Badgermama

Slizard attacks Birdbot
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

Later this afternoon we might be able to go home!

It’s been an ordeal.

If your kid goes in the hospital, please remember:

– write everything down in an organized way. Doctor names, nurse names, medicines with dosage and time. The hospital should pass out some kind of little record book for parents, really. Write down who says what. I think it would have helped if I had re-organized and transcribed my notes every day. But what notes I had were very helpful.

– It is your right and responsibility as a parent to be the advocate for the patient – your child. You are the one who has to look out for their interests, health, and comfort. (The doctors’ job is to have your kid not die or suffer permanent physical damage, and to get you out of the hospital as fast as possible without getting sued.)

– Consider everything you know about the game of “telephone” or “gossip” and principles of communication. Multiply times a million. Your job is to prevent that.

– Make each doctor and each nurse who comes on shift explain to you what they know about the facts of the case. When I do this I find that they often have significant details wrong. You have to know what they think they know, in order for YOU to judge if their judgements are good.

– It does not matter how polite, nice, sympathetic, good bedside manner the doctor has. Do not worry about hurting the nice doctor’s feelings or making them think you are annoying. Make them tell you straight up if they are uncertain about something, and their justifications for doing stuff.

– learn to be quick with your narrative and give only the significant details. It’s hard to figure out what’s significant to a doctor.

– call them on their bullshit when they say stuff that disses your kid – “oh, you know how stubborn/whiny/etc kids can be”. No. Your kid has dignity, and is in pain, and if they are scared, it’s for good reason. That has to be respected, and often you have to remind a doctor of it.

– remember that doctors have tension and power struggles between each other, between departments, nurses, etc. Just stay alert to that. Often there is a lot of bullshit going on. First you have to know it and “name the problem”. Gossip with whoever will gossip with you.

– If something isn’t working and your kid’s freaking, back off for a few minutes and try again. If it isn’t crucial, there is no need to be in a brutal power struggle, especially with an audience of nurses. And that dynamic can develop very quickly.

– look shit up. i know, I have it good with the laptop so I can check on everything.

– call for backup from friends. I should have done this more, because then I would be more effective when “on duty”.

– don’t deny the kid’s pain or try to trick them or say that something won’t hurt when it will. On the other hand don’t reward them for whining. It’s a fine line. Acknowledge that the pain is hard, and that it sucks, and then praise them for dealing with it as well as they are.

– stories of times you were suffering, and then time passed and you got over it, are helpful

– offer your kid lots of minor pain relief/comfort measures. Vaseline their lips. Alternate hot and cold packs. Give them a wet facecloth or a wipe. Anything they can control is especially good.

– fight to minimize chaos, keep everything neat and at hand. establish “now we’re eating… now we’re stopping entertainment and trying to sleep”. again, hard to do in a hospital environment.

That’s it for now. Actually, all this is great to keep in mind for yourself and anyone you know in the hospital. Keep it in mind with elder care, etc. The person who’s sick is usually in no place to think of all this stuff and factor it into decision making. So anyone, child or adult, in a hospital system who has an advocate is very lucky.

homie fish taco
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

My co-housemate, the Pilot, offered me a fish taco and a sympathetic pat on the back when I got home from the hospital.

The fish was tasty, plain, room temperature; lemon from our garden, cabbage nice and fresh. Flour tacos are not my thing, the salsa was out of a safewayesque jar, and yet… it’s like the fish taco of neighborly kindness, which outweighs anything else! It was heavenly!

Rook is at the hospital overnight again tonight. He’s got stamina and I don’t.

Yesterday and today I had all the thoughts one would expect me to have. Feeling deeply that I wished that I could take whatever pain onto myself so that he wouldn’t have to suffer it… Mechanically forcing myself to eat things so that I won’t become useless… Hating the loud, gum-chewing, irritating people I was stuck with for hours in waiting rooms, but feeling guilty too because their kids maybe have cystic fibrosis or cancer or something seriously awful. Being afraid Moomin would die even though the hospital is great and the surgery extremely common… not just “being afraid he would die” but actually imagining it in extended detail, over and over in different ways, catching myself and telling myself to stop the nonsense, but then falling right back into it. I could imagine my stunned denial… it woudl be impossible to believe… you’d keep forgetting, a little, and then horribly remembering it was real all over again… and going over everything and blaming yourself or others… and then even more horribly, imagining years later after acceptance and grief had mixed and almost no one around you even had known him so that anyone who had would be painful to be around but also infinitely precious… You see how far my nonsense can run! Very far! Anyway of course also as I left him at the door of the operating room I thought, “Is this the last time I will see him… in this sucky way when he’s feverish and in pain…” And feeling of course that I haven’t properly appreciated every moment of my life with him before that .

Stopping the nonsense was crucial because I was not going to fall apart in front of him, obviously it’s important to be calm and competent as possible. So while he was in surgery it was the hardest. I had to play several really lame games of nethack just to stop myself from thinking. Then cruelly the waiting room nurse told me that “they” wanted me to come speak with the doctor and follow her please (unlike the other parents there who got paged and told to go to the recovery room where their kid was waiting.)

“Is he out of surgery? Is he okay?” I got the answer that isn’t an answer: “The doctor will discuss everything with you. Come with me.”

You can imagine my thoughts as we walked past the “serenity” room and I wondered if I was going to be in there… And then there was a horrible 45 minutes standing around in hallways tensely asking nurses what was up, with a placating smile and a hysterical screaming underbelly. “I’ll go back and ask. The doctor will come out and talk to you in a few minutes.”

!!! I was able to keep my cool only by imagining the horrible tragedies of all the people around me in the hallway who were a mixture of stoic & bewildered & trashed… So that I would be ashamed to freak out in front of them over my worries so unnecessary and so unlikely to come to pass when their own worries were over something certain and real and deadly. (I’m clear that I get to *worry* but I’m also clear that I don’t get to worry so hard it interferes with my functioning, or that it makes other people have to stop and take care of me, or makes me an enormous nuisance for the sake of my imagination.)

It was all okay and eventually a stream of handsome square-jawed handshaking ken-doll doctors trickled past me giving contradictory yet all very sensible information bits. One said he would be up and out of the hospital the next day – another said he’s be in till at least Wednesday – another said it would be 3-5 days. The words “suppurative” and “purulent” were tossed about, as well as “of course, Dr. Whatever mentioned all the scar tissue from the somethingorother.” No, actually he didn’t, the what? “Don’t worry, we removed it, and got all the pus and gangrenous tissue out too.” OH! Okay then! Naturally! I’ll just barf and faint now, thanks!

(Access to the written reports would be nice, but when I asked (hours later) there was a huge fuss over my “request to see the charts” — I think because they fear it’s a sign I might sue. Actually it’s a sign that I have a brain and am curious. )

I imagine that they don’t let the parents back there right away because the post-op patient is slack-jawed, drooling, zombie-eyed, maybe still intubated and covered with blood. So they clean them up before taking them into the secondary recovery room.

Finally I was with Moomin, smoothing his forehead whenever he moaned and his heart rate monitor would start blipping. It was good to see the forehead smoothing’s effect on his heart rate. He knew it was me… Actually Rook is much better at consistent smoothing and soothing, and has been since Moomin was born. He’s patient and doesn’t fidget. As I said, he’s got the rough part of the shift, all night tonight.

I did a good job of not fidgeting and being a beacon of radiant mom-like calm. You have to believe in your zen-like calm or it doesn’t work! Even if you’re kind of faking it, you have to believe it!

Moomin didn’t have any postop nausea – in fact he ate a popsicle before he was fully conscious. That was a huge relief!

That’s my side of this long day… There is so much more, of course. Moomin was incredibly brave, helpful, cooperative, and excellent.

I hesitate to type what he said as we wheeled him out of the recovery room… where there was a toddler screaming, kicking, hitting, and biting… because it’s too awesome:

“Someone has to teach that little kid that you shouldn’t be mean to the doctors that way. I don’t think he knows about that.”

Super ninjas
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

Well, Moomin has appendicitis. He was barfing on Friday, seemed to be firmly on the way to recovery on Saturday, and then on Sunday began hurting quite a lot. When we couldn’t comfort him or distract him from pain, and he started crying, and then screaming… I picked him up to take him to the car, put some shorts on and get some stuff, then as his screaming turned to total agony I realized shorts and more stuff were not important. I have often imagined hauling ass to the hospital with a screaming kid with a broken bone or severed finger or something… it was much as I imagined.

Rook joined me afterwards, I think after they gave Moomin the morphine. A stream of doctors hmmmmed and thought it was very very very likely appendicitis. A hellish CT scan was inconclusive. Transfer to Stafnord Children’s Hospital. Antibiotics. High fever. “Does this hurt? “Ow… I’m not sure.. ow ow ow ow ow” (Said with restrained politeness that makes it sound totally fake). But then if you tried to get him to sit up, screams of pain. More morphine. More blood draws. All experiences full of stories. Anyway, Rook stayed with him last night so i could go home and sleep. Now he’s home. The ultrasound this morning around 8am gave us a for-sure diagnosis of appendicitis.

Moomin is in the operating room now.

The anesthesiologists totally forgot my shot of whisky.

parade crew
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

Here’s half of our crew at the 4th of July parade, plus a few of the Squatters who shared our blanket and chairs. Nadine and her baby and older son – her partner had to be at work. Her sons’ dad came with us too – his partner was home fixing us all a fantastic barbecue lunch and baking cookies. Nadine and I met over 15 years ago in Austin, where we were girlfriends. She taught me to drive and how to make stained glass, and we romped around town being activists, skinny dipping, picking berries, planting gardens, building retaining walls, and once seeing fireworks so close that the embers were falling on us. We lived together at 21st St. Co-op.

The Deadwood City parade was great. As always! There were incomprehensible floats to satisfy the most ironic of tastes. The politicians in vintage convertibles looked suitably bewildered. Mimes! Little kids in spangles and white gloves! Oh, it was all glorious. I wished that Moomin would remember the strange pageantry and wonder what it was all about, and why Auntie Nadine kept yelling “Yay War!” bitterly whenever military vehicles rolled by and people were marching with fake guns.

We stood and cheered for Barbara Pierce, who is an excellent mayor; for PFLAG; and for the Veterans for Peace.

The kids all behaved and liked the parade.

I was super happy, remembering the excellent parades in Allen Park with marching bands and Shriners in little cars throwing candy. (Why don’t they throw candy anymore? Unhealthy? Fear of strangers? That’s so silly!) Deadwood City’s parade, like its fireworks, go on and on forever like an insane progression of multiple orgasms of nostalgia and kitsch, of panoply — they’re like years of parade rolled into one. It’s the same principle I apply to cooking and parties. If you’re going to bother to do it at all, go overboard, make enough for 20, invite everyone you know.

For the second year we were sitting across from a brigade of entertaining drunken men in hats made out of beer boxes, loud drunken men, hooting and cheering from their folding chairs and platforms built on top of cars, scantily clad, heavily tattooed, beefy and hairy. Since they were safely across the street we were all entertained, not annoyed. They seemed to feel the same about us and our rainbow and United Nations flags… and yet we were united in hooting insanely at the Brazilians (shaking their butts, butts which hung right out) and getting up to dance. Look… we have found common ground! How heartening!

About the Squatters, I have to get it off my chest: Jo and Manny and their kids were a bit late to the parade, and some other people sat down with us because there was extra room. I say “with us” though the mom would not say hello or look at me when I talked to her. Later, the kids ate a quart container of watermelon that I had cut up (I offered). The mom still could not manage to quit snubbing me though her ass was on my purple bed sheet. What was her problem?

So part of my parade experience was thinking about courtesy and territory. Did the Squatter Mom think it was wrong of us to have brought out blankets and chairs the night before to stake out a claim, and that she had more of a right to that space that we did because she came to the parade earlier than we did? Don’t I think that territory and private property are a bit nasty anyway and why would I doom her to miserably sitting in back of us on the sidewalk? On the other hand, didn’t my forethought and preparation, and the way that a bazillion other people saved their families places, mean that there was a convention to be respected? Most of all, couldn’t she have the grace to act minimally friendly with us since we didn’t try to kick her off “our” spot? Would a simple “Hey, thanks” or “Mind if I share your spot?” have been so hard to get out of her mouth, even to us circus freaks with pipecleaners woven into our sticky-uppy-hair?

My other problem with the parade is a small one, but shared by everyone I know. Why do they send enormous street sweeping machines to “clean up” the horse poop? Why not just have a person with a bucket on wheels and a scooper-thingie? One minute you have some piles of poop neatly in the center of the street. The next you have hot pulverized horse poop in everyone’s lungs. Seriously, they might as well have a brigade of skunks, talcum powder, and leaf blowers for all the effect of turning the horse poop to dust with gigantic street sweeping brushes kicking that dust into our faces.

ceiling at canvas cafe
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

I never knew it was possible. Moomin just threw up a red, white, and blue bomp pop with all the colors separated!

Sleepover cancelled… afternoon sweaty, heinous; measured by wet faceclothes, tiny sips of ice water, and more barfing. Moomin is very brave. I have tried to be comforting.

Being around barfing people makes me also want to barf. Unfortunately I can still remember with awful clarity the taste, texture, and look of the graham crackers and grape juice I barfed at length in the Habecovic’s apartment above ours in 1975. I still don’t like grape juice, which is unfortunate because Moomin always tries to make me eat the purple popsicles since they match my hair.

3rd bastion of defense
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

According to Moomin, this castle, with its three or four lines of defense against the oncoming tide, was populated by the Hydrogen people. The oxygen people were attacking, disguised as the ocean. As long as the oxygen people were lured into Moomin’s maze of traps, they’d be neutralized and changed into just plain water.

We were pretending to be helpful giants again, working for peanut butter and beer. Iz and Sophie had no concept of sand castle work ethic, but declared that they were pixie princesses helping to save the city. I made them stop talking in foul baby talk. Ugh! Iz brought a huge piece of seaweed (Turkish Bath Towel) and said it was a whale skin, adding:

But of course we only use the skins off whales that died of natural causes! The people of the castle drink the whale milk, but don’t worry, they treat the whales really well and take good care of them, and the milk is organic!

Her mom’s Xtreme California mentality has been transmitted so strongly that even imaginary sand castle people are carefully ethical with the animal products they eat. Funniest thing ever! Was there a hint of irony in her description of the castle’s organic foods? I wasn’t sure.

Finally, near the end of the day, Sophie and Iz figured out the fun and dramatic horror of the moment when you’re working frantically to keep out the waves and they finally obliterate all your hard work. The kids all stood and stared, mesmerized, as the final wall, with its feathers and drip castles on top, were breached.

Those of you who grew up on beaches with me may recognize the mastermind behind the castle style, with moats and canals, designed for a strategy of falling back over time.

Squid and I lurked in the background as much as possible. Did I mention it was foggy and freezing cold? Leelo sat in her lap almost the whole time we were at the beach – and they took a long walk together. Then off to a taqueria in Moss Beach, “El Gran Amigo”, which true to B.’s observation is in what is obviously an old gas station and auto body shop. It was the best taco with pollo asado I’ve ever had. The chicken wasn’t gristly (a frequent problem. ew.) the sauce was to die for, probably because it had lard in it but I don’t care, the veggies were nice, corn tortillas fresh, grated cheese also good and actually Mexican cheese and not a block of cheap monterey jack from Cosco.

I was thinking as we ate about how in Texas where I grew up, the hicks who were polite would say “Spanish” instead of ‘Mexican”… so “Spanish food” or “Are you Spanish?” Because there, out around Tomball outside of Houston, it was like a bad word to call someone Mexican, even if you were from Chicano and they were too or were Latino, but it was more that white and black people said it to each other or Latinos as an insult. That thought struck me today, how sad it was, and I wondered if that’s still true in that area. Like, in Spanish classes in middle and high school, if you pronounced the language right, you’d get a lot of scary sneering and posturing, some tobacco-chewing football player dude would inevitably get right up in your face and be all, “You sound like a Mexican.” You can imagine what I would say back, right? “So what if I were? You sound like a dumb hick.” (Note the obnoxious deliberate over-their-heads use of the subjunctive.) It was only being a girl and 3 feet high that saved my ass from being beat right there in the hallway. There was no Mexican-American Students Association, the way surely there is here, no expression of pride that I ever saw . . . I hope it’s better there now.

Digressions -R- Us!

We ended up at Squid’s house, and then Seymour and Jo and Manny and Eliz joined us, and Squid’s parents, and we all hung out for hours. I ate the best nectarine in the world while lying on a small trampoline in the sun, reading the manual to my car. Kids all got along pretty well. No one had a screaming fit. We watched a short movie called “hung” to see the hairstyle Squid wants (after kicking the kids out onto the porch because it was all about some lesbians who take a drug that makes them grow a penis for a day and then some of them have sex offscreen and some of them cruise around in frustration and nothing really happens, but this one chick had a cute hairstyle.)

The kids all built a fort out of Iz’s entire room, some christmas ribbon, and all the blankets and pillows in the house.

It was a really nice summery day! I felt like I was properly relaxed and summery all day long and was doing stuff with Moomin and all the other kids in our clan, as I ought to do more, instead of lurking on the couch with my computer and snapping at them to get their own juice boxes out of the cupboard, because I’m busy writing.

playing talisman
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

After a long bout of playing “Talisman” – a Dungeons-and-Dragons-ish board game – we persuaded Sophie to take a bath (fancy foaming bath salts) and go to bed (lacy pillowcase) with a flashlight and a book in Moomin’s top bunk. I read Sophie as being the sort of person who likes fancy things, but won’t admit it, so she takes great satisfaction in the lacy pillowcase much too fancy for a grubby little kid. She wrote “Evil Fridge” and “Fear Me” in fridge magnets – quite wonderful – I need to get her the Franny K. Stein books.

Moomin is grasping the complexities of Talisman. For the second or third time he played the Philosopher, who has the power of always peeking at the top card. It’s a good power! He likes to amass objects and proceed with caution, while I go like a tiger after strength and followers.

After the little kids passed out, Eliz. and I marked up a book catalogue with stuff she thought looked good. Of particular interest: “101 Things to Do Before You Get Old and Boring” and a biography of Victoria Woodhull. I just happen to know quite a lot about Victoria Claflin Woodhull and her sister Tennessee and how they grew up as 2-bit carnival psychics and how Victoria was a radical feminist stockbroker and publisher involved with the free love movement and then ran for President of the United States. I played a role-playing game character based on her once.

Then the serious nerdaciousness began. Eliz made me look up from my cosy blog-reading on the couch by saying thoughtfully, “What I like is the books that make you want to re-read them right away because they’re so complicated and you keep seeing new things… And most books aren’t LIKE that… only Harry Potter.” I assured her not to worry – there are other books like that. (Did she lose that copy of The Odyssey I gave her when she was 7, or what?) “So, I’ve been thinking really, really hard about Dumbledore, and my friend Jak and his mom also have read the books a lot and know all about it, and THEY say… and I think…”

Her main points (supported by examples, at length, with great logical conviction) were:

– We don’t know what house Dumbledore was in . Maybe he was in Slytherin! Hermione says “I hear Dumbledore was in Gryffindor” but that doesn’t make it true.

– He and Snape both know about polyjuice potions and they might have switched places and it’s really Snape that’s dead.

– It seems like Polyjuiced-Dumbledore would never Avada Kedrava Snape, because he’s all good and stuff, but he could be acting specially good because he had been specially evil before.

– It says very clearly that Professor McGonagle was putting up his picture… which can talk. He’s basically still alive in his picture, even if he’s dead.

– A weird idea that probably won’t happen: what if Dumbledore is a phoenix that has burned up for so long that he turned into an immortal human being and that’s why he lived for so long?

– Dobby could have turned into Dumbledore … house elves have powerful magic.

There was more, but Rook and I were busy looking up articles on Nicolas Flamel, and the Wikipedia article on Dumbledore, which led us to the most excellent site ever, “Dumbledore is Not Dead“, which Eliz immediately began to read out loud to us, and she didn’t stop until her dad came to pick them up at 11. I printed it out for her. Really, go and read it… it’s stunningly brilliant! I’m completely persuaded about the phoenix lament’s significance.

Then the killing blow; “I’m a really good manipulator. You were going to make me go to bed, and I’m good at getting people interested in what I’m talking about, so that they want to go and read or look at the products or books I’m talking about, and now you want to go re-read Harry Potter, and so you forgot to make me go to bed.” I hadn’t been planning on messing with her 10 year old dignity, but it’s true if she’d talked so much without being interesting that I would have suggested she shut up for a while. As it stood, we drove Rook away with the unrelenting Pottermania, byzantine logic, footnotes within footnotes, wild speculation, disagreements about house-elf importance, and overanalysis of phrases half-uttered by minor characters.

It was really fun. I remember how bad I wanted to have serious conversations when I was ten. (Not like it’s any different now.)

in "flame dragon" superhero suit
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

In the store that has really cheap underwear and stockings, I found this pair of black tights with flames! Flames! With the middle and feet cut out, they make a great superhero shirt.

Moomin was very happy about the flame shirt, complimenting me thusly:

Mom, your name is Vehicon because you have the power to become all sorts of different vehicles, you have wheels that can pop out, and a propeller, and jet engines, and a big laser cannon that comes up out of your back like an army tank’s gun.

I’ve always suspected that about myself. Now I have independent confirmation!

It took me a long time to realize that Moomin insisted on wearing his fleece pants in 100 degree weather because they’re bright yellow like a superhero outfit.

We rescued some tigers, who are now dressed in the leftover bits of flame-painted nylon.

Then we drew some dragons. I made an ice dragon and Moomin opted for the cooler than cool Lava Dragon playing in a pool of boiling hot lava. I remember thinking how great lava was when I was a kid. It was the coolest most powerful thing ever! Except phasers. Then later in life I learned about plasma, which is always the snotty-kid thing to say in middle school science class to teachers who make generalizations about the behavior of matter. “Except plasma“.

Now I’m deep in my computer and ignoring my child. I hope he doesn’t mind all the photos of him in the dragon suit.

la sirena’s delicious ceviche
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

So, my mommyblogging homie Jo Spanglemonkey and I went in search of fish tacos down in Redwood City’s “other downtown” on Middlefield. We were headed for 7 Mares, but found it closed on Tuesdays, so we figured that La Sirena, “The Mermaid” restaurant, must have fish. Behold the glory of their lobby bench mermaid sculpture! Doesn’t she just scream “Eat me”?

The waitress seems mildly unnerved by our uncouth gabacha ways. We were the only patrons for a while and spent some time gawking around, hooting at the big TV’s World Cuppitude, with Spain vs. France. We screeched “take it off” as some soccer player named Viera unpeeled a sweaty shirt from his muscley torso. Then we realized other people had come into the restaurant, so we behaved a bit better and drank our coke (me) and tamarindo soda (Jo).

A generous basket of fresh chips and two kinds of salsa, one hot and one very mild.

The place had clearly been an auto body shop long ago. A giant garage door structure overhead. Miller ads in those hanging cutout paper things, an enormous dead octopus plastered to the wall (or was it fake? I thought it real and mummified.) A cheerful ocean mural. A pool table. A for Atmosphere, really a comfortable beautiful place!

There were no fish tacos, but I had incredibly delicious ceviche, which if you don’t know, is raw fish marinated till it “cooks” in lime and onion and other deliciousness. My ceviche de pescado was served on a bed of crunchy fresh iceberg lettuce – not the sad “garnish” but something I really wanted to eat. Slices of orange, tomato, and avocado, wedges of lime (mercifully abundant), and then a big pile of marinated citrusy fish, chopped marinated onion, and more avocado on top with a dab of hot sauce. And some crunchy corn things that were not quite tortillas or chips but were very thick. Nice, but the chips were better. Main thing is, the fish rocked. I devoured it.

Damn, it was good.

Jo and I talked about writing, our kids, summer camps, her mental health, and my job possibilities, giggling and then spacing out suddenly in mutual admiration of the soccer players’ thighs. They are not too pumped-up-with-steroids-looking. “They just run. All the time. ALL the time,” Jo said, pensively. “Do you think that they ever ‘pants’ each other on national TV?” “We can only hope. Look! They’re hugging! Full body hug!”

Workmen came in on their lunch breaks … a romantic couple lurked behind the pool table, gazing into each others’ eyes… some more dudes came in to comment on the soccer. I wonder if it’s more hopping of a place at dinner?

Oh, and it’s a big and roomy restaurant where it would be okay to bring kids.

Jo was tempted by breaded fish (pescado empanizado) but went for “la sirena” enchiladas which turned out to be a huge plate of food with roasted chicken filet things, very tasty, enchiladas, and I don’t know what all else. Beans with the proper kind of crumbly fresh mexican cheese, not melted fake cheese.

Though I can’t wait to try more fish taco places, I’m not sorry we ended up here and I’ll definitely be back.

spontaneous elevator construction
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

Meme succesfully transmitted.

Elevator construction is underway, complete with mysterious masking tape structural reinforcements and laborious “double knots” as explained yesterday during thread-tying and wing-making.

Maybe the Age of Crafts has finally arrived? Dare I hope?

I’m going to start buying paper towels again just so that I can save the cardboard tubes. Yes, it’s that time.

sewing stuff
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

Moomin’s cool dragon wings look beautiful but needed some help to stay on better. I suggested straps across the wingtips so that he could hold onto them, flap, and soar. What I loved was his absolute trust and belief that I could do anything. He had an air of “My mom will fix it!” And indeed, I bustled around taking mysterious boxes down from the tops of bookshelves, digging into my art-and-crafty supplies to find a pincushion and thread… and found pipe cleaners to match the wing colors. A little duct tape bound off the pointy ends of the pipe cleaners. I sat and sewed and felt that it was magic.

Only a half-hour interlude, not rocket science, just being able to think of a plan and thread a needle, but it’s an example for Moomin of how to approach a problem. I thought of my own mom, her amazing creative powers, and the level of time she would commit to making a project come into reality. My halloween costume every year was made out of an old white sheet, which we’d dye with Rit tablets. We didn’t have any money… So just that she had to *think of how to do everything* impressed me greatly. One year I was an Indian (oh, that’s embarrassing now) so we dyed the sheet brown and made it into a sort of fringey tunic. My dad pulled out some leftover latex housepaint to make pictographs on it that I copied out of some lame-ass 2nd grade book on “indians”. I made a headband with feather, painted my face, and I think my mom helped me make a bow and arrows out of sticks, and a quiver from cardboard and string.

The next year I was a “dwarven warrior”. My mom made me a long brown beard out of fur and elastic from a puppet-making project she had done for my sister’s nursery school. I took an old baseball hat and she helped me sew stuffed horns out of some old tights for my horned helmet. I mean, picture your kid declaring that they NEED a viking helmet with horns – what do you do? My mom would frown in concentration, then come up with an Idea. The sheet was dyed grey. Dad made me a wooden sword and shield, which we painted green and white again with the leftover housepaint. I particularly remember thinking his idea for the arm straps on the shield was clever, as he cast about our little garage for something and settled on cutting off some sections of flat garden hose to staple-gun onto the back of the shield.

The best costume was Gandalf. I used the same beard. The sheet was a lovely, wizardy periwinkle blue-ish grey, with astrological symbols. A wooden walking stick from a hike was decorated to look wizardy. Pointy hat from cardboard and elastic, easy!

Trick or treat!

It was only much later that it hit me, how much work that all was, how creative and amazing my parents were, and how cool for never turning a whisker at their 8 year old girl dressing up as Gandalf. I didn’t have the slightest inkling that it was strange. They were so gung-ho and I took it for granted that Big Plans would be made; that someone was paying attention, that anything we wanted could be improvised from materials at hand.

Stuff I do for Moomin pales by comparison. I *bought* the wings, right?

For his parties, I go all out, and I think I manage to work up the same sense of involvement & excitement that my parents did for me. And at rare moments when I sew something or make Moomin an arrow-quiver out of a plastic water bottle, I feel as cool and superpowered in his eyes as my mom and dad used to look to me.

waiting for the train
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

We didn’t catch the actual march, other than a glimpse of some of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and a float full of sweaty dancing cowboys, but the playground at Civic Center was great this year. Both playgrounds were open, sponsored by Our Family Coalition, COLAGE, and Kaiser Permanente. Kids and families were everywhere, dressed in funky outrageous San Francisco-y outfits, capes and silly hats, wings, glitter, political tshirts like “Queer Spawn” or quieter ones like “Mamas and Papas” or about love is everywhere. Huge round balloons were flying overhead on thick colorful ribbons.

Moomin ran around with my friend (and ex-girlfriend) Nadine’s son. Last year, he was wearing a Cinderella dress and Moomin was kind of skeptical, with a lot of questions about why he was a boy wearing a dress, and my god, why one of those blue fluffy Cinderella ones if you’re going to wear one. This year’s red plaid kilt with safety pin went over better with Moomin, who has lately seemed more accepting of other people’s weirdness. He expects his mom and dad to be bizarre, and maybe our friends, but not necessarily other people. One good reason among many to take him to Pride!

Then he saw the red dragon wings and embraced his own weirdness big time. I bought him the wings. For the rest of the afternoon he ran around muttering, “FLAME dragon launch!” under his breath and trying to make his shadow on the sidewalk look menacing. It didn’t help when people passing by us would squeal and go “OMG HE IS TOO CUTE.” People! When will you learn? The proper response to a young superhero dragon is not to squeal and “cutesy”. Think how you would feel in front of a proper dragon: a bit of awe, not quite fear, but definitely respect for their power and mystery. Think dragon and suppress the squeal, or Moomin will instantly put you on his forever “ugh” list. Is Godzilla cute? Is a T-rex cute? A vampire? Noooooo. I think I’ve saddled him with the wrong nickname and should instead pick something … menacing.

The big question on my mind is — will he be goth?

I appreciated the free bottled water, oranges, sidewalk chalk, and bubbles from Kaiser.

Most of all in the very happy carefree crowd I kept thinking that in our own country right now, there are people all over who are unable or afraid to have children and be openly lesbian, bi, gay, or trans, for fear their children will be taken away. 50 years ago, this parade was not possible, and being pegged as gay would have meant, likely, the end of your parenting. Terrifying. And here we all are in the sunlight with balloons and tie-dyed “I love my two mommies” tshirts, playing at the park, picking up each other’s children when they fall, hearing someone else praise our kids for putting stuff in the trash can, chatting casually about superheroes and breastfeeding. I don’t take any of it for granted and neither should you.

(And neither should straight moms … because putting your sexuality on trial is one way that your own custody of your child can so easily be lost if you are unfortunate enough to end up in a custody battle. Just a thought.)

sylvia paull is the cutest ever
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

I’ve barely seen my child today… maybe for about 10 minutes…

But I had a great time at Bloggercon IV. Here’s a photo of Sylvia Paull of Gracenet, a network for women in computing… She’s sporting a Moms Rising tshirt! Yay!

I took some notes at the con, which you can find over here on Composite, my poetics-n-computing blog, where I put my conference notes and other ‘technoaesthete mashup’ stuff!

Meanwhile, I’m recovering well from getting my tubes tied. It still hurts – I was wishing for an ice pack as I lolled in the back of the room at Bloggercon – but the really sharp pain from leftover CO2 gas (from when they inflate your abdomen like a balloon) is gone, I’m not on Vicodin anymore, so basically I’m fine. If I’m not infectious and I’m not falling over and passing out, then nothing stops me, you know?

Tomorrow I’ll have something more detailed and parenting-related to relate! And will talk about Lisa Williams’ “Emotional Life” discussion & link to the podcast and transcript.

Being at Bloggercon makes me look forward to Blogher! It’s been nice today to see the bloghers gather, and say hi to the Triumvirago (Jory, Elisa, and Lisa)!

red pail on the beach
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

I’ve been thinking about getting my tubes tied for a while now. The IUD didn’t work out, and I don’t want to have any more babies.

Just the other day I was thinking how much I love Random Encounters. I was trying to describe how a person I barely know was asking me to come to her house and do something, writing-related, and I felt like anything could happen… not like, universes ending and being born “anything”… but more like, something cool could come of this, it would be unexpected, it would be an Experience. It’s the attitude to have while travelling – it might not go how you expected but you roll with it, you welcome the weird random things that turn out to be the point of the trip after all. My realization was that *not* getting my tubes tied would be playing that game too hard. That if I don’t then in the back of my mind it’s like I’m saying, “Oh well, but if I *did* accidentally get knocked up, well then…” But, that’s not how I feel about my life at this point, so I should act.

It’s a drastic change from years ago when I was so desperate to get pregnant, and the miscarriages…

Some people lay it on thick about how Moomin will grow up lonely and I owe it to him to whelp out a sibling. That’s such utter crap!

It gives me a beautiful feeling of control over my fate.

I also realized I should not spend the day before surgery (even minor surgery) doing dull errands. So Moomin and I went to the beach. I talked it up to him, in the way that makes him very suspicious that we are not about to have a fabulous adventure but instead will be miserable. Luckily it was sunny, warm, the beach was lovely, we built sand castles and battled the incoming tide, digging and building & carrying rocks. Moomin can be very finicky about dirt, sand, water, or anything uncivilized touching his skin. It took me 2 hours to break him down to the point where he was covered in sand, his pant legs were wet, and he was running like a crazy wild beast, lugging boulders to shore up the front line of our complex of sea walls. The excitement was too much for him as the waves kept crashing through. Actually, it is the perfect activity for anyone who (like Moomin) has “control issues”. Waves threaten, dramatic tension builds, sand is crumbling & eroding, you keep thinking that if you just extend that wall out a little bit higher around the side, you might beat the entire ocean! He bought into it. We pretended we were giants and the people in the castle (by now, behind a maze of 4 or 5 walls and moats, decorated with seaweed, feathers, sticks, and rocks) were begging us to save them. “We’re giants, but we’re friendly,” I suggested. “Yeah. And, I guess, even though we’re so huge, we don’t mind being bossed?” Right! The grateful people of the castle promised us a banquet of fish, chocolate, and beer, which I declared were the favorite foods of giants.

Off to Barbara’s Fish Shack, overlooking the water, in fact it’s built out on piers over the water in a lonely spot in the harbor. It’s gratifyingly un-mall-like. Has been there forever, not part of a foul “development”.

I then scarfed an entire pot of fresh clams while Moomin read comic books and nibbled on fish & chips. The taste of clams and mussels sends me immediately straight back to Bonnet Shores and Camden Road, both the salty all-day-at-the-beach feeling and the actual memory, very solid, of scrubbing the mussels I had picked, sticking rubber bands on them, and then sitting at the 70s-looking table dipping them in butter and eating them, grossed out but also overcome with deliciousness. Plus I had read many books like Kidnapped and liked to imagine that I was surviving a shipwreck only on shellfish. It’s weird to time-travel so strongly and be sitting at that table in my bathing suit, watching my Grandma Hen’s absentminded pottering.

It’s been a really wonderful few weeks since school ended for me! And today was beautiful!

I can’t help feeling that I’m being horrible and bad by tying it off tomorrow and that something will go horribly wrong with the surgery, so I should live it up. Quick, one more hour till bedtime, I’ve got to squash in a lot of exciting living before then. The suggestion to go out in a blaze of rainbow sequins while handing out feminist tracts and $20 bills was just perfect.

Milo with storm troopers
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

We had a great time at Robogames today, watching weird robots slice each other into scrap. Deadly 60 pound pizza boxes with scythes! Helicopter chainsaw things! Metal turtles with flamethrowers! The scary, deadly little “Kilowatt” that rotated its whole body so fast it tore up the other robot’s armor with purple sparks flying out!

Moomin liked it!

I made him go up to the storm troopers and the other dude (Moomin was nearly sure that the guy in black is a tie-fighter pilot and not Darth Vader. Nearly sure. Because he doesn’t have a cloak.) He was super weirded out and shy with the freaky grownups in costumes.

Needless to say, all I could think about was how much I wanted to make out with the nameless nerds in evil star wars costumes. Hello. So dorky! It makes my pants come right off!

Instead I took Moomin to see the sumo lego bots, and we all admired the firefighter machines, and the artbots that draw stuff in sharpie marker and sing little songs.

Then off to see Jacqueline Carey reading at a bookstore. “Mom, why is that lady dressed up like that with that tattoo on her back?” “She’s a character from a book, a book that other lady wrote…” “What’s the book about?” “Um. You can read it someday. It’s about.. a lady with a big tattoo on her back.” “Oh!”

Then to a cafe, and comic book store, and game store… Rook and I spent an hour picking out comic books that we all could read. What a long day, but it was lovely.

Now we’re all lying around reading comic books.

We’re huge geeks.

It was a good Fathers’ Day!

swimming goggles
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

“Hey Mom, if you had the Fantastic Four, and another team of superheroes that I just made up called the Stupendous Seven, and if they were my toes, and one of them died, then they’d be like this:”

*fight fight fight fight fight kick kick splash*

*fight fight fight fight fight* “Ha HA! Got you!”

That was the scene in the tub just now. The Fantastic Four (as toes) fought the Stupendous Seven, down in the deep end. One unlucky toe of the Stupendous was sort of on the wrong team (foot) trapped next to the Four.

He should never be bored, ever in life. When his shoes are on he can pretend his toes are all trapped superheroes plotting their escape.

Why do I bother to buy him toys?