Holidaze

A short, illustrated list of things I learned this Christmas season.

1.  If you're looking for a gift for your Playmobil family, J says that "Baby              Jesus is always appropriate."

2.  Santa is scary.  

3.   But less so with a good friend.

4.   You should take time to smell the roses lick the snow.

5.   Zoo Lights is even more awesome when you're rocking the leopard print.

6.     Unicorns, tigers and ponies look amazing on my bedroom floor.  And my           playing with her makes J over-the-moon happy. Doing it more often is             my New Year's resolution.

Here's to a great 2014!

Monster Hive

I actually wrote but didn't post this about three months ago, if the dates aren't making sense.

J started kindergarten last month.  I'm pretty sure you read about it in the Times?  From day one, she LOVED it.  Mrs. S is her hero/goddess/best teacher ever. In a fit of pique, J told me that she loved Mrs. S more than she loved me. I didn't believe her, so it didn't upset me, but I don't remember     worshiping my teachers the way J worships Mrs. S.  Mrs. S is pretty terrific but still...wow.

I walk her to school in the morning since we live too close for the bus.  It's been good for both of us.  She gets fresh air and my undivided attention.  I get the sweaty walk uphill toward home after I drop her off.  Every day we notice things that we've driven past a million times and never paid attention to.  Like...one of our neighbors has a pink hose!  Another has a "fossil" of a leaf printed on a stepping stone.  And one has eight cats, with their own dollhouse on the porch.  These are big deals when you're five five and a half.

At the end of her second week of kindergarten, J announced that she could read the word "the."  After G and I made appropriately impressed comments, she said, "Not bad for only eight days of school, huh?"  She's since added "my," "and," "was," "can" and a few more I'm forgetting.  She also has to write her name with a capital J and the rest of the letters lowercase.  This, she tells me, is "kindergarten style," and she does it very reluctantly.  It's not easy, she wants us to know, but she's also never bored at school.  So there's that.

We've also begun soccer and ballet, with much less enthusiastic results.  J just won't really participate.  She's playing soccer because G really believes in team sports.  I do, too, though perhaps not quite as vigorously, or at such a young age.  She likes practice, but not the games.  While the other kids are earnestly kicking the ball into the wrong goal, she kind of floats along at her own pace.  This drives G bonkers and embarrasses him.  I am frustrated, not by her lackadaisical-ness but by her refusal to even allow herself to have fun. The other parents murmur their sympathy, but I can feel their relief that their kid isn't like that.  

J's learning ballet because she saw the local production of "The Velveteen Rabbit" last year and really wanted to be in this year's ballet.  Every year the teacher choreographs her own ballet and each student has a part.  They perform at a real theater, and all the kids at all the schools attend. So I signed her up.  The teacher is very disciplined, and J is...whatever the opposite of disciplined is. She says she loves it, but it's hard to tell from the effort she puts in.  We're trying, and it's getting better, but...

How much to push? She's only five.  And the soccer was our choice, not hers. I don't want to force her to do things she doesn't like, but I hate to let her quit. Soccer's almost over, but there's still next fall to consider. G is going to make her play something.  There doesn't seem to be a Hang Upside Down from the Jungle Gym League, or a My Little Ponies Take a Bath Team, or anything else she actually enjoys playing.  And the odds of her being very good at any sport are genetically limited.  She does have a new game she plays at recess called "Monster Hive."  She's unshakably sure that she doesn't mean "Monster High."   The object of the game is "to turn the monsters into bees and then you are afraid of them because there are bees but there is no such thing as monsters."

Well, duh,

Jesus in the Morning

We are not, as I've noted before, a religious family.  Yes, I went to Catholic school, and I believed it all for a long time.  I've even received four of the seven sacraments!  But education, particularly history and science, along with war, poverty, hunger and all the crap done in the name of (G)od(s) has put me off the whole business.

As a natural consequence, J is being raised without religion.  She hasn't been to church or Sunday School, and we don't even have a bible in our house. It amazes me, then, how often religion (and on the Oregon Coast that means Christianity) pops up in her little world.  And watching her little brain try to make sense of it all is absolutely fascinating. 

"God" is such an easy answer to pretty much all her questions.  "Why is the sky blue?"  "Why can't you touch a rainbow?"  "How did I get inside your tummy?"  But that's a cop out, so we spend a lot of time looking things up in the dictionary or on Google.  And after you do that a few times, it becomes harder and harder not to answer, "That's just how God made it."

Because, for example:

J: Why does it rain all the time?

Me: The plants need water to grow and also?  We live in Oregon.

J:  How do plants drink water? They don't have mouths.

Me: They absorb it through their roots.

J: Like a straw?

Me:  Yeah, kind of. But they need soil and sunlight, too.

J: Why?  

Me: Well, there are nutrients--vitamins--in the soil, and the plant turns the sun's light energy into food.

J: Like the sun is the stove?

Me: Sort of. You could say that, I guess.

J: And the plant doesn't talk because it doesn't have a mouth?

Me: Yes.  And it does't have a brain.

J: Why doesn't it have a brain?

Me: Only animals have brains.

J: Mammals are animals.  I am an animal AND a mammal.

Me: Right.  So you have a brain.

J: Why do I have a brain?

Etc., etc., etc.

How much easier would it have been to say the rain is God peeing?  At any point along that path I could have said God and ended it. But then she'd end up...stupid.

My niece has declared herself, at 13, an atheist.  That's fine, but her lack of any religious training worries my sister.  Not on grounds of salvation, but because she feels that religion gives kids something safe to rebel against.  And because the bible is an important cultural reference that her daughters don't know anything about.  A friend of mine recently watched "The Bible" on the History Channel.  She had also never been exposed to the bible.  "It was really cool," she said of the miniseries.  "They were great stories.  It was like science fiction!"

Indeed.

I'm ambivalent about J's cultural ignorance of Christianity.  Right now she still believes in fairy tales, so I'm not in a hurry to tell her more stories that she'll eventually realize were made up, however culturally significant they may be.  After her no-cavities dentist visit last week, J got to pick a prize from the treasure box.  She selected a pack of biblical "Go Fish" cards

I'm going to put aside the question of why our dentist had this, alongside friendship bracelets, plastic dinosaurs and mini slinkies.  It's just not answerable.  J was enthralled at having her own deck of cards.  Playing them, however, was difficult.  Since she can't read, she has to rely on the pictures.  But she didn't know what they were.  You really can't say, "Do you have a 'Jonah'?" or "Do you have a 'David'?" when she doesn't connect the names to the pictures, and she doesn't even know who these men are. (And they are all men, except for one card that has Adam and Eve).  

In fact, looking at the "Noah" card, which shows a smiling old man with an ark full of happy animals, she asked if the grandpa were taking the animals to the circus.   I told her that each card depicted a character from the bible.  J then asked what the bible was, and I explained that it was a book of stories about God. "Like my purple book of fairy tales?"  Yes, JUST like that.

By the way, J says that you can tell the cards are for "Go Fish" because each one has a fish on the back.  A fish that looks like this:

Christmas and Easter are also fraught with traps for the unwary irreligious. When J was three, she told me that Christmas was the birthday of the baby who had to sleep in the hay because his mother wouldn't let him sleep in her bed.  And the baby's name was Gee Whiz. And sometimes he lives in the cross. And possibly his father is Santa.  Makes sense, in her world anyway:

Easter's a super fun holiday because, really, it's all about death.  J knows, at least superficially, that everything dies.  We've also been working on the fact that people do not come back after they die.  (Same with fish.)  So I thought her question about whether God also died was a good one.  No, I said, he doesn't die.  What about Jesus?  Well, yes and no, he died but he came back to life.  What about Jesus' mom?  Yeah, she died.  In fact, she stayed dead AND there's no candy involved.  To which sweet J replied that it wasn't fair that only the woman had to die.  She unwittingly hit on one of my problems with religion.

But are we doing the right thing by keeping J away from religion entirely?  G's parents are full-on anti-evolution, self-righteous bible thumpers.  I wouldn't wish that on anyone.  I've thought about Unitarianism, but that does still require some underlying belief in something.  And I just hate church. 

So what to do?  "Some people believe..." is really kind of condescending. Knowing she can take a bible as literature class in 15 years doesn't help the here and now. Some of her friends are already telling her about Jesus, and asking why she doesn't go to church.  I'm waiting for some little punk to tell her she's going to hell if she doesn't accept Jesus as her savior.  

Ain't no hell hot enough for that shit. 

Best Little Whorehouse in Oregon

I made the mistake, back in the 90s, of telling my BFF Saville that someday--some crazy, reckless day, I wanted to have seven daughters.  No sons, just daughters.  I shared with her the names that I had chosen with such care.  She replied, "It sounds like you want to birth your own brothel."  In her honor, my seven names:

1.     Lila
2.     India
3.     Sophie
4.     Trixie
5.     Katrina
6.     Ruby

and...wait for it...

7.     J.

That's A Negative, Ghostrider

Remember when he used to be hot, not crazy?

Despite not being (for me) overly worried about the bone scan, I did have some anxious moments over the past few days.  Mentally penning letters for J to open on each of her birthdays I wouldn't see.  Imagining who would/wouldn't come to my memorial service/street dance.  Wondering whether I would linger bravely or succumb quickly. You know...just being myself.

Anticlimactic, to be sure, as the results were (heavenly/delightfully/amazingly/ joyously) negative.  Oh, yeah, sure there's that degeneration in both knees and in my back.  Nothing I didn't know--oh, wait, yes--some more in my shoulders that  I haven't ever felt--just something to look forward to!   And, yes, I  do love me some objective findings.  A high price for validation...sure.  But while I may be falling apart, it's not because of cancer so who the fuck cares?

I'm not sure if that's the right attitude, but pain, however chronic, however miserable, is fine.  I can raise J with a limp.  I can go to her graduation on crutches.  I can chair dance at her wedding.  I. Do. Not.  Care.  I am FINE!!!

Oh, except for the above-mentioned, and the osteopenia. Which, as it turns out, I had last year but my now-retired oncologist didn't mention that to me.  Letrozole is a rough drug; surgical menopause is not for the faint of heart.  Pass the skim milk and the kale salad--as soon as I'm done with my weight-bearing exercise.  Tomorrow, obviously.

Because--did you hear me?--IT'S NOT CANCER!!!

Bone Appetit!

I had a bone scan today--well, I guess yesterday, since it's 1203 AM now. Though my doctor thinks my recent hip pain is either arthritis or AI-related, she wants to be cautious.  (We seem to have a tacit agreement not to say the M word.) And since I'm always up for a quick shot of radioactive isotopes, I readily agreed.

For an old IV pro like me, the test was no big deal.  You get the tracer; you get a pedicure and have lunch work on your laptop for three hours; you drink a boatload of water; and then you lie still for the camera.  Easy enough.

The bed moves.  I know this now.

And then you wait.  For results that may not be conclusive.  I am having another glass of wine embracing the uncertainty.  

And Monday?  I get a bone-density scan.  So we can all know just how much I am falling apart.  Or to see if the Boniva is working.  One or the other.

Meanwhile, tomorrow I host Bunco. Yes, I said that. And more shamefully yet, there's a theme...Hawaiian Luau.  Which means I am up late making pineapple-upside-down cupcakes and char siu.  But this party did give me the opportunity to make yet another amazing scientific discovery.  I learned that drumettes are not the curiously small legs of misshapen chickens. As it turns out, they're part of the wing.  I know this because I am also making teriyaki drumettes.  When I asked the butcher if Safeway sold them, he said the bags of wings were 50/50 wings and drumettes.  Because, as I said, apparently a drumette is the first (or second?) part of the wing. I admit that is some smart marketing, but the upshot is that I probably will never eat another one.  Well, after tomorrow.

And finally, in other bone and chicken related news, KFC is now serving boneless chicken.  The Millennial Generation apparently prefers nugget-type food items.  I never eat there, so this is not a big issue for me.  But I really do prefer--and yes, it's irrational--when my meat doesn't look like the animal it once was.  Not my daughter, however.  When her 29-cent goldfish died, she looked at me and asked, "So do we eat it now?"

Mmmmm!

Five!

Zero

One

Two

Three

Four

Five