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

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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…

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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…

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:

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

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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?!)

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

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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)

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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!

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…

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?

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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…

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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?

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

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…

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

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,

I Am Practically Perfect!

(Watch from 1:03)

“I have no life. I play with Lego all day!”

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Let me start this post by saying that we are a Lego family. With 3 boys in the household – my 2 sons and my one husband, our floor used to be covered with Lego pieces when they were little (the kids, not the husband). Later, a home-made Lego table was the mainstay in the living room, also covered with Lego pieces, and at one time, Lego train tracks, until the kids decided to use the train and tracks as launching pad for Lego people…

We love Legos. We are not embarrassed to admit that we still play with Legos ourselves. We don’t make fun of people who love Legos, or trains for that matter. Yada yada yada. You get the drift.

Then I saw this today on Amazon.com (or as one of my good friends calls them, The Evil Empire…)

I was utterly disturbed.

Is this a joke? Is it Photoshopped? Is it me? Doesn’t that seem like a parallel to “Could you come and help me look for my puppy?”

I showed it to my 11 year-old, and the first thing he said was, “Wow. I have no life. I play with Lego all day!”

Then he went back to his Mindstorms. (Yeah. I love me some good irony too…)

Has the marketing department at Lego lost their marbles? Or, in this case, their blocks?

Much to my embarrassment and relief, google is once again my friend, and I found the truth behind the

The Special 50th Anniversary Edition Lego!

My bad… The guy? He is the owner of the Lego company Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen (yeah, no kidding. Try and say that name 3 times…) aka Lego founder’s grandson who appeared as a kid on the original Town Plan box and now returns on this 50th anniversary special edition!

Somehow I suspect that he does indeed “have no life” because he’s too busy running a global company and thinking up ways to reinvent Lego year after year, and that he does “play with Lego all day”.

The rest of us are just jealous.

To redeem myself from the over-rampant cynicism, I shall seek solace in this oldie but goodie:

Those who do the laundry should have immunity. Just sayin…

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So the other day husband left one of his baseball caps on the floor of the laundry room, looking quite dirty. As in, it’s no longer beige but brown-ish all over.

So what does it mean when someone just leaves clothing on the floor of the laundry room? I’d say it means they are asking you nicely to wash it for them. Wouldn’t you agree?

Since I am a very nice person, so I did.

Turns out this hat is husband’s favorite. Don’t ask me why. This was the first time I heard it too. A cap from a baseball team we don’t really know about. A cap husband had purchased for our oldest at a company outing and later inherited because our oldest was too cool to wear it.

CIMG2707

It’s a mystery to me, really. Sort of like the mystery of how a child selects his/her lovey. (THAT. Is yet another topic we should all blog about. Raise your hand if you have experienced the agony of a lost lovey. Or worst, the death of a beloved lovey…)

It also turned out that the back closure of the hat had split in half and husband had glued it together with super glue. (Have to say I am impressed by that feat and his dedication!) So the hat came out of the wash, well, broken again.

“You broke my hat! That’s my favorite hat!”

In order to keep peace in the household, I offered to glue it together.

“Well, you’d better do a good job: don’t get glue all over it.”

Have to say, he knows me only too well. I can’t work with any type of glue: I once glued my fingers shut with super glue. I offered to use the glue gun.

“You are KIDDING, right?”

Well, I guess I’m now even if I wasn’t…

As I sat there trying to hold the pieces together as my fingers were being glued shut, again. I thought,

Shouldn’t there be immunity for people who do the laundry in the household? Next time, I’m going to have him sign a release form…

FINE. I’ll fix your hat for you.

i'll fix your damn hat!

There. You. Go.

The Absence of Alternatives

My therapy sessions…