Livingston, I Presume

Just end already!

February 2006 is one of those months that will not be remembered fondly in the annals. In addition to the obvious heinousness surrounding my dad, we have also had other illnesses among family and friends as well as the death of Amy and Becky's grandma. Today I got a call from daycare that Connery could not finish his lunch because of his coughing, and that he had a fever of 103 (it turned out to be a fever of 100.3, which is vastly different and far less terrifying). Still, he's clearly not healthy and probably will have to stay home from preschool tomorrow. Just what we all need after my oh-so-steady work life in the last couple of weeks. Plus we'll probably have to skip Kindermusik.

I am convinced--perhaps stupidly--that all these bad things will end when the calendar turns over on Wednesday (and my little brother hits the quarter-century mark! how frightening!). Until then, I am staying off the roads and out of any potential danger scenarios.

Much better, thank you

Dad is on the mend, finally, after the emergency surgery and enough collective worry on the part of his family and friends to keep 100 Titanics afloat. I even called in the major reinforcements on Friday--Mary and Chris--because I just needed to talk with some people who have known me and my family since I was in early elementary school. I'm always grateful at these times that I had the kind of childhood that allows me to still have friends who first met me when we were both 4. Chip, who grew up in all kinds of different places, thinks its a little odd (but perhaps secretly cool) that I can summon up these people going back 30 years or more.

We were hoping that Connery and I would be able to stay into the week, but The Boy woke up with a cough this morning, which would have meant potential contagion and the unappealing prospect of dealing with a sick toddler without the normal arsenal of the familiar. So we came home this afternoon. Both Chip and I were so tired that neither of us should have been driving. Connery refused to nap during the trip. Perhaps we should teach him to drive so that we could have caught a few winks.

Say a prayer, if you believe in that sort of thing

My dad's on his way to have emergency abdominal surgery. Concentrating is now completely impossible.

Back to you, Dick

Dick Button's ears are burning. Scott Hamilton's too. I suppose the rest of the sappy, dippy, screechy (the three lost dwarfs?) figure skating commentators should be on my list too, but I just haven't managed to learn their names yet.

Chip and I are big Olympic fans, so I confess that we have watched the primetime coverage pretty much every night. We do Tivo it so we can fast-forward through the boring parts and the commercials, but don't tell the Olympic sponsors. Chip is already on his last leg as far as figure skating is concerned. After being tortured by not two but three nights of ice dancing, he wasn't necessarily thrilled to watch the ladies' long program. Still, we both got into it, getting misty-eyed in the appropriate places (the Italian's last skate, Slutskaya's sick mom, Tugba's Turkish sacrifices). What we just could not contend with were the commentators.

It started with the first Russian, Sokolova. Now, I've forgotten whatever I once knew about ice skating. (I don't want to brag, but I *did* skate as a munchkin in what must have been the 1977 Great Falls ice show.) But what I do know is that it's patently unfair to assign stupid pop psychological motives to routines that are similar. When Sokolova two-footed a landing, "her heart wasn't in it." When an American did the same, she was "fighting for every element and showing her Olympic spirit."

And, with all apologies to King Kaufman, whose writing I adore for its ability to make sports interesting even to me, could Dick Button have been a bigger, bitchier queen about this final? It's pretty clear that nothing about today's skaters satisfies him--not their sit-spins, not their laybacks, and certainly not their superfluous hand gestures. Why doesn't he just admit that he hasn't enjoyed figure skating since Sonja Henie left the sport? Meanwhile, I worry that Scott Hamilton is going to have a thrombo every time someone does a jump: "And here's...the...TRIPLE SALCHOW....UNHHHH... RIGHT on!" It can't be good for him.

The woman, whose name I refuse to learn on the grounds that I have enough useless nonsense cluttering my brain currently, generally weighs in with quasi-philosophical, psychological pronouncements such as, "You can see how she skates *on* the ice, that's why she is not competitive with the top skaters." Right. And now to the physics desk, Dick, to explain how the other competitors do what exactly? Skate while encased in ice? Skate several inches above the ice?

Still, the Japanese winner's program was great, and we got to watch a scant few moments of the aerials, which were a loss with no Ales Valenta. And I'm going nuts waiting to see how the Czechs will do in hockey. Too bad there are no Czech bars here.

Updates large and small

Thanks to everyone who has asked about my dad. He's recovering well in the hospital after a silent heart attack last Thursday and a bout with a chronic digestive problem. I'll just say that I have no desire to blog about this. It's too scary to put it all into words, and so I'm currently enjoying my time on that Egyptian river.

I did call the man who was angered by my column, and he was quite reasonable. No harm done.

I got another assignment for a major national women's publication, which makes me very happy.

Connery has been fairly cooperative, at least as far as two-year-olds go. I was able to control him with a moderate degree of success in the grocery store by using a trip to the library as leverage. May he always be motivated by books!

We checked out a real winner while at the library, and I will try to post a review. The book is called I Wanna Iguana, written by Karen Kaufman Orloff and illustrated by David Catrow. Connery would read it day and night if we would let him stay up that long. I also checked out Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad for myself after losing my battle with Bill Clinton. (It was interesting, really, but in three weeks I ought to be able to get farther than the 1992 presidential elections. Not a GAP dress in sight by the time I needed to return it. As it was, I owe a $.40 late fee just because I had to read far enough to get to the actual first election win.)

It's also been surreal to read the news. From the Cheney shooting to Bush threatening his first veto to make sure we put out ports in the hands of the United Arab Emirates, I sometimes feel as if we have landed in some kind of alternate Bizarro land, where up is down and treason is patriotism. Still, it's good to know that in the grand scheme of things, the biggest threat facing the United States is *not* lax port security, bird flu, ever-widening civil strife that we helped to create in Iraq, or the rampant rise of theocracy and fundamentalism around the world. It's gay people making lifelong commitments to each other and to children who would otherwise have no parents. Oh, and it's women who have to make the wrenching choice of whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term.

And maybe Bode Miller.

Just a random question

Does anybody else out there have a cat who snores?

I'll be sitting on my Most Favored Couch Cushion typing away when I hear this odd noise. Like a little moan, but more regular. At first I am alarmed because, well, who wants to hear tiny moaning noises in the house unless you're making them personally? But then I remember that Sotek snores when she sleeps very deeply.

What's with my anthropomorphic animals? Besides Sotek's snoring, we once had Bean, the world's most disturbed cat. He drooled. Like a firehose. And when he wasn't drooling on the duvet, he was lying on his back on the couch, in front of the TV, with his paw where his balls would have been, looking for all the world like he needed a tiny remote control.

Then there was Peeper, the deranged lovebird who kept a parakeet as a sex slave. But that's a whole other story, one best saved for another day when I can fully explain the oddly sexualized aura among the fauna around my parents house...

Speaking of the Code of the West...

I was also thinking about the Code of the West last night, when Chip, Connery, and I attempted to go out to dinner. I say attempted because we had to go to four different restaurants to find one that was open and that would take our debit card! I know that I'm not in Big City USA where I can expect to get all manner of food at all times of day, but I would have thought 6:30 p.m. on a Wednesday night wouldn't be too much of a challenge.

The irritation was compounded by our decision while at the gym to walk to one of Livingston's many downtown eating establishments. The restaurant we had in mind was just around the corner and down the block, but when it was--inexplicably--closed, we walked to the next block and tried a restaurant there. We speed-walked Connery through the smoky bar portion only to see the big sign saying, "NO PLASTIC!" You know, if we can pay for a Big Mac with a debit card, why can't we buy a good burger at Stockman's? So around the corner we went to the next bar/restaurant on our list, only to find it dark as well.

Am I missing something? Is the Wednesday night-church night thing so strong in Livingston that businesses close to take their kids to CCD and other religious instruction? Or is it just because we're a tourist town? Whatever the reason, it was a bad night to be out looking for sustenance on foot. The temperature sign on the bank read 10 degrees, and not one of us had mittens. We were glad to see the welcoming light of the Mexican place, even if tacos were not what we had had in mind for dinner.

Just call me the cowardly lion

I wrote a column that was published Tuesday in which I heavily cited Zane Grey's  Code of the West. I thought it was pretty good for a first local column effort, and I had hoped that I put the blame where it deserved--not really on the business or home owners but on the zoning boards and County Commission. I had a message from my editor this morning that there was a phone call from the owner of said business wanting to talk to the author.

Frankly, I'm feeling a little cowardly. The last time I had to deal with irate readers was at TOL when we got the panties of a bunch of Azeris in a...well...bunch. While those emails were indeed unpleasant, they were also entertaining in the manner of former Soviet state citizens whose English insults tend toward the pig-dog, lackey of the capitalist state variety. I'm guessing my phone conversation with this guy will not involve such amusing ill will. This is, of course, in addition to the fact that I did not *write* the TOL article. I merely edited and posted it. There's some ownership there, but not like there is when you loose some text fully formed out of your forehead. And then there's the notion that all those irate Azeris were either in Azerbaijan or spread out around the world in a great diaspora. This guy is in a neighboring town.

So I'm psyching myself up. I've written the requisite whiny plea for mercy to my editor, but in the end I'm going to have to call this guy. Maybe I'll do it on a cell phone. The nation's most reliable network is never that, so if things get really unpleasant, I can crackle some paper into the phone and say I dropped the call.

Perhaps this is why I could never pass the oral exams for the Foreign Service...

And now for some real news

Mainly, I've not been blogging because I've been working. Last week was supposed to be set aside for finishing up an article for Distinctly Montana, but the Business to Business issue out this week refused to die. I got a lot done on the DM article, but it didn't quite set me up for this week as I had hoped. Oh well. It's always better to be busy.

We've also been stressing about my dad's condition. Without going into not-ready-for-Internet details, I'll just say that he's been sicker than I've ever known him to be, and that's not a very comfortable thing. He seems to be on the mend, but it doesn't make the nerves go away. We're supposed to travel to their place this weekend, and I'm going to be glad to be able to see him myself. My mom does a great job of keeping me updated about everything, but it's not easy for her to be the chief conveyer of all information on things dad-related either. And I know she's worried, which makes me even more worried. Champion worriers, we Rosenleaf women.

In other news, Connery has decided to end the satan-spawn impersonation, much to our relief. Of course it could start up again at any moment, but for now, he's being mildly cooperative, which really beats the alternative.

On Saturday we took him to his first orchestra concert, courtesy of the Bozeman Symphony Orchestra. He seemed to enjoy it, although his favorite part was getting to try out the instruments after the concert with his dad, Mr. Ex-Brass Player. Connery and I went out to try the "Instrument Petting Zoo" before the concert, but he was intimidated by the friendly zookeepers, and I don't know one end of a trombone from another. After the concert, Chip asked some of the helpers if he could handle the instruments, and Connery got to help Daddy play, which seemed more to his liking.

I can't quite believe it's Valentine's Day tomorrow. I don't think I've ever been so unprepared. We may put off our celebration entirely until we get to Great Falls this weekend.

Back for now

No, I didn't get blown into a ditch and break all my typing fingers.

No, I didn't trip over the cat and rug burn my palms.

Yes, I am the lamest blogger lately.