All Adither

Submerged in meaningless words and pretty pictures

In the last two days we've gotten this many catalogues:

Hey, Lands End! You, Pottery Barn! Listen up, LL Bean. We don't need this freaking many of your catalogues. Nice try, slapping a pretty new cover on your ever-so-slightly reconfigured pages and passing it off as something unique and exciting, but I have news for you. We're wise to your tactics.

Do you think we have the memories of bars of soap? Do you think we'll spot your catalogue in the mail and ravage it excitedly, looking for the sweater we haven't seen since browsing your glossy pages two days prior? Don't you think that sending out, say, a single catalogue per season is sufficient? Imagine it. If we knew we were getting one and only one Sahalie or Coldwater Creek between September and Christmas we might be apt to actually SAVE it and reference it later. As it is now, we have to recycle the catalogues as fast as we get them lest we be buried alive.

Also, I know it's anything for a buck, but have you heard of our good friend, THE EARTH? Do you ever think about TREES? Or, perhaps, the toxicity of ink and the energy it takes to run printing presses?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Want to declutter by declining some your catalogues? Go here.

Bonk my voodoo

Fruit Bat had a hard day at preschool. A boy who was previously woozy with love for FB because of his expert wooden, train-track assembling skills told him that he didn't care to engage in any cooperative foolery. Only I think it came out more as a sulky, "I don't want to play with you." This boy also announced, during show and tell, that Fruit Bat's chosen object (a Dora doll) was 'babyish'. And then there was some, in Fruit Bat's words, Bonking.

All the abuse transformed my firstborn into his own version of an asshole bully. Upon our return home, he turned his feelings of powerlessness around onto Kitty Cat and much screeching, growling and flailing limbs ensued.

We talked at length about the preschool incidents and how they made him feel. We discussed possible motivations for the little antagonizer's behavior. Then I decided that it would cheer Fruit Bat if I relayed a few of the more charming verbal assaults I've suffered. And there have been many. Mostly spurred by my extreme height. But, when I was mentally scrolling through appropriate insults, what I came up with was, "Well, like, people who say they don't like my hair."

And that really hurts. Not liking my hair. I don't think anyone has ever, in my presence, scorned my 'do. Even if someone did, it would be nothing compared to an emotional bonking from a fickle classmate.

Yeah, such injustice helps shape us, builds character, forges what little social skills we might possess. This knowledge, however, doesn't make it any easier when your kid has to board the rollercoaster of interpersonal relationships.

All I can do, as his mom, is to be there for him if he wants to talk.

That and pop one of these babies in his stocking on Christmas Eve.

Photo totally stolen from Etsy.

The carnivore's dilemma

I saw this on Tuesday afternoon when I was on my great glasses hunt. Some idealistic college students.

I used to be one of them. Very into animal rights and vegetarianism. I never actually trekked to an overpass and held up a sign, or broke into a lab and set animals free, but there was a large part of me that wanted to. Now, frankly, I'm too overwhelmed to care as much. That's horrible, I know. But it's true.

I still love animals. Especially this one.

It's just that we have so many dietary restrictions now that I had to add the meat back in.

So, from a former-vegetarian-now-robust-carnivore...

May all your Thanksgiving wishes come true.

Open Letter to the Starbucks Eggnog scone

I tried you. You were okay. You certainly possessed a strong eggnog essence, complete with nutmeg sprinkled throughout your crumbly entrails. But your blandness was uninspiring and your layer of frosting too thin. My daughter and I unenthusiastically consumed you, skimming off your glaze and then picking at your dry bottom half (as if you were a muffin, which you definitely were not).

I wished you were bigger until I went to the Starbucks website and discovered that you’re 480 calories with 19 grams of fat. Perhaps I could order you again and forget your artery-obstructing properties and banality if you were made with real rum.

Most likely, next time, I’ll just order your cousin––the reduced fat cinnamon swirl coffee cake.

Western medicine vs. natural remedies. Game's on

Turns out that, even with all the scribbling I've been doing in my novel, I still want to blog. A lot. I like the little community we've got going on here and I don't desire any off time. From All Adither, that is.

From the nighttime parenting gig, yes, I want time off from that. The last two nights have been crazily bad around here. Kitty Cat now has some eye goop thing going on (not sure if it is, indeed, pink eye but I took her to the doc and the doc did put her on anti-b's).

Perhaps it was stinging, oozing eyes, perhaps it was the Sudafed I gave her for her impressively tenacious congestion, perhaps it was some side effect from the steroids she was given over the weekend for her croup. Or maybe it was just overtiredness and a feeling of general malaise, but every time Kitty Cat tried to drift off last night, her body would jerk and she'd start flailing and snuffling and crying.

I laid on the futon in her room, I brought her into my bed (which I only resort to in the direst of circumstances), I rubbed her back, I called J. in Phoenix, tearful myself.

Long story short, she didn't settle until around 1am. I got about 5 hours of sleep for the second night in a row. I am tired. I mean, I'm awake enough to function (mostly) but I am certainly not at the top of my game. The words are swimming across my laptop's monitor and I have a curious stomachache that is probably borne of too much caffeine and not enough shut eye. Also, I'm oddly ravenous. I think I may leave soon for Tully's and order five scones.

And another aside, as much as I love medicine and all the suffering it relieves, I have this sense that I'm overmedicating Fruit Bat and Kitty Cat. Fruit Bat has his daily allergy and asthma meds, don't think there's any getting away from that. But in the past week Kitty Cat has withstood many chemicals poured down her gullet. Dexamethasone, Sudafed and now Amoxicillin. Can't we just cure it all with parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme?

Or vitamins and tea tree oil?

I want to believe in the power of plants! Believe it or not, I've seen a naturopath and have taken Fruit Bat to an Oriental Medicine school for his allergies, but that stuff has not worked for me/us. Evah.

Okay, wait, I take that back. Airborne and massive Vitamin C doses has been pretty effective for me in staving off colds. So, there's that. But for some of the other maladies, no luck. Not for me anyway.

Do any of you have natural remedies that you swear by?

My little Fruit Bat

His poor, four-year-old lungs tonight. So twitchy, so wheezy. I'm sad right now.

To cheer us all up, here are two sparkling Fruit Bat moments of the past weekend:

•His insisting I make him a Sunbutter, banana, lettuce and mustard sandwich, and then eating the whole thing.

•His deciding to put this on his Christmas list:

Funny Fruit Bat.

Super Croup

This keeps running through my head:

She's a very croupy girl
The kind you must leave home with mother
She will only let your spirits down
when her breathing becomes a squeak

She's a supercroup, supercroup
She's supercroupy
Supercroup, supercroup
She's supercroupy

Yow.