Livingston, I Presume

For those of you keeping score at home

In what I imagine to be a preview of coming teenage attractions, Connery has been demanding to pick out his own outfits each morning. On the weekends, that's no problem. When I'm sending him off to school looking like he just stepped out of the dressing room at the Boutique for Children Who Don't Match and Have No Interest in Size Labels, it's more of an issue.

Part of it is my own fault. I haven't done the drawer purge for a few months, so not everything he can pull out to wear fits anymore or is of sufficient non-stained-ness to allow for public consumption. Our compromise was for me to pick out several mix-n-match shirts and pants and allow him to choose among those. But even that hasn't gone flawlessly.

I came out the other day to find him shirtless and peevish because I had not put "the dog shirt" on offer. I didn't even know he had a dog shirt. When I told him to go get it, he returned with a sweatshirt festooned with football-playing dogs that he outgrew sometime last fall. When he put it on, its sleeves barely reached mid-forearm and any movement caused exposure of his tender little belly. "I could tuck it in!" he offered, leaving me to wonder where he has been learning these things. In the end I left it up to him and he chose to wear it. I feel that he should have to wear a small disclaimer badge indicating that his mother was not involved in the choosing.

When Chip got home and saw what Connery was wearing, a whole new wrinkle emerged. It turns out that Connery had come to him the night before to lobby for continued wardrobe access to the dog shirt and had been told in no uncertain terms that the shirt was too small and therefore was inappropriate. Crucially, however, dad did not take the shirt and put it on the too-small shelf, thus removing the temptation. When Connery realized that mom and dad had not communicated about said dog shirt, he took advantage of the situation.

So here's the dialog of Chip returning home from work to find Connery in the dog shirt:

Chip: "You're wearing that dog shirt!"

Connery: "Yes, I am. Are you surprised?"

Score: Parents, 0. Child, 1.

The all-purpose excuse

In general, I love being pregnant. So much so that other women kind of hate me. While many friends are enduring trials of vomiting and piles and migraines, I'm...well...not. I have no explanation for it, other than one of my great-grandmothers had more than a dozen children in her lifetime and lived to tell the tale. Even that is tenuous, given that one of the other great-grandmothers had only one child. What can I say? There has to be some compensation for having had birthing hips for 20 years before I did any actual birthing.

Still, even with  my pregnancy love, there are occasional moments of bad. Like today, when I was set to interview the CEO and founder of one of the area's most important companies. I was led up the stairs to his office, but what the PR person had failed to tell me was that there were three flights of stairs and no compensating long hall to catch my breath once at the top. So I arrived in his office not visibly pregnant (due to the coat still being on) but winded like a three-pack-a-day smoker. Very impressive first, uh, impression. That was compounded when, just seconds into the interview, I was trying to have a deep, calming breath to cut down on the panting and choked on my own spittle. Nothing worse than having a coughing fit that you are trying not to have. And it's all caught on my digital audio recorder! Awesome! If you're nice, maybe I'll post it sometime. The world needs more audio files of me embarrassing myself in front of important business leaders.

This was all shortly followed by my (1) getting lost on the way to interview number three, which was held at an office I have been to before and (2) losing control of the car alarm while inside the car and having to endure the curious stares of the Main Street lunch crowd wondering if I was trying to steal my own car.

Can I blame those last two on pregnancy?

I have a blog?

Why, yes, I do! Even if I have not posted on it in, oh, more than a week.

After I posted about my bitterness over not being able to take our planned babymoon, karma decided to slap me around a little for my ungratefulness. The weird fever thing that Connery had turned into a full-blown asthma cold, with plenty of hacking to go around. By (last) Monday morning, it was clear that school was out and a trip to the doctor's office was in order. We got the standard array of knock-it-out steroids and went home assuming that those would kick in and he would be on the mend.

Not so much.

On Tuesday, I had to drive to Bozeman to take a three-hour glucose tolerance test to rule out gestational diabetes. (For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, the test involves four separate blood tests, the first given after a 12-hour fast, and the next three in successive hours after drinking a sugary concoction that tastes roughly like orange soda without any carbonated water added to it. Bleah. And, also, ow.) By the time I got out and called Chip--who was at home with Connery--the asthma was getting worse, not better. We decided that another call to the doctor was in order. She told Chip to take Connery to the E.R. I had to stay in Bozeman and work, which went really well. Concentration? None.

Within a couple of hours, the E.R. docs had consulted with Connery's pediatrician and decided that he needed to be admitted to the hospital "for observation." It turned out that observation would also involve IV steroids, multiple chest x-rays, and an overnight stay--joys for any four-year-old. Would you believe that getting to watch all the TV he wanted and being served food in bed made up for all of it? When he was released about 36 hours later, he cried because he didn't want to go home. Home, you know, where Mom and Dad never bring him meals on trays and occasionally demand that the Child Zombification Unit be turned off.

We did eventually get him home, though he has demanded to return to the hospital whenever he gets sick. I guess it says a lot for the standard of care in our little-town hospital.

Anyway, by Thursday (the day after he was released) he was already well enough to go back to school for most of the day, albeit with a lunchtime visit for his nebulizer treatment. And we did get to go to Missoula on Saturday, while Connery went to Great Falls with Nana and Grandpa, so karma did ease up a little, which I appreciated.

He'll have a doctor's appointment today with his regular pediatrician to check out his lungs and then will see an asthma specialist next month. Ironically, it is the same specialist who was my doctor back when I was an asthmatic kid. Let's hope he's kept up on the research.

Next up: Regular blogging featuring content not involving nebulizers or doctors. Yee-hah!

Mr. Incredible (timing)

Since I am now sitting in front of the television watching The Incredibles--rather than being somewhere in between here and Helena, where we were meeting my parents so that they could take Connery for the weekend and Chip and I could go to Missoula--I thought it would be a good time to bring you all an update in the continuing adventures of The Amazing Connery and His Unerring Sense of Timing.

Unfortunately, yesterday must have seemed like a great day for Connery to get sick--just in the nick of time to save us from our weekend in Missoula. Thank goodness, because who knows what untold threats of relaxation could have been awaiting us there? Dinners at nice restaurants, evenings at the theater, leisurely afternoons browsing downtown... Clearly there were some pretty risky items in there. We might have sprained something. Not to mention what Connery himself has escaped in his weekend with Nana and Grandpa--unlimited cocoa and M&M-laden trail mix, swimming in the warm pool at my parents' health club, watching movies on the flat-screen HD entertainment center. He could have ended up with a sugary coating on his teeth until he brushed or perhaps gotten some water in his ear.

Do I sound bitter? I'm trying not to. After all, it's only a weekend, and it's not as if in a few months we're going to have less freedom to run off to do things like this. The best part? Here's Chip and my horoscope from the Chronicle this morning:

CANCER (June 21 to July 22)
Travel plans or anything to do with education, publishing, the media, medicine and the law look pretty rosy today. Your optimism is justified. Dream big!

I guess The Incredibles are just going to have to suffice for now.

Cat calculus

Apparently, I'm not the only one to wonder how much is too much when it comes to pets:

My friend Sue sent me the link to an article in Salon today: What I wouldn't do for my cat. The author's situation was different from ours in that their cat was in mortal peril, but the sentiments are much the same. Check it out.

Meme me

Robin has tagged me for the 4 Meme, so here goes:

4 Jobs I've Held:

1. Daycare attendant for a casino (that didn't last long)
2. English as a Second Language teacher
3. Managing Editor for TOL
4. Freelance writer and editor

4 Movies I've Watched Over and Over Again:

1. Grosse Pointe Blank
2. Kolya
3. Amadeus
4. Most everything Disney's ever done, given that I have a 4-year-old child

4 Places I've Been:

1. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2. Istanbul, Turkey
3. Shakespeare's Birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, England (and of course MOZARTS GEBURTSHAUS! in Salzburg, which must be said exactly like that, as if you were a television announcer)
4. Knossos, Crete

4 Places I've Lived:

1. Prague, Czech Republic
2. Missoula, Montana
3. Vienna, Austria
4. New Haven, Connecticut

4 TV Shows I Watch:

1. LOST
2. Ugly Betty
3. MI-5 (aka Spooks)
4. Battlestar Galactica

4 Radio Shows I Listen To:

1. Morning Edition
2. All Things Considered
3. Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me
4. Car Talk

4 Things I Look Forward To:

1. Babymoon weekend in Missoula
2. Actual, you know, baby
3. Getting a new computer
4. The next James Bond film

4 Favorite Foods:

1. Grapefruit
2. Grapefruit
3. Grapefruit
4. Grapefruit

4 Places I'd Rather Be:

1. In a big city, for approximately three days
2. Anywhere where the wind isn't blowing 90 miles an hour
3. In bed
4. At a big outdoor market in Germany with a cardboard tray of bratwurst and a Spezi, since beer's off the menu

4 People I email regularly:

1. Chip
2. my Mom
3. my editors
4. Marcela

4 People to Tag:

1. New blogger Sher
2. Blythe
3. my Brother
4. Patia

Why my bathroom smells like pickles

Last week, I made a solemn pledge not to gross you out with details about my pregnancy. I intend to hold to that. However, I never once promised not to gross you out with details about bathtub grime, so that is what I will do now.

A few weeks ago, I read with almost unseemly interest Robin's post on her New Year's cleaning frenzy. I say unseemly because for nearly as long as we've lived in our house (coming up on two years in June), I've been obsessed with the state of the bathtubs. The tubs are those pre-made enclosure jobbies, made of fiberglass or maybe just plastic. The one downstairs that Chip and I use has a slip-preventative, textured bottom, and let me tell you, I don't think that thing was ever cleaned by the previous owners. By the time we got here, all I could do was scrub heartily and futilely and often, knowing that the really deep-down grime was never going to come off, no matter how sweaty I got.

A few months ago my mom--knowing of my plight--sent along some articles she had found on Extreme Tub Cleaning (new Olympic sport) and I thought about trying some. But as they often included noxious chemicals on the level of oven cleaner--and we have been trying to de-chemicalize our house as much as possible due to Connery's ongoing asthma issues--I put it off. By then I was also a few months pregnant and Chip had forbidden me from spending my weekends hunched over the tub smelling Bon Ami and cackling insanely about how I would get those stains! someday! somehow!

This weekend, I got them. Robin had undertaken an overnight vinegar soak in her cleaning frenzy with good results. I emailed her for some clarifications--yes, you should use straight vinegar; yes, it will take a lot of vinegar; no, your bathroom will not smell like pickles until the end of time--and then poured three freshly purchased gallons of vinegar into the tub. When I went to  check it the next morning, it looked exactly the same, until I took my handy scrub brush and moved it lightly across the bottom of the tub. Friends, six-plus years of grime came up with no more than a few brush strokes. The nastiness, she was gone!

So does my ridiculous level of happiness about this natural cleaning miracle reflect a high point in my pre-baby nesting instinct, the utter capitulation of my feminist self to the ideals of a 1950s-clean house, or the simple joy that comes from seeing a problem solved? Hard to say. Whatever the reason, it sure felt great to take a shower in a truly clean space for a change.

And now, with that out of my system, I promise never to gross you out again about pregnancy OR bathtub grime. You have my word.