die next. I watched Phantoms and Bats with them, and they have a great record. But they were constantly stymied by The Presence because everyone in that piece of crap refused to die. We sensed something was up when we realized that the screen was fading to black every twenty minutes or so, meaning that this really wasn’t something that was going to get all that gory. But we held out hope until the very end, when these thin, hateful characters started talking about what they would do next. It was then that we realized we were watching a pilot for some network series that never got on the schedule, but they’d gone ahead and released it to home video in an apparent bid to recoup some of the hundreds of dollars they’d sunk into it. Did I mention this movie sucked, and that any series spawned by it must have sucked so bad that somebody may well have gone back in time to make sure it never aired? Which is why I rolled my eyes the first time I heard the premise for Lost. Oh, great, here we go again, I thought. And yet now I’m seriously irritated that our local ABC affiliate preempted tonight’s episode for a Twins game. The first two episodes hooked me that much. Damn you, J. J. Abrams! Damn you to hell! By the way, that same afternoon we were also really disappointed in The Faculty, because it didn’t suck enough. * * * The house next door to us is on the market. Not my bandmates’ house; the one on the other side. When that house sold two and a half years ago, I claimed the sellers were asking five times what we paid for ours. I was exaggerating. If I said that now, I wouldn’t be. We’re going to have rich neighbors. That is, if they can get past the Kerry/Edwards lawn signs on the next three houses down. I have a feeling the sellers are more likely to get their asking price after the election. * * * Seen on a bumper sticker earlier today: “MY OTHER RIDE IS YOUR MOM.” * * * I’m writing this in a study that is gradually morphing into a nursery. We’ve shipped most of the bookcases and books into the room that was my study when we moved in, and soon will be again. The bookcases that remain in here hold books for children and babies (including the ones that you, incredible and kind readers, have sent us). There’s a rocking chair in the corner and the dresser my parents gave us is at the end of the room, ready to hold (more) baby clothes and the baby himself during changings. More gifts from y’all are around and about in here. Once I get my computer and desk out of the space where the crib is going to be and move them down the hall, the biggest part of getting the house ready for M. Tiny will be complete. Which leaves getting ourselves ready. We’ve been stressing primarily about the room-swapping aspect, but now that that’s nearly finished, something tells me it’s going to be the easy part. * * * Today’s best search phrase: “When breeding red claw use bottle.” Hey, I’ll take parenting tips wherever I find them. posted by M. Giant 9:37 PM 10 comments 10 Comments:
I thought the Twins game was cable only! And here I listened to it on the radio like a chump. Way to be informative after the fact.
By I think they moved all the channel 5 shows to 45 last night.
By Hey, you said "y'all." Is there a new grammatical trend going on up North?
By Up here in the Northland(tm), we are nothing if not inclusive and sensible. At least intellectually. Most of the time. And since English lacks for a "vous"-style pronoun for the plural "you," we're not above stealing from our neighbors in the American South. I love using "y'all" in conversation and writing, and I'm getting fewer weird looks all the time.
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"Y'all" is a really useful word. French and Spanish have second-person-multiple pronouns; why shouldn't English? We're not so uptight here in the frozen wastelands that we can't adopt a sensible rule.
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Okay, dammit. I waited 22 hours, thinking my first post was not accepted by the Blogger server, before posting another one in its place. And now, they're both there.
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Crap! So all the hours I set the VCR to record on channel 5 recorded the TWINS game instead? Crap!
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I started using "y'all" after working for a little over a year doing tech support for southern Americans.
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Wait.. doesn't *everyone* try to figure out who dies next in really bad horror flicks? I thought it was a rule. Seriously.
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I, personally, haven't heard a Southerner use y'all in the singular. We do pluralize y'all sometimes -- "all uh y'all," as in, "Why don't all uh y'all come down for some football this Saturday."
By Monday, October 04, 2004 Back in Time A quick update on the Sugar Cookie Recipe contest: We have a battle for first and second place, but third place is still anyone’s to take. I mean that literally. There is no one in third place because we don’t have three entries yet. I respect the fact that y’all are taking your time in finding the perfect sugar cookie recipe. No doubt that will be reflected in the quality of entries. Just keep in mind that you only have until midnight Central Time on October 31. And for those of you who live where they have daylight savings time, you best make the most of the extra hour you get between now and then. * * * I was up to my armpits in my geekitude the other day. Getting the house ready for a permanent third resident is way too big a project for one day. We’re repurposing entire rooms over here. My study is going to be the nursery. The guest bedroom is going to be my study. Part of the basement is going to be the guest bedroom. And one end of our bedroom has become a library. We’re hoping to convert the garage into a structure that has enough uncluttered space to park cars in, but that’s a longer term project. Over the weekend, for instance, I drafted Zen Viking into helping me haul a sofa out of the basement, always one of my favorite tasks. It’s been down there since we moved in eleven years ago, and it was in my parents’ house ten years before that. There was also about fifty dollars in change in it, with the agreeable result that the couch not only got lighter the further we carried it, it tipped us generously for our trouble. Anyway, back to the upstairs library. It’s not that having books up in our bedroom is anything new. We have bookshelves in every room in the house, save the bathroom, and that’s only because of the humidity. It’s just that we never thought there would be room upstairs for more than a short bookcase, due to the shape of our bedroom. We’d written off the idea of installing tall bookcases up there years ago, thinking we’d either have to cut a hole in the low, sloped ceiling or hide one of the windows. But it turns out we just get away with it, if we stick them at the far end of the room, flanking the window. And one night last week we did just that. Just a little tip for you DIYers out there. If you ever have occasion to move a bookcase, I advise taking out the books first. The volumes we moved upstairs used to occupy a shadowy little alcove in our study, a sort of genre fiction ghetto. Now they face the open room, and as such, we were quickly shamed into getting them properly organized. One case houses mysteries, the other horror and SF. We like having books upstairs even more than we expected to. The other night, while lying in bed, I stuck out my left arm and snagged the newest Clive Barker. I don’t care whether you think Barker has gone from being the poor man’s Stephen King to the even poorer man’s Neil Gaiman, that’s fucking cool. There’s something else in that case as well, filling several shelves. This is my collection. I know what you’re thinking. You think of a nerdy guy like me, a bookcase, and a collection, and you think either “comic books” or “action figures.” Well, I’ve got news for you. Those things are for people much cooler than I am. When I talk about my collection, I’m talking about hundreds of Doctor Who books. Didn’t know there were hundreds, did you? I’ve got the novelization of every story arc that wasn’t written by Douglas Adams and isn’t tied up in litigation over the Daleks. The entire run of Virgin Books’s “The New Adventures,” from the first novel until the BBC took the rights back, and a few that came out after that. A stack of “Missing Adventures,” newer novels featuring previous Doctors, three-sevenths of whom are now dead. And even a batch of BBC editions that I got before I decided they were getting cranked out so fast that even I couldn’t keep up. I’d like to say I’ve read them all, but I haven’t. Maybe 95% of them. One afternoon last week, I spent some time getting them all back in order of continuity, from An Unearthly Child to the ones about the Eighth Doctor. It’s ridiculous how happy I am to have them all sorted out again. I haven’t read any of those books for seven years. Some of them for twenty. But now that I’ve held each one in my hands today, I kind of want to read them all again. In order this time. I’ll be okay. It’ll pass. But when they bring the show back next year, I’m totally subscribing to BBC America and you can’t stop me. Today’s best search phrase: “Coloring book for alligator.” Hey, if you think you can get the prehistoric beastie to stay inside the lines, go for it. posted by M. Giant 9:23 PM 8 comments 8 Comments:
That's okay. I can't decide if that is more or less geeky than what I did in my late teens and twenties. Every month Pocket Books came out with a new Star Trek book. Every month I bought it. Classic Trek or Next Generation - they were both golden to me.
By Well, it certainly is geeky, but at least you didn't buy them all to keep you busy while waiting in line to get "Doctor Who" and "Blake's 7" autographs at a British Sci-Fi Convention.
By I read about 2 books a week so I had built up quite a collection of books but when I moved last winter, I asked myself if I was ever going to read any of these again? Since the answer was no, I threw 3/4 of them out and ever since then I am throwing them out when I finish them. I tried to take them to a place that resells them but I got like a messly 10 cents on the dollar and it wasn't worth it. Now the homeless people who go through my garbage are really well read.
By I don't really do sugar cookies, but I do lots of butter cookies. Just for fun, not to enter the contest or anything, because it wouldn't qualify, I'll dig up my German great-grandmother's butter cookie recipe (that starts with something like 14 pounds of butter and 10 pounds of flour) just so you'll have something different to bake, if you so choose. Mmmmm, buttery. Oh, also, Secret Agent Josephine posted a cranberry/white chocolate chip shortbread recipe last year that I have baked quite a bit, that causes people to have spontaneous mouthgasms. I'll dig that up, too, and pass it along. I'm all about the cooking baking, just not so much the sugar cookies.
By Oh, sorry, that was me - Laura - prattling on about butter cookie and shortbread recipes.
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I LOVED Dr. Who books in high school, but I haven't read them in years. Really, I had forgotten about them.
By To the "Anonymous" who throws out books once they've been read: You may want to find out if your local library (or its "friends" organization) would like them, either for the collection, or, more likely, for a booksale fundraiser. You still won't get money for them, but at least they'll go to good homes.
By Or you could give them to a local hospital or a women's shelter or a seniors' home... the list of worthy charities goes on and on Throwing a book away just seems so...wrong. It hurts me to think about it.
By Saturday, October 02, 2004 Tossing Cookies Trash and I are both grateful and touched by those of you who have already visited our baby registry. Wonderful stuff started arriving yesterday, and we’re both thrilled. Isn’t the Internet great? I’m pretty sure we never got gifts from people in Australia before it came along. * * * Speaking of the Internet, we’re going to attempt to harness its power in another way this month. Last year I told you about Trash’s annual cookie*-baking bacchanalia with our friend Blaine. They’re doing it again this year, of course. Naturally it’ll be at our house this year, because we’re very likely to be responsible for a weeks-old human by then. And having someone else on hand to taste the cookies will certainly come in handy. Our palates get worn out after a couple of hours, so it’s going to be nice to be able to rely on M. Tiny to tell us that the snickerdoodle batter needs a little more cream of tartar. The thing is that after all these years, Trash and Blaine have never found a sugar cookie recipe they’re really happy with. They all come out dry or gooey or flavorless or brittle or Marxist, and that’s no good. This is where you come in. Trash and Blaine want the best sugar cookie recipe out there. That’s why they’re holding a contest. Through me. Here’s how it works: e-mail me with your recipe by October 31. Don’t post it in the comments. If you can explain what’s great about your recipe, include that information as well, because Trash and Blaine aren’t going to have time to test-bake all of them. Trash and Blaine will be the sole judges and their decision is final. Recipes taken verbatim from the Betty Crocker Cookbook or The Joy of Cooking will not be disqualified. They’ll just lose, because believe me, they’ve been tried. Prizes? Of course there are prizes. First prize is a Velcrometer t-shirt. Second prize is two Velcrometer t-shirts. Actually, that’s not true. Here are the actual prizes: Third prize: A small collection of Velcrometer button-magnets, featuring the old Velcrometer logo. Suitable for refrigerators, metal bulletin boards, and your computer tower. Second prize: A hand-crocheted scarf made by Trash herself. It’s also possible that I will have helped by chasing the cats away and untangling the yarn when it gets knotted. First prize: What else? A selection of cookies! Including sugar cookies made with the very best recipe they receive. I’m adding a permanent link to this entry in the sidebar, in case your quest for the perfect sugar cookie recipe takes you around the globe and time is short when you return. No purchase necessary, void where prohibited, blah, blah, blah. Today’s best search phrase: “Anal fetch club.” Um, what kind of club? The kind you join, or the kind you fetch? * Biscuits, if you live in Australia. posted by M. Giant 11:47 AM 3 comments 3 Comments:Does Trash want these to be sugar cookies which can withstand cutting, shaping, and rerolling the scraps, or merely festive bloblike circular sugar cookies?
By Re: Anal Fetch Club. Our baby's new favorite book is Hop on Pop. One frame is "Pat on Bat". My husband G. Grod and I both think it is a disturbing image that could just as easily illustrate Anal Fetch Club. Check it out if you don't believe me.
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"M. Tiny" makes me smile and maybe even squeal a little.
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