Monthly Archives: October 2009

Fall in Chicago. It is back!

Fall arrived in our neck of the woods towards the end of September.  That was when I realized our maple tree was the first one on the block to start turning red.

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Fall is always short in Chicago

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Living in Chicago for over a decade has taught us to appreciate a sunny mild day with a blue sky dotted with big fluffy clouds when we are blessed enough to witness it.   The day is always treated as The Perfect Day.

We have learned to treat the weekends with 50-degree temperature during the long winter with reverence.  All of the sudden the neighborhood comes back alive, people venture outside without their jackets as if it were summer already.

Carpe diem.  We are the experts here.

The first week of October, despite the ominous clouds at the edge of the dome, we decided to go on our annual Pumpkin Farm trip because my husband would soon be away for a 3-week business trip.  It paid off because the temperature immediately dropped down to the unseasonably cold and stayed this way until this weekend.

Maybe the Corn Angels the kids made that day brought Fall back to us…

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Corn Angels

Apple picking may still be in the stars for us.

What I learned from using a Neti pot: Waterboarding IS torture!

For the new diagnosis of my hacking cough, the good doctor not only put me on steroid and on codeine, he also recommended the use of Neti pot. Up till this day, I have never even heard of such a thing. He showed me a sample.
neti_pot

How adorable! It’s a mini teapot!

It was adorable until he demonstrated how to use it…

(I seriously was surprised by how many pictures of Neti Pot in action are online. People never ever disappoint.)


Neti Pot in Action Pictures, Images and Photos

Yew!

I will of course spare you the details since I am nice and classy like that.  The point of this post is to share with you the light bulb that went up when I was administering Neti Pot to myself:

I was scared when water went into my nose.  My first reaction was fight, and then flight.  And that was a very small amount of water.  And I did it to myself.  The sensation of water coming in was frightening even at that.  Imagine Waterboarding.

No.  I cannot imagine it, not even remotely.

I will admit to ANYTHING if it were done to me.  Just the mere thought of it.  ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING.

I would have been a lousy spy.  I’d better start carrying a piece of cyanide hidden inside my tooth.

p.s. IF you ever need to use Neti Pot, be warned, water will drip out of your nose without warning at any given moment, several hours after the use.  I have no idea where that water was, but it gushed out of my nose. More than once.  Imagine my surprise when I went to pick up the fundraiser goods from the PTA moms this afternoon…   Yeah.

The silver lining is, they’ll probably never ever ask me again to join the PTA.

How do you know what you are having is NOT swine flu? Waiting for the other shoe to drop…

For days I thought I may have had IT. Not because I had any telltale symptoms because, well, so far, after I scoured the Interweb, I can’t find any statement on Telltale Signs for Swine Flu.

I watched the CDC video with an obsession, “Symptoms of H1N1” at 2 am in the morning one night when I woke up with a bad cough. Was that a sniffle? Did I feel slightly hot? COMPLETELY USELESS. You can watch it for a laugh if you wish:

“The symptoms of 2009 H1N1 flu virus in people include fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue.”  (Copied and pasted directly from the CDC website)

So what we are told is that the symptoms are exactly like any other common flu. Why? Because Swine Flu is just another flu!

The rational part of my mind keeps on telling me THAT. The irrational part of my mind, which is not surprisingly a lot bigger, made me stare at the mirror at 3 am in the morning examining myself to make sure that I didn’t look bluish, because the only ONE symptom that makes H1N1 stand out is that it may turn your skin bluish, and when that happens, you need to seek medical attention IMMEDIATELY.

Wow.  Really.  I didn’t realize I should PANIC when I find my kid looking like a Smurf!!!

Since I couldn’t tell Swine Flu from any other animal, I started hoping that what I had was a COLD.  At least with a cold, my kids and I would not be forced into a “house arrest” and be the laughing stock behind the doors in the neighborhood. (ADMIT IT! You would totally make fun of someone you know if they’ve caught it. That is, of course, if they recover with no other damage to their health) And my kids would NOT have gone down the school history as THOSE KIDS WITH THE SWINE FLU.  (You know how brutal children can be.  THIS is easy fodder, let me tell ya…)

I curse the person who came up with this name!

So I started searching the Interweb for differences between a cold and a flu:

Cold:

  • Stuffy nose
  • Congestion
  • Body aches
  • Growing cough
  • Symptoms last 3 to 5 days

  • H1N1 or Seasonal Flu:
  • Fever
  • More painful body aches
  • Dry cough
  • Diarrhea
  • Severe fatigue
  • Respiratory problems
  • Dehydration



This was when I started waiting for “the other shoe to drop”.  I willed myself to have a stuffy nose.  A bad cough.  Congestion.  Come on!  Give it to me!!  Let me HAVE it!!!  So I can be reassured that what I have right now is NOT a flu!

Yes.  In case you are wondering, I have had 20+ years of education.  No.  I don’t watch Jerry Springfield or Maury on a regular basis, nor do I aspire to be a guest on their show.

I was elated when my nose started running, my chest felt congested, and my cough felt WET.

Don’t judge me. And I will not make fun of you if you catch IT.

Update 1: I finally gathered myself up to see a nurse practitioner this past Sunday.  She was utterly convinced that 1) I’ve got Sinus Infection 2) I spent too much time on the Internet.

Update 2: I went to see another doctor today because the antibiotics are not making the cough go away.  I seriously cough like an opium addict.  He was utterly convinced that I’ve got a bad case of allergy, which was part of the result of Global Warming.  So I am now on Steroid.  Oh, and the best part of all this?  I am also on Codeine.

Wheee….

Tis almost Halloween. Do you know where your costume is? Let Zoltar inspire you…

Remember Zoltar? From the movie Big?  Well, here is to help you remember…

How many of us have thought about seeking the exact Zoltar out, not to make a wish, but just to say, “I have seen it. THE Zoltar in the movie with Tom Hanks!” Well, this post is not about that Zoltar.  But it is cooler.  Meet Zoltar, in real life…

Zoltar
Zoltar w audience

This dude built a Zoltar on Segway. Ingenious, isn’t it? He won the first place at this year’s Coney Island Mermaid Parade.

This is my favorite picture of all:

Zoltar and Storm T

Marge Simpson, the next Playboy girl? Magazine editors amaze me too…

Marge Playboy girl

This is all over the news lately.  Or at least, on the Interweb.  Here is the part that made me laugh out loud:

New CEO Scott Flanders says the idea is to attract readers in their 20s to a magazine where the average reader’s age is 35…

So, let me get this straight: the 20-something male would 1) prefer to see a cartoon character naked 2) they would want to see a middle-aged cartoon character naked 3) they have otherwise NO options to see a cartoon character naked.

Seriously?

I googled by typing in “Manga girls” and I was inundated with tons of images I don’t want my boys to see.  Care to imagine if I had used more specific key words?

manga girl

And say what you may, Jessica Rabbit is still the sexist female character, EVA.  (Where’s Kanye West when you need him?!)

Twitter rankings: people amaze me…

POTUS has not been really tweeting ever since he became, well, POTUS.  I can understand how he is super busy what with running the country and dealing with the crazies.  On October 9, soon after the world learned about the surprising news that he has won the Nobel Peace Prize, he sent out a tweet, with one single word:

Humbled.

I was surprised that he still maintains the official BarackObama Twitter account (and it IS verified – I doubt anybody would even try to set up a fake celebrity account for this…  Think of how the FBI would get on your behind faster than you could say “Squatter”…)

I decided to check on how he fares per number of followers on Twitter.  Boy, he got beat by not just Ashton Kutcher, but Britney Spears too.  Actually, I am fine with Britney Spears since she has a ‘Twitter double” that actually does the tweets for her. Thank goodness.  But Kim Kardashian, people?!

Twitterholic Ranking

“What are you?” OMG, a form I could fill out wihout having to choose!

My children are, in the common lingo, “mixed”.  Or, if they want to be hip when they grow up and get into identity politics, they can call themselves Hapa, or, indeed, whatever the hack they want.  If they want to call themselves a mutt, the way Prez. Obama did, fine with me too.

But despite my wish to chant along with “We are all the same deep down inside” and “We are the world”, reality always sets in when I fill out forms for the kids, especially when I register my kids for school.

Ethnicity:

White.

Black.

American Indian.

Asian.

Hispanic/Latino.

“Other” is not an option provided. Even if it were, I probably wouldn’t have chosen it anyway: There is no way I would self-identify my children as “Other”. The school district needs to recognize them for who they are. They are not OTHER, thank you very much.  (Edward Said would be very proud indeed…)

For 7 years, I checked TWO boxes, and inadvertently, there was only one check left when the form was returned back to me to “check for accuracy”.   The funny thing is, sometimes “White” was selected, and sometimes “Asian” was selected: the school system can’t seem to make up its mind.  I guess it depends on what my children looked like on that particular day… I would stubbornly check BOTH boxes again and send it back.

That’s why I was so excited when I was filling out this form below: Has got to be the most PC form I’ve ever seen.

Drawing1

I do wonder though: Now that “Multi-racial” is a choice, under what kind of circumstances would one select “Other”?

Tea cosies, French Press cozies, vacuum cleaner covers, oh my. (Patented)

I can’t sleep.  I have either a cold or a flu.  And if I have a flu, I probably have the dreaded H1N1 virus.  So since flu symptoms include severe fatigue, I figured that if I can wake up at 2 am and writing on my blog at 3:30 am, then I probably don’t have a flu.  Plus, my skin is not bluish.  So according to CDC, Don’t Panic.  Not yet.

But if you start looking like a Smurf, yes, run around the house and scream.  ‘Cause, well, you look like a Smurf.

I was reading through Worn Ragged: Mommies on the Edge and also her tweets, (yeah, I’m like some sort of cyber stalker…) and I was introduced to the concept of tea cozies.   Not sure why people make fun of tea cozies: they are actually quite adorable.  And what an ingenious concept.  Al Gore should really promote the idea of tea cozies as an alternative way to keep liquid warm.

So I started googling for some other crafty ideas, not because I am handy, but because (see above).  And I found what I was looking for:

Vacuum cleaner covers!

Vacuum cleaner cover

Mock ye not.  I also found a patent filing on a proposed method of better construction for these babies.  And the patent was issued in 1999.  So I guess you’ll need to find something else to devote your time to until the patent runs out…

Perhaps French Press Cozies? as Jamie on Twitter suggested.  I am sure she said it in jest, but you can find anything. ANYTHING. On the interweb…

French Press Cozies

Granted the shape of a French Press does not seem to inspire whimsical fancies as much as the short and stout figure of a teapot.

Darn.  Now got that song stuck in my head.  Well, good night while I get up and do the dance…


What did I just say?  Yes, indeed, one can find ANYTHING on the Interweb…

Sorry mommy can’t come to the school, but don’t grow up and murder people ok?

I was reading the article about the so-called Craigslist Killer, Philip Markoff, in Vanity Fair, and like almost everybody, I wanted to find out, perchance through this detailed article, WHY?! Stories like this, a bright young man from a well-to-do family with a seemingly normal upbringing make people especially anxious.  If you cannot explain WHY, if the answer turns out to be a shrug of the shoulders, Well, something just snapped and he just did, then the world becomes too random for us to feel reassured.

The reporter set out to find the answers.  To reassure the readers.

Markoff’s parents were divorced.  That of course does not set him apart in this day and age.  But… how about what follows next?

“No one I spoke to in the small community remembered Markoff’s parents or step-parents participating in activities at his school or showing up very often at the local Community Activity Center, where he excelled in youth bowling leagues.”

When I read this, I was all like, WTF?!

It is not enough that I am constantly neurotic about providing my kids with as “normal” environment as I could possibly muster, being a full-time working train-commuting mother with a 9-to-5-only-if-I-say-I-give-up-of-ever-being-taken-seriously-and-why-don’t-you-just-quit-then-what-about-my-own-person-and-my-own-identity job, so now I have to worry about them growing up and becoming a crazed killer because I cannot attend their activities at school??!!

Thank you indeed for sending me off to the grandest guilt trip a mother could have ever taken.  I may never come back from this one.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Just keep on telling yourself that…

I am under duress at work…  I am a certified procrastinator for important projects.  I will be obsessed with it, can’t stop thinking about it, being kept awake at night worried about it, but feel at the same time utterly powerless.  It is like end of term at school with multiple papers due all over again…  The fear of failure sometimes gets too overwhelming.

I found myself humming inside my head the songs from Mary Poppins on Broadway while I plowed along on my presentation…  First up is, what else?

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Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

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Then I move on to….  “Anything Can Happen (If You Let It)”

Anything can happen if you let it

Sometimes things are difficult

But you can bet it doesn’t have to be some…


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Just what I need to hear right now…  The following always gives me the goosebumps:

If you reach for the stars
All you get are the stars
But we’ve found a whole new spin
If you reach for the heavens
You get the stars thrown in

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The last one is currently my “theme song”.  I am sharing with you my secret right now…  It is what gets me going on some of these days when I am so almost convinced that I suck at everything…  I just hum it as I go along with the motions until, miraculously,

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I Am Practically Perfect!

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(Watch from 1:03)