I may be off for the next few days. Yeah, okay, I don't post for over two months, and now I'm giving you notice?
Okay, for real: I'm off to New England for my college class reunion. I won't say which college or which class, but let it suffice to say that it's in Massachusetts and I'm not yet old enough to be the mother of anyone who just graduated. So there.

Yesterday was not an easy day. I went into a photography store with Gigi, in the hopes of finding a replacement battery for my camera and getting passport photos for my little girl. Hmmm, international move in seven weeks, might not be a bad idea to get her a passport, eh?

Well, I failed at both missions. First of all, they didn't carry the kind of battery I need. Second of all, Gigi decided that once we got to the picture-taking corner, she would have the absolute worst teething fit I've seen her experience in months. I kid you not, this child would barely settle down after multiple applications of Orajel and a dose of ibuprofen. For half an hour I sat on the floor of this shop, rocking Gigi and trying to coax her into at least not shrieking in Mommy's ear. It was quite a show. If I'd had any sense, I would have just excused us and left after the first dose of Orajel.

So after 30+ minutes of hoping against hope that we could actually get a decent picture of Gigi, we gave up and went home. Of course, by the time we got to the house, she was calm and reasonably quiet. Argh.

Then, just to be sure that all was forgiven... she and I were playing in the living room later that evening. Among the 40 or so words in Gigi's vocabulary are "baby" and "belly" (yes, if you ask, she will show you her belly in all its rotund glory. I am never letting her anywhere near Mardi Gras.) She was sitting beside me as I lay on the floor, and she pulled up my shirt and said, "Belly!"
"Yep," I said, "there's a baby in mommy's belly."
"Baby," she echoed, and made the sign language motions for 'baby'.
"Right, baby in the belly."
"Belly. Baby!" she grinned, then leaned over and planted a kiss on my tummy.

Yeah, she's cute. I think we'll keep her.

Oh, yeah. I'm back. Where have I been?
Let's see...I was on a quest for the last of the state quarters missing from my collection (damn you, you elusive Arkansas!!!)
No, that's not it.
I've been camped out in front of the bathroom mirror, trying to figure out once and for all whether my scalp is dry, normal, or oily.
Nah...
I've been wigging out over the prospect of moving to an island for the next three years.
Hmmm, more plausible, but still not it.
Oh yeah.
I've been semi-comatose for most of the last two months because I'm back at work, raising a very mobile toddler, and gestating her younger sibling.
Yep, it's true, PS fans (if any of you are left out there), "Gigi" is getting an upgrade in November, to Big Sister.
Which brings me back to two years ago, when I inaugurated this blog: pregnant, working outside the home, facing an international move, and barely able to keep up with e-mail.
So mea culpa on the bloglapse. Now that I'm in Week 16, supposedly I'm going to be feeling better soon. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Meanwhile, it's past my bedtime. Night-night, my friends.

Today was a momentous day for me. I was driving home from a midweek treat, dinner out with an old friend (a restaurant with cloth napkins, oooh) when one of my favorite songs from my youth came on the radio: "I Don't Like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats. Now I'm sure the local radio station was not doing this by way of attracting controversy, considering recent events and the song's ignoble history.
But what hit me was this. I am now the parent of a small child. As a full-fledged Volvo-driving Suburban Mommy I am the target demographic for being outraged at a song about an evilly banal shooting in a schoolyard.
Instead, I sang along with Bob as I wound my way through the subdivisions, just as I did twenty years ago. And I still love every note and word of this classic tune. And I feel no sense of outrage, even considering what my reaction would be if it had been my child in the crosshairs. Why?
a) Because it's just a song.
b) Because the song does not celebrate the act it refers to.
c) Nor does it preach about the causes and effects of the act.
d) Because God alone knows what kept the silicon chips inside my head from switching to overload when I was sixteen.

Anyway, all of this is by way of saying that I'm glad that two years in hardcore suburbia have not totally morphed away my personality, and I can still hear a song about a distasteful subject without wigging out, getting the FCC on speed-dial, and writing shrieking letters to the Editor. Praise Bob.

Earlier this week, I learned that in contrast to the Catholic Church's reckoning of seven deadly sins, Buddhism counts 108 "defilements" (conveniently listed for you here).

As if I didn't have enough on my "To Do" list...

Gigi and I were enjoying some unseasonably warm weather this afternoon after I picked her up from school. She was having a sippy cup of milk al fresco and pondering the weird device I had attached to it (a strap that is supposed to keep the cup attached to a high chair or car seat, so when kiddo wants to play The Gravity Game, Mommy doesn't sprain a knee retrieving the cup).
Anyway, this thing is purple and shiny and new, so of course it requires a vocabulary lesson. "Shiny," I said to Gigi, turning the strap over in her hands. "See how shiny? Pretty!"
"Purr-po," she replied.
No way, I'm thinking. "Did you just say 'purple'?"
Without taking her gaze from it, she repeated, "purr-po."
My daughter identified her first color by name. And it was purple.
Now I know how Anne Sullivan felt at the water pump that day.

I am caving in. After several weeks of falling behind on housework, and with the arrival of spring, I have come to the conclusion that I can either be both a full-time housekeeper *and* full-time employee, or I can be a full-time employee, outsource the housekeeping, and have some semblance of a life.

This is not to say that I do not have pangs of bourgeois guilt. It's just that I'd like to ensure - now that the baby is totally mobile and has discovered the joys of pulling stuff up from the garden - that at least once a week the carpets get vacuumed and the kitchen floor has more than one patch of non-adhesive surface. And I'd like to be there in the garden with the baby pulling up stuff.

Tomorrow I have a carpet-cleaning service coming in to get the smell of cat whizz out of the living room. The previous owners had a cat, and I only have so much time to play "CSI" with the blacklight looking for signs of our cat's power struggle with her predecessor. I also have a few housekeeping companies coming over to give us estimates. Naturally, this means I have to clean up the place before they get here, right?

Which means I should get off the blog. Right.

The past two weeks as haiku:

Spring and winter play
leapfrog. Immune systems blown.
New ear infection.

Spouse has surgery,
limited mobility.
Mommy needs a drink.

Yep, the day my husband has knee surgery and I'm teaching a class - as the substitute, mind you - is the day that Gigi develops a fever. Hubby can't drive, and I can't leave on a moment's notice. The ladies at day care (or, as I prefer to think of it, "pre-pre-school") called to tell me that she had a temperature, and they were giving her the ibuprofen I supply for teething pain, and she was really quite listless and I should consider taking her home. I explained my circumstances and said I'd wrap things up as soon as I could, yadda yadda. They called again two hours later - in between my phone calls to my brother to see how my husband's surgery had gone - and said the fever hadn't broken, she was napping now but she seems to be really sick.

You know, they never actually come out and say, "You negligent slattern, how dare you inflict your diseased spawn upon us," but I'm learning that Day Care is a highly nuanced tonal language.

So I got the babe, took her to the pediatrician, got her a diagnosis and an antibiotic, and took her home to daddy, who was on the couch with ice packs.

Oh, and did I mention that I had a cold too?

Yeah, things are looking up now. However, I should point out that I am blogging on a friend's computer between the cocktail and dinner portion of our weekly Movie Nite. Blogging at work is not an option, and while my family was playing Sick Ward I kinda let the housework go to hell, so I've been playing catchup on the laundry and such in between baby's bathtime, teething fits, and playtime. Oh, and I have relatives coming this weekend (brother-in-law and his fiancee). Hooray, they are graduate students, so a little clutter and fledgling civilizations in the bathroom isn't going to bother them, as long as they get lots of Niece Time.

It is a good person who lets you blog from their home. It is a remarkable person who will do so and cook paella for you at the same time. I am very fortunate in my friends.

I saw some stats today that said that a majority of bloggers fit the profile of females from North America, and that on average blogs are abandoned after four months. I felt a wee bit smug, seeing as PS has been in effect for over 18 months now. Nevertheless I also felt a momentary twinge of guilt for not having posted for the past two weeks. The twinge lasted just long enough to get shot down like a Vice Presidential companion, though, since it's been a jam-packed two weeks. More on that later.

"Deny the passport, throw it away and make a great decision that you will not leave this shore until and unless you have liberated all the human beings." -- Buddha

I came across the above quote a few days ago, and started to wonder if maybe it's a sign from Higher Powers that it's time to quit my job.

Then I remember that my job is sending me to an English-speaking island paradise this summer, to make up for the two years they had me working in a glorified snowdrift with a boss who was clearly the mutant love-child of a Dilbert cartoon and a Stephen King novel.

So whom do I trust? Buddha or the bureaucracy?

January was a very busy month (as anyone reviewing the dates of actual postings can see...). Going back to work was only half of it. Between Gigi and me, we spent an inordinate amount of time in doctors' offices. My employer, being steeped in the business of sending ailing travelers back home - often at ridiculous expense due to a lack of insurance - is very careful about health screenings before sending people overseas. This is good, because it lets me get a really thorough checkup every few years. On the other hand, it can be a pain because my whacked-out endocrine system often raises a few hurdles.
Since my thyroid gland - already as dysfunctional as a Hollywood household - has yet to level out since Gigi's birth, my doctor finally decided that between the blood counts and the nodules it was time for an ultrasound. The results of the ultrasound would indicate whether a needle biopsy was required. I didn't like the sound of that. "Biopsy" and "needle" are words that I don't like to hear individually. Put them together and they're not much improved. But we'll burn that bridge when we get to it; the first step was the ultrasound.
The technician was amused to hear me say that this was my first u/s from the waist up, though I doubted that I'd do any better figuring out what was on the screen. Many times my OB pointed to the screen and said, "See that?" when we previewed Bizzleburp/Gigi, and I couldn't tell which end I was supposed to be looking at. So this technician didn't bother with the detailed, guided tour, just, "here's the left side...here's the right side..." My favorite comment from her? "Wow, your thyroid gland isn't just multinodular. It looks like cottage cheese."
Great, I thought, so it matches my butt. Too bad I can't see either one of them.
But the good news is that a biopsy is not warranted. The doc is just going to adjust my synthetic hormone dosage *again* and we'll test my blood again in another few weeks. If I'm very lucky, we'll have found the magic number and my metabolism will actually get out of first gear.

I finally figured out what it is about the song "The Wheels on the Bus" that bugs me so much. It's the verse that goes, "The driver on the bus says 'move on back!'" that has always gotten under my skin. The passing of Rosa Parks, I think, threw it into sharp relief for me.
Look, I'm not so steeped in my liberal arts education that I'm going to interpret the entire song as an homage to Jim Crow and denounce it as a tool of the white patriarchy indoctrinating young children with institutional blah blah blah. It's just that I finally feel like I have a reason - other than the fact that the tune makes me want to puncture my eardrums with an icepick - to dislike that song.
And because God has a sense of humor, naturally, my daughter got a toy school bus for Christmas, with little shape-sorting figures and interactive sound features. And it is one of her **favorite** toys **ever**. She likes nothing more than to press the little orange button where the "driver" sits, which makes her bus light up playing TWOTBGRAR. And she lights up right along with it, bouncing up and down and clapping her hands with the music.
When she's a little older and starts singing, I'm going to teach her a variation: "The old karmic wheel goes round and round, round and round, round and round..."

Ave atque vale to a truly uncommon woman.

Ear infection. (Gigi, not me.) The poor little thing has been fighting off a fever for the past three days. (Why three? because it's a three day weekend, of course!) Anyway, prognosis is very good. Now if only we could all just sleep through the night again...

Overheard at the Asian art museum:

"What's a...chah-bah?" (said standing directly in front of the little plaque explaining that the kaaba is Islam's most sacred site, the house Abraham built for God, and the items you are looking at are ornamental keys to it...)

Tween Princess: "Mom, can I have sushi for dinner tonight?"
Suburban Martyr: "NO. You had sushi for dinner last night, and sushi for lunch today, and I don't want to hear any more about it. I am not a sushi-making machine."
TP: "Yes you are!"

Um...Happy New Year. No, I didn't fall off the face of the earth. I did return to work, though. More on that later. Just posting a quick thing to remind myself that I do have a blog which some people occasionally read (whoo hoo!)

btw, Gigi has her third tooth. The next three seem to be coming in all at once. More on that later, too.

In other news: The end of this vacation also means the end of my sabbatical. As much as I've enjoyed the time off, I really do miss the paycheck. On Tuesday, I go back to "work" - that is, I'll be at training for most of the next six months before we head to our new island home. Gigi will be at on-site daycare, so I can pop in on my lunch hour and get a snuggle fix.

Have I accomplished anything, or learned any valuable life lessons over the last fifteen months? Well, let's see:

I now have some idea of what people do from nine to five if they don't have offices to go to.
I now know that having all day to run the vacuum cleaner doesn't make me any more likely to do it.
I now know I'm better at this Mommy thing than I thought I would be.
I did acheive one goal: I submitted something for publication this afternoon (just under the wire!). Whoopie. It wasn't much, but I can say that I did it.

Happy New Year everyone!

Yeah, okay, I haven't posted in ages. Gigi went to day care the last time I posted. They called me at 1:30 and said, "She has a fever of 101, but we don't have a medical release from you to give her anything for it." (They never actually come out and say you're a negligent derelict.) When I picked her up, she was a little warm but otherwise seemed fine. The next morning, though, she had a full-blown case of preschool kennel cough. And the next day, naturally, I had it. And then her second tooth broke the surface. I was self-medicating (and not just the cough...) with some Polish honey herb liquor I bought on a dare at a conference in Warsaw many years ago. Damn if that stuff didn't work better than Robitussin.
But I didn't take it with me on the trip to the in-laws in New England, so I've spent most of the past week on cough syrup, bed rest, and the 900-page book about Henry VIII that my in-laws gave me. (Okay, last year it was Sylvia Plath; this year, they gave me a book about a guy who divorced, beheaded or outlived six spouses. Should I be nervous?)
The phlegm factory has finally shut down, Henry just married his fifth wife, and I'm not quite perfectly adhered to the sofa. It's been a lovely visit, but it's definitely winding down.

Hallelujah! A little white line has broken the surface. I believe we can honestly say there is a visible tooth.
Of course she's still caterwauling, off and on, 24/7. But I can at least be assured that she really does have teeth, and isn't just howling for no reason (or one that I can't guess).
This calls for a celebratory drink. Baileys and cocoa, that sounds good. Gentler than vodka, and suited to the snowy weather. It's all goooooood.

Pediatrician visit today. There is good news: she's now 18 lbs 14 oz, which puts her in the tenth percentile for weight. Doc is very pleased; I am jumping for joy. On the downside, no teeth yet, despite her best efforts and several sleepless early mornings over the past week. Ugh. I am looking more and more like a panda on quaaludes. The doc gave us the name of a pediatric dentist and told us to give them a call if those little nubs on her gums don't make any progress after a few weeks.
Then she got a TB test (my company requires it as part of the medical clearance before we transfer overseas again) and her booster flu shot. That was officially No Fun for either of us.
Tomorrow, while my husband and I get our pre-transfer physicals, Gigi gets to do a test run at her future day care center. They'll take her on a "drop-in" basis for fifty bucks a day in the weeks preceding her formal enrollment so she can get acclimated to the place. Nice of them, but dag, fifty bucks a day? It wouldn't hurt quite so much if I were not still on unpaid leave - and if our house payments didn't jump nearly a hundred bucks every time Alan Greenspan got a fart caught crooked.