Socal Mom

links for 2008-05-17

• The Argonaut: Parents & Teachers Visit Sacramento to Protest School Finance Cuts
  If you think times have been tough at LAUSD, you ain't seen nothing now that the Governator wants to fix the state budget deficit by slashing funds for public schools.
  (tags: education schwarzenegger california lausd)

Girlie Piles

I'm stomping around the house, feeling pissy.

I have a lot of tasks that I can't seem to get to; posts I want to write, bills to pay. It's over 100 degrees out. There are a million things I'd rather do right now than the one that has the highest priority: cleaning the house.

I may have mentioned before that I hate housework and I resent being the only one in the family that is stuck doing it.

"I help around the house," my husband will protest when he reads this. That's true. He does. And he's way neater than Megan or me, who he accuses of leaving "girlie piles" of stuff all over the house. I won't argue that point.

Especially when we are having family over for the weekend and I have to spend 90 minutes removing the "girlie piles" before I can start dusting or vacuuming or mopping. (Not to mention the big MAN PILES my husband makes by moving all the girlie piles off the dining room table and onto the credenza, so if they were previously sorted into types of stuff they are now a jumble of stuff that must be resorted before they can be put away.)

And don't get me started on the bathrooms. Actually, I think I'm writing this because I don't want to get started on the bathrooms, which is my most-hated job in the house. That, and cleaning the fridge.

I wouldn't mind it so much if I was only picking up MY "girlie piles." But my daughter NEVER does it. Her bedroom is a disaster -- much of it because when I pick up all HER stuff, I leave it there. And there it stays. And then she creates more in the living/dining area of our tiny house. It makes me want to scream. (So Instead, I vent here. And still nothing gets clean.)

And then I feel guilty. After all, I am not the best role model. I have a very high tolerance for dust, grime and messiness. She learned how to leave "girlie piles" from me. And I don't actually require her to help much, either. How can I? She spends 30 hours a week in school, 16 hours a week in gym, 6 hours a week in Hebrew school... most nights, she's only home long enough to eat dinner, relax for a half hour and go to bed. She gets up at 5:00 a.m. most mornings to do homework.

It's the same thing with my husband. Like most salaried Americans, he works way more than a standard 40-hour week. He often has to work on weekends. He's stressed. So what if I ask him to put away the Passover dishes and they are still sitting on the credenza that I need to dust before my sister and her family get here tonight? So what if he went to a business dinner the other night and spent too much money that we don't have on a basket of food we don't need and I have no place for, because it included a bottle of champagne (when he could have bought THREE bottles of the same stuff at BevMo without the addition of a basket of pasta fixings???)

And then there's me. I don't work outside the home. Presumably, keeping it clean is what I'm supposed to be doing. I think I do a pretty good job of the shopping, the laundry, the bookkeeping and bills and cooking... not to mention time I have to put in volunteering (not so much now that she's out of elementary school). But yeah - I do spend a lot of time on email and twitter and blogging. But I look at those activities as business, even if what I earn from them is a pittance. I can't help but think it's an investment in my future -- as much as the time I now spend working out at the gym is an investment in my health.

But those things do take away time that I could be using for other things. Like mopping the floors.

I have friends who insist they LIKE housework. Aside from the fact that they are crazy, I sort of get it. I like it when the house is clean. I just wish it wasn't so tedious to get it that way.

My needs are simple - I just want to earn enough money to pay for someone else to come here to clean the bathrooms and kitchen and floor.

I suppose I should be relieved that my friend Karoli was not able to meet me for a drink tonight. We'll do it again on an evening when I'm not obsessing about the bathrooms. For a long time, I've been jealous of the women of the Silicon Valley Moms Blog for the community they have built up there. So I've been making an effort to meet other SoCal bloggers. Last month, I had lunch with the Queen of Spain. And earlier this week, I got to meet Sweat Pants Mom for a drink at an undisclosed Valley location. It's my own way of keeping sane until I get to spend some serious quality time with other like minded women at BlogHer in July.

In the meantime, as it's nearly time to get the kid from school, I'm going to whisk through the house and do a really half-assed job of getting it clean. Then, I'll come back after dropping her at gym and do the other half an ass. That sounded a lot funnier in my head, but that could be because I've got Led Zeppelin blasting on my iPod.

It's only my sister coming to visit, after all. She keeps girlie piles, too.

links for 2008-05-16

• By Ken Levine: They're your kids, not your clients
  A Hollywood insider talks about stage parents - a subject I'm interested in because I seem to be surrounded by them out here.
  (tags: hollywood kids stageparents)
• MetroDad: Spiritual? Definitely! Religious? Ehh. Not so much.
  I love MetroDad. Sorry to hear his FIL is ailing. However, sense of humor intact, out of sadness comes this funny aside -- which is why I love MetroDad.
  (tags: religion spirituality parenting childhood)
• MOMocrats: Let's Keep 'Em Poor & Uneducated
  Lawyer Mama's report on today's conference call with Republican Senator John McCain (one of four MOMocrats who were on the call). More to come.
  (tags: election politics GOP McCain momocrats)

Scoliwhatsis?

A few weeks ago, my husband brought our daughter home from gym with some unwelcome news: one of her coaches thought Megan was developing scoliosis.

None of the gymnastics coaches have medical training. However, the head coach has been leading womens' gymnastics teams for nearly 40 years and has seen hundreds of pre-adolescent girls through growth spurts and body changes that affect their performance. There are two other male coaches who are a lot younger, but have been working in this field for several years. If one of them had noticed something odd in our daughter's stance, I would believe it in a heartbeat.

But the source of this information was Megan's floor and beam coach. She's a 24-year-old woman who has only been coaching a few years, and while she has a lot of talent, her inexperience and immaturity have caused some difficulties. I didn't feel her assessment was all that credible (especially since Megan just had her annual checkup and her pediatrician didn't see anything), and I especially did not appreciate the fact that she offered her opinion in front of my daughter.

But both my husband and daughter were disturbed by this. I hit WebMD and other Internet sources and learned that Megan is at the age of rapid growth (12) when scoliosis can develop. She's grown an inch since that checkup. Now that the subject was raised, how bad would I feel if I let it go and it did not get discovered until her NEXT annual physical?

So I reluctantly made the appointment and drove down to her pediatrician's office yesterday after school.

"What's wrong with Megan?" the doctor asked.

I explained the situation. He raised an eyebrow. "Bring me a scoliometer," he instructed an aide.

I had no idea there was actually an instrument to measure this. It looked a little like a leveling tool, except that it was curved to fit across a young person's back. He asked her to bend from her waist and touch her toes.

"Looks good," he said.

He then measured the length of each of her legs. He drew dots on her hips and measured across.

"She has lordosis, but that's common for young gymnasts," he said. Funny. I had that too, when I was her age. I had to take a special corrective PE class for it, which was fine by me, because I was NOT a gymnast (or athletic at all!), and corrective was a lot less strenuous than regular PE.

"One hip is very slightly higher than the other, but that's not too significant," he said. "I really don't see any evidence of scoliosis."

This is exactly what I wanted (and expected) to hear.

"Now if you want a second opinion, I can refer you to an orthopedist," he added.

NO. I DON'T WANT A SECOND OPINION. I'M VERY HAPPY WITH THIS ONE.

Our doctor went on to explain that current medical thinking is that most of the braces and interventions done in the past for scoliosis didn't really help. He said that today, most doctors prefer to let it be -- that the problem tends to correct itself as the child grows.

I went home feeling very relieved... and a little bit angry at my daughter's coach.

links for 2008-05-14

• Tiny Twitter - mobile twitter app by kevin cawley
  I have to give this a try! Thanks, http://www.techmama for the tip!
  (tags: twitter mobile java software messaging phone sms blog free)
• Didn't that woman blog about Al Roker's nipples? | dooce ®
  Heather Armstrong's tale of THAT Today Show appearance... and she actually defends Kathie Lee!
  (tags: dooce blogs media kathieleegifford mommyblog todayshow)

Early Birthday Present

Shhh! Look what just arrived at my house...

A Votre Sante

Nearly a year ago, one of my oldest friends experienced a severe health crisis, which I blogged about here.

Because of her penchant for privacy, I never wrote a follow up post about her...until now.

Seeing my friend unconscious and hooked up to tubes and monitors was shocking. Hearing the prognosis for her recovery was frightening. Her situation scared me right into signing up for a weight loss program. I lost 56 pounds in seven months and today, I eat a lot better, work out regularly and feel pretty good.

And I'm happy to say, my friend is feeling good, too.

She came out of that crisis and embarked upon a regimen of painful and difficult therapy. She remained in the hospital for several months. I visited her a few times, ran some errands, and chatted. At the time, she was using a walker to get around.

And then school started, along with my daughter's gymnastics schedule. I'm ashamed to say, I did not keep in touch. It was difficult; during her first few weeks in the hospital, I learned that using the telephone didn't work; I could not reach her and my messages did not get to her, either. The only way to do it was to show up at the hospital and hope she wasn't in therapy or having a meal, and this became very hard to do when summer was over.

Did I feel guilty? Uh, yeah. But this post isn't about that.

A couple of months ago, my friend emailed me to let me know she had been living back in her home and making enormous progress in her therapy. We made a date for coffee.

I did not know what to expect when I arrived at her condo. I was definitely not prepared to see her walk confidently out her door without a walker or a cane. This is a woman who suffered a stroke and then had the misfortune of contracting a nasty infection while in the hospital. She has been to the brink and back...

...and she walks. She talks. Her brain has been rewired and is back to normal (or pretty much normal - after all, like me, she is turning 52 in a couple of weeks and we are both prone to some short term memory lapses. But hers are about the same as mine).

I was very near tears several times that afternoon. My friend is the poster woman for the power of a positive attitude. She has NEVER wavered, NEVER lost faith, has always been confident of a wonderful future. And her life had been good.

On that day, she talked about her illness and subsequent stroke and other problems as an "incredible opportunity to learn how to live again." And she truly BELIEVES this.

She said she had no idea that her situation had been so dire; this is something that she realized over time. She also did not know that I seen her during this period. I did not tell her that I was certain we had lost her. 

Before all of this occurred, she and I and our mutual friend (the one I wrote about in that old post) would get together every few months for dinner at P.F. Chang's in Burbank. We decided it would be great to resume this habit -- and last night, that's what we did. We sat, we laughed, we reminisced about our younger, crazy (and more alcohol tolerant) selves. And we made plans to do it again.

She also informed us that she's giving herself a birthday party, as she'd missed her birthday last year. "Yeah, I was lying unconscious on my kitchen floor," she laughed.

She's been certified to test for a new driver's license and plans to go back to work over the summer.

Life can be good. You just have to see the good in it.

links for 2008-05-13

• Much Ado About Mommy Blogging - Type-A Mom - Type-A Mom
  Cecily Kellogg weighs in on the latest flurry of negative publicity for moms who blog.
  (tags: blogging blogs mommyblog mommyblogger)

Mother's Day, 2008

Once again, we trekked down to Monsieur Marcel, to my favorite French cafe at the LA Farmer's Market. This has become our family's Mother's Day tradition.

My niece, Carly, took this photo of the three of us. I think this is the image we'll use on holiday cards this year!

I hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day, too.

links for 2008-05-12

• When Mom Packs A Gadget - Forbes.com
  TechMama is so COOL!
  (tags: forbes technology techmama siliconvalleymomsblog)