Baguette naps at day care, but not at home, and nighttime sleep is very hard to come by. Although we never planned to bed-share, it turned out that doing so got all of us more sleep than any other approach we tried.
But she kept growing, and the bed didn’t. Eventually, none of us was getting enough sleep. And then, on a trip to visit family, she suddenly decided that she would rather sleep on the hotel room’s couch.
We capitalized on this by moving her to the couch when we got home. One of us has to lie with her until she goes to sleep, and that can still take a while. Our girl does not slip off into dreamland, not even when she’s clearly exhausted.
And, frankly, the couch is not really big enough for two to sleep, even if one of us is still pretty small.
Mr. Sandwich therefore took his experience in building a toddler bed and put it to use in building a twin frame. One of my cousins made a beautiful elephant quilt, because elephants are Baguette’s favorite animals. We bought a mattress and some sheets.
And then this happened.
Now, if we can just get her to stay there. Wish us luck.
Not the planet. Well, I’m sure it could, because it’s super hot and also if it fell on you, ouch! But that’s not what I’m talking about.
Mr. Sandwich and I try to be environmentally friendly. Yes, we love our air conditioning, but we also do things to cut down on how much energy we use.
We line-dry a lot of our laundry.
We have solar screens (that Mr. Sandwich made!) on the windows.
Mr. Sandwich has added insulation under the roof.
We replace our worn-out appliances with the most energy efficient ones we can afford.
We have a gray-water system (that Mr. Sandwich built!).
We’d love to have solar panels on the roof, but that’s a much bigger project.
And indoors, we’ve been using these:
Compact fluorescent lightbulbs can save a lot of energy. They cost more up front than the old incandescent bulbs, but they last much, much longer.
Also, they contain mercury. This isn’t a problem unless one breaks.
The other night, I went into our bedroom and turned on the light–and a bulb popped. Over our bed, an assortment of Baguette’s stuffed animals, and some clothes.
So we pulled out the sofabed and slept in the living room. The next morning, Mr. Sandwich cleaned up the debris, following the directions from the EPA.
Please make a note of those instructions, because they are important. And a little research revealed that leaving a burned-out CFL in the socket can cause it to explode. So learn from us, and don’t do that.
For now, we’re switching (as the CFLs burn out, and we remove them from the socket immediately, because who needs more exploding bulbs?) to LEDs. They come with their own toxic elements, such as lead and arsenic, and they also need to be cleaned up with extreme care–but they use even less energy than CFLs.
I know my house is messy. I’m not a good housekeeper. I never have been, and neither was my mother. I know she would have recognized herself in Claire McCarthy’s Huffington Post piece.* Also, there’s this.
I do want my house to be clean. It’s so much more peaceful and comfortable when it is. Mr. Sandwich and I agree on this (For the record, if you come over to our house? He’s the one who cleaned it for you.) And we really want to have people over, but we’d feel so much better about it if we were more orderly.
This is our kitchen table after Mr. Sandwich has taken some stuff off of it.
And, honestly, “orderly” is key here. We have too much stuff, and we have no organization system. But there aren’t dirty dishes lying around (seriously, I feel like I am always washing dishes), and the laundry is either clean or in the hamper (Mr. Sandwich is always doing laundry). We’re neither hoarders nor a hotbed of disease.
So is your house clean? I’d probably love being there. But if it’s a mess, I’m probably cool with that, too. Because I’m not visiting you for your house, I’m visiting you because it’s fun. So if I’m not judging you, why am I judging myself? You can schedule a consultation for low maintenance draperies or in-home covering from rescomdesigns.com.
*That Dutch saying quoted in the comments? Yeah, the Dutch are a nation of people who leave their curtains open so you can peer in their windows and see how clean their houses are. My mother-in-law is Dutch. She’s the loveliest person, and yet she still can’t hide that my housekeeping pains her.
No, this isn’t a Barbara Stanwyck movie. It’s just something we’ve found ourselves saying a lot. For the past five years.
We moved into our house in November of 2008. That meant we got a new-to-us phone number. But, as it turns out, not new to the world.
The previous account holders appear to have been a “Don and Irene Plantain” (not their real names). We got a lot of phone calls from health care providers checking on Don’s condition. And then we started getting phone calls from creditors. If we were home when they called, we’d tell them they had the wrong number. If we weren’t, we’d try to call back. Some of these creditors were very persistent–or at least their automated messages were.
(Note to people programming these calls: My answering machine cannot legally confirm or refute identity. And your statement that the recipient should hang up if they are not the correct party? Yeah, my answering machine doesn’t know how to do that. Because it’s an answering machine. Rethink your lousy, non-binding strategy.)
Along with those, we got calls from restaurant delivery people trying to drop off pizza and Thai food. We’d explain that they were clearly at a security box that needed to be reprogrammed, because they were not reaching the person who’d ordered the food.
One day, I asked the guy trying to deliver food, “Where are you?” And that’s how we know Don and Irene’s address. A year or so later, I found Irene on Facebook and asked her to update her phone number. She insisted that the box at their condo complex was not programmed with their number (clearly a lie), that they had given up the phone number a few months earlier (clearly a lie) and that she had “good reasons” for changing it. I told her that we were getting continuous messages for them, and would like to pass them along to her. She told me to leave her alone.
Later, her mother called to wish her a Merry Christmas.
We emailed the condo homeowners’ association and asked them to reprogram the box, so at least we don’t have to explain the situation to pizza delivery people anymore.
The calls waxed and waned over the years, as, apparently, did Don’s health. We’ve gotten phone calls from Medicare and Senior Services, and most recently from individuals and companies who are trying to provide services and equipment to Don. We continue to tell the callers that they have been given the wrong number. Invariably, they ask if we know how to get in touch with Don and Irene.
No, I do not. And I don’t particularly want to. But we sure do want Irene to provide a phone number that will result in actual medical care for her husband. Because as things stand, we’re not sure he’s getting it.
Time is fleeting, and filled up. Here’s what my balance looks like, for the past two weeks and the foreseeable future.
5:00 Alarm goes off. Hit snooze button. 5:09 Hit snooze button again. 5:17 Get out of bed before the alarm goes off again. Wash face, brush teeth, etc. Open dog door. Unload dishwasher and dish rack. Wash remaining dishes. If Baguette needs to take lunch to daycare, pre-heat thermos. 5:35 Finish morning ablutions. 5:45 Sit with Baguette so that Mr. Sandwich can get up and get ready for work. Catch up on Facebook and blogs in RSS reader. Check weather for day. 6:10 Get up and assemble Baguette’s breakfast, snacks, water bottle, and lunch (unless it’s one of the days for which we’ve pre-paid for hot lunch). Put ABA binder in bag (if it’s Monday, put sheets and blanket in bag). Assemble my breakfast and lunch, if I got them prepared the night before 6:30 Get dressed. Put insert in toilet seat for Baguette. 6:45 Take Baguette’s pre-selected clothes and stage them for getting her dressed. Choose different clothes if weather forecast has changed from night before. 6:55 Wake up Baguette. Comb her hair. Sit with her in bathroom. Get her dressed. 7:10 Leave for daycare. Take Baguette to her classroom and set out her breakfast and water. Drop off ABA binder, bag, jacket, and any other items needed for the day. 7:17 Drive to bus stop or to work, depending on whether I’m actually on schedule. 8:20 Arrive at office building. Buy breakfast or parts thereof, depending on what I brought. 8:30 Turn on computer and check email. Touch base with Mr. Sandwich, to let him know how Baguette’s morning went. Work. 4:30 Leave work. 6:00 Arrive home. Evening ABA session starts. Prep dinner. Participate in ABA. 7:00 Eat dinner. Participate in ABA. Check calendar to see if Baguette has hot lunch at school. Check weather for next day. Lay out my clothes for next day. Lay out Baguette’s pajamas. 8:00 Sign ABA provider’s timesheet. Give Baguette her bath. 8:15 Get Baguette out of bath and get her dressed for bed. Take Wicket outside one last time. Close dog door for the night. Feed Wicket. 8:25 Load dishwasher. Wash other dishes and put in dish rack. Play with Baguette. Check Facebook. 9:00 Go to bed. Read to Baguette. Hope she falls asleep by 9:30. Go to sleep ASAP after that.
The big difference from my balance in 2011 and 2012 is ABA. It’s a big difference.
And this isn’t just my balance. Mr. Sandwich’s day is not identical to this, but looks very similar. With a lot more laundry.
Ginger of Ramble, Ramble has more writing prompts this week. I couldn’t choose, and they seem to go together, so here you are:
Prompt 1: What are your sick day must haves? Do you want certain foods, shows, clothes, drinks? What makes you feel better when you feel crummy?
Couch, pillows, TV, fleece blankets, PJs, Wicket. Basically, all the soft things.
I don’t know about you, but I feel better just looking at her.
Prompt 2: What’s the sickest you’ve ever been?
Nearly every story about the sickest I’ve ever been includes vomit. Lots of vomit. So I think we should skip those stories, and I think you will agree.
The obvious exceptions are the time I had pneumonia (at an out-of-town conference! that required plane travel!) and the time I had swine flu. Ah, swine flu. Good times.
One Friday in late February 2009,* I had a D&C for my second miscarriage, which (like miscarriages 1, 3, and 4) did not happen without some help. On Sunday, I was supposed to get together with a couple of friends to watch the Oscars. Because of my surgery, they kindly came to my house and brought all the food.
We snarked the Red Carpet so viciously that at one point Mr. Sandwich had to come inside to see what we were shrieking about (one of the hosts had done something so unfortunate to her face that she was trying not to appear on camera, but since she was the host, she kind of had to). The ceremony began. The snarking continued.
After a couple of hours, I started to feel under the weather. I thought, “What I really want to do is go lie down, but if I do that, my friends will feel that they have to leave. And I’m totally fine with them staying, I just need to lie down.”
But since I didn’t want them to go, I stayed put in the recliner.
After another hour, I thought, “What is this? I’m so sore and achy. Wait. Is this the flu? It’s been a while, but I think this is what the flu feels like.”
By the time the show was over and everybody went home, I felt as if the inside of my skin was being sanded. This is not a good feeling.
The next day I had a follow-up appointment with my OB-GYN; from his office, we went to our primary care doctor. As the morning progressed, Mr. Sandwich started to feel achy.
The primary care physician prescribed antivirals for both of us, and we headed off to the drug store.
Which could only fill one prescription of antivirals.
Back home, we swathed the couch in microfleece throws (because the perfectly fine upholstery was too rough for feverish skin) and settled in.
Oh, and while this was going on? I was borderline hemorraghing from the D&C. (You do not want to know.)
Both the flu and the bleeding went on for most of the week. We spent much of it on the couch, looking sadly at each other and saying, “I’m really sorry I can’t take care of you, but I feel so sick.” And the other one would say, “Please don’t worry about it, because I feel that sick, too.”
We also learned that, even with the blinds closed, the afternoon sun cast so much glare on our TV screen that we couldn’t really see it. And since TV was the only form of distraction we could manage (books are so heavy), we kind of needed to see it.
Mr. Sandwich draped the windows in more microfleece throws. Fortunately, we have a lot of them.
And those antivirals? We felt no different at all for taking them. They didn’t seem to help in the slightest. The fever, aches, chills, and clamminess persisted in spite of the drugs. (We still got the second prescription, and we each took all of them that we were supposed to. In case you were wondering.)
But on the other hand, we didn’t die. So there’s that. Because people do die of swine flu.
And after we were well, we replaced the window coverings with wooden blinds.
So I guess you could say that we were so sick, we redecorated.
See those blinds behind Wicket? Those blinds.
*Sources say that the first reported U.S. cases were in late March. But given the severity of our symptoms and the speed of their onset, we are pretty sure that we ran into it at the hospital, before doctors knew about the outbreak.
My mother hated egg whites. Scrambled eggs had to be perfectly blended. I think of her every time I scramble eggs.
On the rare occasions that we’d have breakfast out and we’d order fried eggs, she’d take my yolks and I’d take her whites.
I’m told she made a great lemon meringue pie, but I have no memories of her making it.
Until quite recently, Baguette ate a lot of scrambled eggs. I would fix one for her each morning and take it to school. Last week, though, her teacher told me that she’d been throwing them away because Baguette wasn’t eating them.
After 2015, no California hens can be kept in battery cages; Prop 2, which voters approved and Governor Schwarznegger signed, requires that the animals have enough room to stretch their wings and turn around.
I only buy eggs from California.
Mr. Sandwich and I like the idea of having a backyard coop, and Los Angeles allows that, but we’re not sure that our back yard is set up to let us have a coop the required distance from other structures and still have a back yard.
The farmers market sells eggs from a farm 1-1/2 miles away. They cost twice as much as the most humane eggs I can find at the store, but it’s hard to get more local than that.
Local on the left, store on the right.Local on the left, store on the right.Local on the left, store on the right.
The store egg yolks seem to break much more easily. The local egg yolk didn’t break at all. That’s store yolk you see there.
This week’s Monday Listicles? “10 things you love that are free.” Read on:
1) Baguette’s kisses.
2) Mr. Sandwich’s love for me and her.
3) Snuggles with Wicket.
4) Rain on the roof.
5) Going for a walk and seeing our great neighbors.
6) Opening the windows and letting fresh air blow through the house.
7) Friday evenings, with the whole weekend ahead.
8) A compliment to a stranger.
9) Sun salutations.
10) Conversation.
