Galloping Cats

On second thought, the story about the nurse screaming at the woman that she had an STD did not come out as funny as it was in person. I’m thinking it came out more… insensitive. But at the time, sitting in my paper gown in the exam room and listening to this going on outside my door, it was so absurd as to be funny. (Not funny that she had an STD, of course, but that she thought it was a good idea to call the GYN from the car wash, and that the nurse was so flustered as to try to speak up to be heard, rather than tell her to call back.) And, apparently, the memory was enough to get the doctor and me going again several years later. But I can definitely see how this could make me seem bitchy.

Just a friendly reminder to those of you who are interested that our first book discussion starts a week from Sunday. Hope to see you there!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Suz and I are launching a bloggy book club. Go check it out!

This is the story of one of my oldest Internet friends. This is a woman who has to endured more, much much more, than any person should, in her quest for children: IVF (4x). Miscarriage (2x). Stillbirth (2x). Moving on to adoption, she was matched with twins in Guatemala, only to find that the woman who claimed to be their birth mother did not, in fact, match their DNA.

She was matched again with two more babies, and the adoption has been progressing. She and her husband have been twice to visit these gorgeous children and have been excited preparing for the day they get to bring them home. Now this adoption, too, is at risk. Mandy explains it in more detail, but basically it looks like adoptions from Guatemala are being shut down, and at this point in time there is no provision for grandfathering adoptions already in progress.

Through everything that Mandy has endured, there’s never been anything concrete that I could do to help. Now, finally, there is something: I can write a letter to my congressmen, asking them to put pressure on the DOS to require Guatemala to follow current law and proceed with IN PROCESS adoption cases where families have already received permission from the U.S. to adopt, and are already registered with the Guatemalan Government. And I can ask you to do the same. Please go see the details on her blog, and help Mandy bring Noah and Lily home.

If you’re reading this, it means I can’t be too bad at the technical stuff. I changed hosts and had to re-map my domain name and there were a couple of hiccups– some my fault, some not. I do apologize for the confusion, because I know for a while there you were just getting the GoDaddy web site, and then you were getting nothing at all, and then you got WordPress’ homepage. I mean, if you were obsessively checking up on me, that is. Thanks for not giving up.

Whaddya think of my new digs? Could you drop me a comment and let me know you arrived safely?

Updated to add: Okay, I see now that we are going to have a problem if you were previously linking to www.gallopingcats.com/my_weblog or using that URL for your feeds. It’s the myweblog part that will bring up an error so, you know, when you get around to fixing your links, just www.gallopingcats.com will do. You know I love you guys, right?

I am also guessing that any of my previously embedded intra-site links will no longer work for the same reason. And I have to finish transferring my blogroll. Then there are the posts that came in in duplicates and I’m starting to think this was not such a good idea.

Even in the suburbs, many preschools book up precisely on September 1 for the following year. Who knew?

I just called for a prescription for these*.

Carry on.

* Update: Oops. I did not mean to imply anything other than that I’m ready to start thinking about folic acid. No announcements! It just felt, somehow, momentous to me to make that call. Now I feel stupid!

Lily asked:

"As a non-mom - I would love to know what things you were afraid of
in parenting (beyond the logistics - more like raising a whole person)
that weren’t a problem, and vice versa. I worry alot about what kind of mom I will be - and I suspect I
worry about the wrong things! (at least I want my worry to be fruitful!)"

For the record, Lily is my real life friend and she is going to be a kick-ass mother someday. She is more in touch with and more interested in babies than any non-parent I’ve ever met– and more than lots of actual parents, too!

I think the thing I was afraid of was that it was going to be really, really hard in ways I couldn’t imagine, and that I was going to find babyhood boring. I also worried about the lack of sleep. As it turns out, it wasn’t nearly as hard as I imagined, in part because Gatito was such a great sleeper from the beginning. I think that having some difficult getting and staying pregnant, and also reading enough blogs and talking to enough people to realize all the things that could go wrong, made me so intensely grateful to have him, that a lot of stuff didn’t bother me. I also turned out to be way more laid back that I would have anticipated. I read other people writing that their kids are driving them crazy throwing food off the table, and that kind of thing just doesn’t get to me.

The hardest thing that I did not anticipate is the daddy preference. Dear lord, people, that’s been going on for as long as I can remember. It’s not that he’s not happy when he’s with me and A is not there, but if we’re together (and mostly we are together at night and on weekends), he will choose Daddy about 80% of the time. At least it feels that way. And it’s really hard not to feel insulted when he’s hurt or sad and he only wants Daddy, or when he cries when I go to get him in the morning, calling for Daddy, or when I come into a room and he orders me, "Mommy! Door!" or I come downstairs and he says, "Mommy! Upstairs!"

I think, probably, that it feels worse than it is, and I know for sure that sometimes when he’s with Daddy he is crying for Mommy. And we certainly have lots of sweet moments where he will tell me "Yellow soooo much!" and give spontaneous kisses, and sit in the chair with me, reading book after book after book. I think it helped a little last weekend when I sent them off to a car show together so that they could have alone time. We normally spend all weekend together so I think it was nice for him to have that one-on-one time, and I noticed a difference in his attitude towards me that night. At least I think I did. Other than that, I try to do what I do with the cats, which is to let him come to me. But that is, without a doubt, the hardest part about parenthood for me.

What about you guys? What did you worry about that turned out not to be a problem, and what big problem did you not even think to worry about?

It’s amazing how the events of six years ago have gotten twisted and used for so many different purposes, so that the whole idea of September 11 is infused with meanings based on politics and money and we’ve somehow lost that real rawness of losing 3,000 people and our sense of security on this day six years ago. Today, I’m focused on remembering what that day was really like.

I’m remembering going to vote in the primaries, then getting on the subway to head up to school. I’m remembering the subway ride, the chaos of the station under the WTC buildings (where the subway stopped– must have been moments after the second plane, though I cannot reconstruct my own personal timeframe for that day very well), and not knowing what it meant. I’m remembering sitting in class (my god, the confusion of that day– we really had no idea– we were sitting in class at 10:00!) and looking over at a classmate’s computer, seeing the news that the first tower had fallen. I’m remembering waking up in the nights that followed, thinking about what separated the people that jumped from the people watching them jump from the relative safety of the ground.

And I’m marveling at how life just goes on, and that I’m sitting here in my office today, working as though it was any ordinary day. Six years have passed! It’s impossible to believe. Here’s my first post on September 11, from 2004.

I made this apple pie from scratch, including the crust! I’ve never done a thing like that in my life. I keep asking A, "Can you believe I made a pie?!" And I brought this apple crisp to a barbecue today and it was gobbled right up.

I made a good dent in the apples, and apples can last a while in the fridge anyway, but now the peaches are ripening and I have to go back to work. I don’t know if I can squeeze another pie in after a day at the office, after getting Gatito to bed, and after finishing up the rest of my work from home…

(Just so long as I didn’t have to clean.)
(And I’d be a way better blogger, too.)
(I have to go back to work on Tuesday. Wah!)

German apple pancake:


It fell apart when it was turned out of the pan at the end, but it was *delicious*. Even in it’s crumbled state, I think it still looks pretty good. Moist and eggy, not too sweet. No syrup required, and leftovers were good cold, too.

Recipe courtesy of my favorite cookbook, The Best Recipe, and available via email upon request, which I don’t think would be breaking copyright rules. (But what do I know?)