Fair Maria Wood

Fair Maria Wood

Horseless Carriage

I'm maybe getting a new car tomorrow. It's happened suddenly after 3 months of fruitless searching. I'm feeling less excitement than I might have expected, as I'm trying to keep somewhat low expectations and I have so much else in my head anyhow. The relief of having a lower monthly car payment will be immense, especially given the other financial disasters which have befallen me in the past month or so. I will feel much more responsible and reasonable in a smaller cheaper car. I hate driving something so perilously close to an SUV as the Forester. And it makes my back hurt.

Late

Elmer is still alive! She's in my lap, twitching her tail, touching me with her cold wet nose, walking on the keyboard and generally driving me nuts, and I'm so thankful. I truly thought she was going to be dead last weekend, and it cost almost $1,000, a lot of medicine, two trips to an animal hospital an hour away, and lots of heartache and angst to get her back and annoying me again. She's still acting a little weird about water and food and our wonderful vet seems to think she might actually be crazy, but I'm glad she's here.

Poof

The email list is gone. The web guy seems unconcerned ("you don't have copies of the email addresses?"). Part of the reason for having this email list held and administered on the web site was so that we wouldn't have to deal with managing all the addresses ourselves, and also so that people's addresses would remain private and they could sub- and unsub- freely for themselves.

I can't bear to tell anyone yet. I'm too tired. I'm too overwhelmed, and I haven't been around another adult for 3 or 4 days now. I'm glad I'm leaving town day after tomorrow. I can't tell you how tempted I am not to come back.

In the meantime, who wouldn't be cheered up by this?

Knitty Gritty

I finished the diaper cover! Ok, I mostly finished it. It still needs a drawstring and I'd like to knit cuffs for it. But I finished it enough for M.M. to wear it:



It's not a great picture, and the soaker is not terribly visible, but I was working with a moving target. Here's the other shot I got of it:



I'm now preparing to start the soft soft hat for Mr. W. I'm not using the right kind of yarn, and it's a bit of an experiment since with my novice skills I don't know how the substitution is going to work.

The First Hour

Where does it go? When M.M. goes to sleep I inevitably have a long mental list of things I need to do before I too can hit the hay. I spend much of the time it takes to get her down culling that list, prioritizing, scheduling my precious pre-sleep activities. Every night, I somehow end up an hour later wandering around the house in a panic about how I'm not going to get to bed until 1am again, with absolutely no idea where the first hour went. It's like a black hole, the dryer-sock phenomenon of the time-space continuum.

Tonight I was desparate to take a shower and get into bed by 11:30. Here it is, 11:30, and I've showered, but I still have to do the mandatory kitchen cleanup and laundry start without which life cannot go on. I've revised my bedtime to 11:45. It's still a lot earlier than yesterday.

No Soap

I've just decided: I'm not taking a shower tonight. I go through this frequently, needing a shower, wanting to take one before bed when M.M.'s asleep but being too tired and throwing in the towel (heh). Again, tonight. I truly need a good night's sleep. My brain's been foggy with fatigue all day, and I'm having anxiety and stupidity as a result. So, no soap!

I paid my bills tonight. I'm feeling proud and impoverished. I am in a desperate pickle, and I really need to find a stream of income that does not require me to expend time or energy, as I have none to spare beyond what goes into M.M.-care. She's already getting shortchanged on the Mama-attention meter. My new plan is to pay bills every weekend so they don't get so out of control, and so I maintain a more realistic and depressing view of my financial status.

More cheerfully, I'm still knitting the diaper soaker that I started last week. I'm getting to the section that I have no idea how to perform, so it may fall apart soon. Meanwhile, I'm waiting for yarn and needles for a sweater for the New Nephew, and the right sized needle for a hat for him to match the one I made M.M. I'm proud of myself for jumping into this knitting craze and adventuring with it, attempting sweaters and all. I hope to have photos of the finished products eventually.

Beautiful Boy

I have a new photo of the beautiful boy.



I sat down to make sense of my bills this evening and discovered to my horror that I hadn't paid them in almost a month, which was quite a bit longer than I thought. Everything is late, and I have to pay double bills for lots of things to catch up. I have a health insurance bill for $1500.00. I don't know why the state assistance portion didn't get paid this month; probably something to do with the New Year.

Even with state aid the cost is outrageous. I would absolutely get rid of it if it weren't for having to make sure M.M. is covered. As it is, I may finally be forced to figure out about getting MassHealth and dropping private insurance altogether. I am beaten down, discouraged by the enormity of the terribleness of the system and the futility of trying to do anything about it. I just want health care for my daughter.

The irony is that medicine is so useless so much of the time. M.M. threw up for the better part of a month and all the doctor's office could say was don't let her get dehydrated. And they gave me bad advice which I didn't follow about withholding breastmilk, the most nutritious and well tolerated of all substances for babies.

Before I allowed myself to discover the extent of my dire financial situation for the month, I got M.M. a hammer and pounding bench today, and a Pete Seeger kids' CD. She loves hammers and was delighted, thrilled, enthralled with having one of her own. She was carrying it as we walked back to the car, and insisted on banging on a brick wall as we went by. She fell asleep on the way home, and when she woke up, "hammer" was the first thing she said. It felt great. Screw the insurance company and the accountant.

The Arrival of Winter

This blog is appropriately named. It's been ebbing, and now perhaps I'll start to flow again.

Here is the first official photo of my new nephew, Mr. W. I can't believe I have a nephew!



He's the cutest baby since my baby. M.M. and I are going down to meet him in a couple of weeks.

I am in the process of knitting a diaper soaker for M.M., having already completed her hat:



Sadly, the hat has since been put through the washer and dryer and is now smaller and... felty. I'm planning a small version for Mr. W., and when that's done, if it's not warm by then, I may try either a replacement for M.M.'s or some sort of rescue, like ear flaps or an added cuff to make it bigger.

Hmm... a loud popping sound just came from my kitchen. Can't imagine what that might be. Hmm.

The War On Americans' Rights... I Mean Terrorism

FTAA IMC is an independent media web site covering the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas meeting that happened in Miami last week, and the protests it inspired. The response to the protests by the city, or the federal government, or whoever the heck was in charge of responding to them, was quite scary. As I read on the IMC web site, the police were militarized, and the military were policing. There were dozens of police in full riot gear on every street corner. The 'authorities' scared the citizens into closing their businesses and avoiding downtown, so the place was deserted except for protestors and police/military. I read about military tanks patrolling the streets at night.

This is the kind of news I avoid a lot of the time, because it is too depressing, enraging, and scary for me. Everyone else seems to avoid it too, because I haven't heard anything about it other than from my brother. That is even scarier.

Political Muscle

I can't be the only one to notice this, but there seems to be a trend towards famous, musclebound, tough guys getting elected governor of western states. First Jesse Ventura, now Arnold Schwarzenegger. What's going on with that? Are voters afraid that their governors will have to beat someone up? Are they insecure about having a governor that could be construed a sissy?

I realize that there is something of a history of celebrities parlaying their fame into elected office; I'm aware of Ronald Reagan, Clint Eastwood, and Sonny Bono (who, by the way, I sometimes get a little confused with Bono of U2). In nearly every case, these elections alarm me, because I have the strange idea that you should be qualified to hold elected office, and not just by the fact that lots of people know your name and face. But maybe I'm wrong about that and I should just lighten up. After all, politics is all about appearances, and so is fame, so perhaps it's a natural marriage.

Why is it, though, that the left wing famous people never seem to run for anything? Where are Martin Sheen, Woody Harrelson, Janeane Garafolo (ok, I know she's too young)? Martin Sheen could, of course, be elected to anything immediately, having won the trust of the nation playing the President on The West Wing. I suppose it's to his credit that he hasn't chosen to capitalize on that role by making it real. But I'd much rather have him than Arnold, or even Jesse, though I did develop a soft spot in my heart for old Jes'.

Maybe Martin Sheen can't beat up all the other governors. Maybe that's why he hasn't run.

the gates of...

I have noticed that there seems to be a new trend on my road of putting big forbidding gates across the entrance to the driveway. I haven't seen this before, ever, outside of those weird subdivisions in Florida and on tv shows filmed in Beverly Hills. Certainly not in this little corner of the world. Ok, I've only noticed gates on two driveways - but that's a lot, considering that it's not a big road, that I've never seen it before, and that they both sprang up in the past couple of months.

What does this mean? Is there a danger lurking in my neighborhood that I'm not aware of? Are my neighbors just getting paranoid? Are the gates there to keep me out?? These happen to both be houses I've visited over the past few years, although I don't know the inhabitants well, or at all. I went to one as a favor to a friend who needed something dropped off - I don't even think anyone was home, and I think I left the package by the door. The other one was a similar nonevent.

It's curious and disturbing to see these unfriendly gates. One's a big tall chain link number and the other is a pretentious looking iron bar affair. I haven't tested them to see whether either is electrified or otherwise buttressed against all comers.

What is this world coming to?

Alternative Energy

Here's what I don't understand: why is it that the big greedy oil companies aren't rushing around trying to get ahead in the alternative energy markets. Not because they care about the environment, or because they're trying to make all us commie-pinko-liberals happy, but because they could make so damn much money doing it. Won't whoever has the patents on new fuel technologies and the like become like Bill Gates or Henry Ford? It's clear to everyone that the world has a limited supply of fossil fuels, and that we're going to run out of them one of these days - and that even before that, they're going to become incredibly expensive to extract and process.

I can't see why Toyota and Honda are the only companies making hybrid cars. Car companies could be competing to make the fanciest, trendiest hybrid cars and marketing them to the people who are now buying Range Rovers and Hummers (ok, maybe not Hummers... ). It seems to me that it would make financial sense for these companies to be trying to milk every last penny out of the touchy feely liberals out there.

Radio Sociology

I am concerned that I may have an involuntarily sexist attitude towards my friendly local radio station DJs. I looove WKZE, and I listen to it all the time, even when it's staticky. But my two least favorite DJs are Christine and Julie. I think it's because of their irritating personalities and tendencies towards crappy music. But I worry that it's really because they're women.

I like Jimmy, Corey, Frank, and Stuart, and I've come to have a certain soft spot in my heart for Doug, too, even though he talks too much. Instead of Nature versus Nurture, the debate I have going on in my head is Programming versus Personality. I haven't come up with a way to test myself on this. If Christine's morning show were exactly the same but with a male voice, would I still not turn the radio on until 10 am when it was over? Or would I react differently to the clichéd and non-morning-appropriate music she sometimes plays and her overly peppy and full of herself comments?

I hope for my own sake that these women are genuinely irritating and amateurish.

It's Just Too Depressing and Predictable to Talk About"

Misleader.org: Daily Mislead

"President Bush's Inspectors Find No Weapons to Support his Claims about Imminent Threat"

Of course not. Because it was a big lie!