Arrrgggh!! I've had it up TO HERE!!!

Ugh- let me just say that this ongoing (for 60+ years, no less) idiocy over Israel/Palestine has me as enraged as anything could possibly enrage me.

Okay- I am a mom. And, as a mom, if I saw a couple of 4 year olds fighting and trying to beat the crap out of each other over a "but he hit me first" thing, I'd punish them BOTH!

Because yeah, at this point, I honestly don't care about or care to remember who started it...it's been over 60 years, dammit!!! Arguing about who's been doing what over the past centuries is POINTLESS and I wouldn't put up with it in a toddler.

Everybody's hitting everybody, and now everybody's all butthurt with black eyes, and wants some magical referee to step in and say "ookay, you get this, you get this, and you win and they lose." Which is never. Going. To. Happen.

Srsly- people...is it really that hard to suck it up and just say everyone loses, everyone wins...and then, if you still hate each other soooooooo much like a couple of bitchy 12 year old girls, you can all be perfectly free to never speak to each other again.

I repeat: get over yourselves. Nobody is going anywhere, and after more than half a century, it's ridiculous to expect an entire population to pick up and leave. There's about a brazillion miles of empty space there, and you can all have all the time and space in the world to no eat pork together and talk about how everyone else goes about not eating pork wrong.

This is not worth getting anyone's children killed over.

There Will Be Child... There Will Be Child.

Today was an eventful day, honest. Even for the mother of a preschooler, it was an eventful day. I was supposed to meet my dad at 8am for brek, but after spending last night being woken hourly by The Child, (who kept dropping Its pillow, and shrieking, "MOM!! HELP! HEEELP!! I dropped my pillow again.") I slept through my alarm and wasn't even up when my dad rang the bell. Yeah...oops.

After brek, some family from out of town was arriving, and we arranged to meet them and my parents at a local faux-50s diner that The Child can never get enough of. I'm sure that one day in the fairly-near future we'll have to have a little chat about idealizing the past, McCarthyism, etc., after which I will force The Child to memorize all the lyrics to "We Didn't Start the Fire" as if that will make any sense to It. But not today! Today was a happy day for burgers and fries and similar all-American crap which everyone enjoyed as I tried to be subtle about constantly checking my phone for updates on the Indy 500.

My husband got a massive, gorgeous, sexy double-chocolate chocolate-chip milkshake, complete with an ethereal crown of whipped cream and what The Child refers to as a "cappuccino cherry." I tasted; it was awesome. But, what happened next was even awesomer: The Child stands up in the booth, very deliberately bend stiffly and oddly formally at the waist, and- hands clasped behind Its back- begins sucking on Its dad's milkshake straw. Then, it turns with a triumphant smirk to my husband and says, "DAD! I. DRINK. YOUR. MILKSHAKE. I DRANK IT AAAAALLLLL UP."

Seriously- you can't make this shit up!

Truly...

Today was an insanely hectic day, even for me; whose life has been so frequently and unexpectedly punctuated of late by The Child's newfound insistence upon turning darn near everything into a fight.

But yeah- today was a hectic day, even (or, perhaps, especially?) considering the fact that all the frenetic rushrush was in addition to the standard, baseline tantrum incidence. So, interwoven with the frequent bursts of banshee-esque wailing, there was, first off, getting The Child off to school. Sounds pretty easy, right? Wrong!! Because Friday happens to be "free dress day," meaning the kids don't have to wear uniforms. Fun, right? Wrong!! Because in reality, "free dress day" translates into me trying to yank clothes onto a squirming kid who's trying to run away whilst simultaneously stripping off clothes as fast as I can wrest them on. And, inevitably, kid is dead-set upon going to school wearing a Christmas sweater-- appliqued with snowmen, sleds and santa hats-- when it's nearly june. On top of a pair of Elmo undies. And a pair of MY socks. And nothing else. Yep.

But I digress. So, to sum up the day thus far: chase Child. Catch Child. Attempt to clothe Child...and fail. Many times. Finally stuff Child into new "I Am the Kwisatz Haderach" t-shirt, herd Child into car, somehow manage to bend and compress Child into carseat. Begin drive to school, whilst listening to The Cult's "Fire Woman" for the brazillionth time that week because Child has decided that that is the official "going to school" song. Arrive at school, bring Child inside, promptly get foot (not the bad one, thank heaven!) run over by crazed kid on tricycle. Kiss Child goodbye and realize that I am supposed to be at a doctor's appointment NOW!

And so on, ad nauseum...

Today was a day of being stuck for hours in the service area of the car dealership because my regular maintenance check turned up a screw in my tire, (well, the car's tire, really) a funkdafied air filter and a recall adjustment. It was a day of waiting for an exterminator who never showed...which means we still have a wasps' nest by the front door. It was also a day of interminable time spent on hold, only to hear that I have to pay almost a hundred bucks just to have someone come out and- very likely- tell me that they can't help me and I need to buy a new fridge. And squeezed in between all of the above were the usual attempts to read something, write something and eat something. Whew!

But...ya know what? There are those ineffable, bright-shining moments when all of it-- all that hectic, frantic, emotional bottlenecking...actually pays off, and how!

Sitting in the dealership, (with my ruptured discs snarling in protest as I worried that The Child hadn't yet had a nap) I decided to check my email. Again, that is, since I just had like 5 minutes before. So I was mildly surprised when quite a few new messages popped up...including one from an online 'zine to whom I'd submitted a piece. With shaking fingers, I opened the message, which naturally took an insane amount of time to load. But, when it finally did, these were the first words I read:

"After reading and discussing your work, we are happy to accept the following submission"

As we say in Indiana: my heart like to've stopped right then! This is the 2nd piece I've sold, albeit for a mockery of a pittance, but WOW! What an amazing feeling; knowing that my HS teachers (and more than a few college profs, as well) might very well have been wrong about my writing being trite, banal, unimaginative, uninspired, gibberish, worthless.

Take that, My Past!

Oh no She Didn't!!

Wow. I think maybe someone just attempted to run an old-school phone scam on me today!

Got a call from a woman purporting to be calling from the billing department of a medical center whose services I have recently utilized; she said that "(she'd) been trying to run my CC for over a week in order to charge my copay...but it just kept being rejected. She then quoted me a figure for this ostensible copay, (which my CC could definitely cover) and began to rattle off numbers that she claimed had been given to her as my CC#, so that I could "verify" them. (Yeah, I know, right?)

I asked the DH if he'd received any previous calls (since this problem had, purportedly, been going on for a week...) and he had not. Nor have we received any paper bills...aaaand here's the kicker; neither my DH nor I have any memory of presenting a CC at the time, period. Hmmmm...

So I politely interrupted the soi disant accountrix and asked for a number with which I could call her back, and she gave me one with a local area code and prefix. I checked it against the med center's online directory, and whilst the prefix fits, that particular number is not listed.

DOUBLE Hmmmmmm...

In any case, I'll be calling the (officially listed) billing department at the med center to see if they actually have been attempting to charge me for a week without calling or notifying me. If they have been, well...all I can say is that they need to train their employees to deliver a story which sounds less shifty. And, if not...*whew!*

I will post update/s as to how this works out, but mostly I just wanted to warn folks: DO NOT GIVE YOUR CC# AND/OR IMPORTANT INFO OUT TO RANDOM CALLERS...NO MATTER HOW PRESSING THEY TELL YOU THE NEED IS!!!

Always, ALWAYS ask for a number you can reach THEM at, and check them out/verify their identity thoroughly before spilling even an iota of personal/confidential info!!

Be your own Tiger Team, so to speak...because you can't trust anyone else to do it for you!

Late-Night MetaThoughts

Sherlock Holmes: one of the most immortal, eternally fresh, au courant individuals of the modern age.

Who- it just so happens- never actually lived.

Homemade Cough Syrup: Easier Than You'd Think

I made this syrup for The Child last night because Its coughing was keeping it up and making It (not to mention everyone else) miserable at night...it ended up being surprisingly effective, so I thought I'd share it. It's still a rough recipe, so feel free to play with the proportions:

Emily's Cough Sizzurp for Children

3 handfuls dried rosehips
1 large pinch dried spearmint leaf
2-3 large pinches dried nettle leaf
4-5 cloves crushed garlic
1-2 in. section of fresh ginger root, chopped
2 dashes cayenne pepper

Add enough water to cover all ingredients by a centimeter or so, bring to a boil and simmer until volume is reduced by 1/3-1/2. then stir in:

juice of 1 tangerine or small orange (I used a mandarinquat and some tangerine)
1/8-1/4 cup of raw honey*

Strain mixture through a fine sieve and let cool.
I've been giving 2 tsp. at a time and it's working beautifully!
For adults, feel free to stir in 1-2 Tbsp. of whiskey at the end; that really bumps up the expectorant properties!

*Warning: NEVER give honey or products containing honey to children under 1 year of age!! If the child is younger than 1 year old, *please* contact your doctor instead of the interwebz!

The Infection Connection

Just realized that about the only times I've had free to blog lately are the times that I, The Child and/or The DH are sick...so yeah, in case you were wondering, we're sick. Again. For a change.

This time around, I mostly just feel like I had one too many cocktails...in a bad way. Everything's just all swimmy and dizzy and far-away feeling, but without the painful-sounding seal-bark cough that The Child has.

I was hoping to blog about our recent wonderful family-visit-Catalina-weekend trip, but even typing is a bitch at this point. So just know that Catalina is awesome, I want to go back, and in fact I keep clawing my way awake from weird sick-dreams thinking I'm still at the delightful Avalon Hotel. No such luck...

So, Nu?

New year, new resolutions...and here are mine:

1) I will get into the best shape of my life in the year to come. This is not, I'm somewhat ashamed to say, as challenging a resolution as it might be for some. But the fact is that I have never been a particularly fit person, and this lack affects me on many levels. Most importantly, perhaps- albeit shallow- is the simple reality that as a Western acculturated woman, I base a massive portion of my self-esteem on my looks...and my looks are NOT those of a particularly fit individual. The emotional component of fitness is at least as important to me as the physical, though I have no doubt the two are intimately intertwined.

2) I will organize and design/decorate my home- inside and out- to an extent that I at least do not feel embarrassed and/or ashamed at the state of my dwelling. I am a rigid perfectionist, and as is common for such persons, I tend to allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good to such an extent that, in the case of my home, I often feel too overwhelmed to even attempt at making reality live up to my imagined possibility. That needs to change. Some art hung on the walls is better than none, even if it is less than all. Small steps are better than no steps, even if at first they may not even be apparent as part of the Big Picture. But I have had time enough to acclimate myself to the challenges of home ownership, and must face the reality of intimidation by viewing it as a challenge rather than an insurmountable juggernaut.

3) I will, within the next 12 months, attain a reasonable degree of spanish language fluency. I don't need to be ready to fill a UN simultaneous translator's seat..."reasonable" is the key word here. But I've been putting it off long enough, and I happen to be blessed with a wonderfully large and diverse local population of bilingual speakers...the time has come to take advantage of this, rather than continue in my cycle of jealousy and embarrassment at my lack of knowledge.

It is my hope that, in posting my resolutions in this most public of forums, I will be both encouraged by my internal sense of motivating shame AND by the external noodging of my friends and any general public who happen to drop in.

Thank you for reading, and enjoy your new year!